Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules

Product Information

David Marquet has written an incredibly clear and easy to understand book - that happens to be about submarines and their crews. The details about life on the submarine are sometimes a bit more than my interest can tolerate but overall the message about process and changing the structure from leader-follower to leader-leader is crystal clear. His writing style is incredibly well structured and meticulous -- all the examples work really well for his story. Captain Marquet translates his experiences as a nuclear submarine commander into a book of highly readable and applicable leadership techniques. He discusses his ‘leader-leader’ model (as opposed to the traditional leader-follower) and the three pillars upon which it is built – 1) Control, 2) Competency, 3) Clarity. Control, we discovered, only works with a competent workforce that understands the organization’s purpose. Hence, as control is divested, both technical competence and organizational clarity need to be strengthened” David Marquet imagines a ​world where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity, a place where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work–a place where everyone is a leader. One of the 12 best business books of all time…. Timeless principles of empowering leadership.”– USA Today

If all you need to do is what you are told, then you don’t need to understand your craft. However, as your ability to make decisions increases, then you need intimate technical knowledge on which to base those decisions.” The legacy of a Commanding Officer, or the leader of any organization, is how well the organization performs after he/she departs and the subsequent motivation, success and institutional contribution of those next generation leaders trained and developed. Read Turn the Ship Around! and you will learn how to build an enduring high performer, where people can’t wait to get to work.”– Admiral Thomas B. Fargo(USN, ret.) Former Commander U.S. Pacific Command Chairman, Huntington Ingalls Industries This terrific read actually provides new and valuable insights into how to lead. And nothing important gets done without leadership. Captain Marquet takes you through his life of learning how to lead, and presents you with a winning formula: not leader-follower, but leader-leader. It’s about leading by getting others to take responsibility–and like it. It works for business, politics, and life.”– Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of several business boards, and a former columnist for The New York Times

The basic gist of it is using the author's experience in transforming an under-performing submarine crew into the top performing submarine crew in the US Navy in about 18 months, and translating that experience to a set of leadership concepts that he feels would be generally applicable in any organization.

From simple ways to first, improve you and after the people around or even your team, to more complex things like transforming the way we think and see things, how to run a business, and like the name suggests be a leader and not a follower at every level in your life or in your organization. The rating is for the book, not the content. The ideas and concepts the book brings up are quite interesting and sound like they would be quite useful to many organisations. However, it's written in a simplistic structure that came off cheesy and often annoying. The writing, in general, was amateurish and the narrator for the audiobook (who happened to be the author as well) did a pretty horrible job. The feeling I got from the whole experience was that the author managed to get some success with a new leadership methodology and let that success get to his head. USE YOUR LEGACY FOR INSPIRATION is a mechanism for CLARITY." Note achievements and legacy - these are helpful for guiding the team.One can raise some arguments that the environment was specific (military, elitist, non-typical supply:demand in "job market", etc.), but in fact author's ideas are applicable in different contexts, sometimes with re-adjustments (SKIN IN THE GAME!), but they remain quite valid. Use "I intend to... " to turn passive followers into active leaders. Avoid disempowered phrases such as "Request permission to . . . I would like to . . . What should I do about . . . Do you think we should . . . Could we . . ." Enough context (justification) should be provided with this statement so that there would be no need for additional clarification and you can just approve the statement. If there are rules, which could be applied in the military we can't say that our organisation is not agile enough to build the leader-leader approach to team management. The author explains why, in the long term, it is far more effective then leader-follower setup. You can also find here ready-to-use examples of how you can support your team members on their way to engage, taking ownership and becoming the leaders. As a former Navy “Nuke” I am a bit biased towards this book as it spoke of situations I am familiar with in a language I was fluent in.

It’s the Hunt for Red October meets Harvard Business School. Turn the Ship Around! is the consummate book on leadership for the Information Age–where unleashing knowledge workers’ intellectual capital is pivotal in optimizing organizational performance: from maximizing market share and minimizing customer churn to improving margins. Capt. Marquet’s thesis is a complete paradigm shift in leadership philosophy. This new approach to leadership is applicable in all industries and across all corporate functions. If you’re an Organizational Behavior or Leadership expert or enthusiast this book can have a substantial impact on you and your organization s ability to meet its goals.”– Joe DeBono, Founder and President of MBA Corps and Merrill Lynch Wealth Manager Leaders and managers face an increasingly complex world, where precise execution, teamwork and enabling of talent are competitive advantages. David Marquet provides a blue print, along with real-life examples and implementation mechanisms. Anyone who is charged with leading and making a difference needs to read this.”– John Cooper, President and CEO, Invesco DistributorsMilitary metaphors seem to fit into my understanding of the organisations. There is also a good proportion between military and business use-cases. This is the story of Captain David Marquet’s unprecedented experiment in the most rigid of environments on the Santa Fe, a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine. He had the courage to operate counter-culture, reengineering the very definition of leadership accepted by the U.S. Navy for as long as it has existed. He took huge risk to do this. The outcome was revolutionary – within a few short months, the crew of the Santa Fe went from worst to first. In today’s information age, Human Capital is our most precious resource. It is the 21stCentury weapon of choice. Captain David Marquet’s experiment in leadership has far greater application to the entire business world. This is thought leadership.”– Charlie Kim, Founder & CEO of Next Jump, Inc. 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.