Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders

For anyone seeking to develop or improve their leadership style, Turn the ship around is a must read.

On the theme of leadership and psychology safety, this book came highly recommended.The core takeaway of the book is that anyone can be a leader, which is documented through the crew’s transformation from the worst performing to best within the fleet.Marquet’s honest appraisal of his strengths and weaknesses as a leader make this a very easy read. The chapters are short, insightful and pack takeaways that draw clear lessons for any industry to adopt- driving a structure from leader-follower to leader-leader.The change from continually seeking permission for actions to stating “I intend to”, to communicate intentions and verbalising thought process, promoted a culture of trust and empowerment amongst staff. Whilst also improving communications with the team.A subtle semantics change, but pivotal none the less.Encouraging and fostering a culture of curiosity was especially pertinent as a mechanism for clarity and continual improvement- highlighted in the team’s engagement with CPD and inspections that led to improvements in academic and professional performance.“Don’t Brief, Certify” was relevant to pre shift briefings and toolbox talks I have witnessed, with staff encouraged to present their area of expertise and brief the team. To promote ownership and engagement.This is in contrast to the traditional briefings from a senior member of staff that staff dutifully attend, rather than actively engage with.This provides efficiencies and benefit from the meetings- tying into the pragmatic approach Marquet also took with ammending antiquated business processes that didn’t serve a contemporary process for his team.

Good read although gets a bit repetitive

This changed my thoughts around leading a business - I loved it. Highly recommended!

Great to read, enjoyable and full of content! The book is well structured and that makes you want to read it all in one go.

I want to give this to all my colleagues!One of the best books I’ve read in years. I recommend it to everyone I meet.

The structure of the book (short chapters, clear progression, list of learning and actionable points) makes for an excellent read and allows one's mind to free itself from the classic leadership approach. As much as it could be challenging to directly translate the leadership method from a nuclear submarine to one's specific organisation, the applied nature of the narrative and numerous concrete examples in this book makes for a great first step in the world of leader-leader structure. I will keep pondering about this book for some times after having read it (several times).

If you can change the leadership culture on a navy submarine then you can do it anywhere. That is the inspiring thought that David Marquet gives us in this entertaining and very readable account.With commendable honesty, Mr Marquet details the trials and tribulations that he, and his colleagues, went through on the way to a high performing culture. He didn’t start out with a grand plan or theory – they tried stuff out along the way and gradually found out what worked.At the high level, what works is that the “leader-leader” model involves giving employees control over what they work on and how they work. This means letting them make meaningful decisions and it requires competence and role clarity. Control, competence and clarity make up the framework that Mr Marquet structures his book on. Within these three pillars Marquet identifies key lessons and actions.These lessons and structures are not particularly new – I remember studying similar concepts in leadership 25 years ago, and Mr Marquet’s ideas are similar to Servant Leadership and related approaches. What makes this book different – and valuable – is that the author focuses on practicality. He never references theories or research, he simply gets on with the job of trying to change things, pretty much by trial and error. It is this practical approach which will be of most interest to business readers.I do have some criticisms of the book, notably that Mr Marquet is rather vague in his explanations of how some of his ideas work, or whether they might work outside of the military context. For example, the “I intend to” approach works in a military environment where the leader affirms every action in a control room setting, but I don’t see how it works in a distributed business.Similarly, I am unclear what “deliberate action” actually means in practice. Vocalising your actions out aloud (if that is what it is) might not be appropriate in a civilian situation and, it seems to me, has as much scope for error as the “old” way – colleagues will soon subconsciously tune-out.Nevertheless the book remains a useful pointer to a better way than that many of us are accustomed to. It contains some nice ideas for workshops with managers and, above all, its focus on practicality and taking a step-by-step approach make it most useful. There are things here that managers at all levels can start to try out to get the ball rolling.The key lesson from the book, for me is – to quote - “Don’t move information to authority. Move authority to the information”.

This was a unique perspective and I appreciate how the author turned adversity into life lessons! I highly recommend it!

Lot of good lessons in there!

El producto llego en muy buenas condiciones.

I found this book a valuable resource for anyone in leadership position or aspiring one. The authors approach to leadership is inspirational and practical.

Gives a complete new view on leadership. Great instructions how to achieve it and hands-on examples.