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[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water treatise by water treaters where we’re scaling up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems hi everybody tres Blackmore here the host of scaling up and I have to say one
of the coolest benefits of hosting this show is being able to speak with some
very influential people our guest today is Captain David Marquis of the United
States Navy he had one of the most amazing jobs in the world think about it
I just play with water all day he lives surrounded by water all day he commanded
a nuclear-powered submarine I actually had the pleasure of meeting David about
three years ago at a business conference that we were both at and he was the
speaker and by the way I asked him how I should address him and he very humbly
said well David of course so I am reluctantly referring to him as David
and I’m sure you’re gonna hear I revert back to captain Mark a quite often did I
mention that he’s a submarine captain so cool as you can gather I am fascinated
with submarines but I am also a huge fan of the book that he wrote it’s called
turn the ship around and it’s one of my favorite books actually it’s my second
favorite book outside of the seven Habits of Highly Effective People I know
you’ve heard me talk about the seven Habits several times on scaling out well turn the ship around is a book that
shows how you can apply the seven Habits of Highly Effective People and it’s a
true story it illustrates his story of how he was assigned to the highest performing
submarine in the fleet only to be reassigned several weeks before he was
to take command to the lowest performing submarine in the entire fleet so turn
the ship around chronicles how he took this lowest I mean submarine the USS Santa Fe and
turned it around into the highest performance evaluation in the history of
the Navy amazing turnaround he did it with what he calls a leader leader
mentality not the leader follower which is typically how the Navy how the
military gets things done it’s an amazing story I’m really looking forward
to speaking with Captain Mark a so I hope you enjoy my interview with a true
hero captain David Mark a my lab partner today is Captain David Marquis of the
Meet Captain David Marquis
United States Navy retired captain Mark a wrote one of the best books in my
library turned the ship around and Captain Mark a I’m so excited to talk to you today here a little bit about your
story and why you wrote the book thank you for coming on scaling-up and how are you today sir
I’m good trades how are you doing very well and I know initially you asked me
to call you David I’m gonna try to do that but yeah you were a captain of a nuclear submarine I think that’s the
coolest job out there maybe one notch below astronaut but it is way up there that’s just amazing no no you got it
wrong is way above astronaut as when you sit there man I got it wrong I apologize
that’s important too how did you come to be in the Navy out of curiosity well I
grew up in the seventies in America I would grew up in New England and the seventies if anyone was there with me
everyone will recognize that as basically a giant bomber and we were in
this conflict with the Soviet Union and inflation was going crazy and the Iranians took her hostages when I was
asked Iggy kid on the math team you know I spent my afternoons on math team and chess club
and I was like well I’m gonna do something about this and I decided to go in the military because I really felt
pretty strongly about what the Constitution said about how we should organize humans and you know you should
be able to live your life without being told what job to have or who to marry or
what religion to you wanted to celebrate so what’s an introvert to do when they
join the military well you got to go in the submarine Forks cuz that’s where you can hide so that’s kind of came up with
reinforce I’m gonna be a submarine captain it was kind of this crazy thing to say because I really had no milk I
had no idea what I was getting into we had no military really in my family so it was sort of absurd but I went down
the path and letting the little you know I ended up being a submarine captain but it was I learned something along the way
you learned a lot of things along the way and you were thankful to share them in your book I definitely want to want
Turn the Ship Around
to talk about that turn the ship around is a book that you published how long
ago it came out in 2013 so since 2013 you have told people how
to turn their own ships around and I’m gonna have links on my show notes page to how you can get copies of this book
and I highly recommend that but before we get to that let’s talk about how you
were preparing for the Olympia and then something happened yeah so the
leadership model that we had and the leadership book that I had in 1981 at
the Naval Academy basically says leadership is the art and science of
directing people’s thoughts plans and actions directing and it’s a model of
leadership which I now call a leader follower and it or it’s also if you
think about a 2 by 2 matrix where there’s no it don’t know it tell it don’t tell it you want to be obviously
they know it tell it quadrant in other words you know all the answers and you give all the orders and this was
the model of leadership and it’s so pervasive that we really don’t even question any other models we just say oh
that’s how it is of course there needs to be leaders and of course there needs to be followers and I think hey
basically what I learned was yeah you need leaders and you need followers but in a much different way than way this
construct has a design so obviously you I’m trying to remember
I want to quote properly you took a submarine that was getting performance scores that were among the
lowest in the fleet to a state where the Navy issued the highest performance
evaluations in all history right so I’m
getting ready to go yeah I get promoted promoted promoted I’m gonna been selected to cap be a captain of a
submarine I’m super excited I get training for a year to go to that ship because you got to know everything this
is a NOAA tell it model right you got to know all the answers and then I got affected off to another ship the world’s
performing worse morale ship in the Navy because the captain quit a year early
and the Navy hadn’t prepared a guy so I said mark’ you’re going to the Santa Fe and you got two weeks so I I go over
there the Santa Fe was a different kind of submarine than the than the ship I was trained for and it was one of the
newer ships has different equipment and I’m walking on board and I’m looking at
all this stuff I’m like I really don’t know this year but the structure of the leader gives the orders and the crew
follows them was so strong that we tried that course it didn’t work because I
didn’t know the details of the ship and so almost immediately I made a mistake and gave an order that you couldn’t do
and there’s really rocked me back on my heels and my instinct was to tell the
guys hey you guys need to speak up and take initiative be proactive if what I say is wrong talk back to me that’s what
I’d seen and again but the problem is that’s pushing the responsibility onto
other people and the view of the world that the problem is everybody else and not you
and finally that dawned on me that the problem was really me and instead of me
running around telling people what to do I just needed to stay quiet and so I now view it as the leader actually leans
back instead of leaning into your subordinates and they lean into the team below them and they lean in a team below
them the leader actually leans back and creates the space for the team to lean up forward into you but it always starts
with the leaders behavior and the leader leaning back and it’s very unnatural and
it’s aggravating and it’s slow and it
goes against the way your body is wired it’ll feel wrong but when you actually
lean back and invite your team to lean forward once you get that going Katie bar the door because not only what
performance go way up and morale go way up but you end up creating more leaders this way and so that’s the story you
know how I learned to lean back as a leader in a way that was safe for me and
the team and how they leaned into me and we ended up going from one leader and 134 followers to 135 leaders and it was
awesome I’m thinking and all of the business owners that are listening to
Lean Back
this podcast and they’re thinking no I have to do anger follower mentality and when you
look at what you did on a submarine were worse if something goes wrong it is
catastrophic how do you I know because I know you work with people like this how do you convince people like that that
they do need to lean back so others can lean forward I never convince anybody and it’s not my
job like if you don’t fundamentally if you can see that there would be a better world if you have to if you could stop
telling people what to do all day long and they came to you it says here’s what I intend to do I can’t convince you that
so I’m not gonna convince you but if you say I see the value in that
how do I do how do I do it can I get some stories and help that’s where we go so here’s the deal when you do this
leaning back thing you ever sit in one of those lawn chairs right and it’s got this like all these little notches this
just came to mind and you’re like you’re gonna lift it up but you’re too lazy to actually get out of a chair and then put
it where you want and get back in the chair so you’re trying to like lift it up and lay it and set it back while
you’re still sitting in the channel I do that’s what I do and then misses and you go slam way back you ever happen to you you know I had
that happen yeah so anyway you don’t want to do that right you don’t want to do that so what it is is you lean back
not by notch by notch by notch in a very slow and incremental way because that’s
otherwise if there’s really messy chaos and I lean back too far and I tell the
story in the book about some of the mistakes that I’ve made but when you lean back not to my knotch the team then
can lean in bit by bit here’s the thing you want to be firm and how the team interacts which will allow you to
release control of the what like what are we gonna do and what about our products and how we’re gonna price them
you want to get out of that business let your team do that you want to be in the business of deciding how we interact
deciding so in other words I’ll give you an example in a meeting your job as a
leader is not to try and drive a decision it’s to make sure that everybody’s voice is heard because when
you hear everybody even the quiet person they may be thinking different from you
but the problem is it’s not really safe or they’re quiet or they’re an introvert they don’t speak up so you need to
notice that and say well let’s hear from trace you know do you see it different yeah well as a matter of fact I do
great that’s tough tell us about that we call it embracing the outliers and so the point is you want to be doing that
rather than whatever driving your agenda which is what most people get trapped into well I know in our earlier
Slow Down
conversation before we started recording you were talking about how this process can be very slow you know and I’m sure
that there were times that you could have just gotten something done you could have ordered it been done but you would have slowed down
the entire model that you were top trying to create how did you resist the urge to do that yeah so what happens is
your people come up to you to say hey what he wants to do you know the answer or you think you do and you say well
just turn left turn whatever and things could be happening again and I would resist that and say well what do you
think if you were me what would you do those kind of questions and it was very
frustrating I had this poster inside my stateroom behind the door so no one knew
what was there except for me because when people came into the stateroom the door was open but when I was in there by myself I would close the door and I
could see the poster and the poster basically had me and it was it would me and my dog and the dog standing in front
of me there’s eight pictures in a row of the dog standing and I’m saying sit sit sit sit sit sit and then the last when
the dog is sitting and says I say it says good dog I don’t want to see it because I didn’t
want them to think I was thinking of them as his dogs which I wasn’t looking behind the point is you gotta just
relentlessly repeat the message and I can’t tell you how many times when I was
and I did you know especially if I were tired or hungry or stressed out myself I’d fall back into the old way of doing
business but you don’t develop leaders that way you write you say oh do this like you’re not developing leaders and
you just trap yourself into this thing next week you’re gonna have to answer the same question and the week after and
the week after night I got to get out of that you gotta get out of this process of having to answer questions I need to
create an independent thinking team and it only comes when you should keep your mouth shut and see what how they would
think through a problem which so it was this image of a future that was brighter
than the present because I had thinkers all around me that motivated me along
with my poster which reminded me to stick with the program and not give up
in your book you mentioned one of the techniques to do that was the I intend
Intentions
to can you speak around that yeah so that for us was a very powerful word and
when I look at organizations almost every organization I look into is what I call it permission based organization
which is if you don’t get permission to do something you can’t do it yeah the
default is no so if you sent an email to your boss and there’s no response do you
do it or not oh no no I couldn’t do it and so what we did is we just said I
never said the word being powered or anything like that I just said just say these words I intend to it so the team
would start coming up to me and saying I intend to submerge the ship I intend to load the torpedo I intended this I
intend to prepare for that and the difference is they so now they they own it and rather than me walking around and
telling them do this do this do this I’m leaning back and they’re coming to me here’s what they intend to do so they
own their jobs and the other thing is it creates a bias for action because when
you say I intend to do this then the default is it happens not it doesn’t
happen and that’s scary because you own it and there’s responsibility from the team side and
it’s also scary from the boss side because my team might send me an email now and I’m on it it’s a 15 hour flight
to Sydney usually our default is basically 24 hours right I get 24 hours to veto
something but I don’t worry about checking my email because if I don’t check it it doesn’t slow down the work
they’re off doing it anyway right so I’m not one of these guys in a meeting I gotta check my email because my whole
team’s waiting on me and nothing’s happened me tell them you know go approved approve like that never happens
so this idea of intend it’s very powerful then by practicing the language
the team then be felt empowered became empowered but we always say we act our
way to new thinking so you don’t start with a concept of empowerment and then hope something changes you could start
with the physical language and that rewires are thinking we activate a new
thinking not to think about a new action a lot of people are listening today they
may be business owners or they may work for somebody in order for a leader follower to change to leader leader does
it have to come from top down or is there something that somebody can do a subordinate can do to get that started I
think it’s a lot easier if it comes from top down I tried something like this
when I was in the middle of the organization that didn’t really work partly mostly because I really didn’t
know what I was doing and I didn’t understand that when you give people control you got a really beef up the
technical competence you give as much control as they have to technical competence to handle and the
organizational clarity for making decisions I don’t really understand that I kind of blamed it on exactly what you
said well I wasn’t the boss my boss is a jerk my Bob whatever ba ba ba because
basically I’m an optimist and I’ve seen it but it’s generally been someone who’s
like the head of a division or something like that and they have to create some sort of change process because it all
starts with the leaders behavior but the way the team interacts is something that everyone gets involved with the way do
we welcome new people or do we put them through some hazing process do we to respect people who think differently
than us and see things differently and we are curious about how they see it or do we just convince them that they’re
wrong these are the things that every team member can do and that’s why it’s
important that everyone get involved with this okay one of my favorite lines from your book is when you say a little
rudder far from the rocks is much better than a lot of rudder close to the rocks I actually have that on a poster in my
office I’m a fan of the seven Habits of Highly Effective People you actually met
him and I want to I want to talk about meeting dr. Covey but I think it’s the best example and when I teach seven
Habits I use your quote as is how to look at habit so with that in mind how are you judging
when you’re trying to give somebody the authority to make decisions but yet
we’re getting too close to that rocks when when does the danger level amp up or you have to step in and if you step
in too quickly you’re taking away their power yes so number one is my problem
would be I would say if I hadn’t given the nut team enough time and I was in crisis there’s not enough time at that
point to then ask the team Oh what do you guys think about this because the moment is on you you have to make
decisions and so now you’re you’ve lost the opportunity to train your team so it really is on coming on you to look
further downrange and say oh you know in two days we’re gonna be entering port we’re gonna be driving into Pusan Korea
okay well I’m gonna put a new officer up there I need that you know I need to
give that person heads-up so that they can study the charts so that they could be in charge beforehand and if you don’t
plan for far enough out then you never get the opportunity the related
behaviors that I think allow the team to have more authority so for example I call it think out loud so yeah let’s say
so this happened to me I’m teaching my daughter to drive she’s driving I’m sitting in the passenger seat I don’t
know what she’s it’s quiet in the car I see a family playing I see a car coming down the street I see a stop sign I keep
saying hey Emily do you see this you see that she’s getting frustrated yes of course that but I don’t know that she’s
seeing if she’s not saying anything so think out loud is sounded like this I see the family I’m I have the right away
but if they run on the street I’m ready to stop I see the stop sign see a car coming and you’re just sort of just
narrating what you see now it’s not the normal thing we we don’t normally do this because once people learn to drive
you don’t need to do it but in that learning process it allows me to then be
quiet because I knew she saw all these things and we tend to get the
pensive and close-up resist scrutiny a lot of times when what you really want
which resultant means your boss has to ask more questions and it’s just a sort of negative self fulfilling thing versus
like open the doors and say here’s what I’m thinking here’s what I’m thinking here’s what I’m thinking here’s what I’m thinking here’s what I see here’s what I
see and that allows your boss to be quiet and have to give you give you more distance than if you don’t so there’s
these different tools you have that allow the team then it’s sort of act in the same way but in a way that safest
allows you to still veto the decision if you think is really a problem I know you
I intend to submerge
in the book you talk about you know the I intend to submerge the ship and then I think your people would say you know
we’re in the water we own every everything is you know the valves are where they need to be and I was not in
the Navy so that’s the extent of what I remember of my reading and but I say all
that because was your goal to get to some point where you didn’t have to ask
any more questions that they gave you enough information that you just said very well yeah exactly so so the first
time you know someone comes up to you says I intend to submerge the ship and
let’s say it’s a junior officer we haven’t gone through this before I ask
some questions that’s part of it it’s not like I intend to submerge a ship okay great and I walk away no and I might ask them well this
is the way it started I would say well you know is it safe or the hatches shut bubble blah and they would kind of get you know they go through that and then
why are we doing that I asked them what like why and why is this the right place and the right time they go through that
and then I would start saying well look since I’m gonna ask you this anyway why don’t you just make it part of your your
blurb I intended submerges ship hatches are shut here’s why blah blah blah okay great
now for new guys that conversation might take five minutes cuz there’s a lot
about it and I really am trying to understand their thought process I want to say yes but I really want to
understand their thought process and then the next time they do it it might only take four minutes and then you know
three six now like the engineer would come up to me who highly highly confident officer
you would just say Catherine antennas emerges ship and sometimes he would do a little bit so that if people are
watching him they would know the right pattern but it would be very very short conversation because I would know from
experience that he knew all the things to check and then because I would be
spending my time on somebody else at that point so the point isn’t the two
things one when your team says I intend to you don’t have to agree with it that’s why I intend to not I done it
that’s over at that point right and the other thing is if you’re a team member and you go to your boss and say I intend
to that doesn’t mean you get automatic car launch to do it you want the word we use invite scrutiny so you say things
like so check my thinking on this like make what am I missing have I not is there something I haven’t
thought about is this truly aligned with the organization’s objectives like invite those questions because that’s
what’s gonna result in your boss trusting you more and more giving you more authority down the road not this
sort of defensive well you know why you asking me that don’t you trust me blah blah blah that’s not what you want so
that’s that’s what we think and and then and then eventually you will learn the right to go to your boss and say this is
what I intend to do and your boss will say okay fine whatever you know I you know it’s on you guy got it moving on I
am very pleased to tell you that we did this in our organization and the magic
The magic
it was difficult that you talked about I think I fell out of the chair you mentioned earlier a couple of times but
the magic was my guys were thinking in a train of thought that I wasn’t in and I
actually learned from the process as they were it was truly magical yeah well
thanks for telling it story I mean that’s that’s the whole deal that’s the whole deal the question is is your
company gonna get better cuz your people are better doing what you tell them to you or your company gonna get better because you’ve unlocked the thinking and
the creativity of all the people in your company and I’m pretty much thinking it’s gonna be number two
like certainly that was it it was that for me we pull audiences on this and we get like a 90/10 response typically
because you do need for any business that we do need to maintain the discipline we do need to maintain
process discipline and we do need to maintain certain rules whether they’re internet security client confidentiality
safety you know where you’re safe steel toed shoes and safety go we know whatever it is there are certain
compliance things that we need but we so we need compliance over here but over there
we need thinking and creativity and so knowing when to flip back and forth is
really the things you need both but we think the bigger gap is on the thinking side well it definitely opened my eyes
The most effective team
that problems that I thought were with people were with our procedures not necessarily with our people and they
allowed and doing some of the things that you talked about in the book with the I intend to and think out loud it
allowed us to examine our processes and help our people not hurt our people
because we had those processes yeah that’s really good so the Google did a
study about what it creates the most effective team and the number one determinant is the team interaction it’s
not who’s on the team or what positions are and it’s like how they interact and so this is where as a leader you want to
spend a lot of time how are your people interacting what are the meanings sound like are people being honest about you know if they see a
problem do they speak up or they just keep it to themselves that’s what I’m talking about and that’s what you want
to focus on on a leader and then we need to get that done you can stop telling everyone what to do because they’re
involved they’re participating they’re telling you what they think how do you write procedures that support that line
of thinking so there are procedures where you need to say so here’s the procedure start up
the diesel engines apply lube oil for step 1 lube oil step 2 start the engine right you don’t
want to do it in the opposite order so there’s a certain compliance thing there but in compliance work you want to give
you always want to give people the option to get out of it and say I’m not sure this is right let’s put the push
the pause button and put on our thinking caps this is the purpose of the end on cord in the Toyota factories where the
worker could pull it and say hey I’m having a problem so number one you cannot you can inoculate the team
against being tried we call it trapped in red work we call this production work red work like I’m in production I’m
getting stuff done and too busy getting stuff done to stop and think about whether it’s not skinning the right
stuff done or whether I’m actually heading into a mistake the second thing
is we need to create an environment where if people feel like they can ask a question and that it’s safe to ask
questions and it’s safe to express dissenting opinions we won’t be ridiculed we won’t be told we’re wrong
we won’t be you know laughed at at the water cooler or any of these kind of things so that’s what you want to be
doing every time I read your book and and I
The leader fixes the environment
don’t read books twice often I’ve read yours and I think about eight times every time I go to work with somebody
and we’re talking about a personnel issue and I do some consulting with some other firms I always give them a copy of
your book a matter of fact I think I’ve I can’t even count how many copies of your books that I’ve given out but it’s
such a good example of how to work with people anyway the reason I say all this is every time
I read it I have certain questions that I’ve always wanted to ask you you’re on my show I want to take advantage of it
can I ask you some of these questions alright so in the book you mentioned one
of your enlisted men you called him sled dog yeah he went AWOL and he was a great
guy but the system was broken as far as he was concerned it really wasn’t an issue with him but he was feeling the
brunt of it maybe you can tell that story a little bit but as far as my question you decided to give him a pass
for going AWOL and by all means it was the right decision based on what
happened but the immediate thought in your crew that well hey I can make a
mistake and the captain’s not gonna hold me accountable for it how do you get past that yeah so what happened was this
is a really powerful lesson and story for me we call it the leader fixes the environment not people 99.9 percent of
the time your people are trying to do the right thing but they’re operating inside a system which may actually be
making that harder for them to do the right thing so I had been talking about quote taking care of our people like
most leaders and but not paying enough
attention to the junior enlisted guys and we had steamed from Pearl Harbor to
San Diego which it takes like a week and
this guy sled-dog had been standing watch six hours on six hours off and
when you stand watch six hours on in six hours off it sucks you don’t get any
sleep because the ship is set up for its one-in-three rotation so we’re running drills during
the time when he was gonna be sleeping he’s not sleep anyway so he pulling apart he hasn’t slept in 36 hours and I
don’t know that I haven’t been paying attention to this individual guy soon as he pulled in to San Diego he’s like runs
off the ship he’s like a few guys and I’m out of here he goes up to the
on-base barracks and gets a room to go to sleep he doesn’t go to Tijuana or anything
like that so anyway it kind of comes out because reported to me the guy’s gone UA and I gather up his leadership his
leadership team I said well what’s going on they kind of explained this thing about the important starboard which I
didn’t notice he was walking around the ship I didn’t notice this guy was always on watch and whatever and so I’m kind of
sympathetic to the fact that we deprived the guy from super sleep and I swear to
God well he’s on the barracks well why didn’t go to tea like you know we’ll go across the boards you’re really trying to go your way or just really just angry
need some sleep so I said you guys did
him wrong you guys because you the supervisors were like six hours on and
24 hours off they were getting plenty of sleep but the junior guys were getting screwed so I went up and I said hey so I
found him I said knock on the door he opens the door he’s bleary-eyed I didn’t
totally let him off the hook I said listen but maybe I did I said listen you come back to the ship tomorrow when
liberty expires at 7:00 in the morning we’re gonna forget this thing you don’t we’re gonna hunt you down to the end of
your days you know your choice so I went back to the ship and of course he showed up I made a change the rule and the rule
was that on the duty rotation the senior guys could not have a better Duty
rotation than the junior guys and which was a big change from what we were we
were junior guys we’re getting hammered the senior guys lots of sleep and the senior guys were really pissed off they
didn’t think this was fair that they turned the right whatever I just like
know you’re doing it and I never the watch bill I never said who’s on
duty but I made this rule what happened was we very quickly got everybody three and three section and
then four section actually so we’re very efficient in terms of how we use the people and we never had another person
go UA and I don’t know exactly why or how it works but I think the crew
basically knew that this was a special
case that we we the leadership had screwed this kid and we were making it
right and that but that they they shouldn’t expect you know a free pass on
any kind of discipline problems the discipline problem always result is a systemic issue like there’s a systemic
problem with your organization which then results in discipline problems
that’s why people are acting up 99.9 percent of the time so leaders fix the
environment not people if you got the right environment that people will do the right behaviors also in the book you
The Three Name Rule
talk about the three name rule and you had a lot of eyes on you as you were
trying to turn this ship around and I was hoping you can tell us a little bit about what the three name room was why
you did that but my question is that you got commended because people were
greeted with the three name rule however you knew that at best ten percent of
your men were actually doing the three name rule so I know that had to be some
sort of conflict where they weren’t doing exactly what you asked them but at the same time you were getting commended
for it so how did you handle that well yeah so there’s two principles here one
is you activated new thinking and we talked about that a little bit with the intent to not think you ate a new action
and you focus on the people who are getting it right so what happened was I
took over I had two weeks we were getting inspected the very first underway
we were gonna go through this tactical inspection and it was all all the signs were was gonna be a disaster
you know crew didn’t other jobs morale was crappy blah blah blah I was gonna be a mess the captain didn’t know the
summary and we did a little brainstorm about what we want the crew to be proud
of the ship now the normal thing was like somehow give lectures we’re proud of the ship you know put some posters
this doesn’t actually change anything what would it look like if the crew were proud of the ship well one of the one of
the things was that they would when the visit when the inspection team was on board they’d say Oh welcome aboard
welcome aboard the Santa Fe Commodore Kenny my name is sled-dog so those are
the three names your name their name and the ship name we didn’t really explain
why we just said he was the new rule when you see these visitors you’re gonna
meet them with these three names right now that seems maybe in one sense
incredibly micromanaging but it was really sort of a structure of how we’re gonna operate no one had ever told the
crew anything like this before so you had all these random interactions even
though only a small proportion of the crew started doing it eventually everyone was doing it the whole crew got
it but at beginning it was only a small proportion but it was enough to change
impression in the minds of the inspectors so as the spec inspectors were walking around the ship to having
Santa Fe sailors come up to them these are guys who were forward shuffling therefore they’re like land of the zombies like shuffling their fleet
looking at the deck but now they look coming up to the inspector and it didn’t matter to the inspector like they didn’t
sense her notice the nine people who didn’t do it but the one person who did hi you know welcome aboard Commodore
welcome aboard the Santa Fe Commodore Kenny my name is sled-dog you know can I show you my watch station can I show you
what we’re doing here you know that made such a huge impression that the image was totally different the feeling on the
ship was totally different and pretty much you know within a month or so everybody was doing it but the principle
is we activate a new thinking and you know don’t get people lectures just
just figure out what it is and then practice the new behavior and eventually everybody will catch on cuz that’s the
that’s the culture yeah and then I would find when a guy when I saw a guy doing I said oh you know sled dog thanks for you
know thanks for introducing yourself like that that’s all I would say for the nine people didn’t do it I just didn’t say anything like don’t focus on the
people getting it wrong focus on the people getting it right ah you mentioned the USS sunfish is that
where you first got the idea of the leader leader mentality well we didn’t
call leader leader then but that’s where I first saw the power of the leader just
asking the team the leader stating I intend to to his boss in my case the
captain said why don’t I just say I intended to the him it wasn’t quite as institutionalized as what we ended up
doing but that’s where I first saw this idea of intent and experienced it and
then I kind of went to hibernation for the next 10 years but I was able to draw upon that memory when I ended up with
the on the Santa Fe if that experience didn’t take place on the sunfish why do
Meeting Stephen Covey
you think would have happened on the Santa Fe what do you come to that conclusion of how to fix the situation
yeah I don’t know fair enough just just curious all right you had met one of my heroes one of my favorite
actually this is why you’re so cool to me you you take two of my favorite books
of all time one of my favorite fun read books is The Hunt for Red October so you have that and then the seven Habits of
Highly Effective People my all-time favorite leadership book and you just merged all those together so that’s why
we were destined to have this conversation what was it like to have him come on your submarine you know what
was it like to meet him so haven’t Stephen Covey come on board with super cool yeah I get this phone
call right we’re a year into this transformation we’re setting records for retention and performance and
everything’s going great and we still we don’t know yet that we’re gonna create
more leaders than any other submarine but you know the immediate results are pretty good and I get a phone call dr.
Covey wants to ride the submarine I was just like a little kid and I was like oh my god doctor because I was using seven
habits on the ship in a way I was just applying seven habits at an
organizational level that’s kind of how I thought about what I was doing and he came on and we had some families as well
we spent a day on the ship we submerged we we drove from Maui over to wahoo
it was super awesome and he comes up to me near the end and he’s like I know what you’re doing here he says is the
most empowering workplace I’ve ever seen I was like what I was super cool really
because I really don’t know what we’re doing I mean I know how you’re doing this and for me there was this there was
this ad hoc nature to what we were doing and he put the structure behind he said
well when someone asks you to tell them what to do you don’t tell him what to do he asked them what they see where you
just simply take to describe the situation and once they describe the situation you ask them what they think
and then they say well here’s what I think’s going on you ask him what they what we ought to do and then you ask him
what they intend to do like so and I was like yeah and so we built we built this thing which we now call the ladder of
leadership which is the structure by which you climb your school self up or
as the leader you invite your people up you know it’s a plus one thing right if they come in at level three you put you
invite in the level four that B gave me the structure in my head so that I was
talking to people and listening to them that’s the structure that I used and it was it’s basically the thermostat for
empowerment it’s bear very powerful what would you say your biggest victory was for changing the
leader follower mentality to a leader leader mentality on the Santa Fe at the
time I thought it was all these awards that we got and the fact we went from
the worst of the best and performance and we set a record for how many people we kept in the Navy and all this other
kind of stuff but that’s not what I think now what happened was over the
next 10 years we had 10 officers from that wardroom got selected a commander on submarines and the same kind of you
know highly disproportionate numbers and the enlisted rank went on the leadership positions and this is what I think is
the big is the big win it’s creating an environment where your people can go off
and express the leadership they have inside them and then go off and do great
things irregardless of you you’ve left where they’ve left doesn’t matter that’s the
legacy of leadership well it truly was inspiring the the story that you share
in your book and definitely having you on the scaling up program this was phenomenal thank you very much I hope
you enjoyed this yes they thank you folks I can’t tell you how much I
enjoyed interviewing captain Markey I’ll let you in on a little secret I had 30 minutes with captain Markey
however we reached 30 minutes and we were still having some really good dialogue I didn’t say anything and he
kept going so thank you very much for allowing me to do that captain Markey
and I forgot I’m supposed to call you David I told you I was going to have issues with that I want to thank you for
coming on the show and sharing all the things you did about your experiences now we at Blackmoor enterprises use his
book as a template for pretty much every procedure that we write our goal is to
empower people and not tie people’s hands just simply because we have a
procedure if you haven’t read the book I highly suggest it I’ll have an affiliate
link on my show notes page so you’ll be able to go directly and get his book they’re also
david has a newsletter it’s called the nudge i’ve subscribed to it for several
years when he’s out and about he will find a sign he even has one where he was
in a men’s room and he was inspired by something so he’ll have all these things that it would be like a little twenty
second clip on something that inspires him and how you can use that to help
empower people you work with highly recommend that and I will have that link
on my show notes page as well I also think David would be a phenomenal
keynote speaker for the association of water technologies at our convention this coming year so if you agree with me
let the leadership know that you think that that would be a great keynote speaker and did I mention he’s the
captain of a nuclear-powered submarine how cool is that all right so thanks for
listening to the show without you listening to the show I would not be able to interview people like that
remember be a better water trader tomorrow than you were today and have a
great week folks [Music]
you [Music]