Wanted to like this book more. Was hoping to get more "submarine" detail. This book is written maybe a step, or half-step, above that level, and is maybe more of a management book than I was hoping for. With the emphasis on procedure, training, and the resources of a large bureaucracy, small businesses may have a hard time implementing the prescriptions outlined in the book. Well-written and thought-provoking nonetheless. ( )

Read this for work.

Strong leadership book ( )

I rarely read this kind of “professional career guide” type of book. They’re all too often fairly dry, are strongly dependant on the cultural and social environment they’re based upon (e. g. US/Europe) and, honestly, range from “difficult to apply” to “impossible to adapt”.

Luckily, this book is completely different! David Marquet tells us in plain words how he metaphorically “turned the ship around” from one of the worst to one of the top performers. I would never have believed that the military of all organisations was actually able to apply a culture of “thinking out loud”, (constructively) questioning orders and, generally, turn a culture of classic “command & control” into something much more open and productive.

Marquet doesn’t ever preach, though, but expertly demonstrates each of his already simple-to-grasp (but not necessarily easy-to-implement!) points by telling us about how he actually implemented them on a nuclear-powered attack submarine.

Not only does he display good general insights…

»You may be able to “buy” a person’s back with a paycheck, position, power, or fear, but a human being’s genius, passion, loyalty, and tenacious creativity are volunteered only. The world’s greatest problems will be solved by passionate, unleashed “volunteers.”«

… but turns those into useful ideas which he is able to communicate clearly:

»My definition of leadership is this: Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.«

He also does away with some well-meaning but annoying misconceptions by some leadership approaches like “empowerment programs”:

»Additionally, it seemed inherently contradictory to have an empowerment program whereby I would empower my subordinates and my boss would empower me. I felt my power came from within, and attempts to empower me felt like manipulation.«

There are a whole lot of inherently simple ideas that Marquet drives home clearly and in a very well-structured manner while not forgetting about us, his readers, who usually appreciate a well-presented big picture. He writes clearly without frills and yet engagingly. I actually found his writing strangely attractive and pulled in.

To actually put some of the ideas presented to the test, I “sneakily” applied some of the easier ones at work and was pleasantly surprised how well that turned out.

When all is said and done, this is a really well-done book on leadership which I highly recommend for any kind of leader!

Five out of five stars.


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I'd heard about this book a few times from others in my field (education design), and finally got the time to track it down and read it. The subject matter was of high interest - it brings together three of my passions: leadership, training, and submarines.

David Marquet (USN, retired) tells the story of his rise to the rank of captain in the US Navy submarine fleet. From his early days of leadership the heavily ensconced leader-follower model troubles him and he experiments with other approaches. Some of these show promise, some fail dismally. But it's when he takes command of USS Santa Fe that he finds his stride. Through trial, error, experimentation, and determination he develops a new way of leading a submarine - the leader-leader model. This is about empowering all members of an organisation to take (appropriate) leadership and conduct themselves with personal accountability and responsibility. He and his team of department chiefs identified bottlenecks, waste, morale-drains, and irrelevant bureaucracy. They develop new ways of working and relating and their practices eventually spread through all the officers and crew.

Did he succeed? Well, if taking the worst-performing sub in the fleet (Santa Fe) and turning it into a consistently high-performing unit with incredible accomplishment statistics is anything to go by - then, yes! And their record of training and advancement is quite something. It's fantastic how he turns the organisation into a learning environment.

Frankly, I would have given his approach a thumbs-up but with a low probability of success - given centuries old maritime leadership traditions and tight USN hierarchies. But hats off to the author... he succeeded where many would not dare to tread.

This is a story of real leadership, and vision, and dogged determination. It's also about passion and giving a damn about people.

The book is a blend of story-telling and leadership advice. Personally I enjoyed the story-telling parts more (probably due to my submarine bias), but for someone looking to revitalise their team or organisation, the leadership advice, questions and exercises would be of interest.

Overall, a worthwhile read. And I learned some things!

Recommended (my rating is more like 4-1/2) ( )

This book could have been great, but ended up being merely good. Three things drag it down:
1) the connection (or lack thereof) between the many chapters,
2) almost all of the chapters are way too brief, leaving me feeling like I won't be able to apply these techniques myself, and
3) no coverage of what to do when you find yourself off the beaten path.

The chapters are presented in (mostly) chronological order but have few connections to each other. I'd expect from a chronological presentation that there'd be a logical progression between chapters, with each building on the previous. Not so here, and the times that the captain does jump around in time help further obscure the connection between content. It gives the book more of a 'collection of blog-posts' feel, rather than that of a single cohesive work.
Additionally, each of these chapters has a start date for when the situation started, but no detail on how long it took for the change to take. To my mind, this is important information for how to judge which changes to roll out first (because surely you can't roll out the whole book's worth of changes all at once, right? The author never addresses this problem).

Most of these chapters are also not very long - some are only a page or two. Rolling out these changes in an environment where the existing practices are entrenched (which is not just a thing in the Navy) is a _hard problem_ and is given almost no attention. What is also given no attention is the fact that most people aren't the captain of the ship they're on (metaphorically speaking). I know that's not the situation that the author found themselves in, so it's hard to hold it against him. Even so, it'd be nice to have detail on how you could apply some of this without being the highest level of authority (yes, I know he was only a captain and had his own bosses, but being out to sea for six months at a time provides an awful lot of autonomy).

Some of the chapters go into problems he ran into during application - in one memorable situation, a member of the crew goes AWOL, and the captain handles it really well. But many of the chapters don't go into how to generally apply these techniques when the plan doesn't go as intended. This is especially unfortunate in a book whose thesis asserts that the traditional way of doing things is broken and _already_ not working as intended! If I try to apply any of this, I'm going to have to adapt it to my own, differently-broken situation, and I really don't feel like I've been enabled to do that effectively here.

Don't get me wrong - you should probably still read the book. There are a lot of good, high-level things to keep in mind presented in it. Just don't expect to have deep guidance on how to apply the lessons the author wants you to take away.
( )

Great book on leadership and everyone plays at the top of their game. ( )

If you are or will be in a leadership position, you need to read this. And read it again. And again. The best empowerment and leadership book I've read to date (and I've read quite a lot on leadership). That it is conceived and written by a Navy Captain only makes it better.

Each point is succinct (apparently misunderstood by some as condescending...odd bit of cluelessness I can't fathom), exceptionally illustrated and with the candid background of what generated it. Many brilliant insights. I plan to adapt much of this. Always learning.

The drivel of David Emerald's TED "power" "empowerment" is pre-school compared to this. Avoid it. ( )

Marquet offers a message of empowerment to create a model of leader-leader instead of leader-follower. He constructed his system while executing a turn-around of the Navy's lowest performing submarine. The key elements of his approach are organized around control, competence and clarity. Backed by plenty of real-world scenarios relevant to business as much as military, I found this book valuable and inspiring. ( )

A very inspirational and practicable leadership guide. This was the one, that made me really want to follow.

I've read a couple books on the leadership issue before. They're written by well-known authors and probably they're really good. They talk about right principles and give practices to inculcate them all at once. But I haven't been really able to do that. Because guiding a group of co-workers (in my case - engineers) purports a bit other relations. I can assume, that quite a small percentage of leadership guide readers actually run a business with tens of employees, so our experience is comparable. I have strong feeling that those books increase a hierarchy stairs footstep between you and followers, that wasn't appropriate for me. This one is different. It's more about exemplifying and cooperation, no matted of rank difference. It doesn't exploit or intentionally generate that difference. And it offers you a recipe of step by step evolution of your ideas. This book matches with my own vision of management and has significantly modified my principles, so it has became my personal guide for now, that I really follow.

What is good for a book, is that it's built more like a memoir, than a textbook. So, it gives you a person to take after, that becomes it's major benefit. The other one is that the story lets you to go through author's experience while reading.
At the same time, it is well-structured so you'll never get lost while looking for some issue and gives you specific recommendations, unlike memoirs do.

I've started with having read a paper book, translated to Russian. And now I've purchased an audiobook, narrated by the author. It sounds great and absolutely clear even for a foreign listener. ( )

Prevents a mindless application of Lean tools to engage the creativity of team members. ( )

A combination business book and memoir, this should be required reading in business schools. I have seen this meme for a fair amount of time, pushing decision making down to the lowest level in the organization so that the people who actually do the work have ownership of what and how they do. When done, it improves morale and increases the bottom line. So why is the idea still in books and not all over the work world? Mr Marquet, in telling his story, shows both the way the program works and some of the problems is setting it up. The people in charge have to support it and buy into not having major control over the workforce. ( )

This book was recommended by a speaker at a recent conference and since that speaker was really great I thought to give this a try. There is probably nothing in my line of work and place of employment that compares with serving on a nuclear submarine. Perhaps that was good because it kept me from direct comparisons and made me think more of the overall picture. Interesting and thought-provoking. I would definitely recommend it to 'accidental managers' like myself. ( )