Turn the Ship Around

Not a trivial book; the story is interesting. This captain turned the navy’s rigid top-down hierarchy into an enterprising community, and the worst-performing submarine became the best. I did not care for the final section; it felt repetitive, and I am not sure what they were doing on the submarine, likely just drills. Better than being at war, of course. The structure of the book is a bit underwhelming; there were summary questions and a quote - story - concept - explanation pattern that felt a bit forced and did not help me remember. But it is full of good lessons. I also liked how he documented the difficulties he faced, especially from other teams that did not believe in him, and how he saw problems and immediately tried to address them from his perspective.

Notes

• 4 phases: let go of old habits, transition to new mental pillars. The point is to delegate control to other levels of the organization while maintaining responsibility
• Challenging environment: a 150 m2 submarine with a very rigid hierarchy
• Problem: Captains are judged by how the ship performs during their tenure, not after. But according to the author, a good captain is also measured by how he leaves the ship for the future. As is, they aim not to educate subordinates but to be obeyed. Others are just instruments
• First step: he listened to everyone as soon as he arrived, their problems and their ideas
• Morale was poor; they were trying to fix errors rather than pursue excellence
• 🔑 3-name rule: say who you are, what you do, and which submarine you are on. A small gesture in which each person owned their role and had some responsibility
• 🔑 I intend to: we often make mistakes, but by stating what we intend to do, we get those seconds to think and avoid problems. With this social practice they greatly improved their effectiveness
• Eliminate mechanisms that entrench hierarchy: for example, there was a process to sign off on leave; he delegated it down to the team leaders
• “Think out loud” is another very useful method to limit errors
• 🔑 Take deliberate action: hard to put into practice immediately, but a powerful mechanism. For example, during fire drills he allowed the watchstanders on scene to start using extinguishers based on their judgment without waiting for orders. And half the book is similar examples
• But be careful: control without competence is chaos
• Another philosophy: we are always learning. Whenever something did not go well, they took time to think about how to fix it
• 🔑 Don’t Brief, Certify. During briefings people nodded, but in the end they did not know the material. Certify. You ask them the questions and have them complete the explanation, and keep repeating until it becomes boring. Always the same
• Provide your people with the objective and let them figure out the method.
• At some point his reputation did the heavy lifting. He sometimes made tough decisions, but the crew trusted him because they knew he was doing it for them and wanted to help
• When I say immediate recognition, I mean immediate. Not thirty days. Not thirty minutes. Immediate. If you need to reward something, do it immediately
• Set specific goals for promotions. This guides your crew to aim for those, not vague things: they promoted 9 out of 10
• Nice closing line: Now, here’s the thing: almost none of these preparations had happened because of my orders. They happened because someone on the crew thought, “Hey, those guys are going to be wet. They’re going to be cold. They’re going to be hungry. They might be injured. And we should get ready for them.” My crew didn’t wait for orders.