Turn the Ship Around!
Marquet's account of transforming the USS Santa Fe from the worst-performing submarine in the Navy to the best. The specific mechanism — moving from leader-follower to leader-leader by pushing control down while moving competence and clarity up — is one of the most rigorously documented leadership case studies in print.
Summary
Marquet commanded the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear submarine ranked last in its fleet, and describes how he changed its performance by removing the leader-follower structure and replacing it with what he calls leader-leader. The origin of the change was a failure. Marquet gave an order that could not be executed because he had trained on a different class of submarine, and the crew attempted to carry it out anyway. He concluded that a structure in which everyone waits for the captain's instruction fails whenever the captain is wrong, and that the only alternative is distributing the decision.
His central mechanism is the phrase I intend to. Rather than asking permission, subordinates state what they intend to do and the reasoning behind it, and the officer either assents or intervenes. This shifts the cognitive work to the person closest to the situation while preserving the check.
His supporting practices include ensuring that people have the technical competence to make the decisions being pushed to them, since authority without competence produces errors; ensuring organisational clarity about the objective so that decisions are made against the right criterion; deliberate action, meaning a pause and a vocalisation before any operation so that errors are caught before execution; and resisting the urge to provide answers when asked.
He documents the results, including the ship's ranking and its subsequent record of promoting officers to command. The environment is a nuclear submarine with extensive procedural training, which supplies the competence his model requires and which most organisations lack. Marquet acknowledges this. The intent-based language is the transferable mechanism and works immediately.
Key takeaways 8
- A structure in which everyone waits for the leader's instruction fails whenever the leader is wrong or absent.
- Subordinates should state what they intend to do and their reasoning rather than asking for permission, which shifts the thinking to the person closest to the situation.
- Distributing authority requires that people have the technical competence to use it, or the errors increase rather than the outcomes improving.
- Distributing authority also requires clarity about the objective, since decisions made against the wrong criterion are worse than no decisions.
- Pausing and stating an action aloud before performing it catches errors before execution rather than after.
- A leader who provides answers when asked trains the organisation to keep asking, which reproduces the structure they are trying to remove.
- The measure of a leader is what happens after they leave, which Marquet applies to his own succession.
- The environment supplied extensive technical competence through training, which most organisations lack and must build before distributing authority.
Who should read it
Leaders trying to distribute decision-making who need a specific verbal mechanism and the preconditions it requires.
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