Book notes: Turn the Ship Around!

These are my notes on Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet.

Classic.

Key Insights

• Divested control only works with a competent workforce that understands the org's purpose.
• Disengaged, dissatisfied employees break the spirits of their colleagues.
• Thinking that we know something is a barrier to continued learning.
• It is contradictory to have an empowerment program whereby you are empowered by your boss.
• I was at my best when give specific goals and broad latitude in how to accomplish them.
• Are you optimizing the org for your tenure, or forever?
• It doesn't matter how smart a plan is if the team cannot execute it.
• When performance of a unit goes down after an official leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.
• Avoiding errors == no new initiatives, no innovation.
• Don't move information to authority, move authority to the information.
• Worries to delegate control usually fall either in lack of technical competence or lack of clarity on what the org is trying to accomplish. Both can be resolved.
• Short, early conversations make efficient work.
• Demand of perfect products the first time around results in significant waste and frustration.
• Trust == I believe you don't lie, but you can still be wrong.
• Use "I intend to ... " to turn passive followers into active leaders:
  • It has to include all the rationale of the decision which caused subordinates to think at the next higher level.
• Adherence to the process frequently becomes the objective, as opposed to achieving the objective that the process was put in place to achieve.
• When I heard what my officers where thinking, it made it much easier for me to keep my mouth shout and let them execute their plans.
• Lack of certainty is strength and certainty is arrogance.
• Inspectors == disseminate ideas in the org, learn from others.
• Balancing the courage to hold people accountable for their actions with the compassion for their honest efforts.
• Control without competence is chaos.
• How to design a training program.
• A briefing is a passive activity for everyone except the briefer.
• Provide your people with the objective and let them figure out the method.
• One hour session with supervisors:
  • Rule: only talk about long-term issues, and primarily people issues.
• Steps to move to leader-leader.

Mechanisms

Compiled list of mechanism:

• Control mechanisms:
  • Find the genetic code for control and rewrite it.
  • Act your way to new thinking.
  • Short, early conversations make efficient work.
  • Use "I intent to ..." to turn passive followers into active leaders.
  • Resist urge to provide solutions.
  • Eliminate top-down monitoring systems.
  • Think out aloud (both superiors and subordinates):
    • Also a clarity practice.
  • Embrace the inspectors.
• Competence mechanisms:
  • Take deliberate action.
  • We learn (everywhere, all the time).
  • Don't brief, certify.
  • Continually and constantly repeat the message.
  • Specify goals, not methods.
• Clarity mechanisms:
  • Achieve excellence, don't just avoid errors.
  • Build trust and take care of your people.
  • Use your legacy for inspiration.
  • Use guiding principles for decision criteria.
  • Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviours.
  • Begin with the end in mind.
  • Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience.

TOC

• Introduction
• Starting Over
  • Chapter 1 - Pain
  • Chapter 2 - Business as Usual
  • Chapter 4 - Frustration
  • Chapter 5 - Call to Action
  • Chapter 7 - I Relieve You!
• Part 2 - Control
  • Chapter 8 - Change, in a word
  • Chapter 9 - Welcome Aboard Santa Fe!
  • Chapter 10 - Underway on Nuclear Power
  • Chapter 11 - I Intent To ...
  • Chapter 12 - Up Scope!
  • Chapter 13 - Who's Responsible?
  • Chapter 14 - A New Ship
  • Chapter 15 - We Have a Problem
• Part 3 - Competence
  • Chapter 16 - Mistakes Just Happen!
  • Chapter 17 - We learn
  • Chapter 18 - Under Way for San Diego
  • Chapter 19 - All Present and Accounted for
  • Chapter 20 - Final Preparations
• Part 4 - Clarity
  • Chapter 21 - Under Way for Deployment
  • Chapter 22 - A Remembrance of War
  • Chapter 23 - Leadership at Every Level
  • Chapter 24 - A Dangerous Passage
  • Chapter 25 - Looking Ahead
  • Chapter 26 - Combat Effectiveness
  • Chapter 27 - Homecoming
  • Chapter 28 - A New Method of Resupplying
• Chapter 29 - Ripples

Introduction

• Disengaged, dissatisfied employees break the spirits of their colleagues.
• Leader-follower:
  • People who are treated as followers have the expectations of followers and act as followers.
    • Those who take orders run at half speed.
  • Performance of the organization is closely linked to the ability of the leader.
  • Leader leaving is a major event.
• Leader-leader:
  • Evolutionary steps.
  • Divested control only works with a competent workforce that understands the org's purpose:
    • Control, competence, clarity.
  • As control is divested, both tech competence and organizational clarity need to be strengthened.

Starting Over

• Thinking that we know something is a barrier to continued learning.

Chapter 1 - Pain

• It is contradictory to have an empowerment program whereby you are empowered by your boss.
• I was at my best when give specific goals and broad latitude in how to accomplish them.
  • Irritated when given a task list.

Chapter 2 - Business as Usual

• Are you optimizing the org for your tenure, or forever?
• It doesn't matter how smart a plan is if the team cannot execute it.
• When performance of a unit goes down after an official leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.

Chapter 4 - Frustration

• Being curious (make sure you know) vs being questioning (make sure subordinate knows).
• Bad: Technical knowledge as the basis of leadership.

Chapter 5 - Call to Action

• Flashlight anecdote: leading by example.
• Little things like lack of punctuality are indicative of much bigger problems.
• Avoiding mistakes became the primary driver for all actions:
  • Focus exclusively on satisfying minimum requirements.
• Leave request required 7 approvals == huge delay.
  • It was the system, not the people, that failed.

Chapter 7 - I Relieve You!

• Self-reinforcing downward spiral:

• Avoiding errors == no new initiatives, no innovation.
• Shift from avoiding errors to achieve excellence.
• Connecting our day-to-day activities to something larger was a strong motivator for the crew.
• Clarity: Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

Part 2 - Control

• Don't move information to authority, move authority to the information.

Chapter 8 - Change, in a word

• Start at the mid-level managers:
  • Starting top-down contrary to a bottom-up leadership philosophy.
  • Starting at the bottom: too inexperience people.
• When delegating decision-making authority, I was worried ... that the interests of the command would not be protected. That didn't happen.
• Find the genetic code for control and rewrite it:
  • Senior leadership exercise:
    1. Identify in the org's policy documents where decision-making authority is specified.
    2. Identify decisions that are candidates for being pushed to the next lower level in the org.
    3. For easy decisions, draft change. For large decisions, maybe disaggregate.
    4. Ask each participant to complete the following sentence in a 5x8 card:
       • "When I think about delegating this decision, I worry that ..."
    5. Post cards on the wall, go on a long break, and let the group mill around them.
    6. Sort and rank worries and begin to attack them.
  • Worries usually fall either in lack of technical competence or lack of clarity on what the org is trying to accomplish. Both can be resolved.

Chapter 9 - Welcome Aboard Santa Fe!

• The fear and cost of being different.
• How to embed a cultural change in your org:
  1. Identify what cultural change is required.
  2. In a 5x8 card, people complete the sentence:
     • "I'd know we achieved [this cultural change] if I saw employees ..."
     • Expectation is that the answers will be specific and measurable.
  3. Allow 5 mins, tape card to wall, go to break, have everyone mill around reading cards.
  4. Depending on discussions and quality of answers, give everyone a second shot.
  5. Short and prioritize answers.
  6. Discuss how to code the behaviours into company's practices.
  7. Write new practices in appropriate company procedures.

Chapter 10 - Underway on Nuclear Power

• Adding additional verification/review steps to a process == extra work without making anything better.
• Short, early conversations make efficient work.
  • Early feedback of unfinished work.
  • Not to order but to provide clarity.
  • Hierarchy is supposed to protect Commanding Officer time (== highly valuable).
  • Demand of perfect products the first time around results in significant waste and frustration.
  • Early feedback raised the question:
    • "Don't you trust me?"
    • Trust == I believe you don't lie, but you can still be wrong.

Chapter 11 - I Intent To ...

• Use "I intend to ... " to turn passive followers into active leaders.
  • 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 ...
  • Empowered phrases that active doers use:
    • I intent to ...
    • I plan on ...
    • I will ...
    • We will ...
    • "I intend to" has to include all the rationale of the decision which caused subordinates to think at the next higher level:
      • Basically training them to be their boss.
• Book recommendations:
  • 7 Habits of highly effective people.
  • The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness.

Chapter 12 - Up Scope!

• Mechanism: resist the urge to provide solutions:
  • If there are a lot of short notice decisions, you are in reactive mode:
    • No time to training the team.
    • No time to think.
  • To get the team thinking:
    • Urgent decisions: make it, then the team "red-team" the decision.
    • Soon decisions: ask for team input, make the decision.
    • Decision can be delayed:
      • Force team to provide inputs.
      • Don't force team to come to consensus.
      • Cherish dissension: if everybody thinks like you, you don't need them.

Chapter 13 - Who's Responsible?

• Mechanism: Eliminate top-down monitoring systems:
  • Avoid system whereby senior personnel are determining what junior personnel should be doing:
    • Gives ownership and responsibility.
  • You want to keep data collection and measuring processes that simply report conditions without judgment.
  • Adherence to the process frequently becomes the objective, as opposed to achieving the objective that the process was put in place to achieve.

Chapter 14 - A New Ship

• Mechanism: Think out loud:
  • When I heard what my officers where thinking, it made it much easier for me to keep my mouth shout and let them execute their plans.
  • As the captain, impart important context and experience to subordinates.
  • We aren't comfortable talking about gut feelings or anything with probabilities.
  • Lack of certainty is strength and certainty is arrogance.

Chapter 15 - We Have a Problem

• Mechanism: Embrace the Inspectors:
  • No being defensive, but taking ownership.
  • Inspectors == disseminate ideas in the org, learn from others.

Part 3 - Competence

Chapter 16 - Mistakes Just Happen!

• Balancing the courage to hold people accountable for their actions with the compassion for their honest efforts.
• 7 Steps to Learning from Our Mistakes.
• Mechanism: Take deliberate action.
  • Usual ways to avoid mistakes:
    1. More training:
       • Implies lack of knowledge, which can be detected with a test.
         • What question would detect it?
    2. Add more supervision: unlikely to help.
  • Mistakes due to people in autopilot.
  • We want to engage the brain before action:
    1. Prior to action, vocalize and gesture towards what you are about to do, even when alone.
    2. Pause.
    3. Execute action.
    4. Even when in emergency.

Chapter 17 - We learn

• Control without competence is chaos.
• Mechanism: We learn (everywhere, all the time):
  • Training program that employees will want to go to:
    • Purpose: increases technical competence, so that
    • Increases delegation of decision making, so that
    • Increases engagement, motivation and initiative.
  • To design, in the next leadership meeting:
    1. Hand out 4x6 cards.
    2. Complete:
       • "Our company would be more effective if [level] management could make decision about [subject].".
       • You fill [level] but the group fills the [subject].
    3. Cards to the wall, break, mill.
    4. Select a couple of subjects.
    5. Ask: what, technically, do the people at this level of management need to know in order to make that decision?
    6. Cards to wall, break, mill.
    7. Collect list of topic for training.

Chapter 18 - Under Way for San Diego

• A briefing is a passive activity for everyone except the briefer:
  • It is not a decision point.
  • No one listens to those briefings.
• Mechanism: Don't Brief, Certify.
  • In a certification, the person in charge asks them questions:
    • It is a decision point: no certification means no go.
    • Requires more management: both what to do and who will do it.
    • Active: Shift the onus of preparation to participants.
      • Everybody responsible to know their job.

Chapter 19 - All Present and Accounted for

• Mechanism: continually and consistently repeat the message:
  • Day after day, meeting after meeting, event after event.
  • People think they understand, but if they haven't seen it before, it is unlikely that they do.

Chapter 20 - Final Preparations

• Mechanism: specify goals, not methods:
  • Provide your people with the objective and let them figure out the method.
  • Also a mechanism for Clarity.
  • Warn: compliance with procedure supplanting achieving the objective.

Part 4 - Clarity

Chapter 21 - Under Way for Deployment

• Mechanism: built trust and take care of your people:
  • Take care != protecting them from the consequences of their own actions.
  • Take care == give them every tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the job.

Chapter 22 - A Remembrance of War

• Mechanism: use your legacy for inspiration:
  • Use past examples to bring clarity to org's purpose.

Chapter 23 - Leadership at Every Level

• My job as the command is to tap into the existing energy of the command, discover the strengths, and remove barriers to further progress.
• Guiding principle: faced with a decision between two courses of action, provide criteria to chose.
• Mechanism: use guiding principles for decision criteria:
  • Real ones aligned to org's goals.
  • Use them for awards or evaluations.

Chapter 24 - A Dangerous Passage

• Mechanism: use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviours:
  • Don't delay it for official/admin rubber-stamp.
  • Awards should not pit a teammate against other, but the team against the external world.
    • Example: avoid "Top 10%".
    • Would hinder collaboration otherwise.
• Gabe Zichermann's blog on gamification.

Chapter 25 - Looking Ahead

• Mechanism: begin with the end in mind:
  • One hour session with supervisors:
    • Rule: only talk about long-term issues, and primarily people issues.
  • Long term: write down end-of-tour awards/goals (1-3 years in future).
  • Make goals specific and measurable:
    • "How would you know if xxx was improved?"
• Not mentor-mentee sessions, but mentor-mentor:
  • Both pars learn as much.

Chapter 26 - Combat Effectiveness

• Mechanism: encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience.

Chapter 27 - Homecoming

• Steps to move to leader-leader:
  1. Identify where excellence is created:
     • Generally interfaces with the customers and the physical world.
  2. Figure out what decision the people responsible for the interfaces need to make to achieve excellence.
  3. Understand what is needed for those employees to make those decisions:
     • Technical knowledge.
     • Understanding org's goals.
     • Authority.
     • Responsibility for the consequences.

Chapter 28 - A New Method of Resupplying

• Mechanism: don't empower, emancipate:
  • Empowerment is necessary but not enough:
    • It is still a top-down structure as leader empowers followers.
  • You know you have an emancipated team when you no longer need to empower them:
    • You are not their source of power.

Chapter 29 - Ripples

• Additional benefits:
  1. Excellence after leader leaving.
  2. Development of new leaders.
• https://intentbasedleadership.com.