We Better Shift Our Paradigm If We are Going to Turn the Ship Around!

This article is the fourth and final part of the journey in which I am sharing thoughts and experiences related to the following three books to demonstrate how and why they have become my go to references for enhancing my leadership abilities and utilizing those abilities to build effective teams:

·???????? Crucial Conversations, Patterson, Kerry, et al (2002)

·???????? The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni, Patrick M. (2002)

·???????? Turn The Ship Around!, Marquet, L.D. (2013)

For more background, see the initial post from August 8, 2024.

Why this book?

I read Turn the Ship Around! about a year after I started utilizing the principles of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The timing was great because it provided the “how to” mechanism for creating the ownership and accountability associated with principles in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, not only for my direct reports but also for pushing those principles into the rest of the organization.

When I read this book, I realized that I was caught in the same trap that the author, L. David Marquet, describes in that in my attempt to be an excellent leader, I was centralizing the leadership of my team around me which required me to be everywhere all the time and be excellent at everything involved in our operation. Not only was this exhausting, but it was also impossible. In addition, it limited my ability to develop the leadership skills and abilities of those in my organization. I immediately realized the issue I had created and resonated with the solution provided in the book.

A summary

The objective of the principles in the book Turn the Ship Around! is to create an empowered workforce in which everyone in the organization takes ownership in the operational success rather than just being satisfied by accomplishing their assigned tasks. By doing this, leadership can create an exponentially more effective organization by harnessing the focus, creativity, and energy that everyone in the organization possesses. To facilitate this level of engagement, the author introduces the boss-employee relationship of “Leader-Leader” as being a more effective paradigm than the historically prevalent hierarchal relationship of “Leader-Follower.”

Leader-Follower is a leadership style in which the boss tells the employee, “Do this,” the employee goes off and does “this”, then waits for the next instruction from the boss because in this style decision and approval making are maintained by the boss rather than delegated to the employees. As a result, the employee takes little to no ownership in the overall outcome of the project. The genesis of this leadership style coincided with the dawn of humankind and has been prevalent ever since. Because humankind has accomplished countless amazing things utilizing this leadership style, it has become the default style in life and art. Countless novels depict leaders exhibiting this style as heroes. We applaud the achievements of real-life leaders through millennia who got things done while utilizing this model.

It should be noted that through most of mankind’s history, the “employee” in the boss-employee relationship was an uneducated manual laborer, which is not the world we live in today. With the majority of our employees having post-secondary education and critical thinking abilities, it is necessary that we create a new default leadership style. In addition, the requirements of the “boss” in this relationship have become much more complex due to the development of social awareness, environmental concerns, and technological requirements. This means that in the Leader-Follower model that requires the boss to be omniscient in all aspects of the project to give the appropriate directions and be omnipresent to ensure decisions and approvals are made timely to maintain the schedule will limit the effectiveness of a team.

The Leader-Leader model that is explained in Turn the Ship Around! is about the organization’s achieving sustainable breakthrough results by developing the leadership capabilities of the employees and simultaneously giving them much higher job satisfaction through their taking ownership of the organization’s performance. The main function of this leadership style is that of pushing CONTROL into the organization. In this model, for the boss to be confident in delegating control while maintaining responsibility, they must ensure that COMPETENCE and CLARITY are bolstered in the organization to support the delegation of CONTROL.

Control

Delegating control means that the decision-making and authorization responsibilities are no longer being centralized with the boss. Instead, those responsibilities, as much as possible, reside with individuals in the organization to address inefficiencies, pain points and bottlenecks found by doing value stream or process mapping of the organization’s various processes. Be aware that this shift in control does not absolve the boss from their responsibilities. On the contrary, the boss has just as many responsibilities, it is just that the boss’ time and effort can be focused on activities that can lead to greater sustained success of the organization. Rather than spending their time making every decision, running from crisis to crisis, and approving every request, they focus their efforts in the areas of developing the leadership capabilities of their personnel, evaluating strategic options, and ensuring their team has the resources they need to successfully execute the objective. Because the boss must continue to be informed and involved in the processes, it is imperative to establish and maintain effective communication protocols and standards.

While working at the Vice President of Finance, I had been utilizing the principles from the three books with my functional department and counseling other functional heads in the division about the principles when they were interested. One day, my boss, the Division President (he and I took these roles at the same time), was in my office confiding in me that he felt like he had to be everywhere at once to keep things moving because there wasn’t enough initiative and ownership being exhibited by many of the leadership team. Note that many of the members of the leadership team were holdovers from the previous management which was very autocratic and punished taking initiative if it was not immediately successful. The president had heard me refer to the principles from the books multiple times, and a person could not come into my office without seeing the three huge posters summarizing the principles from the three books. I took the opportunity to specifically explain the concept of CONTROL from Turn the Ship Around! and how I thought implementing it could help in this situation by enhancing ownership and accountability in the group. My boss finally took my recommendation to read the book over the weekend (actually, he read all three) and instantly saw what I saw. Over the next few years, we began the turn around of the division’s performance, enhanced the leadership capabilities of the team, and effectively changed the culture to one of empowerment.

Competence

Competence is an essential support pillar in this model because people must be equipped with the technical knowledge and resources to make sound decisions, as well as the leadership skills to support the leader-leader style necessary for a boss to have confidence to delegate control, and for the employee to have the required capabilities to be trusted with that control. Without the requisite competence in place, the organization’s processes will very quickly fall into chaos with the delegation of control. Does this mean that a boss should not start this process until they verify that all competence levels are extremely high? No. The boss and the team will be able to identify the biggest areas of risk and concern as control is delegated and will be able to take steps to remediate, as necessary.

One of the principles in the book that is especially useful is “Don’t brief, certify.” The thought behind this is rather than the boss explaining a process to an individual, that individual’s requirement is to do the homework to understand the process and explain it back to the boss. If the boss is doing the explaining, then the boss is the only active participant in this scenario. When the employee does the homework, then explains it back, the employee has become an active participant. Studies have shown that active learning is extremely more effective than passive learning. In addition, the employee now understands the process, not simply their own tasks; they understand the activities happening before and after their part, which makes them more effective at assessing when and why there are problems. All of this promotes ownership, accountability, and enhanced leadership abilities.

Clarity

Clarity is an essential support pillar in this model because it is critical that decision makers at all levels understand what the organization is about to ensure alignment of those decisions with the organization’s objectives and values. If there is misalignment, then distorted decision criteria exist, and the effectiveness of the team will be hampered. When a boss delegates control into the organization, they need to have confidence that the decision criteria are the same that the boss would use. And the employee needs a stable source to reference to have confidence in making those decisions. This reference is an understanding of strategic objectives and operational results, as well as organizational heritage and values. Clarity also promotes an increased level of ownership which leads to the employees’ heightened level of engagement and satisfaction.

When I took a promotion to lead a company division, I knew that I would be implementing the leader-leader model. In preparation for what was to come, one of my first focus areas was to establish the core values that I wanted everyone in the organization to be extremely clear on so that they would have the reference source for making decisions that reflected the organization we were building. After an extensive process, I narrowed my list down to three values, each with a short definition:

• Integrity – Honest with everyone all the time, especially ourselves.
• Humility – “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” from Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
• Commitment – Do what it takes to get the job done right and on time.

I created a poster with this information for my office and placed it on the wall so that on video calls it could be seen directly over my left shoulder, like the virtual graphics next to a news anchor, so that it literally looked over my shoulder verifying that what I did represented those values. I discussed them with my direct reports routinely and provided them with posters of their own. My direct reports reviewed the values with their organizations at each team meeting to “continually and consistently repeat the message” (another method from the book). As a result, the team had profound knowledge and understanding of the values by which I expected them to make their decisions and represent the company with the delegated authority.

Oh sure, but…

Many people over the last 11 years have said some variation of the following to me, “That all sounds nice, but I don’t see how it could work in my organization.” My response is that the principles and practices of the Leader-Leader methodology in this book were developed real time aboard a US Naval submarine, which must be one of the most hierarchical Leader-Follower organizations in the world. If it was developed and then successfully maintained on that submarine for over ten years, with leadership turning over every two to three years, then most of us do not have an argument that it is impossible to be done in our organizations. I have successfully utilized the principles from this book to create Leader-Leader teams for more than 10 years. I am living proof that if you are committed and consistent, this can become your new default leadership paradigm.

I would love for you to share in the comments your experiences of utilizing principles from Turn the Ship Around!, how things turned out and what you have learned.