Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

by David Marquet

“Cast off all lines.”

  On the bridge, Lieutenant Dave Adams was coaching a junior officer who was conning the submarine for the first time. We’d completed the upkeep maintenance period and were preparing to travel to San Diego for several exercises with the USS Constellation Battle Group. I had been in command forty-five days. We were scheduled to deploy with that same carrier battle group in four months. The transit and at-sea exercises would provide a welcome opportunity to work on our operational and war-fighting skills. Time at sea was invaluable for building the crew into a team. Santa Fe’s crew would be able to finish crafting our guiding principles, which had been delayed because I wanted the crew to develop them on their own. Now we would have the chance.

  The transit out of Pearl Harbor was beautiful. I hardly said a word. Dave was coaching the young officer, and between the navigation team and the bridge party, I was getting a near-continuous stream of reports, status, intentions, and plans—all of it thinking out loud.

  “Standby to mark the turn, next course is left to 182.”

  “Turning in approximately thirty seconds.”

  “Mark the turn by radar.”

  “That looks early to me.”

  “Mark the turn by visual.”

  “Helm, left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course 182.”

  “My rudder is left fifteen.”

  “The rudder is left.”

  “Turn looked a little late.”

  “Helm, increase your rudder to left twenty, steady 182.”

  Beautiful. The team was communicating well, in a mutually trusting and nonjudgmental way.

  Pearl Harbor is a wonderful place to operate a submarine. Not only is it full of submarine lore and legend and beautiful weather; there is also deep water immediately offshore. On the East Coast, submarines must transit on the surface for miles to clear the continental shelf.

  Santa Fe was assigned the water all around the harbor, and we were quickly at the dive point. I went below. Shortly afterward, the officer of the deck (OOD), lookouts, and conning officer came below after rigging the bridge for dive.

  In the control room, men were taking their stations to submerge the ship. It was taking an irritatingly long time. Nuclear-powered subs spend so much time submerged that they rarely practice submerging. We’d lost focus on getting submerged and actually being a submarine. During World War II, when submarines spent most of their time on the surface, the crash dive was a matter of life and death. The men could clear the bridge, shut the hatch, and submerge in thirty seconds. Submerging on a nuclear-powered submarine was a much more graceful affair, taking several minutes. This wasn’t the problem so much as the preparations for submerging. Again, here was evidence that a key war-fighting skill had atrophied.

  Later, when we got under way, we would set an objective of minimizing the time from casting off lines to having Santa Fe submerged and stable at 150 feet underwater. That forced the crew not to think in terms of disparate events (under way, maneuvering watch, shift the watch below, submerge, trim the ship), with all the discontinuities in personnel and equipment, but to think of sticking all those events together. When challenged like that, they found ingenious ways to trim seconds and minutes from the transitions, which made Santa Fe a much more effective warship.

  The diving officer of the watch (DOOW) announced that he would brief the dive. We were always briefing things. We love briefings in the military.

  He opened the Ship System Manual (SSM), which contained the procedure, and began to read. “On the second blast of the diving alarm the Chief of the Watch will open all vents.

  “The helmsman will place the rudder amidships.”

  On and on he droned.

  Five minutes later, he asked if there were any questions.

  There were none.

  The first dive after an extended in-port raised my anxiety level for two reasons. First, the uncertainty in the trim of the ship is greater. If we brought on weight—whether additional torpedoes, equipment, stores, water, or even the number of crew—that wasn’t properly accounted for, the submarine would be heavy, and sink. If we were lighter than expected, we’d open the vents and wallow on the surface for some time until we brought on enough water to achieve neutral buoyancy.

  The other reason was that during the in-port period, while everyone was focused on maintenance, the crew would forget some of the nuances of the diving and submerging procedure. Like everyone else, we thought we were covering this by briefing the procedure.

  And, because we needed to take every opportunity to learn, I intended to run some unexpected casualty drills, including simulating that certain gauges had malfunctioned.

  “Captain, I intend to submerge the ship.”

  “Very well.”

  “Dive, submerge the ship.”

  “Submerge the ship. Dive, aye.”

  Well, needless to say, it didn’t go well. Given unexpected indications, the team got confused. People took wrong actions initially and took too long to determine and correct the source of the problems.

  Afterward, we gathered for a debrief, during which I simply asked, “What happened? The chief briefed the procedure.” My flashlight was pointing at one of the planesmen, who hadn’t responded properly when we simulated a stuck depth gauge.

  “Captain, no one listens to those briefings.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you come on watch, sit in the chair, and when the chief starts reading from the book, you’re thinking, ‘I already know how to do this,’ so you don’t listen too hard.”

  Mechanism: Don’t Brief, Certify

  That described a phenomenon I’d seen many times. A briefing is a passive activity for everyone except the briefer. Everyone else “is briefed.” There is no responsibility for preparation or study. It’s easy to just nod and say “ready” without full intellectual engagement. Furthermore, the sole responsibility in participating in a brief is to show up. Finally, a brief, as such, is not a decision point. The operation is going to happen and we are simply talking about it first.

  We decided to do away with briefs. From that point on we would do certifications.

  A certification is different from a brief in that during a certification, the person in charge of his team asks them questions. This could be the Chief in Charge—as in the case I’m recounting—or a lead surgeon prior to an operation. At the end of the certification, a decision is made whether or not the team is ready to perform the upcoming operation. If the team has not adequately demonstrated the necessary knowledge during the certification, the operation should be postponed.

  The first time we tried it, the watch standers didn’t know what they were supposed to do. They hadn’t studied. When I asked them why they were unprepared, they told me they didn’t know that we were going to submerge on this watch. Later, when I asked the same question of twenty watch standers for a major evolution like starting up the reactor, the excuse one sailor gave was that he knew we were going to start the reactor but didn’t know what watch station he was going to be assigned to until immediately prior to the evolution.

  What I learned from these examples is that briefing an action many times compensates for poor planning and that certification, which flows from the leader-leader approach, puts more work on management than leader-follower does because management needs not only to identify what near-term events will be accomplished but also the role each member of the team will be fulfilling.

  Certifications shift the onus of preparation onto the participants. All participants are active. The change from passive briefs to active certification changed the crew’s behavior. We found that when people know they will be asked questions they study their responsibilities ahead of time. This increases the intellectual involvement of the crew significantly. People are thinking about what they will be required to do and independently study for it.

  Stop Briefing and Start Certifying in Your Business

  Whenever you have focused team events, whether they are surgical
procedures or sales pitches, think about the preparation.

  Are people coming to “be briefed” or are they ready to present their portion of the event? In organizations where there are a lot of briefings, it will take extra work initially to shift the mind-set, but you could start with something as simple as read-ahead or think-ahead assignments that people are accountable for accomplishing.

  The second thing that would make a big difference is to simply make sure the team knows that it’s a decision meeting about whether they are ready to accomplish the procedure. Yes, the costs of saying “we’re not ready” are high, but not as high as the costs of a bungled operation.

  DON’T BRIEF, CERTIFY is a mechanism for COMPETENCE.

  Certification is also a decision point. It is possible to fail a certification. Individuals can reveal that they aren’t prepared to take part in an action because of their lack of knowledge or understanding. Otherwise, it’s just a brief.

  “Don’t brief, certify” became another example where we basically did the opposite of what we were supposed to. Later on, we had fun when inspectors came to the ship and said they wanted to observe the brief prior to an evolution (like submerging) and I’d tell them we didn’t do any briefings. A briefing was not required. What was required was that we operate the submarine safely and according to the procedures. And our certifications did this better than any briefing.

  Don’t brief, certify also became quite powerful because instead of one person studying an evolution and briefing it to the watch team, every crew member became responsible for knowing his job. It was a mechanism that forced intellectual engagement at every level in the crew. When you walked around the boat, you’d see guys studying. Studying! On their own! But only if management did their part. Some people call this ownership. A current management term is employee engagement.

  An effective survey question to ask your employees is how many minutes a week they spend learning on their own, not mandated, not directed. Typically it’s a small number. An organizational measure of improving health would be to increase that number. If you want engaged teams, don’t brief, certify!

  QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  How do you shift responsibility for performance from the briefer to the participants?

  How much preparation do people do prior to an event or operation?

  When was the last time you had a briefing on a project? Did listeners tune out the procedures?

  What would it take to start certifying that your project teams know what the goals are and how they are to contribute to them?

  Are you ready to assume more responsibility within the leader-leader model to identify what near-term events will be accomplished and the role each team member will fulfill?

  All Present and Accounted For

  Have you ever thought that people understood what you were talking about only to find out they didn’t “get it” at all? Unfortunately, it happened on board Santa Fe and almost cost us a good sailor.

  March 5, 1999: San Diego, California (116 days to deployment)

  We’d arrived in San Diego an hour earlier and I was stewing over a report that showed multiple mechanical problems with our missile tubes. This was our first long underway where we started caring about their condition. Not surprisingly, when a system that is subjected to salt water and sea pressure is neglected, switches, connectors, and pressure sensors fail.

  The COB appeared at my door. I was hoping to discuss our plan for getting this system 100 percent ready before the upcoming strike exercise.

  “Sir, he said ‘Fuck this shit’ and left the boat.”

  “Huh, who?”

  “Oh, I thought you knew. Sled Dog went AWOL.”

  Of course I knew him well. He was one of the junior quartermasters who had surprised me with their participation in improving our chart process.

  Standing quartermaster of the watch (QMOW) is tough business. It’s important for the safe navigation of the ship, and there is little room for error. Worse, it’s under constant scrutiny because the watch is stood in the control room. While the OOD directly supervises the quartermaster, the XO and I frequently came into the control room and headed straight for the chart to see where we were. Frequently, the quartermaster would be attempting to plot his rounds with three or four officers crowding around the chart table. It is one of a handful of watch stations personally qualified by the captain.

  My initial reaction was that I just didn’t need this, and I slumped down in my chair.

  I was already feeling bad. I had just realized that we were giving the Navy-wide advancement examinations this week. I had been preoccupied with the navigation of the submarine to San Diego and effective operations with the battle group and hadn’t paid attention to the scheduling of the advancement exams. The Navy picks the dates and everyone takes the exams on the same day to prevent compromise. Performance on these exams would largely determine whether the one hundred petty officers on Santa Fe would be promoted. But because we hadn’t been talking about the advancement exams and we hadn’t scheduled any study time, I didn’t have high hopes we had set the crew up for success.

  Going AWOL (absent without leave) would be a permanent mark on Sled Dog’s record, further hindering his potential to get promoted. It was also a serious indictment of how things were going on board Santa Fe.

  After our problem with shore power and in the torpedo room, things started going better. A junior officer withdrew his resignation, and we started seeing reenlistment requests from the enlisted men. This was a sign that morale was turning around. Sled Dog’s jumping ship would be a big setback.

  We convened a meeting, a critique of sorts. Present were Sled Dog’s chain of command, including Lieutenant Commander Bill Greene and Chief John Larson, as well as the COB, the XO, and me. There were two camps. On one side, several of the senior enlisted men and chiefs pointed out that Sled Dog had been in the Navy for several years, was perfectly sober, knew what he was doing, and knew what the consequences of his actions were. He was on his own, and they already had a report chit written up on him that would send him to captain’s mast. It would be important for good order and discipline to deal with him harshly, especially with deployment looming. We didn’t want sailors thinking they could renege on their obligation to the nation and their shipmates.

  On the other side, the officers were more sympathetic. They pointed out that the quartermasters had been standing port and starboard watch since we left Pearl Harbor a week ago. That meant Sled Dog had stood watch six hours on, six hours off. Of course, you have to eat, prepare for watch, and conduct postwatch duties during those “six hours off,” so it ends up being more like eight hours on, four hours off. Then there are training sessions, briefs, and all-hands drills. If they occurred during your sleep time, too bad. In this case, we had had piloting certifications, run drills, and shifted the clocks two hours ahead to match the local San Diego time. All of these factors had, unfortunately, conspired to reduce Sled Dog’s sleep in the previous thirty-six hours to zero. No one planned it, but no one was looking out for him either. We then had several hours piloting the ship into San Diego. This is a period of intense activity while we bring the ship into port, especially for the quartermasters.

  While Sled Dog wasn’t going to win awards as the top-ranking petty officer in his division, he was a hard worker and a valuable member of the watch team. If we lost him, Santa Fe would be unable to get under way. If we were already port and starboard then we’d be down to “port and re-port,” which meant we had only one qualified watch stander for the quartermaster watch station. This would be a severe limitation to the ship’s ability to act in the nation’s defense.

  The Tip of the Iceberg?

  I decided to dig deeper into the problem.

  Q: Why were the quartermasters port and starboard anyway?

  A: Because there weren’t enough of them to support the normal three-section watch bill.

  Q: Why not?

  A: The chief of that division hadn’
t gotten enough of his guys qualified; we had a perilously shallow bench. The qualification program was broken.

  Q: Was anyone else qualified who could have made them three-section instead of port and starboard?

  A: Yes, the leading first class petty officer of that division (a supervisor), but he was “off the watch bill” in order to be ready to stand the discretionary watch “navigation supervisor” (NavSupe).

  Q: But isn’t the navigation supervisor stationed to increase safety of the navigation picture when the ship is close to land?

  A: Yes.

  Q: And didn’t we just cross the eastern Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to San Diego?

  A: Yes.

  Q: And did we need a navigation supervisor?

  A: No.

  This pissed me off. This supervisor was letting his guys go without sleep and he wasn’t even on the watch bill.

  I reviewed the entire watch bill more carefully and realized that the diving officer of the watch—a watch stood by the chiefs—was one in six. In other words, they shared one watch station among six qualified chiefs, one six-hour watch every thirty-six hours. Meantime, the standard crew rotation was one in three—three men per watch station, and some watch stations, like Sled Dog’s, was one in two—two men for the one watch station.

  How did that happen? It was the normal way of doing business on submarines. Some boats take their chiefs entirely off the watch bill. That this could be viewed as an acceptable way of doing business was a manifestation of the idea that being a chief meant you had more privileges, not more responsibility. It was the “good life” that the junior enlisted were supposed to aspire to. But it had the opposite effect: all it did was alienate the crew. I was upset that the chiefs had taken care of themselves first, and the crew was paying for it.