Book: Turn the Ship Around

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

Unshared knowledge

Have you ever been at a workplace when it is announced that someone is leaving, and all of a sudden it is a mad scramble to wring as much information from their brain as is humanly possible? Perhaps you’ve experienced a situation where for some reason there wasn’t any warning at all. And then, all at once, all of their knowledge is gone.

And now you’re on your own…

It can be incredibly