Book SummaryTurn the Ship Around, by L. David Marquet

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Turn the Ship Around

When L. David Marquet became captain of USS Santa Fe in 1999, it was the worst-performing nuclear-powered attack submarine and crew by Naval standards. In a year, he turned the crew into one of the best by replacing the military’s traditional “leader-follower” or command-and-control structure with a “leader-leader” organizational model. Turn the Ship Around! is the story of how he did it. Its lessons are applicable to any organization—business, nonprofit, or government.

In short, the “leader-leader” model allows staff to take responsibility for problems and solutions rather than waiting to be told what to do. As a result, team members see themselves as leaders instead of followers.

The Leader-Follower Model

The traditional leader-follower model practiced in the U.S. Navy and most companies and organizations assumes there are two types of people: leaders who make decisions and followers who implement them.

This has been the basis of our thinking about leadership for hundreds of years because it has worked. It’s responsible for successes ranging from the construction of the pyramids in ancient Egypt to the factories of the Industrial Revolution.

However, the leader-follower structure was designed to coordinate physical labor for various purposes, whether building pyramids and roads, or mining coal. In contrast, many of today’s employees are knowledge workers who work independently to develop and apply information. The leader-follower model doesn’t manage cognitive work effectively.

People who are treated as followers become passive. With scant decision-making ability, they have little motivation to contribute their ingenuity and energy.

The Leader-Leader Model

The leader-leader structure is based on a different assumption about people: everyone can be a leader, and an organization is most effective when everyone thinks and acts like a leader.

The leader-leader model treats employees as valued assets, which increases individual motivation and organizational success. Also, the improvements that come with the leader-leader model are lasting because they’re not dependent on one leader’s skill or personality. Leaders develop throughout the organization.

A Leadership Revolution

With little room for error, a nuclear submarine is an unlikely setting for trying out a new leadership model. But to turn around the beleaguered Santa Fe, Marquet felt he had no other option.

When he took over as commander, Marquet had six months to get the submarine ready for deployment. Santa Fe was to join a battle group for a torpedo exercise in the Arabian Gulf intended to demonstrate combat effectiveness. Marquet needed to radically change the way officers and crew operated.

Marquet’s goal was to create a leader-leader structure by pushing control—the authority to decide what to do and how—downward to the officers and crew. He started in the middle of the operation with the 12 chiefs, the senior enlisted personnel equivalent to middle managers, who supervised the crew members responsible for day-to-day maintenance and operation of the submarine.

Although there’s a Navy axiom that “the chiefs run the Navy,” they lacked true authority. By instituting a “Chiefs in Charge” program, Marquet made the chiefs accountable for the performance of their divisions and crew members. The chiefs’ new authority generated excitement and strengthened the connection between the chiefs and the sailors. Both the chiefs and crew became more engaged in their work.

"Mechanisms" for Success

Over time, Marquet and his officers came up with 20 “mechanisms” (Navy terminology for methods practices) to transform Santa Fe from a leader-follower to a leader-leader organization. The mechanisms focused on three key areas:

• Control: Decentralize decision-making to increase the crew’s initiative and motivation.
• Competence: Increase the crew’s technical competence and knowledge so they could make good decisions.
• Clarity: Ensure crew members are clear on the organization’s goals so their decisions align with what Santa Fe needed to accomplish.

Mechanisms for Decentralizing Control

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, or decision-making authority, down to where the information originated.

Besides pushing authority downward to the chiefs, here are the other mechanisms or methods Marquet used to spread control throughout the organization:

• Identify practices and procedures embedded in the organization—the “genetic code”—that dictate control and rewrite them.
• Get people to act differently and they’ll begin thinking differently (starting with the “three-name rule.”).
• Have supervisors do brief check-ins to ensure crew members are on the right track so time isn’t wasted.
• Have everyone start conversations with the phrase “I...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Introduction

When L. David Marquet became captain of USS Santa Fe in 1999, it was the worst-performing nuclear-powered attack submarine and crew by Naval standards. In a year, he turned the crew into one of the best by replacing the military’s traditional “leader-follower” or command-and-control structure with a “leader-leader” organizational model. Turn the Ship Around! is the story of how he did it.

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 Workers

Most people are enthusiastic when they start new jobs—they have energy and ideas, but their initiative is quickly squelched by bosses and coworkers who tell them, “We tried that before” and “Just do what you’re told.” Consequently, they fall in line and do the minimum required.

As a result of this demotivating...

Shortform Exercise: Grade Your Workplace

Many workplaces are demotivating and job satisfaction is at an all-time low because they use a traditional leader-follower model, where employees follow direction rather than making their own decisions.

Does your organization follow a top-down, leader-follower model or a leader-leader model? What are the signs indicating it’s one or the other?

Turn the Ship Around Summary Part 1: Early Lessons | Chapters 1-2: Learning Curve

Marquet’s early ideas on leadership came from reading classics and from movies, where plots centered on a heroic leader and his followers. His Naval Academy training reinforced the assumption people are either leaders or followers. However, based on several frustrating early experiences, Marquet began questioning this model of leadership and ultimately rejected it.

1989: The Irish Sea

After beginning his career as a junior officer on USS Sunfish, Marquet was assigned as an engineer on USS Will Rogers, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine known as a boomer, armed with 16 Poseidon missiles.

Marquet supervised one of two 60-person crews operating the control room and nuclear reactor. Hoping to generate the passion he felt on Sunfish, Marquet gave the crew more control over their work. Instead of involving himself in details, he tried explaining the objectives and leaving it to the crew to determine how to meet them. But things went badly—the crew made mistakes in maintenance that required redoing work. They missed deadlines and fell behind schedule.

Upon inspection, he found that bolts on a seawater heat exchanger had been improperly installed to save time....

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapters 3-5: A New Command

December 1998: Pearl Harbor

Marquet was assigned to command USS Santa Fe. His new boss, Commodore Mark Kenny, had pushed for him to get the job of turning around Santa Fe because of Marquet’s hunger for learning during commanding officer training.

Yet Santa Fe was the ship the PCOs (prospective commanding officers) had joked about in training. A photo of the control room crew carrying on instead of paying attention had gone viral the previous year.

Marquet needed to get Santa Fe ready for deployment in six months; it was to join a battle group for a torpedo exercise in the Arabian Gulf, demonstrating combat effectiveness. He decided not to replace anyone on the crew, to send the message that he believed Santa Fe had a leadership problem, not an incompetent crew. But Marquet needed to quickly change the way they operated.

The key personnel on the 135-person crew were:

• An executive officer (XO) or second in command
• Four department heads, or officers overseeing weapons, engineering, navigation/operations, and supply
• Junior officers
• 12 chiefs—senior enlisted men, the equivalent of middle management; their technical expertise and leadership were...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapters 6-7: Just Following Orders

December 1998

On Board the Santa Fe, Pearl Harbor

During Christmas break, Marquet wandered around the ship, where a skeleton watch crew was performing routine duties. He asked the petty officer on watch, “What do you do on the ship?” The answer was a cynical “Whatever they tell me to do.”

The petty officer’s reply revealed he was an unhappy follower who wasn’t taking any responsibility for his unhappiness. It was an insulting comment to a commander (implying that the leadership was incompetent). But it also encapsulated the problem and the attitude pervasive among the crew.

The Wrong Kind of Leadership

The executive officer (XO) on Santa Fe required department heads to check out with him before leaving for the day, so he could go over tasks he had given them to do and ensure they weren’t leaving with something major undone.

But this made the XO, not the department head, responsible for each department head’s work; the XO thus “owned” the task. Marquet believed that the department heads should use check-out to report what they’d accomplished and planned to do, thereby taking ownership.

While it would be...

Shortform Exercise: Are You Focused on Avoiding Errors?

In many organizations, managers and employees are focused on avoiding errors rather than on achieving excellence. This drains energy and initiative and results in mediocre performance.

Are your employees striving for excellence or just trying to avoid mistakes? How can you tell?

Turn the Ship Around Summary Part 2: Control | Chapter 8: The First Steps

When he assumed command, Marquet’s goal was to create a leader-leader structure by pushing control—the authority to decide what to do and how—downward to the officers and crew.

Over time, Marquet and his officers came up with 20 “mechanisms” (Navy terminology for methods practices) to transform Santa Fe from a leader-follower to a leader-leader organization. The mechanisms focused on three key areas:

• Control: Decentralize decision-making to increase the crew’s initiative and motivation.
• Competence: Increase the crew’s technical competence and knowledge to make good decisions.
• Clarity: Ensure crew members are clear on the organization’s goals so their decisions align with what Santa Fe needed to accomplish.

The initial focus was on decentralizing control.

Mechanisms for Redistributing Control

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.

Besides pushing authority downward to the chiefs, here are the other mechanisms or methods Marquet used to spread control throughout the...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 9: The Three-Name Rule

January 11, 1999

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (169 Days to Deployment)

The chiefs’ new authority generated excitement and strengthened their connection with the sailors responsible for day-to-day maintenance and operation of the submarine. Both chiefs and crew became more engaged in their work and the overall mood was more upbeat.

There was also a lot of work ahead. In the months before deployment, there would be an escalating series of inspections, starting in eight days when Commodore Kenny and squadron staff would ride on the submarine and observe. Marquet needed a success to convince skeptics that his leader-leader model would work.

Mechanism: Change Behavior, Then Thinking

Marquet decided to involve the entire crew by instituting a behavior change that he hoped would lead to changed...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 10: Changing Focus

January 20, 1999

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (160 Days to Deployment)

Marquet had been in command for 12 days when Santa Fe headed out to sea after repairs and maintenance, to further prepare for the Commodore’s four-day inspection.

They were doing a practice exercise that involved locating an enemy submarine, monitoring it, and sinking it if they were ordered to do so. But the crew was still focusing on complying with procedures and avoiding mistakes rather than on combative effectiveness.

In charting the route out to sea, they focused on the procedures for avoiding buoys, shallows, boats, and other hazards rather than on determining a route that would take them to where the enemy submarine was likely to be. So they charted the...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 11: Use Proactive Language

January 21, 1999

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (159 Days to Deployment)

During an engineering propulsion drill, Marquet learned how a passive leader-follower mindset on Santa Fe could lead everyone off course. So he instituted a change in the crew’s language to create a proactive mindset.

The engineering drill involved a simulated problem that shut down the submarine’s reactor. The crew had to locate and fix the problem, then restart the reactor. While it was shut down they would use a small electric engine for propulsion at a very slow speed.

Marquet ordered an engine speedup to make the exercise more challenging. However, he didn’t realize that Santa Fe’sbackup engine differed from those of other submarines in his experience and lacked a speed-up function. The officer on deck knew this, but he passively passed Marquet’s order...

Shortform Exercise: Implement “I Intend to…”

To get Santa Feofficers and crew members thinking proactively rather than seeking permission or orders, Marquet required everyone to state their intended actions, beginning with the phrase, “I intend to…”

How proactive are senior managers and employees in your organization? Do they use follower language such as, “May I have permission to,” “I’d like to,” “Could we,” “What should I do about,” “Do you think…”?

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 12: Top-Down Habits

January 27, 1999

Pearl Harbor (153 Days to Deployment)

Santa Fe picked up Commodore Kenny and the inspection team and headed out for the inspection exercise. In the process, Marquet learned two more lessons about decentralizing control.

In the first instance, he learned that if you tell people to do something specific, you should also explain why you made your decision. Better yet, let your people decide what to do. In discussing the torpedo exercise, in which Santa Fe needed to intercept and sink an enemy submarine, Marquet pointed to the chart and said, “We need to be at 0600,” based on where he thought the enemy would be.

He went to grab some sleep and when he woke up, he found the ship was several miles off position and headed away from the enemy. The watch team had been derailed by responding to contacts and navigational challenges rather than moving to the best tactical position.

Marquet realized that he...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 13: Create a Sense of Ownership

January 28, 1999

On Board Santa Fe (152 Days to Deployment)

While observing the torpedo exercise, the inspection team also reviewed Santa Fe’s administrative procedures and found that officers hadn’t responded to several messages and requests from higher authorities.

They had been tracking the messages and filing them in a three-ring binder. The officers reviewed the binder once a week to forward requests and keep track of the work, but sometimes they dropped the ball. Besides being ineffective, the system meant that the officers were taking responsibility for the work of others below them.

Marquet attended the officers’ next meeting, where they discussed how to turn the system around to ensure that department heads were responsible for the work of their departments.

Mechanism: Eliminate Top-Down Monitoring of Work

To replace the old tracking system, they decided to use a model similar to the...

Shortform Exercise: Increase Ownership

While many leaders claim they want managers and employees to take ownership of their work, the company’s top-down systems of controlling and monitoring work prevent this.

Would you say that your managers and employees have a sense of ownership for their work? Why or why not?

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 14: ‘Think Out Loud’

January 29, 1999

En Route to Pearl Harbor (151 Days to Deployment)

Marquet thought the inspection had gone well, but he was still concerned about how involved he had to be in suggesting solutions to problems. While waiting for the final inspection report, he discussed his concerns with department heads.

They identified several possible reasons for the insufficient initiative. The primary one was a lack of informal verbal communication—for instance, no one gave a heads up that the time to download the radio broadcast was approaching.

The department heads decided to actively encourage greater communication and call it “thinking out loud.” When the captain made a decision, he’d go through his thought processes and reasons out loud. Officers would think out loud about concerns. While this might seem like...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 15: Welcome Outside Oversight

January 29, 1999

In Port, Pearl Harbor (151 Days to Deployment)

When Santa Fe arrived in port, the crew needed to hook up four shore power cables so it could shut down its reactor. During this process, a petty officer violated a critical rule. He activated breakers on the pier when he knew it was safe to do so, but without getting clearance to do it. No harm was done but he'd violated a “red tag.” Red tags are attached to critical controls on a submarine so that they can’t be removed to activate the controls without going through clearance procedures.

Marquet was tempted to handle the violation in house because reporting it up the chain of command would result in additional monitoring and scrutiny. However, he decided...

Shortform Exercise: Embracing the Inspectors

Many organizations get defensive about audits and inspections, and during them, they say as little as possible. In contrast, Santa Fewelcomed inspectors as experts who could help the crew improve.

Who are your company’s inspectors and how do you and your organization typically respond to them? What is your goal?

Turn the Ship Around Summary Part 3: Competence | Chapter 16: ‘Mistakes Happen’

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:

• Take “deliberate action”: Officers and crew pause before acting and state their intentions to prevent acting without thinking.
• Learn constantly: Officers and crew approached every activity as a chance to learn and improve.
• Demonstrate readiness: Instead of listening to a briefing or review of instructions, crew members demonstrate they’re prepared to proceed.
• Repeat the message of change until it fully sinks in. Old habits die hard.
• Specify goals, but let crew members decide the best methods for reaching them.

January 30, 1999

In Port, Pearl Harbor (150 Days to Deployment)

On Saturday morning, Santa Fe officers and observers from Squadron Seven and Naval Reactors gathered to critique the petty officer’s “red tag” mistake.

The incident underscored to Marquet that it wasn’t enough for people to be empowered—they also needed to be competent to perform better. To...

Shortform Exercise: Instituting ‘Deliberate Action’

To reduce errors made by people acting on autopilot, Santa Fe used a procedure called taking “deliberate action.” Before acting, a crew member would pause and verbally state what he intended to do.

What kinds of mistakes have your employees made by acting on autopilot? How have you responded?

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 17: A Learning Culture

February 13, 1999

Makalapa Housing Area, Pearl Harbor (136 Days to Deployment)

While deliberate action reduces errors, it's not enough, by itself, to build competence. For instance, a sailor made a mistake in the torpedo room that deliberate action didn’t prevent—the problem occurred because he didn’t understand the effects of what he was doing and how certain systems worked together.

If crews only have to do what they’re told, they don’t need a deep understanding of how things work—they just follow procedures. But as their ability to make decisions increases, they need greater knowledge on which to base those...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 18: Ready or Not?

February 22, 1999

Pearl Harbor (127 Days to Deployment)

As Santa Fe left the harbor and headed for San Diego for a series of exercises with the USS Constellation Battle Group, Marquet discovered another weakness they could turn into a mechanism for improving competence.

As the crew got ready to submerge the ship, it seemed to be taking a long time—they were out of practice on submerging rapidly, which was a key combat skill. The diving officer of the watch conducted a briefing (read the procedures out loud), but no one paid attention to this formality. Marquet ran some unexpected drills simulating malfunctioning gauges, which didn’t go well.

When they discussed how things went, one sailor remarked that no one listened to briefings because they felt they already knew the steps to take.

Mechanism: Certify or Demonstrate Readiness

Briefings, or reading...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 19: Don’t Assume They Got the Message

March 5, 1999

San Diego, California (116 Days to Deployment)

On the way to San Diego, Marquet learned that when you give middle managers control over their teams, you can’t assume they’ll act in the team’s interest. This nearly cost Santa Fe a key crew member.

When they reached the port, a junior quartermaster, nicknamed “Sled Dog” for his work ethic, went AWOL (left the boat without permission), after saying he couldn’t take things anymore. A quartermaster is a naval petty officer with responsibility for steering the submarine and charting its course.

Marquet discovered that the underlying problem was that Sled Dog and the other quartermasters were being overworked....

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 20: Achieve Results

May 1999

Under Way from Pearl Harbor to San Diego (28 Days to Deployment)

At sea again, Santa Fe was heading back to San Diego. On the way, they would be practicing drills and operational skills. Final certification for deployment would happen when they reached San Diego. Things were going well, but a fire drill revealed yet another area where following procedure still took precedence over achieving results.

Fire is potentially catastrophic on a submarine. To prevent disaster, crews needed to have hoses on a fire within two minutes. Marquet called a surprise drill and it went poorly. The crew focused on following procedure (in this case, performing assigned duties) rather than putting the fire out. Some ran past a fire hose instead of grabbing it because others were assigned to handle hoses.

Further, typical fire drills were aimed at practicing techniques, which made crews focus on process. They had...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Part 4: Clarity | Chapter 21: Support Your Team

Along with competence, a leader-leader model that decentralizes control also requires clarity. Everyone needs to understand the organization’s goals so that the decisions they make align with what the organization is trying to accomplish. If the purpose isn’t clear, the criteria on which decisions are made may be off base, leading to bad decisions.

Here are the mechanisms Santa Fe adopted to ensure clarity:

• Focus on achieving excellent results, not on rotely following procedures in order to avoid errors.
• Take care of your team. Supervisors should build trust and motivation by putting the team’s interests first.
• Be inspired by your organization’s legacy. Create a sense of mission by connecting present efforts with the past accomplishments.
• Create guiding principles to aid decision-making.
• Immediately recognize excellent performance.
• Begin with the end in mind: Set long-term goals.
• Encourage questions, not blind obedience.

June 18, 1999

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (Deployed)

Santa Fe was ready to deploy, two weeks early. They would head west and make a stop in Japan, then operate in the western Pacific, Indian Ocean, and...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapters 22: Build on Your Past

July 2, 1999

Western Pacific Ocean (in Command)

As Santa Fe headed through the China Sea toward the Strait of Malacca and the Arabian Sea, the officer of the deck announced on the mic that they were passing the location where the USS Grayling was sunk in September 1943.

The announcement was a reminder to Marquet that the...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 23: Create Leaders

July 1999

Western Pacific Ocean (in Command)

Being on deployment gave Santa Fe’s officers the opportunity to finalize a set of guiding principles. They wanted the principles to help crew members use the right criteria when making decisions. The theme they came up with was “Leadership at every level” and the principles included:

• Initiative: Take action without direction from above to increase your knowledge, improve submarine operations, and solve problems.
• Innovation: Look for new ways to do things. Have the courage to change and to fail.
• ...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 24: Recognize Achievement

July 10, 1999: The Strait of Malacca

Santa Fe moved on the surface through the crowded Strait of Malacca, between Singapore and Indonesia, because it was shallow. Numerous large vessels, as well as ferries and fishing boats, used it daily, which made the three-day passage tricky.

The submarine’s crew decided it would be safest to follow closely behind an empty tanker, which other vessels would avoid. Marquet was driving the submarine from the...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 25: Long-Term Thinking

July 15, 1999: Indian Ocean

Marquet decided to have a one-hour mentoring session with a key supervisor each day focused on long-term issues and goals. He asked supervisors to identify the end-of-tour awards they were striving for, or write their own personnel evaluation for the next year, indicating what they would accomplish.

To keep the mentoring from falling into a leader-follower format, Marquet developed it as a mentor-mentor program, where both he and the officer shared ideas on what Santa Fe needed to accomplish and what the officer could do for himself and to support the ship.

Together, they wrote...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 26: Build Resilience

September-December 1999: In the Arabian Gulf, then the Pacific

In the Arabian Gulf exercise, Santa Fe was assigned to attack another sub, the USS Olympia, which was playing the role of an enemy diesel boat. They were halfway through the deployment, and were preparing to fire the first submarine-launched torpedo in the Arabian Gulf.

A rear admiral was on board observing the exercise, which would demonstrate not only Santa Fe’s abilities, but also the ability of a U.S. submarine to attack and sink a submarine in shallow water. The exercise was designed to send a message of deterrence to potential U.S. adversaries. It also was a test of the leader-leader model.

Santa Fe’s crew performed flawlessly without Marquet’s involvement. The exercise torpedo scored a hit, which Marquet announced...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 27: Assessing the Leader-Leader Model

January 2000

At Anchor off Lahaina, Maui

Marquet and his officers had read and discussed Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, so he was pleased when Covey, who had sought Navy permission to ride a submarine, was assigned to Santa Fe.

Covey’s visit, during a short proficiency training run in the Hawaiian Islands, offered Marquet an opportunity to reflect on what his team had accomplished under the leader-leader empowerment model.

This list included:

• Traveling 40,000 miles safely
• Making port calls in six countries without any behavior problems
• Maintaining the sub at total operational readiness, unhindered...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 28: Nurture Innovation

Summer 2001: Strait of Hormuz

Eighteen months after Covey’s visit, Santa Fe was on deployment again, operating in the Strait of Hormuz at periscope depth, when the submarine developed a problem. There was an oil leak the crew couldn’t fix at sea and the submarine was running out of oil. However, Santa Fe’s empowerment culture saved the day.

They spotted a navy resupply (combat support) ship, USS Rainier , several miles away and decided to ask for oil. Protocol required making a supply request 36 hours in advance. However, the crew ignored the bureaucratic process, which was unheard of, and simply contacted the...

Turn the Ship Around Summary Chapter 29: Lasting Effects

January 15, 2011: Submarine Base, Pearl Harbor

Santa Fe’s achievements and innovations under Marquet’s leadership lasted long after his departure and spread throughout the submarine force.

Twelve years after Marquet took command of Santa Fe, Commander Dave Adams, former weapons officers under Marquet, took charge. Also, three officers from Santa Fe were chosen from hundreds of candidates by the chief of naval operations for special assignments in...