David Marquet has written an incredibly clear and easy to understand book - that happens to be about submarines and their crews. The details about life on the submarine are sometimes a bit more than my interest can tolerate but overall the message about process and changing the structure from leader-follower to leader-leader is crystal clear. His writing style is incredibly well structured and meticulous -- all the examples work really well for his story.

Leaders and managers face an increasingly complex world, where precise execution, teamwork and enabling of talent are competitive advantages. David Marquet provides a blue print, along with real-life examples and implementation mechanisms. Anyone who is charged with leading and making a difference needs to read this. (John Cooper, President and CEO, Invesco Distributors)

Turn the Ship Around! Audiobook Summary

Speechify AI Avatars & Video Create polished videos without any actors or equipment. Turn any text into high-quality videos with AI avatars and voiceovers – in minutes. What? Yet another book on leadership, filled with generic statements focused on WHAT (which is quite straightforward) instead of HOW (the hard part ...)? Not really, not this time. Wouldn’t it be great if everybody in the world has equal chances and opportunities? And wouldn’t it be even better if there are no rigid hierarchies, so that you can be both a leader and a follower, depending on the situation? This is kind of an autobiography, but it's also an in-detail description of changing a ship's structure from 'one leader, many followers' (leader-follower) to 'one leader, many leaders' (leader-leader) - instead of having one guy saying what's to be done, you shift decision making power downwards so you get independent layers and groups. That's the basic gist, but there's much more here, how to get people to politically, emotionally, socially accept such changes, how Marquet himself struggled to implement these changes, what went well, what went wrong, really good thoughts on empowerment vs. emancipation within organisations, the strange benefits of deliberate action [1], and so on.

Whether you need a major change of course or just a tweak of the rudder, you can apply Marquet’s methods to turn your own ship around. 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 . . ." Enough context (justification) should be provided with this statement so that there would be no need for additional clarification and you can just approve the statement. Because, if there’s one thing people like more than following is being followed. Everyone can be a leader, in its own fashion. Marquet used the leader-leader model to empower the demoralized crew he inherited. He believed that if they took responsibility for problems and solutions rather than waiting to be told what to do, they’d see themselves as leaders instead of followers. This book describes the specific methods Marquet used on Santa Fe to transform the organization. Leaders in any organization—business, nonprofit, or government—can apply them as well. Unhappy Leaders and WorkersI'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. It doesn't try patronizing you, doesn't pretend there's a magic sequence of works, secret super-efficient technique or just a new "framework" to free good spirits of self-organization within your team :) It's just a story (not complete one, just particular, representative scenarios) of developing leader (Captain - Commanding Officer of LA-class submarine) who've managed to elevate its crew from far beyond average to top notch performers by applying careful, highly aware leadership practices in so called leader-leader model, where everyone can contribute in highly autonomic way that utilizes her/his potential & skills. To say I'm a fan of David Marquet would be an understatement.... I'm a fully fledged groupie. He is the kind of leader who comes around only once a generation. He is the kind of leader who doesn't just know how to lead, he knows how to build leaders. His ideas and lessons are invaluable to anyone who wants to build an organization that will outlive them. (Simon Sinek, optimist and author of Start with Why) Get people to act differently and they’ll begin thinking differently (starting with the “three-name rule.”). 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.

Short early conversations make efficient work (another mechanism for control) - this is basically like a daily standup in Agile - it helps to talk through any questions and get an idea of where potential misunderstandings or misdirections may lie. A standup isn't intended to solve all the problems - you may create more meetings out of this but it's a good touchpoint! Decentralizing control under a leader-leader system only works when the people receiving increased control have the technical competence or knowledge to make decisions. Marquet and his officers used the following mechanisms to strengthen the crew’s technical competence:To be honest - I have never had a strong interest in military-oriented reading material, fiction or non-fiction. Aside from my interest in pre 20th century piracy on the high seas (more of social class/mobility angle here) - I haven't really read any books about life on boats or submarines.

The typical leader-follower structure is designed to push information up the chain of command to the people who make the decisions. In contrast, Marquet pushed control down to where the information originated. When we encourage our people to push the envelope on what has been done or achieved, there is a likelihood that they will stumble, fall and make some mistakes.Competence: Increase the crew’s technical competence and knowledge so they could make good decisions. From 1999-2001, Captain L. David Marquet served as Captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear submarine stationed in Pearl Harbor. At the beginning of his tenure, Santa Fe was one of the worst subs in the fleet. His book Turn the Ship Around! is the phenomenal story of how the ship turned from poor to excellent during his tenure and beyond through his leadership. If you haven’t read it, I hope this article inspires you to do so. I will summarize it and then briefly relate the book’s principles to Scrum. Leader-Follower vs. Leader-Leader