Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

Written by L. David Marquet and Stephen R. Covey

Narrated by L. David Marquet

“One of the 12 best business books of all time…. Timeless principles of empowering leadership.” – USA Today

"The best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.” —FORTUNE

Marquet was a Naval Academy graduate and an experienced officer when selected for submarine command. Trained to give orders in the traditional model of “know all–tell all” leadership, he faced a new wrinkle when he was shifted to the Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine. Facing the high-stress environment of a sub where there’s little margin for error, he was determined to reverse the trends he found on the Santa Fe: poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention rate in the fleet.

Marquet ran into trouble when he unknowingly gave an impossible order, and his crew tried to follow it anyway. When he asked why, the answer was: “Because you told me to.” Marquet realized that while he had been trained for a different submarine, his crew had been trained to do what they were told—a deadly combination.

That’s when Marquet flipped the leadership model on its head and pushed for leadership at every level. Turn the Ship Around! reveals how the Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet by challenging the U.S. Navy’s traditional leader-follower approach. Struggling against his own instincts to take control, he instead achieved the vastly more powerful model of giving control to his subordinates, and creating leaders.

Whether you need a major change of course or just a tweak of the rudder, you can apply Marquet’s methods to turn your own ship around.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593415252

Reviews for Turn the Ship Around!

[paven-14534 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book on how to build autonomy in a hierarchical organization. It still have control through the hierarchy but can use some of the agency of a decentralized organization.

Some points.
1: delegate authority and train for that responsibility
2: speak out actions, I intend to. . instead of requesting or waiting for orders
3: focus on purpose over process.

[rscottm182gmailcom · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wanted to like this book more. Was hoping to get more "submarine" detail. This book is written maybe a step, or half-step, above that level, and is maybe more of a management book than I was hoping for. With the emphasis on procedure, training, and the resources of a large bureaucracy, small businesses may have a hard time implementing the prescriptions outlined in the book. Well-written and thought-provoking nonetheless.

[nic.dalessandro · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd heard about this book a few times from others in my field (education design), and finally got the time to track it down and read it. The subject matter was of high interest - it brings together three of my passions: leadership, training, and submarines.

David Marquet (USN, retired) tells the story of his rise to the rank of captain in the US Navy submarine fleet. From his early days of leadership the heavily ensconced leader-follower model troubles him and he experiments with other approaches. Some of these show promise, some fail dismally. But it's when he takes command of USS Santa Fe that he finds his stride. Through trial, error, experimentation, and determination he develops a new way of leading a submarine - the leader-leader model. This is about empowering all members of an organisation to take (appropriate) leadership and conduct themselves with personal accountability and responsibility. He and his team of department chiefs identified bottlenecks, waste, morale-drains, and irrelevant bureaucracy. They develop new ways of working and relating and their practices eventually spread through all the officers and crew.

Did he succeed? Well, if taking the worst-performing sub in the fleet (Santa Fe) and turning it into a consistently high-performing unit with incredible accomplishment statistics is anything to go by - then, yes! And their record of training and advancement is quite something. It's fantastic how he turns the organisation into a learning environment.

Frankly, I would have given his approach a thumbs-up but with a low probability of success - given centuries old maritime leadership traditions and tight USN hierarchies. But hats off to the author... he succeeded where many would not dare to tread.

This is a story of real leadership, and vision, and dogged determination. It's also about passion and giving a damn about people.

The book is a blend of story-telling and leadership advice. Personally I enjoyed the story-telling parts more (probably due to my submarine bias), but for someone looking to revitalise their team or organisation, the leadership advice, questions and exercises would be of interest.

Overall, a worthwhile read. And I learned some things!

Recommended (my rating is more like 4-1/2)

[bizcoach_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book on leadership and everyone plays at the top of their game.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you are or will be in a leadership position, you need to read this. And read it again. And again. The best empowerment and leadership book I've read to date (and I've read quite a lot on leadership). That it is conceived and written by a Navy Captain only makes it better.

Each point is succinct (apparently misunderstood by some as condescending...odd bit of cluelessness I can't fathom), exceptionally illustrated and with the candid background of what generated it. Many brilliant insights. I plan to adapt much of this. Always learning.

The drivel of David Emerald's TED "power" "empowerment" is pre-school compared to this. Avoid it.

[jpsnow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Marquet offers a message of empowerment to create a model of leader-leader instead of leader-follower. He constructed his system while executing a turn-around of the Navy's lowest performing submarine. The key elements of his approach are organized around control, competence and clarity. Backed by plenty of real-world scenarios relevant to business as much as military, I found this book valuable and inspiring.

[aheadflank-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very inspirational and practicable leadership guide. This was the one, that made me really want to follow.

I've read a couple books on the leadership issue before. They're written by well-known authors and probably they're really good. They talk about right principles and give practices to inculcate them all at once. But I haven't been really able to do that. Because guiding a group of co-workers (in my case - engineers) purports a bit other relations. I can assume, that quite a small percentage of leadership guide readers actually run a business with tens of employees, so our experience is comparable. I have strong feeling that those books increase a hierarchy stairs footstep between you and followers, that wasn't appropriate for me. This one is different. It's more about exemplifying and cooperation, no matted of rank difference. It doesn't exploit or intentionally generate that difference. And it offers you a recipe of step by step evolution of your ideas. This book matches with my own vision of management and has significantly modified my principles, so it has became my personal guide for now, that I really follow.

What is good for a book, is that it's built more like a memoir, than a textbook. So, it gives you a person to take after, that becomes it's major benefit. The other one is that the story lets you to go through author's experience while reading.
At the same time, it is well-structured so you'll never get lost while looking for some issue and gives you specific recommendations, unlike memoirs do.

I've started with having read a paper book, translated to Russian. And now I've purchased an audiobook, narrated by the author. It sounds great and absolutely clear even for a foreign listener.

[susanbeamon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A combination business book and memoir, this should be required reading in business schools. I have seen this meme for a fair amount of time, pushing decision making down to the lowest level in the organization so that the people who actually do the work have ownership of what and how they do. When done, it improves morale and increases the bottom line. So why is the idea still in books and not all over the work world? Mr Marquet, in telling his story, shows both the way the program works and some of the problems is setting it up. The people in charge have to support it and buy into not having major control over the workforce.