However, the specific context of military submarine makes the book more inspirational than practical. Described methods are to be heavily adapted while working in different areas (e.g. volunteer organizing in NGO). One of the 12 best business books of all time . . . Timeless principles of empowering leadership.” – USA Today Turn the Ship Around! This is kind of an autobiography, but it's also an in-detail description of changing a ship's structure from 'one leader, many followers' (leader-follower) to 'one leader, many leaders' (leader-leader) - instead of having one guy saying what's to be done, you shift decision making power downwards so you get independent layers and groups. That's the basic gist, but there's much more here, how to get people to politically, emotionally, socially accept such changes, how Marquet himself struggled to implement these changes, what went well, what went wrong, really good thoughts on empowerment vs. emancipation within organisations, the strange benefits of deliberate action [1], and so on. DON’T BRIEF, CERTIFY is a mechanism for COMPETENCE." - this was fantastic because instead of the chief reading off the process while everyone else's eyes glazed over, the person who would be doing the task would identify the steps that he would be taking and the others would certify that process was correct (technical competence).

SPECIFYING GOALS, NOT METHODS is a mechanism for COMPETENCE." and CLARITY. Two excellent examples were around fire drills - which weren't going well because of process (ie "I'm not in charge of this area/shift") to make everyone responsible and the crew members CLOSEST to the fire would be responsible for taking action. On the ship, stealth (ie, not making loud noises) is critical so any time some loud noise is made - it can affect the sonar. The goal of a stealth ship was emphasized and everyone was required to report noises instead of the sonar team trying to find the source of a transient noise. This resulted in identifying a lot of other issues that they were able to fix and move even closer toward excellence. To be honest - I have never had a strong interest in military-oriented reading material, fiction or non-fiction. Aside from my interest in pre 20th century piracy on the high seas (more of social class/mobility angle here) - I haven't really read any books about life on boats or submarines.Taking care of your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior. That’s the path to irresponsibility. What it does mean is giving them every available tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the specifics of the job.” RESIST THE URGE TO PROVIDE SOLUTIONS is a mechanism for CONTROL." The leader has to create space for open decision by the entire team; in crisis situations - you can have the team brainstorm and then as a leader vet the best option for action. What? Yet another book on leadership, filled with generic statements focused on WHAT (which is quite straightforward) instead of HOW (the hard part ...)? Not really, not this time. BUILDING TRUST AND TAKING CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE is a mechanism for CLARITY." Providing them opportunities and materials to improve themselves both in their professional and personal goals builds a much stronger, competent and empowered team.

Focusing on avoiding mistakes takes our focus away from becoming truly exceptional. Once a ship has achieved success merely in the form of preventing major errors and is operating in a competent way, mission accomplished, there is no need to strive further.” USE GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR DECISION CRITERIA is a mechanism for CLARITY." Development of guiding principles (see the book - fantastic list created by his chiefs) is critical to empowering a team. The book, by a former US nuclear submarine commander, is based on his real-life experience of turning around an underperforming ship, the Santa Fe, by turning the traditional top-down management model upside down. If a nuclear submarine could gain leadership at all levels by giving control, building competence and achieving organizational clarity, your enterprise has no excuse to continue exploit people in a command & control environment like it's still 1900's.

Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet was given to me by Dom and Jed, two former Royal Marine Commanders and successful business people from the consultancy Albany York, whose work I would throughly recommend to companies looking for coaching on building high performance teams. ( https://www.albanyyork.com/about-us#team)