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

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There’s no better way to inspire your subordinates than making them an equal part of the same decades-long story. That way, they will feel as part of a family. Leadership should mean giving control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers."

Most of the companies today are filled with smart and confident people who can add value to the company if given more freedom and responsibilities.In the quote from the Scrum Guide above, we see competence and control clearly. The team is cross-functional, meaning they are competent to do the work required in delivering a valuable product. Second, they are self-managing, meaning they have control over what to work on and how to accomplish it. Third, not mentioned in the quote above, but the PO brings clarity through a clear and attainable product goal. Decentralizing control under a leader-leader system only works when the people receiving increased control have the technical competence or knowledge to make decisions. Marquet and his officers used the following mechanisms to strengthen the crew’s technical competence: The typical leader-follower structure is designed to push information up the chain of command to the people who make the decisions. In contrast, Marquet pushed control, or decision-making authority, down to where the information originated. We’ve already learned a thing or two about leadership from some the past greats, such as Lincoln and Washington. And we went over the 21 laws of leadership. The traditional leader-follower model practiced in the U.S. Navy and most companies and organizations assumes there are two types of people: leaders who make decisions and followers who implement them.

That made the members of the USS Santa Fe crew much more motivated and trustworthy. They didn’t ask for permissions. But they didn’t shy away from taking the blame either. They felt both freer and more accountable. He increased clarity on his ship by coming up with guiding principles for the ship--things like courage, openness, etc. Nothing revolutionary--who hasn’t seen this in an organization? But to ensure that this list of principles did not just become a piece of paper on the wall, Marquet embedded the principles in the wording of the ship’s awards and evaluations. So, for example, when someone received an award, the reasoning behind it was given in the language of the ship’s principles: “Petty Officer M exhibited Courage and Openness when reporting…” (Marquet 182). This brought the principles to life. It embedded the language and thinking of the principles into the actions of the crew.When we encourage our people to push the envelope on what has been done or achieved, there is a likelihood that they will stumble, fall and make some mistakes. Take “deliberate action”: Officers and crew pause before acting and state their intentions to prevent acting without thinking. The leader-leader structure is fundamentally different from the leader-follower structure. At its core is the belief that we can all be leaders and, in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders. Leadership is not some mystical quality that some possess and others do not. As humans, we all have what it takes, and we all need to use our leadership” Taking care of your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior. That’s the path to irresponsibility. What it does mean is giving them every available tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the specifics of the job.”