Turn The Ship Around follows David Marquet‘s journey as he takes command of the Santa Fe (the wrong nuclear submarine) and over the course of 6 months works with the crew to try and turn their fortunes around. Spoiler alert: it works out well.
I was introduced to David and his leadership theories through his TED talk, How Great Leaders Serve Others. The talk presents some of the ideas from the book around the core theme of moving the leadership on the ship from the traditional leader-follower model to a leader-leader one. The talk is good and entertaining but, importantly, does not have enough information to enact this sort of change yourself.
The main “mechanism” discussed in the talk is “I intend to…”, a suggested set of phrasings which empowers decision-making at the most appropriate level: the level at which the information for that decision is. However, this mechanism needs other mechanisms for it to be effective in a team. Particularly you also need people to be “Thinking aloud” and “Resist the urge to provide solutions”. “I intend to…” requires others to have the confidence that a decision which is needed has been made, or will be very soon.
The book covers the story, ideas, and execution in far more detail. It presents the complete set of mechanisms for achieving the 3 pillars of having a successful leader-leader structure: control, competence, and clarity. For this reason I would really recommend this book for anyone working in a team, particularly those in leadership roles (which is everyone if you buy into leader-leader ;) ).
Some thoughts on... 