Turn the Ship Around

L. David Marquet, a career U.S. Navy submarine officer, argues that most organizations operate under an outdated "leader-follower" model that divides people into those who give orders and those who carry them out. This model, he contends, was optimized for physical labor and fails in a world where cognitive work is paramount, costing billions in lost productivity and worker disengagement. He proposes a "leader-leader" alternative in which everyone acts as a decision-maker, producing improvements in effectiveness and morale that endure beyond any single leader's tenure. The book recounts his experience commanding the USS Santa Fe (SSN-763), a nuclear-powered attack submarine, and is organized around three pillars: control (divesting decision-making authority), competence (ensuring technical knowledge), and clarity (ensuring organizational purpose is understood).

Marquet traces his philosophy to earlier career experiences. In 1989, as engineer officer aboard the USS Will Rogers, a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, he attempted to give his department greater autonomy. The effort failed: errors multiplied, work fell behind, and crew members wished for the old engineer who simply told them what to do. Marquet reverted to micromanagement, preventing problems but becoming exhausted and indispensable. After the Will Rogers, he took a position conducting arms treaty inspections in the former Soviet Union and read extensively about leadership. He identified a central problem: organizational performance was dangerously coupled to a single leader's competence, meaning a "good ship" could become a "bad ship" overnight with a change of captain.

In December 1998, after 12 months of training for command of the USS Olympia, Marquet learned his assignment had been canceled. He would instead take command of the Santa Fe, a significantly different submarine whose technical systems he had not studied. Captain Mark Kenny, now Commodore of Submarine Squadron Seven and Marquet's squadron commander, presented a clear goal: have Santa Fe ready for deployment in six months. Kenny did not dictate the method, modeling the kind of leadership Marquet intended to implement.

When Marquet boarded the Santa Fe, he found a demoralized crew that avoided eye contact, mumbled responses, and believed they were the worst ship in the submarine force. Only three sailors had reenlisted the previous year. Two junior officers had submitted resignations. Through interviews, Marquet uncovered systemic dysfunction: leave request forms requiring seven signatures sat unapproved for weeks, the executive officer (XO, the second in command) wrote directives on messages before department heads saw them, and a culture of passivity pervaded the ship. One petty officer, asked what his job was, replied, "Whatever they tell me to do." Marquet concluded the ship did not lack leadership; it had too much of the wrong kind.

Taking command on January 8, 1999, Marquet resolved that the crew's goal would be excellence rather than error avoidance. That afternoon, he met with the chiefs (senior enlisted supervisors who serve as middle management) and asked whether they truly ran the ship. After admitting they did not, the chiefs proposed making the chief of the boat (COB, the senior enlisted man) the final authority for enlisted leave, eliminating six steps from the approval process. Marquet made a one-word change to the ship's regulations. This "Chiefs in Charge" initiative gave chiefs ownership of their divisions' operations. Rather than delivering speeches about empowerment, Marquet focused on rewriting the procedural rules that governed who made decisions.

A pivotal incident occurred during an engineering drill. Marquet ordered the officer of the deck (OOD), Lieutenant Commander Bill Greene, to increase speed to "ahead two thirds" on the backup electric motor, a setting that did not exist on this submarine class. Greene repeated the order to the helmsman, who froze. When Marquet asked why Greene passed along an order he knew was impossible, Greene responded: "Because you told me to." Marquet recognized that in a leader-follower model, when the leader is wrong, everyone follows over the cliff. He implemented the "I intend to . . ." mechanism: officers stated their intentions and reasoning, and Marquet responded "Very well." This forced officers to think at the next higher level of command, effectively acting their way into more senior roles.

During a simulated torpedo attack with Commodore Kenny aboard, Marquet learned to resist providing solutions. When a request came to raise the communications antenna at the worst possible moment, Marquet stayed quiet. The department heads reasoned through the problem themselves and recommended continuing the attack. Santa Fe scored a successful torpedo hit and passed its first inspection with an "above average" rating. Marquet also eliminated top-down monitoring systems, making department heads solely responsible for tracking their own work, and reported a shore power safety violation to Squadron Seven and Naval Reactors rather than handling it quietly, treating external oversight as a learning resource.

A critique of the shore power incident produced the mechanism of "deliberate action": before operating any control, the operator pauses, vocalizes the intended action, and gestures toward the relevant switch. After a torpedo room incident exposed gaps in technical knowledge, Marquet recognized that distributing control without competence produces chaos. The crew adopted "We Learn" as their creed, reframing every task as a learning opportunity. Marquet replaced passive briefings with active certifications, where the person in charge questions team members and decides whether they are ready to proceed. He also changed fire drill protocols: instead of requiring designated watch standers to man hoses while 40 engineers ran past the nearest one, he told the crew the objective was to put the fire out, regardless of who did it. Response times improved dramatically.

On June 18, 1999, Santa Fe deployed two weeks early for a six-month tour. The crew integrated advancement exam preparation into daily operations, and reenlistments surged from 3 in 1998 to 36 in 1999. The crew connected to the submarine force's World War II legacy and finalized guiding principles designed as practical decision-making criteria. In September 1999, Santa Fe fired the first-ever submarine-launched torpedo in the Arabian Gulf during a training exercise.

During a SEAL team recovery exercise, a shallow-water alarm prompted Marquet to shout an incorrect order. Sled Dog, a quartermaster (a sailor responsible for navigation) who had earlier gone AWOL (absent without leave) after his chain of command failed to monitor his exhaustion, responded: "No, Captain, you're wrong." Marquet stopped, examined the indications, and realized the crew had positioned the ship correctly. Had they followed his order, they would have driven toward land.

On a second deployment in 2001, a hydraulic oil leak threatened to cut operations short. Ensign Armando Aviles, a brand-new officer, spotted a Navy resupply ship nearby and suggested asking for oil, bypassing the standard scheduling process. The crew sprang into action on their own initiative, each supervisor announcing intentions using "I intend to . . ." and identifying the responsible chief. The ship resupplied and continued its mission without Marquet directing the effort. Marquet uses this episode to distinguish empowerment from emancipation: Empowerment still flows from the top down, while emancipation recognizes people's inherent capability and removes barriers to its emergence.

Marquet concludes by examining Santa Fe's legacy. After his departure, the ship continued to excel, winning the award for best chiefs' quarters seven consecutive years and earning the Battle "E" for most combat-effective submarine in the squadron three additional times. Both executive officers were selected for submarine command. All three eligible department heads were selected for executive officer and then submarine command. Senior enlisted personnel advanced to positions including chief of the boat and command master chief. In 2011, Dave Adams, the weapons officer from Marquet's tour, took command of the Santa Fe. Marquet argues that this enduring excellence and leader development, decoupled from any single personality, is the defining power of the leader-leader model.