Compass No.26
Lessons from the navy, developing a team of leaders, and remembering to enjoy the ride
Thought provoking quote
I’m really enjoying L.David Marquet’s book, Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, about the leadership program he developed as a captain in the US Navy. Marquet’s leadership enabled him to turn the USS Santa Fe from one of the worst performing ships in the navy into the most combat effective nuclear powered, fast attack submarine in the squadron. Here he is speaking about the issue with traditional “employee empowerment” programs:
“The problem with empowerment programs is that they contain an inherent contradiction between the message and the method. While the message is ‘empowerment,’ the method — it takes me to empower you — fundamentally disempowers employees. That drowns out the message.”
Podcast insights that stayed with me
In 2018, Marquet was interviewed on the The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk.
Marquet’s perspective on what allows leaders to sustain excellence for long periods of time
“An ability to decouple the performance of the organization from their personal feelings and personality.”
Why does that matter? “If your organization depends on you being right today and you making good decisions day in and day out, then that’s a fragile place. Because one day you are going to be in a bad mood, didn’t sleep right, didn’t eat right. One day something in your personal life is going to be weighing on your mind, and you are not going to be focused and not make a good decision…My approach was to get me out of it. I’d be a part of it, but it didn’t depend on me. I needed to create a resilient network where everyone participated in the decision making so if anyone was off that day, it didn’t really matter because the rest of the team would cover that.”
His best advice for someone transitioning from an individual contributor role to a managerial role for the first time
“Talk last. Don’t give them the answer even if you think you know what it is. Up till now you’ve always been rewarded for having answers. However, when you have a team and you are still the answer man, you are suppressing their desire, ability, and motivation to develop their own answers, which doesn’t develop them and means you are team is only ever going to be as good as you are.”
His tactical strategies for developing a team of leaders
“Push authority to information not information to authority. In other words, let the people closest to the problem have the authority to make decisions.”
Be a knowing but not telling leader, as opposed to a knowing and telling leader who knows all the answers and makes all the decisions.
Question inspired by a recent interview
In a recent interview with entrepreneur Ben Kellie, I asked him about what’s enabled to get him comfortable with making decisions using the information at hand, rather than trying to plan and strategize his way into a false sense of “certainty.” He said this:
“…I enjoy the finding out part. The ultimate answer has never been that satisfying. The process is what's satisfying. Selling a company wasn’t what I thought it would be, but the journey of building that company with friends was fun. I actually think certainty is kind of boring, and life's a lot more fun when it's just happening.”
Where is trying to create a sense of 100% certainty preventing you from enjoying the ride?