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

by David Marquet

  I continued to see benefits of deliberate action. DELIBERATE first of all reduced errors by operators and was also a mechanism for TEAMWORK. Finally, it was a mechanism for SIGNALING INTENT.

  A year later, at the beginning of 2001, we received the highest grade anyone had ever seen on our reactor operations examination, with top marks in every area. Afterward I talked with the senior inspector, a captain. He told me that my guys tried to make as many mistakes as the average ship. The difference was that the mistakes never happened because of deliberate action.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but the power of leader-leader was just starting to kick in.

  We had accomplished numerous other breakthroughs as well:

  Instead of focusing on intimate review of the work, I focused on intimate review of the people.

  Instead of requiring more reports and more inspection points, I required fewer.

  Instead of more “leadership” resulting in more “followership,” I practiced less leadership, resulting in more leadership at every level of the command.

  After Dr. Covey’s visit, I thought long and hard about the mechanisms we had put in place and how they worked together. I was struck that it seemed in many cases we were doing the opposite of what traditional leadership would have had us do. Here are some examples:

  DON’T DO THIS!

  DO THIS!

  Leader-follower

  Leader-leader

  Take control

  Give control

  Give orders

  Avoid giving orders

  When you give orders, be confident,

  unambiguous, and resolute

  When you do give orders, leave room

  for questioning

  Brief

  Certify

  Have meetings

  Have conversations

  Have a mentor-mentee program

  Have a mentor-mentor program

  Focus on technology

  Focus on people

  Think short-term

  Think long-term

  Want to be missed after you depart

  Want not to be missed after you depart

  Have high-repetition, low-quality

  training

  Have low-repetition, high-quality

  training

  Limit communications to terse,

  succinct, formal orders

  Augment orders with rich, contextual,

  informal communications

  Be questioning

  Be curious

  Make inefficient processes efficient

  Eliminate entire steps and processes that don’t add value

  Increase monitoring and inspection

  points

  Reduce monitoring and inspection

  points

  Protect information

  Pass information

  Additionally, we formulated the overall construct presented here: control, competence, and clarity. Up to this point we had been just “doing stuff” and seeing what worked and what didn’t. I can’t claim a predetermined plan, other than a vague notion that we needed to get everyone’s full mental capacity, creativity, and energy involved.

  The mechanisms fit under the three keys in the following way.

  Instituting the Leader-Leader Model

  The core of the leader-leader model is giving employees control over what they work on and how they work. It means letting them make meaningful decisions. The two enabling pillars are competence and clarity. Here is a listing of the mechanisms outlined in this book:

  Control

  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.

  Competence

  Take deliberate action.

  We learn (everywhere, all the time).

  Don’t brief, certify.

  Continually and consistently repeat the message.

  Specify goals, not methods.

  Clarity

  Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors.

  Build trust and take care of your people.

  Use your legacy for inspiration.

  Use guiding principles for decision criteria.

  Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviors.

  Begin with the end in mind.

  Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience.

  It’s my hope that this organization of the mechanisms in this book will help you put these ideas into action as you adopt the leader-leader philosophy.

  Here’s a summary of the exercise I take organizations through when they want to move in the direction of leader-leader.

  First, identify where excellence is created in your company. There may be some internal processes that generate excellence and there may be some interface processes that generate excellence. Generally I find that interfaces with the customer and with the physical world are two key interfaces. Then, figure out what decisions the people responsible for the interfaces need to make in order to achieve excellence. Finally, understand what it would take to get those employees to be able to make those decisions. This typically requires an intersection of the right technical knowledge, a thorough understanding of your organization’s goals, authority to make the decision, and responsibility for the consequences of the decisions made.

  QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  Are you ready to take the first steps toward leader-leader?

  Are you ready to take the first steps toward an empowered and engaged workforce?

  Are you ready to embrace the changes that will unleash the intellectual and creative power of the people you work with?

  Do you have the stamina for long-term thinking?

  A New Method of Resupplying

  Do you want empowered employees but find that empowerment programs don’t help? We learned that empowerment is not enough.

  Summer 2001: The Strait of Hormuz

  Santa Fe was on deployment again eighteen months after Dr. Covey’s visit. We’d gone through all the same inspections and predeployment workups as in 1999 but without much of the drama. I had a new XO as Lieutenant Commander Mike Bernacchi relieved Lieutenant Commander Tom Stanley and a new navigator as Lieutenant Caleb Kerr relieved Lieutenant Commander Bill Greene. Lieutenant Dave Adams, Lieutenant Commander Rick Panlilio, Senior Chief Andy Worshek, and Chief David Steele were still on board. During our training period, the new officers, Bernacchi and Kerr, quickly adopted the Santa Fe way of doing business.

  Once again we were operating in the Strait of Hormuz at periscope depth, and we had a problem.

  We had just completed an operation and were anticipating a replenishment port call. It didn’t look like it was going to happen. Normally this would simply be a minor inconvenience because the submarine was loaded out for ninety days of operations at a time and we were not close to that limit.

  Unfortunately, we had developed a small oil leak on a hydraulic ram that we couldn’t fix at sea. Slowly but steadily we were using up our supply of oil and were at risk of having to terminate our operation early. Up to this point, we’d had a 100 percent accomplishment record in terms of making our underway days and assigned missions, and I wasn’t interested in losing that record now.

  The Strait of Hormuz is a busy place, and a submarine operating at periscope depth and slow speed has to constantly be on the lookout for traffic in each direction. As in the Strait of Malacca, supertankers are traveling in both directions; additionally, smugglers are running from Iran across to the United Arab Emirates, and of course, fishing dhows are omnipresent. By this point in the deployment, our section tracking team had been operating smoothly, and I was not overly concerned ab
out keeping the ship safe. I periodically looked at the displays to assure myself that we were staying clear of all traffic, but I was not paying much attention to the specific ships we were avoiding.

  We had an ensign on the periscope, Armando Aviles. Armando had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1999 and had reported to Santa Fe in February. He was brand-new. He was enthusiastic and unconstrained by knowing how the “real Navy” works. This worked to our advantage.

  After listening to a discussion about our need for more oil, Ensign Aviles chimed in. “Hey, that’s the AOE [a Navy fast-resupply ship]. Why don’t we just ask them for some oil?” I looked at the periscope display and, sure enough, the fast combat support ship USS Rainier was transiting through the Strait of Hormuz several miles away.

  The Rainier was a supply ship specifically designed with the speed to stay with the carrier battle group. It had deployed out of San Diego with the USS Constellation Battle Group when we departed Pearl Harbor. Rainier carried 2 million gallons of diesel fuel, 2 million gallons of jet fuel, and tons of ammunition and supplies. All we needed was a few cans of oil. Surely Rainier would have that.

  There was a problem. All ship movements in the carrier battle group were directed by a series of messages. One message was the daily intentions message (DIM). If you wanted to resupply from Rainier you would request that it be added to the DIM. This needed to happen at least thirty-six hours before the planned event. One just didn’t “call up” and get supplied.

  Except in this case, we did.

  Rainier didn’t know we were there, of course, because we were remaining undetected. Even though we were in an identity condition that allowed us to be surfaced, we always practiced remaining undetected as much as possible.

  My thoughts were, “It’s a long shot, but why not? What do we have to lose?” I waved the flashlight around. “Go ahead, guys, see if you can set it up.”

  “I intend to break radio silence to coordinate a resupply from Rainier,” said the OOD.

  “Very well.”

  Nav called Rainier on the radio, identified who we were, and passed the Navy stock number for external hydraulic oil. Sure enough, they would supply us! Fortunately, Captain Kendall Card, a personal acquaintance of mine, had reinforced with his crew that they were there to support the ships of the U.S. Navy, and that trumped bureaucracy. I’d never heard of such a thing. Not only that, but the CO invited us to send over any crew members who needed medical or dental checkups beyond what Santa Fe’s Doc Hill could provide.

  Rainier had a schedule to maintain; we couldn’t delay long. If we didn’t get surfaced in a few minutes, it wouldn’t be able to stay around to help us.

  The crew sprang into action, to which I gave my immediate assent.

  From the sonar supervisor: “OOD, I intend to retrieve the towed array in preparation for surfacing. The sonar supervisor is the Chief in Charge.”

  Very well.

  From the OOD: “Captain, I intend to prepare to surface.”

  Very well.

  From the COB: “I intend to muster the small boat handling party in the crew’s mess. I intend to break rig for dive, drain, and open the forward escape trunk lower hatch. COB is Chief in Charge.”

  Very well.

  From our corpsman, Doc Hill: “I intend to muster selected personnel for dental checkups in the crew’s mess, conducting watch reliefs as necessary.”

  Very well.

  From YN1 Scott Dillon: “Captain, I intend to canvass the crew for outgoing mail and transfer it to Rainier.”

  Very well.

  From the supply officer: “Captain, I intend to transfer the hydraulic oil from Rainier.”

  Very well.

  We surfaced for a brief stop for personnel (BSP). Meantime, Rainier lowered a small boat, loaded it, and sent it our way. The small boat they used was called a rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB).

  We needed men topside and to open the main deck hatch to bring the supplies on board. Myriad various activities needed to happen quickly and in a synchronized manner. Here’s where the training paid off—where everything we’d done paid off. There’s no way I would have been able to pull off a plan for conducting this kind of operation and direct it piece by piece. You could call it speed of response, or reducing the sense-act delay inherent in organizations, or adaptability to change. Whatever you call it, the crew’s performance allowed us to continue being a submarine in defense of the country rather than limping into port for a fill-up.

  Not only did Rainier send the oil we needed; they sent newspapers and fresh fruits and vegetables (FFV) as well.

  We brought the RHIB alongside. We loaded the oil, newspapers, and FFV and sent half a dozen crew members over for their checkups. I was a bit concerned about our vulnerability because we were on the surface in a highly trafficked area. Consequently, we shut the hatch and prepared Santa Fe to submerge on short notice. If we had had to submerge, the group on Rainier would have been there for a couple days.

  Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary, and shortly thereafter the RHIB returned with our crew members. We brought them aboard and submerged, ready to operate for as long as needed now.

  Mechanism: Don’t Empower, Emancipate

  Empowerment is a necessary step because we’ve been accustomed to disempowerment. Empowerment is needed to undo all those top-down, do-what-you’re-told, be-a-team-player messages that result from our leader-follower model. But empowerment isn’t enough in a couple of ways.

  First, empowerment by itself is not a complete leadership structure. Empowerment does not work without the attributes of competence and clarity.

  Second, empowerment still results from and is a manifestation of a top-down structure. At its core is the belief that the leader “empowers” the followers, that the leader has the power and ability to empower the followers.

  We need more than that because empowerment within a leader-follower structure is a modest compensation and a voice lost compared with the overwhelming signal that “you are a follower.” It is a confusing signal.

  What we need is release, or emancipation. Emancipation is fundamentally different from empowerment. With emancipation we are recognizing the inherent genius, energy, and creativity in all people, and allowing those talents to emerge. We realize that we don’t have the power to give these talents to others, or “empower” them to use them, only the power to prevent them from coming out. Emancipation results when teams have been given decision-making control and have the additional characteristics of competence and clarity. You know you have an emancipated team when you no longer need to empower them. Indeed, you no longer have the ability to empower them because they are not relying on you as their source of power.

  QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  Are you limiting your leadership to empowerment?

  What programs have you instituted to supplement control with competence and clarity?

  Have you divested yourself of the attitude that you, as a corporate leader, will empower your staff?

  Ripples

  January 15, 2011: Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor

  I am sitting on the pier in Hawaii, January 15, 2011, twelve years after I took command of the USS Santa Fe. This time another officer is taking command and it’s Commander Dave Adams. He was coincidentally assigned to command Santa Fe after serving an XO tour on the USS Honolulu and commanding a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan for a year. He wasn’t the only Santa Fe officer to do that. Lieutenant Commander Caleb Kerr also commanded a PRT after his tour as navigator on Santa Fe. These officers are handpicked by the chief of naval operations. I don’t think it was a coincidence that of the hundreds of candidates, three Navy PRT commanders came from one ship—Santa Fe.

  Now, years later, I can see that implementing leader-leader on Santa Fe achieved two additional accomplishments that weren’t immediately knowable. First, the ship continued to do well long after my departure. Since we embedded the goodness of how we did business in the practices and pe
ople, that goodness persisted beyond my tenure. The ship won the award for the best chiefs’ quarters for seven years in a row and won the Battle “E” award for the most combat-effective submarine in the squadron three additional times in the subsequent decade. This compares with zero during the previous decade.

  The other accomplishment is that we developed additional leaders in numbers widely disproportionate to the statistical probabilities. Both of the executive officers were selected to command their own submarines and were subsequently selected for major command. Both were promoted to commander and later to the rank of captain. The three eligible department heads were selected for executive officers and again to command their own submarines. They are in command now. All three were promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander, then commander, and two have already been selected for the rank of captain. The fourth department head was selected for the Navy’s Engineering Duty Officer community and was also promoted to captain. Many of the enlisted men have gone on to positions such as chief of the boat or have attained advanced degrees and run businesses.