The department heads identified a potential problem with this approach. Who would be responsible and accountable for the work? If you, the captain, allow us to make decisions about the work, aren’t you risking your professional reputation and career on how well we do? Isn’t that the reason these ideas are so hard to implement?
They had a point. I pondered that. Would I be willing to be vulnerable to the effects of their decisions? On a submarine, a warship, there were lives at stake after all, not just our careers. I would retain accountability for Santa Fe’s operational performance but release control of the actual decisions to the department heads. It felt uncomfortable, but we were in such a bind that I didn’t see any other way. Besides, Santa Fe was already at the bottom—how much worse could the ship do?
By contrast, “whatever they tell me to do” pointed to the reality that the fundamental structure of leader-follower was the problem on board ship. Everyone below the captain and the department heads had their brain shut off. What did that give us? We had 135 men on board and only 5 of them fully engaged their capacity to observe, analyze, and problem-solve. An image from my hometown popped into my head. I grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, near Lowell, where a host of empty textile mills mark the landscape. This is how I pictured the mental utilization of the crew—sitting idle.
Another thing bothered me as well. Who, exactly, was the “they” in the statement “whatever they tell me to do”? Wasn’t “they” us?
• • •
Once I understood the pervasive influence that our structure of leader-follower had on our way of doing business, I saw examples of it everywhere I looked: in the way we conducted operations, the end-of-day checkout, the structure of the meetings, the routing of the message boards, the quarters on the pier.
Everything we did reinforced the notion that the guys at the top were the leaders and the rest of the crew were the followers. The problem for Santa Fe wasn’t an absence of leadership. It was too much leadership of the wrong kind, the leader-follower kind.
I could also see the costs of leader-follower in the passivity of the sailors at quarters, in the lack of initiative, in the waiting for others, in the department heads’ paralysis without the CO at the department head meetings.
Everything would have to change.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Why is doing what you are told appealing to some?
Do people really just want to do as they are told?
If a snapshot of your business went viral on the Internet, what would it reveal about your workers?
Do your procedures reinforce the leader-follower model?
How would your middle managers react if you implemented a checkout system like the one described in this chapter?
“I Relieve You!”
Is your organization spending more energy trying to avoid errors than achieving excellence? We were.
January 8, 1999: Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor (172 days to deployment)
Freshly painted, Santa Fe sat proudly next to the pier at Submarine Base Pearl Harbor. The January weather was beautiful: sunny, 75 degrees, and light trade winds. On board the ship a portable platform had been loaded with a podium and four chairs. I was sitting in the second chair, looking across to the pier where the crew, families, and submarine community of Pearl Harbor were sitting under tents. In a few minutes, I would be taking command of a nuclear-powered warship and instantly become responsible for the taxpayers’ $2 billion investment and 135 men. I would be responsible for preparing the warship to take the fight to the enemy and return home. It was a daunting task. It had come faster than I could have imagined, and I certainly didn’t feel ready.
The authorities and responsibilities of the commanding officer, or captain, are specified in U.S. Navy Regulations:
The responsibility of the commanding officer for his or her command is absolute . . . While the commanding officer may, at his or her discretion, and when not contrary to law or regulations, delegate authority to subordinates for the execution of details, such delegation of authority shall in no way relieve the commanding officer of continued responsibility for the safety, well-being and efficiency of the entire command (Section 0802).6
Delegation is the exception, not the rule. This issue of absolute responsibility has been a fundamental aspect of naval service since the United States Navy was crafted in the image of the Royal Navy. If the ship started to sink right at that moment, I would not be responsible. If it started to sink an hour later, it would be my responsibility, 100 percent. I would be accountable. While that singular point of accountability is attractive in many ways, there is a downside. The previous commanding officer would not be held accountable. Thus, as I pointed out earlier, each CO is encouraged to maximize performance for his tour and his tour alone. There is no incentive or reward for developing mechanisms that enable excellence beyond your immediate tour. Imagine the impact of this on the thousands of decisions made by the commanding officers throughout the Navy.
For example, in Section 0851 in the Navy Regulations on action with the enemy, the CO is directed to take the following action:
Before going into battle or action communicate to the officers of the command, if possible, his or her plans for battle or action and such other information as may be of operational value should any of them succeed to command.
It might seem amazing that we feel it necessary to tell commanding officers to communicate the battle plan to their subordinates before going into combat, “if possible.” If the crew doesn’t know and understand the battle plan before then, defeat is almost certain.
But those Navy regs are describing the top-down, aloof, leader-follower structure that naval officers learn. Leader-follower is the image that comes to mind when we think of the confident, resolute commanding officer boldly leading his crew into battle. We think this is good leadership.
As I sat there on the dais musing about what I was soon to be accountable for, I thought back to my introduction to Santa Fe and took stock of what we had going for us.
First, the crew wanted change, even if they didn’t know quite how to do it. When I asked the men what I shouldn’t change, what worked particularly well, I didn’t get a lot of answers. The frustration, wasted hours, and mediocre results of the previous year had convinced them they needed to do something else. Ultimately, we were to introduce a way of doing business that would be different from what they’d experienced before and would spare them the pain they’d suffered earlier on board. Without the thirst for change it would have been difficult to get the crew to accept an entirely new way of thinking about leadership. This call to action would be necessary for the changes I had in mind.
Second, we had an incredibly supportive chain of command. My bosses, Commodore Mark Kenny and Rear Admiral Al Konetzni, Commander, Submarine Forces, Pacific (COMSUBPAC or CSP), were ready to give me all the encouragement I needed—and all the rope I needed to hang myself. They were outcome focused. They didn’t care or need to know the specifics of what we were going to do as long as the evidence showed that the submarine was improving in performance, war-fighting capability, and morale. This was good because I’m not sure I could have articulated the path ahead, and even if I had, I’m not sure they would have bought it.
Third, my reliance on the crew for the specifics of how the boat operated prevented me from falling into old habits and the trap of leader-follower. I couldn’t have operated that way if I’d wanted to. There were many times I had the impulse to give specific direction but I couldn’t. Although I cursed my lack of technical knowledge, it prevented me from falling back on bad habits. In the past when I would interview a crew member about how something worked, I only acted curious because, in reality, I knew how it worked. Now, when I talked to the men on the ship, I actually was curious.
Finally, it seemed clear that the crew was in a self-reinforcing downward spiral where poor practices resulted in mistakes, mistakes resulted in poor morale, and poor morale resulted in avoiding init
iative and going into a survival mode of doing only what was absolutely necessary. In order to break this cycle, I’d need to radically change the daily motivation by shifting the focus from avoiding errors to achieving excellence.
Mechanism: Achieve Excellence, Don’t Just Avoid Errors
In the nuclear-powered submarine Navy we focus on errors. We track them, we report them, and we attempt to understand the reasons for them. There is a powerful and effective culture of open and honest discussion about what went wrong and what could have gone better. What happens then is that we evaluate ships based on the mistakes they make. Avoiding mistakes becomes the prime focus of the crew and leadership.
What happened with Santa Fe, however, was that the crew was becoming gun-shy about making mistakes. The best way not to make a mistake is not to do anything or make any decisions. It dawned on me the day I assumed command that focusing on avoiding errors is helpful for understanding the mechanics of procedures and detecting impending major problems before they occur, but it is a debilitating approach when adopted as the objective of an organization.
You are destined to fail. No matter how good you get at avoiding mistakes, you will always have errors on something as complex as a submarine. You might reduce the number and severity, but there will never be zero. They may be such minor errors as reading a gauge wrong or scheduling two conflicting events, but people always make mistakes. Thus, they always feel bad about themselves. In the same vein, success is a negative, an absence of failure, avoidance of a critique or an incident. Sadly, a common joke on Santa Fe was “Your reward is no punishment.”
Focusing on avoiding mistakes takes our focus away from becoming truly exceptional. Once a ship has achieved success merely in the form of preventing major errors and is operating in a competent way, mission accomplished, there is no need to strive further.
I resolved to change this. Our goal would be excellence instead of error reduction. We would focus on exceptional operational effectiveness for the submarine. We would achieve great things.
Part of achieving excellence would be acquiring an intimate understanding of errors, that is, what caused them and what we needed to do to eliminate them. But that intimate understanding would not be the thing the crew needed to be thinking about as they reported for duty. Reducing mistakes would be an important side benefit to attaining our primary goal, achieving excellence. Excellence was going to be more than a philosophy statement pasted to the bulkhead; it was going to be how we lived, ate, and slept.
My thoughts turned sharply back to the present. I heard the outgoing CO come to the end of his speech. I stood, and with the words “I relieve you,” became the commanding officer of Santa Fe. I turned to Commodore Kenny and reported I had relieved as CO Santa Fe.
I was now totally accountable for Santa Fe and committed myself to that role with the following words:
I believe the personal freedoms, respect for human dignity, and economic prosperity we enjoy in the United States are unique throughout the history of mankind and across the span of the globe.
I believe that this is not a natural state but one which must be worked for relentlessly, and, if necessary, defended.
I believe the men who sallied forth from these very piers in boats like Tang, Wahoo, and Barb were engaged in an honorable and worthwhile endeavor.
I believe those eternally on patrol beyond the reef did not die in vain. The future depends upon those willing to continue that honorable and worthwhile endeavor. Accordingly, I reaffirm my vow to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Shipmates of Santa Fe, I will be proud to sail with you.
Thank you.
I sat down.
I was ready to go to work. We were scheduled to deploy in 172 days. As I looked across at the officers, chiefs, and sailors assembled on the pier, I knew we should start in the middle. We would start with the chiefs.
• • •
Going to sea in a submarine, leaving your family for six months, is hard work. Honorable work, but hard work. These guys weren’t going to become rich looting enemy ships; they weren’t in it for themselves. Fear was pervasive and we needed to turn that around.
Connecting our day-to-day activities to something larger was a strong motivator for the crew. The connection was there but it had been lost. Instead, in ways large and small, I encountered situations where the crew’s actions were motivated by following a checklist, pleasing an inspector, looking good, or some other variant of “avoiding problems.”
I, we, needed everyone to see the ultimate purpose for the submarine and remember that it was a noble purpose. I also wanted to connect our current endeavors with the submarine force’s rich legacy of service to and sacrifice for the country. Once the crewmen remembered what we were doing and why, they would do anything to support the mission. This was a stark contrast to earlier, when people were coming to work simply with the hope of not screwing up.
ACHIEVE EXCELLENCE, DON’T JUST AVOID ERRORS is a mechanism for CLARITY. (The book to read is Simon Sinek’s Start with Why.)
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Are your people trying to achieve excellence or just to avoid making mistakes?
Has your organization become action-averse because taking action sometimes results in errors?
Have you let error-reduction programs sap the lifeblood out of initiative and risk taking?
Do you spend more time critiquing errors than celebrating success?
Are you able to identify the symptoms of avoiding errors in your workplace?
When you ask people what their jobs are, do they answer in terms of reducing errors?
When you investigate the criteria that went behind decisions, do you find that avoidance of negative outcomes far outweighs accomplishing positive outcomes?
What is the primary motivation of the middle managers and rank and file (not what it says on the wall poster outside the boardroom)?
How can you minimize errors but not make that the focus of your organization?
PART II
CONTROL
My primary focus when I assumed command of Santa Fe was to divest control and distribute it to the officers and crew. Control is about making decisions concerning not only how we are going to work but also toward what end.
A submarine has a built-in structure whereby information is channeled up the chain of command to decision makers. Instead, we were going to deconstruct decision authority and push it down to where the information lived. We called this “Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.”
The chapters in this part will introduce you to the initial set of mechanisms we devised to implement leader-leader practices. I’ve organized the mechanisms into three groups: control, competence, and clarity. Although the initial focus was on redistributing control, it was necessary to work in all three areas.
Find the genetic code for control and rewrite it.
Act your way to new thinking.
Short, early conversations make efficient work.
Use “I intend to . . .” to turn passive followers into active leaders.
Resist the urge to provide solutions.
Eliminate top-down monitoring systems.
Think out loud (both superiors and subordinates).
Embrace the inspectors.
Change, in a Word
What’s the best way to change decision-making authorities in your organization? Turns out it’s pretty easy once you commit to changing.
January 8, 1999: Old Periscope Facility, Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor (172 days to deployment)
Later that afternoon, I sat with the chiefs of Santa Fe in the defunct World War II periscope repair facility. Now a tired and unassuming two-story building next to the piers, this structure had once been a constant scene of activity as technicians worked to refurbish and focus the periscopes of American submarines. These were the tools that such men as Dick O’Kane, Mush Morton, and Gene Fluckey
would use to achieve victory against the Empire of Japan. The periscope repair functions had moved to a larger and more up-to-date facility a hundred yards away, and the original facility was now an informal lounge. The room was hot and uncomfortable. We sat on recycled furniture with a squeaky ceiling fan turning slowly above us and the windows opened to let in the slight breeze.
If I started at the top, with the XO, COB, and department heads, we would be using a top-down approach to implement a bottom-up leadership philosophy. That was inherently contradictory. Additionally, that would involve only six people and wouldn’t create a critical mass of participation. The junior officers weren’t a good place to start because they had lost credibility in the command and would still have to learn the basics of leadership. Starting at the bottom, with the junior enlisted men, probably wouldn’t work either. There was too much distance between them and me, and without support in the rest of the command, they would be viewed suspiciously. So here I was with the chiefs.
Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders Page 6