Turn the Ship Around!

Key Concepts

The Problem: Leader-Follower

“But this model developed during a period when mankind’s primary work was physical. Consequently, it’s optimized for extracting physical work from humans.” (Introduction)

“In our modern world, the most important work we do is cognitive; so, it’s not surprising that a structure developed for physical work isn’t optimal for intellectual work. People who are treated as followers have the expectations of followers and act like followers. As followers, they have limited decision-making authority and little incentive to give the utmost of their intellect, energy, and passion. Those who take orders usually run at half speed, underutilizing their imagination and initiative. While this doesn’t matter much for rowing a trireme, it’s everything for operating a nuclear-powered submarine.” (Introduction)

The Solution: Leader-Leader 

“The leader-leader model not only achieves great improvements in effectiveness and morale but also makes the organization stronger. Most critically, these improvements are enduring, decoupled from the leader’s personality and presence. Leader-leader structures are significantly more resilient, and they do not rely on the designated leader always being right. Further, leader-leader structures spawn additional leaders throughout the organization naturally. It can’t be stopped.” (Introduction)

Short-term reward systems are counter productive for true leadership

“In the Navy system, captains are graded on how well their ships perform up to the day they depart; not a day longer. After that it becomes someone else’s problem. I thought about that. On every submarine and ship, and in every squadron and battalion, hundreds of captains were making thousands of decisions to optimize the performance of their commands for their tour and their tour alone. If they did anything for the long run it was because of an enlightened sense of duty, not because there was anything in the system that rewarded them for it.” (p. 13)

“It is precisely the success of the top-down, leader-follower structure that makes it so appealing. As long as you are measuring performance over just the short run, it can be effective. Officers are rewarded for being indispensable, for being missed after they depart.” (p. 15)

“There’s a cost to the people, though, which only becomes evident over time. People who are treated as followers treat others as followers when it’s their turn to lead. A vast untapped human potential is lost as a result of treating people as followers. Only in the long run—three to ten years later—does it become obvious, but by that time people have moved on to new jobs.” (p. 15)

The benefits of curiosity

“Since I didn’t have a place I started wandering around the ship. After a time I started asking nearby crew members about the various pieces of equipment. For the first time, I was truly curious. Walking the ship, I would ask the crew questions about their equipment and what they were working on. They were skeptical about these questions initially. That’s because normally I would have been “questioning,” not curious. I would have been asking questions to make sure they knew the equipment. Now I was asking questions to make sure I knew the equipment.” (p. 23)

“If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.” (p. 26)

“Are you asking questions to make sure you know or to make sure they know?” (p. 27)

Mechanism: Achieve Excellence, Don’t Just Avoid Errors

“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.” (p. 43)

“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.” (p. 44)

Mechanism: Find the Genetic Code for Control and Rewrite It

“What’s the best way to change decision-making authorities in your organization? Turns out it’s pretty easy once you commit to changing.” (p. 51)

“I had suffered through many wasted hours listening to lectures about how we should “work together,” “take initiative,” and the like. These weren’t backed up with mechanisms that actually enabled or rewarded these behaviors, so the speeches were worse than nothing at all; they sounded hypocritical and the speakers out of touch.” (p. 52)

“I was resolved to avoid this altogether. Instead of trying to change mind-sets and then change the way we acted, we would start acting differently and the new thinking would follow.” (p. 52)

Mechanism: Use “I Intend to . . .” to Turn Passive Followers into Active Leaders

“I vowed henceforth never to give an order, any order. I would let this be a lesson to myself to keep my mouth shut.” (p. 81)

“That’s what we decided to do on Santa Fe. It wasn’t just when you were on watch, and it wasn’t just for officers. It started filtering through the crew and permeating the way we did business. For my part, I would avoid giving orders. Officers would state their intentions with “I intend to . . .” and I would say, “Very well.” Then each man would execute his plan.” (p. 81)

“The benefit from this simple extension was that it caused them to think at the next higher level. The OODs needed to think like the captain, and so on down the chain of command. In effect, by articulating their intentions, the officers and crew were acting their way into the next higher level of command. We had no need of leadership development programs; the way we ran the ship was the leadership development program.” (p. 83)

The Power of Words

“Here is a short list of ‘disempowered phrases’ that passive followers use: 

• “Request permission to . . . 

• “I would like to . . . 

• “What should I do about . . . 

• “Do you think we should . . . 

• “Could we . . . 

“Here is a short list of “empowered phrases” that active doers use: 

• “I intend to . . . 

• “I plan on . . .

• “I will . . . 

• “We will . . .” (pp. 82-3)

Mechanism: Eliminate Top-Down Monitoring Systems

“Sure, I was worried that a lot of stuff would slip through the cracks and Santa Fe would get a reputation for not getting the work done, but that didn’t happen. I won’t say that we never again received a message zinging us for not reporting something, but they were easily remedied and not that important. What was incredibly powerful was the idea that everyone was responsible for their own performance and the performance of their departments; that we weren’t going to spend a lot of effort telling them what to do.” (p. 97)

“Don’t preach and hope for ownership; implement mechanisms that actually give ownership.” (p. 98)

Adopting a learning culture as the basis for leader-leader

“We had been taking actions that pushed authority down the chain of command, that empowered the officers, chiefs, and crew, but the insight that came to me was that as authority is delegated, technical knowledge at all levels takes on a greater importance. There is an extra burden for technical competence.” (p. 127)

“Control without competence is chaos.” (p. 128)

Mechanism: Continually and Consistently Repeat the Message

“I discovered that what happens when you explain a change is that the crew hears what you say, but they are thinking, “Oh yeah, I know what he’s talking about. That’s like it was on the USS Ustafish.” They hear and think they know what you mean, but they don’t. They’ve never had a picture of what you are talking about. They can’t see in their imagination how it works. They are not being intentionally deceitful; they just are not picturing what you are picturing.” (p. 150)

Taking Care of Your People Extends Beyond Their Work Lives

“Because the crew was convinced that I was ‘on their team’ there were never any issues with negative responses to constructive criticism. It was never a “me versus you” issue. Had they not believed I was doing everything I could for them, it would have been a lot tougher when I asked them to work so hard.” (p. 171)

“It’s hard to find a leadership book that doesn’t encourage us to ‘take care of our people.’ What I learned is this: 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. In some cases that meant further education; in other cases crewmen’s goals were incompatible with Navy life and they separated on good terms.” (p. 172)

Mechanism: Don’t Empower, Emancipate

“First, empowerment by itself is not a complete leadership structure. Empowerment does not work without the attributes of competence and clarity.” (p. 212)

“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.” (p. 212)

“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.” (p. 213)

Quotables

“I overheard people wishing for the old engineer back, who would just ‘tell them what to do.’ Indeed, it would have been much faster just to tell people what to do, and I frequently found myself barking out a list of orders just to get the work done.” (p. 6)

“I thought I was brilliant, but Captain Kenny took me aside and upbraided me. It didn’t matter how smart my plan was if the team couldn’t execute it! It was a lesson that would serve me well.” (p. 12)

“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. (pp. 41-2)

“Right or wrong, I was committed to doing whatever I thought was best for Santa Fe, the Navy, and the nation without worrying about the repercussions. I called this the paradox of ‘caring but not caring’—that is, caring intimately about your subordinates and the organization but caring little about the organizational consequences to yourself.” (p. 64)

“There was another human tendency working against us as well. Subordinates generally desire to present the boss with a ‘perfect’ product the first time. Unfortunately, this gets in the way of efficiency because significant effort can be wasted. We decided then and there that at each phase in the review process the navigator or the assistant navigator should talk to me. These would be quick conversations. On their part, the review team needed to overcome a fear of criticism of an incomplete plan; on my part, I needed to refrain from jumping in with answers.” (p. 72)

“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.” (p. 141)

“Instead of more ‘leadership’ resulting in more ‘followership,’ I practiced less leadership, resulting in more leadership at every level of the command.” (p. 204)