Turn the ship around - L. David Marquet

• Remember: Leadership is a choice, not a position.
• Leader-Follower principle
• Leadership in most organizations is about controlling people
• People who are treated as followers have the expectation of followers and act like followers
• "Empowerment"... It takes me to empower you.. fundamentally disempowers employees
• The follower learns to rely on the leader to make all decisions rather than to fully engage with the work process to help make the organization run as efficiently as possible
• It seemed to me that humans are born in a state of action and natural empowerment.
• I felt my power came from within.
• It didnt matter how smart my plan was if the team couldnt execute it! It was a lesson that would serve me well
• We didnt associate an officers leadership effectiveness with how well his unit performed after he left. We didnt associate an officers leadership effectiveness with how often his people got promoted two, three, or four years hence. We didnt even track that kind of information. All that mattered was performance in the moment.
• When the performance of a unit goes down after an officer leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.
• He sensed that a keen curiosity would be vital for the success
• Dont move information to authority, move authority to the information
• ... we would be using a top-down approach to implement a bottom-up leadership philosophy
• Instead of trying to change mindsets and the change the way we acted we would start acting differently and the new thinking would follow.
• Many empowerment program fails because they are just that: "programs" or "initiatives" rather than the central principle
• [In group meetings] because the officers and chiefs interacted with me frequently, i sent them to the back so that the crew would gather around me.
• Early conversations make efficient work
• Use "I intend to..." to turn passive followers into active leaders
• passive follower use:
• Request permission to
• I would like to
• What should I do about
• Do you think we should
• Could we
• empowered phrases that active doers use
• I intend to
• I plan on 
• I will
• We will
• Dont preach and hope for ownership, implement mechanisms that actually give ownership
• Efforts to improve the process made the organization more efficient, while efforts to monitor the process made the organization less efficient.
• Why is "learning" a better word than "training"?
• Training implies passivitiy, it is done to us. We are trained; we attend training. Learning is active; it is something we do.
• Are people coming to "be briefed" or are they ready to present their portion of the event? Read-ahead or think ahead assignments.