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

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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.

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. Changing the processes to focus on the outcomes and goals rather than process/method made a huge difference. The full book itself I found a little dull packed as it is with details of Marquet’s actual experiences with the Santa Fe and its crew, relayed with lots of navy jargon and acronyms (not sure I really needed to know that fresh fruit and vegetables are known as FFV).Providing them opportunities and materials to improve themselves both in their professional and personal goals builds a much stronger, competent and empowered team.

Captain David Marquet’s experiment in leadership has far greater application to the entire business world. On the ship, stealth (ie, not making loud noises) is critical so any time some loud noise is made - it can affect the sonar. And over the next decade, a highly disproportionate number of the officers of the Santa Fe were selected to become submarine commanders.How do we release the intellect and initiative of each member of the organization toward a common purpose? That said, it does illustrate his principle well - when there was a chain of sign-off those lower down the chain would then take no real responsibility for or ownership of the decision and the Captain would be too far from the situation and not really best utilised to sign off 150 people’s leave.