Turn the Ship Around! : Transform Followers into Leaders with a True Story of Leadership

Justin mc Guinness: Good read although gets a bit repetitive

United Kingdom on Oct 30, 2023

anthony: An amazing read for those that ate looking to read or those that are leaders....especially in an environment that needs a shift of culture.

The insight and perspective is spot on and can be applied when in the leaders toolbox

United States on Oct 01, 2023

Fabio Pucci: Ho comprato questo testo in versione kindle perchè consigliato da un collega. Ho trovato un testo molto ispirazionale. Riuscire in un ambiente gerarchico e verticistico come quello militare a costruire una vera collaborazione tra marinai basata su un rapporto paritario e diffuso piuttosto che sulla gerarchia e sulla coercizione è sicuramente di inspirazione per tutti. Consiglio questo testo a che vogliono scoprire un modo diverso di pensare al proprio successo tramite il successo degli altri.

Italy on Sep 20, 2023

Michael Hoff: A more personal book about leadership than your typical “good leadership styles” book. Easy read and good lessons to be learned.

United States on Sep 14, 2023

Amazon Customer: Really great book as per my partner who i bought it for - i have been told it looks at ways of empowering people through challenging them. Great to see that this is a method that works. Will be following up the author to get his feedback on the reality of the method after writing this book.

Australia on Sep 12, 2023

anonymous: This is one of those books you read where the lessons are obvious but by reading it, you come away with the right language to use to support the ideas. Very easy read. Insightful stories. One of the most enjoyable leadership books I've read in a while.

United States on Aug 25, 2023

Brian F Donovan: When David Marquet took over as commander of the nuclear submarine USS Santa Fe, he inherited a toxic culture characterised by fear, blame, and mediocrity. The crew was afraid to make mistakes, and quick to blame others. They did not have the motivation to perform at their best, and were not proud of their work. Turnover was high, and they were not meeting their goals. In Turn the Ship Around, Marquet outlines how he believed that the best way to improve the performance of the submarine was to create a culture of leaders at every level instead of the command/control model that typified the US Navy.

In his view, the fundamental structure of leader-follower was the problem on board the ship. Instead, he encouraged an approach of decision making and leadership at all levels. He retained accountability for Santa Fe’s operational performance, but he released control of the actual decisions to his department heads. It was an uncomfortable approach, but he didn’t see any other way to improve the ship’s performance.

One mechanism Marquet used was to introduce a new language for officers and crew. They now said “I INTEND TO …” instead of using passive phrases...

Australia on Aug 04, 2023

Nathan: On the theme of leadership and psychology safety, this book came highly recommended.

The core takeaway of the book is that anyone can be a leader, which is documented through the crew’s transformation from the worst performing to best within the fleet.

Marquet’s honest appraisal of his strengths and weaknesses as a leader make this a very easy read. The chapters are short, insightful and pack takeaways that draw clear lessons for any industry to adopt- driving a structure from leader-follower to leader-leader.

The change from continually seeking permission for actions to stating “I intend to”, to communicate intentions and verbalising thought process, promoted a culture of trust and empowerment amongst staff. Whilst also improving communications with the team.

A subtle semantics change, but pivotal none the less.

Encouraging and fostering a culture of curiosity was especially pertinent as a mechanism for clarity and continual improvement- highlighted in the team’s engagement with CPD and inspections that led to improvements in academic and professional performance.

“Don’t Brief, Certify” was relevant to pre shift briefings...

United Kingdom on Jul 02, 2023

One more opinion: I am giving this three stars as it is a critical review, however the overall strength of the book and clarity with which it is written warrants at least 4 stars, probably 5 if one reads it with a grain of salt.

I read this book on a recent business trip. I selected it on the basis of being the most interesting and potentially useful book I found after doing an advanced search in Amazon, sorting by "highest average customer review" in the "business and money" category. This is certainly an interesting and page-turning book. And I am (still) strongly tempted to implement some ideas from it in my own organization. However after I read the book and let it digest, something started gnawing at me - I was uneasy about it for some reason though I could not put my finger on it at first.

I gravitated towards this book also because I knew a former "nuke" enlisted man, who graduated with a degree in electrical engineering after he was done with the military. If I recall correctly, he even had some item of paraphernalia with an anti-Navy sentiment, maybe FTN or some-such. I also recall that he loathed the khakis (officers). He was on a boat with a serious morale...

United States on Nov 08, 2014

Albert Soto: One of the words that are used in leadership in civic leadership, corporate leadership, non-profit leadership, and the military is the use of the term ‘empowerment.’ The use of this word is inspiring and it has great meaning to people but the truth is very few leaders and organizations really do not know how to correctly share power with others. To empower people requires the discipline for the leader not to over-perform as to take matters into one’s own hands and to complete tasks themselves or the leader to simply give directional commands to people in order to complete a specific task. Most often, what occurs in organizations is that we empower ‘followers’ which creates a dependency on people for not having to think for themselves as well as not having to take on any real ownership of what the mission and goals of a particular organization is leaving the desire for excellence to be regulated to a few leaders who are brokering all the power. What this creates are organizational cultures that cannot realize the best of the intelligence, talent, and skills from their greatest resource which is their people. In this top-down culture leadership is not understood to be an...

United States on Feb 11, 2014