Just Finished Reading: Turn the Ship Around! – A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L David Marquet (FP: 2012) [216pp]

A few years back my work had an ‘Innovation’ event and we were all “encouraged” to go along and be ‘inspired’. Having seen this sort of thing before (many times) and suspecting that a) it would a waste of my time and b) wouldn’t change anything anyway I intended to avoid it as much as I could. Walking back through one of the atria full of stands and video presentations I couldn’t help but notice one table with several piles of books on it. Magnets & iron filings come to mind…. So I found myself standing next to said table and chatting to the person running/guarding it. ‘Books’ I grunted, pointing. ‘Yes’ she said. ‘Take?’ I enquired’ ‘Yes’ she said. ‘Free if you share’. So I smiled and I took. Ironically, of course, it’s now been a year since I left work that I get around to reading the second book I picked up. So I’m ‘sharing it’ with you.

I’m one of those lucky people who, despite having been of ‘management’ level never actually had staff or subordinates to ‘manage’. I liked it that way. The stories I could tell about other people’s headaches with their staff members. I went out of my way to avoid such things and never regretted that decision once. So naturally I’d pick up a (admittedly free) book on Management to read. Surprisingly though this was actually rather good. The author was a young naval commander in the US submarine fleet and, consequently, full of ideas for improving things. As XO of a ‘boat’ he’d tried a few of these ideas out and had some mixed results. Itching to take things further he accepted what many might have seen as a poison chalice – taking command of the worst rated boat in the fleet and, in only 6 months, turn the ship around. Not giving too much away here he managed just that – but in a whole host of interesting ways outlined step by step in this slim volume.

The one theme that really jumped out at me and gave me more than one ironic smile or occasional belly laugh, was his discussion on ‘empowerment’. This was a favourite topic at work and ‘empowerment’ talk rippled through my ex-organisation on a regular basis. Naturally they didn’t mean actually giving people more power over what they did or how they structured their day. That, no doubt they thought, would lead to organisational chaos as people went off and did their own thing. What they (my ex-organisation) meant was giving people responsibility for failure. The author recognised this very failing in HIS organisation and addressed it by giving people actual power over what they did – as long as they hit their targets exactly HOW they did so was entirely up to them. Failures still happened but rather than simply apportioning blame and moving on they found out WHY something failed, fixed it, and then disseminated the fix to everyone who needed to know so they could avoid that particular failure. The submarine had become a truly learning organisation.

Even if you’re not the commander of a multi-million dollar submarine or even if you don’t work on one this is still an interesting and likely useful addition to any managers (or subordinates!) off-line reading/training regime. It’ll give you LOTS to think about and maybe, if they let you, try out in YOUR organisation. As interesting, different and thoughtful read. Recommended.