Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

by David Marquet

  Angry that the reviews hadn’t focused on the right operational goals, I instinctively wanted to grab the XO and demand improvement. He’d in turn grab Bill Greene, who would grab Chief John Larson and the ANAV, and so on. We’d be adhering to the chain of command, but with only forty-eight hours to get under way, it wouldn’t have gotten us ready in time. Further, it would perpetuate the top-down approach I was trying to get away from.

  Instead, we gathered all the quartermasters to discuss the issues. I thought the junior sailors would be huffy about being called into a big meeting with the captain when all they wanted was to get the work done. I was wrong.

  I laid out my issues with the charts and how I’d come to the conclusions I came to. One of the junior quartermasters, recently qualified to stand watch, was a stocky African-American we called Sled Dog because he would work till he dropped. If you just met him walking through the ship, you would have guessed he was an auxiliaryman, not a quartermaster.

  To my surprise, Sled Dog immediately perked up and began offering suggestions. He had clearly been frustrated, toiling away in the dark; now he had a voice. It was a classic case of the workers’ being technically competent but unclear about what we were trying to achieve. This inefficient work practice was the antithesis of what we were going to do, and I was glad to have this insight.

  When asked about the significance of the different colors chosen for the contour lines, Sled Dog frankly admitted that the curves were highlighted simply based on what colored markers were available at the time.

  I wanted the colors to be consistent and to convey information. Someone suggested that we use a modified National Geographic scheme: shades of red would represent shallow water, shades of blue deeper water. We also came up with standard schemes for water assignments. Santa Fe’s water would always be blue in military exercises (American forces are always “blue”); other submarines would be yellow; areas where we shared water but were separated by depth zone would be—you guessed it—green! A quick look at the chart and each OOD would know instantly that if it was blue, Santa Fe owned the water; if it was yellow, we needed to stay out; and if it was green, we needed to maintain a specific depth zone. This worked because the display conventions in efficient symbology and coloring tapped a much larger body of knowledge in your brain. It built on what you already knew. (The book to read on this subject is Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.)

  We tried the changes, and after agreeing that they made sense Bill Greene wrote our new procedures up in the Standing Orders. This is where excellence in navigation occurred and where excellence in combat effectiveness started.

  • • •

  SHORT, EARLY CONVERSATIONS is a mechanism for CONTROL. It is a mechanism for control because the conversations did not consist of me telling them what to do. They were opportunities for the crew to get early feedback on how they were tackling problems. This allowed them to retain control of the solution. These early, quick discussions also provided clarity to the crew about what we wanted to accomplish. Many lasted only thirty seconds, but they saved hours of time.

  A commanding officer’s attention is no doubt highly valuable time for the organization, and the hierarchy was supposed to protect that time. Inefficiencies in my time were highly visible, especially to me. Less visible, however, were the inefficiencies of all the people throughout the organization. In my organization, even accounting for the difference in the value of our time, those inefficiencies overwhelmingly outweighed whatever efficiency I was getting with my time as captain.

  Furthermore, supervisors needed to recognize that the demand for perfect products the first time they see them results in significant waste and frustration throughout their organization. Even a thirty-second check early on could save your people numerous hours of work. Many, many times I’d be walking around the boat and ask someone, “Show me what you are working on,” only to discover that a well-meaning yet erroneous translation of intent was resulting in a significant waste of resources.

  Don’t You Trust Me?

  One problem that came up as we spread the idea of these short interactions earlier in the process was the question of trust. I could hear the petty officers complaining that the command “didn’t trust them,” and sometimes they challenged me directly with that complaint. For a long time this bothered me because I actually did trust them, but I didn’t know how to answer the question. Then I realized that we were talking about two totally different things.

  Trust means this: when you report that we should position the ship in a certain position, you believe we should position the ship as you indicated. Not trusting you would mean that I thought you might be saying one thing while actually believing something else. Trust is purely a characteristic of the human relationship. Now, whether the position you indicate is actually the best tactical position for Santa Fe is a totally different issue, one of physics, time, distance, and the movements of the enemy. These are characteristics of the physical world and have nothing to do with trust.

  QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

  How would you counter any reluctance on the part of your team to have early, quick discussions with you, the boss, to make sure projects are on course?

  To what degree is trust present in your organization?

  Is your staff spending time and money creating flawless charts and reports that are, simultaneously, irrelevant?

  What can you do in your organization to add “a little rudder far from the rocks” to prevent needing “a lot of rudder next to the rocks”?

  What commonplace facts can you leverage to make information more valuable and accessible to your employees?

  Have you ever uncovered a “reason why” akin to Sled Dog’s admission that the navigational chart legends depended on whatever color highlighter was at the ready?

  “I Intend To . . .”

  How proactive are senior managers and employees in your organization? Rewording our speech dramatically changed our level of proactivity.

  January 21, 1999: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (159 days to deployment)

  “Conn, maneuvering, reactor scram!” The reactor had just shut down. The engineer inserted the shutdown deliberately, testing his department’s ability to find and repair a simulated fault.

  The four days we had to regain our sea legs until we picked up Commodore Mark Kenny were jammed with training, qualification checkouts, strike exercises, and torpedo loading events. After picking up the inspection team, we would hunt for an enemy submarine heading toward Maui, where we’d shoot some exercise torpedoes against all the targets we were assigned. It would be fun, but I was nervous about how the ship would do. It was going to be our first big test.

  “Inspection mentality” is a morale killer. This is the practice of focusing solely on the next inspection. While many ships gear their efforts toward doing well on the next inspection, on some ships this inspection mentality is so strong they refer to “ORSE patrols” and “TRE patrols.” The Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination (ORSE) is a propulsion plant exam, and so they run predominantly engineering drills. The Tactical Readiness Evaluation (TRE) involves challenging navigation drills as well as shooting missiles and torpedoes, and so they run predominantly forward drills. On Santa Fe, doing well on inspections was going to be the natural outcome of being excellent, not the goal. Operational and tactical excellence and preparedness for service to the country were what mattered. If we were excellent and prepared, the drills and inspections would take care of themselves.

  We were about to do a tactical inspection, so it was natural that the weapons officer (Weps), Lieutenant Dave Adams, had packed the schedule with weapons and tactical training. The engineer (Eng), Lieutenant Commander Rick Panlilio, wanted to do this engineering drill, and that seemed like a good idea to me because we needed to train both ends of the ship: the tactical end and the propulsion end. I’m glad I agreed to include such a drill because I learned a lesson of profound significance both to me and to the future
of Santa Fe.

  The drill was simple. The engineer would shut the reactor down with a simulated fault. The engineering department would troubleshoot to locate the problem, conduct the necessary repairs, and restart the reactor. While the reactor was shut down, we would have to shift propulsion from the large steam-powered main engines to a much smaller electric propulsion motor, called the EPM. The EPM can power the ship only at slow speed, but it’s enough to get you home if the reactor is out of commission.

  We set up for the drill. I was in the control room in the forward part of the submarine observing the officer of the deck and the ship control watch standers. In the engine room, Rick and his drill team set up and had started the drill by scramming (shutting down) the reactor.

  The OOD was my senior department head, Lieutenant Commander Bill Greene, and he was doing all the right things. We had shifted propulsion from the main engines to an auxiliary electric motor, the EPM, to turn the propeller. The ship was coming shallow in order to use its diesel engine to provide electrical power and keep the battery charged until the reactor was restarted. During the long troubleshooting period while the nuclear electronics technicians were isolating the fault, I started to get bored. I fiddled with my flashlight, turning it on and off. Things were going too smoothly. I couldn’t let the crew think their new captain was easy!

  I nudged Bill and suggested we increase speed from “ahead one third” to “ahead two thirds” on the EPM to give the nuclear-trained enlisted men (nukes) more to worry about. This would significantly increase the rate of battery discharge and put pressure on the troubleshooters to find and correct the fault quickly. At “ahead two thirds,” there is a near-continuous click-click-click on the battery amp-hour meter. An audible reminder that time is running out, it’s physically unnerving!

  “Ahead two thirds,” he ordered.

  Nothing happened.

  The helmsman should have reached over and rung up ahead two thirds. Instead, I could see him squirming in his chair. No one said anything, and several awkward seconds passed. Astutely noting that the order hadn’t been carried out, I asked the helmsman what was going on. He was facing his panel but reported over his shoulder, “Captain, there is no ahead two thirds on the EPM!”

  Now, here’s my excuse. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier chapter, I had not been on this class submarine before, and every ship I had been on previously had one third and two thirds on the EPM. I’m 100 percent sure that somewhere in being trained for my new submarine this fact had been covered, but it didn’t stick amid the myriad technical details. I’d fallen back on what I’d known before.

  I applauded the helmsman and grabbed Bill. In the corner of the control room, I asked him if he knew there was no ahead two thirds on the EPM.

  “Yes, Captain, I did.”

  “Well, why did you order it?” I asked, astounded.

  “Because you told me to.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you’d learned something secret at PCO school that they only tell the COs about.”

  He was being perfectly honest. By giving that order, I took the crew right back to the top-down, command-and-control leadership model. That my most senior, experienced OOD would repeat it was a giant wake-up call about the perils of that model for something as complicated as a submarine. What happens in a top-down culture when the leader is wrong? Everyone goes over the cliff. I vowed henceforth never to give an order, any order. I would let this be a lesson to myself to keep my mouth shut.

  This incident brought to mind being chided as an OOD on my first submarine, the USS Sunfish, when I asked the captain for permission. “Just tell me what you are going to do!” he exclaimed. Thereafter, I started saying, “Captain, I intend to . . .” and he encouraged it.

  That’s what we decided to do on Santa Fe. It wasn’t just when you were on watch, and it wasn’t just for officers. It started filtering through the crew and permeating the way we did business. For my part, I would avoid giving orders. Officers would state their intentions with “I intend to . . .” and I would say, “Very well.” Then each man would execute his plan.

  Mechanism: Use “I Intend to . . .” to Turn Passive Followers into Active Leaders

  “I INTEND TO . . .” was an incredibly powerful mechanism for CONTROL. Although it may seem like a minor trick of language, we found that it profoundly shifted ownership of the plan to the officers.

  “I intend to . . .” didn’t take long to catch on. The officers and crew loved it. I was the one who had a problem with it, ironically. I was worried that someone would say “I intend to . . .” when I was sleeping, and I would not be fully informed or understand what was happening. So, we made a rule that “I intend to . . .” only applied when I was awake. Other than that, it applied to everything.

  A year later, I was standing on the bridge of the Santa Fe with Dr. Stephen Covey. He’d heard what we were doing and was interested in riding a submarine. Commodore Mark Kenny had been instrumental in arranging it. By this point, the crew had fully embraced our initiatives for control, and “I intend to . . .” was prominently visible. Throughout the day the officers approached me with “I intend to.”

  “Captain, I intend to submerge the ship. We are in water we own, water depth has been checked and is four hundred feet, all men are below, the ship is rigged for dive, and I’ve certified my watch team.”

  “Very well.”

  Dr. Covey was keenly interested in how the ship operated. I gave a copy of his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to every chief and officer who reported aboard Santa Fe. We were applying many of the ideas in his book at an organizational level, to great success.

  The Power of Words

  The key to your team becoming more proactive rests in the language subordinates and superiors use. Here is a short list of “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 . . .

  Here is a short list of “empowered phrases” that active doers use:

  I intend to . . .

  I plan on . . .

  I will . . .

  We will . . .

  Interested readers will want to check out Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit for more ideas about the value of empowering language.

  Then we extended the concept.

  Frequently, I wouldn’t just say, “Very well.” There would be too many unanswered questions about the safety and appropriateness of the proposed event, so I found myself asking a bunch of questions.

  One day I caught myself, and instead of asking the questions I had in mind, I asked the OOD what he thought I was thinking about his “I intend to submerge.”

  “Well, Captain, I think you are wondering if it’s safe and appropriate to submerge.”

  “Correct. So why don’t you just tell me why you think it is safe and appropriate to submerge. All I’ll need to say is ‘Very well.’”

  Thereafter, the goal for the officers would be to give me a sufficiently complete report so that all I had to say was a simple approval. Initially, they would provide some information, but not all. Most of the time, however, they had the answers; they just hadn’t vocalized them. Eventually, the officers outlined their complete thought processes and rationale for what they were about to do.

  The benefit from this simple extension was that it caused them to think at the next higher level. The OODs needed to think like the captain, and so on down the chain of command. In effect, by articulating their intentions, the officers and crew were acting their way into the next higher level of command. We had no need of leadership development programs; the way we ran the ship was the leadership development program. One of the mechanisms I credit for the significantly disproportionate number of promotions that have been issued among Santa Fe’s officers and crew in the past decade was our “I intend to . . .” procedure.

>   Eventually we turned everything upside down. Instead of one captain giving orders to 134 men, we would have 135 independent, energetic, emotionally committed and engaged men thinking about what we needed to do and ways to do it right. This process turned them into active leaders as opposed to passive followers.

  Later, I had the opportunity to talk with a friend of mine who had taught the PCO class. He was frustrated by the inability of too many officers in the training pipeline, who were almost ready to be promoted to commanding officers, to make decisions at the captain level. He said that these officers “came from good ships” but would become paralyzed when it came to decision making. I took issue with his categorizing them as “good ships.” By using that term, he meant ships that didn’t have problems—at least that we knew about. But this had obviously been accomplished using a top-down, leader-follower structure where the captain, when these officers were second in command, made the decisions. Moreover, it didn’t appear that the captain had sufficiently involved or trained his XO.

  This shows the degree to which we reward personality-centered leadership structures and accept their limitations. These may have been good ships, in that they avoided problems, but they certainly did not have good leadership.

  Why did I say to the navigator that he should go ahead two thirds on the EPM? Being the captain of a nuclear-powered submarine can be a tremendous rush. You give orders, people jump, the reactor goes to higher power, the submarine surges through the water. You want more, you give more orders, and you become more controlling. It has a seductive pull on the leaders, but it is debilitating and energy sapping for the followers.