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

Turn the Ship Around!

Author: L. David Marquet
Published: 2013

Quick Summary

Former nuclear submarine commander David Marquet shares his revolutionary leadership approach that transformed the worst-performing submarine in the Navy into the best by replacing the leader-follower model with a leader-leader model. Instead of giving orders and expecting obedience, he empowered every person to become a leader and make decisions at their level.

Key Highlights

The Leader-Leader Model

• Traditional Model Fails: The leader-follower approach creates dependency, reduces ownership, and doesn’t scale
• Intent-Based Leadership: Instead of “Request permission to submerge,” crew members say “I intend to submerge” - shifting from asking to declaring intent
• Push Authority Down: Move decision-making authority to where the information lives, not where the rank sits
• Certify Competence: Before delegating authority, ensure technical competence and organizational clarity

Core Principles

Control

• Find the genetic code: What’s the underlying belief driving your actions?
• Act your way to new thinking (don’t think your way to new acting)
• Short, early conversations make efficient work
• Use “I intend to…” instead of requesting permission
• Resist the urge to provide solutions - instead, provide tools for thinking

Competence

• Take deliberate action: Say what you’re going to do before you do it
• We learn (everywhere, all the time)
• Don’t brief, certify: Shift from passive briefings to active certification of understanding
• Continually and consistently repeat the message
• Specify goals, not methods

Clarity

• Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors
• Build trust and take care of your people
• Use your legacy for inspiration
• Use guiding principles for decision-making
• Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience

Quick Takeaways

1. Empowerment ≠ Abdication: Pushing authority down requires building competence and clarity first
2. Language Matters: “I intend to…” changes psychology from permission to initiative
3. Leaders at Every Level: The goal is creating an organization of leaders, not efficient followers
4. Short Early Conversations: Brief, frequent communication prevents big problems later
5. Control + Competence + Clarity: All three must be present for leader-leader to work

Application for Principal Engineers

• Code Review Culture: Change from “Can I merge this?” to “I intend to merge this after addressing X”
• Technical Decision-Making: Push architectural decisions to the teams closest to the problem
• Continuous Learning: Create certification processes for new technologies, not just passive knowledge sharing
• Goal Setting: Specify what outcome you want, not how to implement it
• Team Growth: Measure success by how many leaders you create, not how many orders you give

Memorable Quotes

“Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.”

“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.”

“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.”

Why It Matters

For technical leaders managing engineering teams, this book provides a practical framework for scaling yourself through empowered teams. The intent-based leadership model maps perfectly to modern DevOps culture, microservices ownership, and agile methodologies. It’s especially valuable for principal engineers transitioning from individual contributor to multiplier roles.