Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules

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However, the specific context of military submarine makes the book more inspirational than practical. Described methods are to be heavily adapted while working in different areas (e.g. volunteer organizing in NGO). The leader-leader structure is fundamentally different from the leader-follower structure. At its core is the belief that we can all be leaders and, in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders. Leadership is not some mystical quality that some possess and others do not. As humans, we all have what it takes, and we all need to use our leadership” I'm always looking for books that teach me more about how to look after my students. Within scientific research there's more 'leading' than 'following' going on, with very little command structure, and PhD students and Postdocs usually being the leader of their project. There's collaboration but it's not easy for people to work on the same project without unnecessary duplication of work. Still, there's so much useful advice here on how to lead and teach, I recommend this to people who are looking to hone their leadership/organisational skills. SPECIFYING GOALS, NOT METHODS is a mechanism for COMPETENCE." and CLARITY. Two excellent examples were around fire drills - which weren't going well because of process (ie "I'm not in charge of this area/shift") to make everyone responsible and the crew members CLOSEST to the fire would be responsible for taking action. On the ship, stealth (ie, not making loud noises) is critical so any time some loud noise is made - it can affect the sonar. The goal of a stealth ship was emphasized and everyone was required to report noises instead of the sonar team trying to find the source of a transient noise. This resulted in identifying a lot of other issues that they were able to fix and move even closer toward excellence. Taking care of your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior. That’s the path to irresponsibility. What it does mean is giving them every available tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the specifics of the job.”

David Marquet’s message in Turn the Ship Around! inspires the empowerment of engaged people and leadership at all levels. He encourages leaders to release energy, intellect, and passion in everyone around them. Turn the Ship Around! challenges the paradigm of the hierarchical organization by revealing the process to tear down pyramids, create a flat organization, and to develop leaders, not followers.”– Dale R. Wilson, Sr., business management professional, and editor/blogger at Command Performance Leadership (commandperformanceleadership.wordpress.com) The book is a step by step guide of changes from top-down management approach in organisation like US Navy. Story starts with Cpt. Marquet assigned in charge of submarine with worst results in the fleet, and turns it around within a year to the best one, by changing the top-down (leader-follower) approach to the empowerment (leader-leader) approach. But then it is good to read a business book based on real incidents, not anonymised case studies, and which shows how the approaches were developed, and indeed the mistakes made and corresponding learnings along the way. And Marquet does provide top and tail each chapter with the key learning points and with templates for how to apply this to other situations.

David Marquet imagines a ​world where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity, a place where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work–a place where everyone is a leader. The best book on leadership I've ever read. The author nails down the three pillars that enable organisations to shift from a leader-of-followers paradigm to the leader-of-leaders. This transition has enabled him to turn the worst-performing submarine with 100% employee churn to an award-winning submarine with 100% retention, in under a year.

Embracing the inspectors. Use the opportunities provided by inspection to learn where improvements can be made. Since Turn the Ship Around! was published in 2013, hundreds of thousands of readers have been inspired by former Navy captain David Marquet’s true story. Many have applied his insights to their own organizations, creating workplaces where everyone takes responsibility for his or her actions, where followers grow to become leaders, and where happier teams drive dramatically better results. To me the above does not diminish what they achieved. These were the attributes that made it possible to make all of these changes in such a short time. The rating is for the book, not the content. The ideas and concepts the book brings up are quite interesting and sound like they would be quite useful to many organisations. However, it's written in a simplistic structure that came off cheesy and often annoying. The writing, in general, was amateurish and the narrator for the audiobook (who happened to be the author as well) did a pretty horrible job. The feeling I got from the whole experience was that the author managed to get some success with a new leadership methodology and let that success get to his head.Use "I intend to... " to turn passive followers into active leaders. Avoid disempowered phrases such as "Request permission to . . . I would like to . . . What should I do about . . . Do you think we should . . . Could we . . ." (and I was always told "hopefully"). In empowering the officers to be responsible for their work - "the goal for the officers would be to give me a sufficiently complete report so that all I had to say was a simple approval." Un libro excelente sobre liderazgo, ese concepto tan vacío de significado y tan manipulado. David Marquet nos lleva por el viaje que recorrió en lo que era el peor de los submarinos de la Armada estadounidense y su transformación en el mejor en poco más de 3 años. 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.”

BUILDING TRUST AND TAKING CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE is a mechanism for CLARITY." Providing them opportunities and materials to improve themselves both in their professional and personal goals builds a much stronger, competent and empowered team. EMBRACE THE INSPECTORS is a mechanism for CONTROL, organizational control." Use the opportunities provided by inspection to learn where improvements can be made. This is the story of Captain David Marquet’s unprecedented experiment in the most rigid of environments on the Santa Fe, a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine. He had the courage to operate counter-culture, reengineering the very definition of leadership accepted by the U.S. Navy for as long as it has existed. He took huge risk to do this. The outcome was revolutionary – within a few short months, the crew of the Santa Fe went from worst to first. In today’s information age, Human Capital is our most precious resource. It is the 21stCentury weapon of choice. Captain David Marquet’s experiment in leadership has far greater application to the entire business world. This is thought leadership.”– Charlie Kim, Founder & CEO of Next Jump, Inc. WE LEARN (EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME) is a mechanism for COMPETENCE." This was a great section on learning from mistakes without coming down really hard on the team members - everything is a learning opportunity. Will this book shake your world? In my case, it didn't, but as it's a nice set of R-L cases, it's truly educative & I believe it has provided my some additional input to "digest" intellectually.

Captain Marquet translates his experiences as a nuclear submarine commander into a book of highly readable and applicable leadership techniques. He discusses his ‘leader-leader’ model (as opposed to the traditional leader-follower) and the three pillars upon which it is built – 1) Control, 2) Competency, 3) Clarity. RESIST THE URGE TO PROVIDE SOLUTIONS is a mechanism for CONTROL." The leader has to create space for open decision by the entire team; in crisis situations - you can have the team brainstorm and then as a leader vet the best option for action. Control, we discovered, only works with a competent workforce that understands the organization’s purpose. Hence, as control is divested, both technical competence and organizational clarity need to be strengthened”