The Wicked Podcast

David Marquet: Turn The Ship Around

• web@thewickedcompany.com • Episode 30

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30 glorious episodes! and we celebrate with an ex-US Navy nuclear submarine captain, who walked the walk and turned around 250 years of leader-follower management style into the best performing ship in the fleet.
We are talking of course about David Marquet, creator of intent-based leadership.
 
00:35 Insights & Takeaways
10:00 Interview

Links:
Book on Amazon: here
Author website: here

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Marcus Kirsch:

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch.

Troy Norcross:

And I'm Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch:

and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast,

Troy Norcross:

we take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's

Marcus Kirsch:

we know you want actions, not theories and his actions that we want to help shape, because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company.

Troy Norcross:

So Mark is First off, I have to tell you how impressed I am that you actually got David Mark K, to come on the show today. I know how popular he is. And I know how much he's one of your favourite authors. So this has got to be a real treat for you today.

Marcus Kirsch:

Oh, indeed, one of my live streams, I guess, you know, to get someone like him here. One of my favourite books, Alvin Toffler, unfortunately, is dead. So that's not going to happen. So so you know, this is the second best, I think, at this point. And was the absolute striking history, you know, a nuclear submarine captain and turn the worst ship in the fleet into the best performing ship in the fleet for years to come. Having the best graduates or or higher ranking people coming out of that, because of the way he changed the management to hear a key the decision making

Troy Norcross:

on in an environment like the US Navy, we're change of things is is not just frowned upon, it's positively squashed. You got to put two fingers up to all of that and said there is a better way, and we're going to do it here.

Marcus Kirsch:

It's a two it's a nearly and I looked it up I think it's 247 years since the US Navy was created. So it's a two and a quarter of a millennial. age old is

Troy Norcross:

only 200 years old. So it's unlikely 247 years old.

Marcus Kirsch:

Is it what I look up? Oh, maybe it was the British, let's say was the British Navy. Okay, that's awesome. Let's, let's wind it back.

Troy Norcross:

You can edit that part out.

Marcus Kirsch:

Shit, I think I might just set it when we

Troy Norcross:

started. Don't worry, I don't think you did, I would have picked up on it.

Marcus Kirsch:

I want to second break. And then I go into effect man with the most striking of stories. You know, as a US Navy nuclear submarine captain, we turned the worst ship in the fleet into the best ship in the fleet in a very old organisation or relative that is amazingly old military organisation that basically is known for a top down

Troy Norcross:

and then very original. They don't want to change. And so he went in to kind of put two fingers up and said we're going to do it differently.

Marcus Kirsch:

Exactly. Any any, any he proved that this works better? You know, he's actually it's one of the best examples Well, for the whole idea of, you know, system x and system y Theory X theory, why'd you say you know, trust in the people around you. Trust in the expertise they have enabled him Don't empower them. So the whole empowering things really interesting. But so you know, striking character, an amazing man and

Troy Norcross:

moving authority to where the inflammation is. One of our very first interviews with Sonny talked about moving decision making down to the bottom of she was talking about the ant colonies, you know, because that was where the information was. And that's where the decisions were, were to be made. But before we go into all of this stuff, normally you asked me, I'm going to ask you this. What are your two big takeaways?

Marcus Kirsch:

Yes, so it was it was very compressive. I think there was a lot in there may be more than others, however. So it's a bit bit harder to pick because I think there was a lot of really essential thing I think a big thing for me was and that's what his his his second book is all about is about language. The way we use language as leaders or anywhere else, when we sit around the table and discuss things and try to agree on things and try to take action. We need to change. We need to develop a language or agree to use a language that is open and allows for every voice to come through. Something that is enables people to speak out and showed the intent and therefore transparency to actually be able to be happening. I think the language aspect is big one and you know how much I'm all about that to create a universe language that actually helps better problem solving, because there's tonnes of statistics and evidence and research around exactly that to be very contributing to better outcomes. So the language I think, is the big one. I think the other one is he also talked about, and that's something that really comes home to a lot of transformation on organisational recommendations is that companies like to say, Well, you know, there will be some that we can take on board or with us. So sorry for that pun, is essentially saying, you know, X percent, we need to let go, he didn't have the opportunity to let someone go, he was on the tour for weeks on end. And he had to get the best performance out of everyone who was there. And he himself said, Look, the actual percentage of someone really not being able to perform just about well enough, is actually quite tiny, what's likely is your percentage of that in your organisation is higher, because you don't trust people to be able to do their job, and they are closest to that. So they're probably not the best at doing their job. So if you enable them, that number will be so small, we actually don't have to worry about it. Because it's something that's in the end, not in your control. And he gave us a little list of things that are not in your control, so he actually shouldn't be worrying about it. So just get on with the job and try to enable people. So So knowing that that is smaller than you think. And the clarity, he had to describe that I found really, really actionable.

Troy Norcross:

So my two takeaways are, you know, in the what would I tell clients, if I was going to be giving advice based on the the David mark a book, turning the ship around? be the most curious person in the room, not the most knowledgeable, you don't have to always be the smartest person in the room. But it's really good to be the most curious person in the room, and to try to explore and uncover what it is that you don't know from the other people that are that are in the room. And the second one, resonated, because I've had half of the phrase for for quite a long time with building trust and transparency. And he says, expose your thinking and to build trust through transparency over time. It's not something you can build trust overnight, it does indeed, take time and exposing your thinking, especially for the millennial generation, exposing the way they think exposes what they know, exposes their thinking process. And in that transparency, you know, helps them to build and develop trust, so that when leadership does decide to push authority where the information exists, there's trust there as well.

Marcus Kirsch:

Definitely. And talking about time to time for this time for that, I think Let me have a look at the time. Let me have a look at the time. Oh, is that is that all my

Troy Norcross:

markups? Amazing watch. Now you know what time it really is, don't you?

Marcus Kirsch:

Is I'm looking at my little Russian military watch. And it says it's time to go to the interview I think. So Hello, everyone. We're Today we speak to a man who successfully challenged and improved the US Navy's near 250 year old model of top down or leader follower decision making process. David Marquis, thank you for making time for us, sir. And welcome to the show.

David Marquet:

Yeah, of course. Thanks Marcus and Troy for having me on your show.

Marcus Kirsch:

So as usually it's not at the top by to any of our listeners and followers who might not know you to please tell us who you are and why you wrote the book.

David Marquet:

Yeah, I was a submarine commander and the United States Navy, nuclear submarine commander. And I had a very interesting experience. At the very last minute after being trained. For one submarine, I got shifted to a different submarine different kind of submarine. And so here I am as a captain, and we were deliberately told your job as leader is to make decisions and get people to do what you decide they should do. We weren't shy about that. And it was on the strength of my ability to make good decisions, and puzzle through problems and solve things that I was made a submarine selected to be a submarine commander. Well, anyway, when I was thrown into this environment, where I didn't know the submarine because it was a different kind of submarine the very last minute why because the previous Captain quit. It was the worst performing submarine in the fleet with the worst morale. That was only two problems. And he quit a year early and they said oh yeah, you're not gonna go to where you were thought. You're gonna go to the Santa Fe instead. And so I show up and had this really interesting experience where basically the conclusion I can't do is that all of our leadership, training and programming is on a outdated model. And these assumptions about how organisations are supposed to be run run so deeply, we generally don't even question them. Like, well, of course, my job is to make a decision. And of course it is to get other people to do it, like what else could my job be, we don't even, we don't even see the potential for a better world. And so we had this experience, we set awards, we, we did all this stuff in the near term, which was wonderful. But the key is over the next 10 years, more submarine commanders came from this one submarine than any submarine. And then I was just and then I wrote the book cuz I was pissed off and angry, and, and depressed. Because I was suffering from not that kind of leadership, I was suffering from kind of leadership where I was being told what to do. And my thoughts weren't appreciated. And it was, I made me angry. And I could see the effect on human beings that we were doing not these are good people doing bad things to people thinking they were doing good things to people. And that that was that was having a huge stress on people's happiness lives and health had an impact, significant negative negative impact on my own health. And I got out of the Navy, and I was paying this anger and frustration drove me to write the book so I could tell the story. Hey, it doesn't need to be like this, ladies and gentlemen, it can be better.

Troy Norcross:

I'm really writing a book from a place of really deep seated passion, probably give you a lot of kind of incentive to come and drive to going to get up every day and go about doing it. Which sounds really interesting.

David Marquet:

Yeah, I it was so hard. That was a hard, hard, hard year in my life. I'm an engineer. So I was a math, I'm a math guy, I was on the math team. And I'm kind of an action oriented person, I this idea of like, let's do stuff really appeals to me. And that is sit down in front of my computer. And to write stories was just the most worst torture you could do to me. But I was driven by the, the anger that I had. And people say, well, that's really unhealthy Asian. I don't know, I like that anger, I think drives a lot of good change. And so for me, I've kind of it's not bitterness, bitterness, maybe it's not that helpful, but just like, Listen, it doesn't need to be this crappy at work, we don't need to be killing ourselves. And the thing that was really frustrating for me was, I would see these behaviours and leaders. They were not evil people. They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought that running around and telling people was doing that holding people accountable. Quote, mentoring them, which really meant just telling them how screwed up they were. Those are all good things. And they're not.

Marcus Kirsch:

I think I think there's, there's something that a lot of people can relate to, you know, throwing me We work a lot in change and transformation. And the frustration there is the same, you know, definitely drove me to write my book as well. So we have that in common. So it's a great, it's a great energy, not the best, but also quite cathartic, cathartic, you know, it's like somebody getting out if you think differently, can you have time and space to maybe think about a bit differently? Or sometimes just a need to, I just need to tell someone, you know, and this is this is a process that doesn't stop me, no one can stop me on this one, because I'm writing it. But it's also a learning process at the same time. And I think, I think given given especially looking at it because there's so many organisations where 1000s if not millions of people work and if you look at some of the statistics that come back from McKinsey is that most organisations that run a particular Hiroki, people are just suffering in there. And again, as you said, people think they're doing the right thing. They have all the best intentions. But they don't even see that there is an alternative way. So in particular, and that one, I'd like you to elaborate a little bit because it's in the book, and it's also in a Harvard Business Review article you wrote where you wrote about the mess of leadership and one of the quotes days, you said, you know, I'm so on the word empowerment and you Make a statement, I think about the difference between empowerment and enablement. Or that empowerment itself is just just as a fly in the air. Can you? Could you elaborate on that, please?

David Marquet:

Yeah, so here, here's my experience of empowerment, I, my, the boss would stand up and say, well, you're all empowered to speak up, you're all empowered to come up with it. You're all in power, blah, blah, blah. And I say, Oh, well, thank you. What were we before you empowered us? Well, I guess you must have been unempowered. So I was able it, it seems like you have the power. Because you're the one who gave us power, and therefore you're the one who can take us take that power away. It just rang really hollow to me. And basically people, I would see leaders use this phrase empowerment as an excuse. It was laziness, rather than them figuring out what they should do. The way they should run a meeting, the way they should ask questions, which made it easier for the rest of us to contribute? What we had inside of us already, that they wouldn't do that hard work of self reflection and self change, they would do the easy thing by just point to us and say, well, it's on you, you're empowered. And again, that was one of the things that just made me really angry. I wouldn't be the guy who got the memo, that you weren't supposed to ask the admiral those weird, those uncomfortable questions. And I say, well, it doesn't seem like we're very, I think, like, Look, you don't need to empower people, they're already they already have power. Anyone with kids knows, you don't need to tell a two year old or a three year old Oh, you can go try crawling, you can try walking you can, you don't need to tell people that what we needed, what we do is we beat it out of them in the education system. Because we want what we want, we don't want empower people, we want people to conform, we want them to do what we tell them to do when we tell them to do it, and the way that we tell them to do it. And then when they come up short, then we're gonna we're gonna, quote hold them accountable. Because Bob, you know, whatever. Well, you decided what to do. You decided when it was due, you decided what resources I had. And now you have the guts to quote hold me accountable. And again, this is an achy feeling. This made me angry, people don't need to be controlled, they need to be coordinated. That's the key. And the prominent modern hierarchy. hierarchy is not bad, you have to have hierarchy. It denying hierarchy is bad, because denying hierarchy means we're gonna pretend that something's not there, there's not that it's actually there. So it's like denying gender denying race. That's it, look, it's there. So it's how you use a hierarchy. And the problem is, the way most organisations use hierarchy is number one, they channel information up and authority down, that's the opposite of what you ought to be doing. Then the second thing is they, they use hierarchy as a cascading control mechanism. So everyone in the hierarchies job is to control the person below them and be controlled by a person above them. Now this is one of the most stressful things you can do to human is tell them that they have to try and control something that they can't fundamentally control, ie another person, and to be controlled, to not feel like you're in control yourself. So the structure of hierarchy where we're all trying to control the people below us is inherently stress, you can't. You can have degrees of stress. But once you lay, once you buy into that fundamental model, there's stress, because control is misaligned, to what we can actually control attempted control is misaligned with what we can actually control. And so we spend our whole lives being angry and frustrated, because I've tried to control someone I can't and somebody's controlling me, which pisses me off.

Troy Norcross:

So we're gonna talk about the three principles of control, competence, and clarity, and trying to really understand those in completely new and different ways. And without giving away too much of the book, I really enjoyed how you put those three together, and then show the control as you say, his authority down and information up instead of the other the other way around.

David Marquet:

Yeah, the two that so so there's two things there one, number one, what we say is push authority to where the information is. So in other words, rather than by some software programme, where you can aggregate information for the top so that they can make decisions and pass it back down. What you want to do is figure out how to push the decisions closest to the person who has the information natively. let that person you get so many firms, you get speed of execution, you get ownership and engagement, and they feel better about their jobs. Otherwise everyone in the organisation is just a Dewar and a data taker, and they get told by somebody else what to do. Who wants that 0.0 humans want that.

Troy Norcross:

My in my personal. Alright, so I'm going to go on one of my semi favourite topics, the new younger workforce, who arrive after out of uni. And on day one, they want to be vice president, you know, Mrs. Smith, in charge of making all these decisions for and they have a huge sense of entitlement that comes right out of the chute. And there's no, there's no sense of I need to learn what I'm supposed to be doing. I need to kind of bed in, I need to kind of participate and communicate within the organisation. Before I'm handed all of this authority, I don't have all the information. How do we tell our clients? So Marcus and I are client are? We're consultants? How do we tell our clients, this is how you deal with the new generation workforce?

David Marquet:

Okay, very good. So there's a couple quick things. So first of all, the idea of uncontrolled competence and clarity is I was gonna show a slide, but I can't apparently I

Troy Norcross:

can't, I can make your presenter Don't worry.

David Marquet:

Now it's telling me I have to download some smart virtual background, I guess, because I updated my resume. Okay, there we go.

Unknown:

It works.

David Marquet:

Here's the deal. You so on the summary, one of the things that what I was fundamentally trying to do was to let people be in control themselves, I was giving them control of their own actions. I went too far, it turns out that there's what limits you and your ability to make decisions controls the ability to make decisions about say the nuclear reactor is, do you technically know the nuclear reactor? And so that's caught? That's technical competence. And then do you understand what we're trying to do with the submarine or the organisation? That's what we call organisational clarity. This is your why now, when I'm talking to millennials, so you don't want to go this way. You want to go this way. So let's say I'm talking to a group of younger workers. What I say to them is, hey, look, if you want to, you want to make it easy for your boss to give you decision making authority. You don't do that by saying, Well, why are you asking me questions, you want to prove yourself, you want to you want to open your way? The word is expose your thinking, Hey, I have a decision coming up. Here's I'm thinking about it. Make that thinking better? How should I think about a better it's through this exposure of your thinking that you're going to gain the ability to make bigger bigger decisions? Not by hiding your thinking your job is to is to build your technical competence. But you don't know anything? You don't you know? 0.0 but any rough order of magnitude. So So prove that you know something? Because if I don't know what you're so put, put yourself in the shoes of your boss, I don't know you. Yeah, you got a certificate from wherever? What do I care? I don't know you, I don't know what you know, I don't know what your competence is. So expose your confidence. Don't say, Oh, well, I have a certificate from ABC University. Therefore, you didn't question me. That's the exact opposite thing you're gonna do. Trust comes from transparency over time. And it comes from the opposite of what we have this impulse to do. I'm gonna you should, you should just trust me now. leaders, when I'm talking to leaders what I say, well, your job is actually trust first, in a small way. Ask questions like, hey, if you were if you were gonna make this decision, what would you do if you if I weren't here? How, where would you go with this? It's almost imaginary trust, because you're still getting the opportunity to veto our keyword is intent. So hey, just tell me what you intend to do. I don't like just do it. Leadership. I think that's a big mistake. A lot of organisations may go We'll do really good with a bow widget. We just want people doing stuff. Yeah, you want chaos. You want a mass. You want lots of uncoordinated activity, just do that. Imagine cars going down the highway multi lanes. This turn signal is people signalling and Ted, hey, I'm gonna change lanes. No one's honking they must not be no one sees that it's a problem. I can change save to change lanes. So the idea is by stating your intent, what we get is coordination among the people. People say, well, we're gonna have a self organising team, how well, they're going to self organise, well give me one tool that's going to have him sell for nothing zero, or we're gonna have a discussion. How's this discussion going to be structured? What's the first question? No idea. It's it's a lot Have muddled nonsense you want self organising teams tell people to say what they intend to do prior to doing it publicly to the rest of the team. Now other people can react and they say, and by the way, how can I make this better? And or what are what's everyone's thought on this, and then the rest of you, oh, I have to do this before you can do that. Or, hey, if you do that, then it's gonna really affect me here. Okay, now now you get the function of self organisation, it comes as a result of people staying there, their intent, if you if you want to make it impossible to self organise, just tell people to just do stuff.

Troy Norcross:

Before I hand over to Marcus, I've got a story to tell. I worked for Nokia for a while. And one of my projects was a global project where I had a team in London, Helsinki, in Mumbai, and Delhi, and in China, and in California. And it was a follow the sun management sort of thing where somebody who was working for me was always awake, and I really wanted to be able to sleep. And just it wasn't going to hospital. So I called it my empty chair management. Okay, pick a room, pick a chair, say Troy's in that chair, what would Troy say thing do or decide, do that get on with it? And hopefully, no one's going to die. And if it's the wrong decision, we'll figure out why and take corrective action. But do not wait on me. And I was doing that back in 2007. But I think you've added so much to what I what I was doing back then I would love to have had you read your book, because I would take the cross communication and the open transparency step further.

David Marquet:

Well, so I look, I love that I think that's awesome. But again, what you're doing is you're taking people to level six, you're just saying just do it. And the problem is, when you get people there is they often don't communicate, I would say, send an email, say you're doing it. Even if the time is really short, in five minutes, we're going to do that we're going to launch the product in two days, we're going to take the product down for whatever it happens to be but announce it ahead of time. The key is with intent. If you don't hear a response, you still have permission to do it. That's what that's that's what frees the team. No one's waiting. That's the most organisations have what we call permission based organisation, which means you hear here's how, you know if the response if there's no response to your comment or your request, do you do it or not do it in a permission based organisation? The answer is no you don't you wait for permission, I need a head nod Yes. Or the answer's no. And then templates organisation, absent a no, I'm gonna do it. So you can sleep because you know that if they send a thing, and they say an email, and I said beginning to ship in six hours, we're gonna do this. They don't hear from you in six hours. Great, time's up, boom, we're doing Yeah, they don't care. You don't care, everyone's good. But you want to be in the habit of having them announce it ahead of time. Even if it's very short. On the submarine, we might say things like shutting ventilation valve one, boom, and then it would be just one second, but would still be announced, then do because there may be someone in the control room that hears that and says, oops, they got a fan running, I shut it down, shutting ventilation fan one, but shutting down fan one, boom, boom, otherwise, that that's the kind of thing so it can be very quick. But it's announced then do.

Troy Norcross:

And so for those that didn't know, there's a seven leadership levels that David has put together that are really, really important. He's got a couple of really great videos out on that, but I'm going to dominate this conversation and markets gonna hate me. So I'm going to turn it over to Marcus. Thank you.

Marcus Kirsch:

Thank you. Thank you. So yeah, so the other thing is, I mean, it's interesting, I think the transparency thing, it's just, you know, again, same my experience, you know, when you work, for example, a big project at bt, we have 14,000 people and we work with a few 100 people together there, the complexities are insane. There's certain things where leadership doesn't scale well, which means communication there is is it needs these kinds of things, very quick, simple checkbox and levels of transparency so that you can actually manage the thing and enough people know what actually is going on to say, hang on a second, we might want to do the other thing before and I recognised some of that is really good to see that some organisation pick up more and more of that through, you know, agile stand ups where oftentimes you stay down a morning and you just try to keep them as short as possible 1015 minutes, and at least, at least you you know what everyone's doing, which means you can announce any blockers any help someone needs. If not, they just say what they what they want to do. And then they go ahead and dress the day and do what they want to do. So similar principle, which is really great. But asking, then apart from those kind of transparencies, especially given that in your experience, so you had a team that was underperforming, the morale was quite down or You know, they were probably interconnected. A lot of times when you work on big transformation and change projects, organisations tend to say, Well, you know, there will be a certain percentage of people who will not be able to come along with us. And they might have to leave, you know, some will be able to do some people won't be able to change not get into the mindset. And where the fault of that is, is obviously a complex answer. But the question for me is, then, in your scenario, you likely had to go with the crew you had and then four weeks, there was the crew you were given? What are sort of the parts there that you have? When when you started to implement, especially something slightly new that some people might have been uncomfortable with? And he started to, you know, energise them around? Like, yeah, let's really go for this thing. And you might, and you have come across certain certain problems and challenges, what what can you do to bring, let's say, the lower performing aspect of your team, up to scratch and sort of what do you do in those scenarios, where you only have that team, and that's all you got?

David Marquet:

Yeah, so I, these are things not in my control, as a submarine commander, who I had on my team, what positions they were in the resources I had, and what our operational schedule was. Now, people tend to focus on these things, when they want to do a transformation. And it turns out, none of these actually are the most important things, the most important thing is how the team interacts, how they talk to each other, it's plain and simple. And as a result, we get distracted, oh, I need the right people, blah, blah, blah, like, well, you're running the meeting wrong. So as it doesn't really matter who you get, you're still gonna have suboptimal outcomes in your meetings. And so So number one, it's always a choice, you can't mandate for people, this is the biggest change. If I'm watching people in an industrial age factory, let's say it's a textile mill, and there's sewing machines, I can see the fabric going down machine spin, it's very visual, I can see it, I can measure it very easily. And what's happening now in your work in most people's work, because algorithms are eating away at that kind of work, is thinking, it does not lend itself to the kind of visual imagery. And so as a result, it's much harder to control. If I'm trying to control like, I can't do a degree control someone operating a sewing machines, I can see when they slow it out, I can't see when you're thinking close now, I can't see that you're only giving me 10% of your brain and 90%, you're thinking about what you're going to do when you get off work. I can't see those things. So all everything is volunteered. And so we need to design a workplace where people are volunteering their effort, we have to recognise this all volunteered. So we can't order people into an empowerment programme, we can invite them now here's that's the key. So, Pete, and there will be people who don't want to participate. Now, I personally think that this percentage of humans is incredibly low. I think it's made larger by the fact that we've conditioned people into doing what you're told. And the best thing about doing what you're told is an absence of responsibility. Because the key, the number one excuse for being screwed up is to say I was told to do you think those two engineers at Volkswagen were all said, Yeah, no. It was our idea to make this cheat to diesel engine thing? No, no, we were told to do this, we were sending signals that this is what the organisation wants it. So it's about volunteers. So we we, the other thing, though, is you want to put people in a place where they're going to be successful. And as long as this really uncomfortable and say, just say, I think this is crazy, I really don't want it fine, I can find a job for you, or just do what you're told is not in my organisation, but I'll help you find that. So we and then the final thing is, again, don't focus on their behaviour, controlling their behaviour is the wrong approach. leaders think to themselves, well, what's my behaviour that will result in the behaviour that I want? So let's say someone is not speaking up in a meeting? Well, what how am I acting? How am I asking the question? and over and over again, when we ask questions like that, we found that we were the cause of peep. We were the cause. Why is there people not feeling ownership? Because I was stealing their ownership. So just stop stealing people's ownership. What do you mean, when I walk down there and say, Hey, Marcus, how are we doing on the project? I just stole some of your ownership. It's now my project. If I say Marcus, you can give me an update when you think is necessary. Or you come to me and say, Hey, I need to get on your calendar. We are going to give you a project update. Hey, here's what's going on. Bah, bah, bah, here's what we did. Bah, bah, here's what I intend to do. Baba now. It's your Project, but I get impatient. I haven't structured the organisation to operate that way. And so I say, I send out the email Hey, Marcus, what's going on with the project? When am I going to get another update? And then I, and then I'm like, Marcus, where's your ownership? You're like, dude, you stole my ownership.

Troy Norcross:

Interesting. We're going to be short on time from an ask for a couple of quick answers. Some of our listeners are indeed, not the answers weren't quick before, but some of our listeners are entrepreneurs. Some of them are solopreneurs. And they may have either tiny teams, they may be working with friends, they may be outsourcing. What kind of advice do you have for people who are working in a in a non classic and kind of big corporate environment?

David Marquet:

Well, cherish it. Okay. I mean, there's probably a reason, and it's probably because they got fed up with Trump trying to control other people and being controlled by others. And yeah, short answer, cherish it. Okay.

Troy Norcross:

That's great. Marcus, you got to quickly.

Marcus Kirsch:

Yeah, I'm sure. So I think I was looking at so talking about, you know, transparency, and everyone being able to talk is a theme that keeps coming up, not only because it's now been, for a long time being supported by positive statistics on performance, de risking, and so on. You know, famously, or, somewhat famously, surely, you know, Google did a massive piece of research called Project Aristotle that you might be familiar with, you know, about what are their best performing teams. So one of the best skills they had a counter to the best performing team is like, well, they let everybody talk. Everyone on the table has a voice, right? Yeah, you wanted to comment on? Well, I

David Marquet:

would just say the way you said that day, let everybody talk. It's not the way I was, first of all, yeah, press was a great thing. Yeah, they let everyone talk. That's not how I say I'd say they created a structure or a culture in which it was easy and safe to talk. It's about creating and making it safe for people to talk. The job of that is the leader. And this is actually what my new book, leadership is language is all about. It's about and we use different teams, we looked at transcripts, one of them is a ship that sank in this hurricane. And you what you see is that people even in good situations are doing behaviours. here's a here's a couple examples. And I've actually been on this show a couple times number one, we as binary questions. Does that make sense? Right? That actually suppresses the person who thinks it's different. They that that makes it harder for the person who says no, it doesn't make sense. What you want to say is, so what could be wrong? What are we missing? How am I misjudged this? What do I I'm not? What am I not seeing? Ask a question that invite makes it easier for the person who sees something different than you to speak number one, number two, running a meeting in a way that we talk about it first simply anchors the group to the social norm, the whole group thinks one thing, it's just more and more, more and more difficult to speak up against the group. So what you actually want to do is vote first, then have the discussion. Rarely do I see leaders run meetings this way? So we run key decision meetings, in ways that and intentionally not well, that the meeting structure is designed to actually reduce dissent. Why because we talk for them, we vote that's not the way you want to do it. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry, I was like, just lit up on that.

Marcus Kirsch:

That's great. That's, that's what we like. And it's definitely a better better description. And it probably just tells how often we are just indoctrinated on, you know, using a language that is just that, that doesn't even give that space, right?

David Marquet:

That's exactly right. We're all programmed. So this whole new book was all about why am I saying it's like why am I say why am I programmed it? Why would I say Baba bah bah, bah, bah, right? Why did I say that? I don't, I don't want to say that. I want to say no wrong, or like how to do but we just have these natural ways of speaking, which are inherently anchored in the industrial age. And it's about reducing variability and reducing, it's a premature rush to reduce variability and uncertainty, which is cognitively late cognitive laziness. And, and then we have horrendous decisions, like, Deepwater Horizon or 737 max or dieselgate, or Wells Fargo or

Marcus Kirsch:

so maybe just as a last question. If you're looking at that, and we're looking at that you mentioned earlier, you know, Hiroki needs to be there. You know, it's always somewhat there, but decision making on whoever The power of decision making needs to drastically change the way it's set up. In that sense, when you when you talk to your clients, you know, how often do you sometimes in which way? do you propose to either management to say like, well, management layers should disappear? Or is there a different way to look at what management therefore means? Am I

David Marquet:

I could see you struggling with the way you ask the question. And I yeah,

Marcus Kirsch:

I'm very conscious about this. Now.

David Marquet:

You can hire a lot of companies that are going to tell you to do a reorg and change management levels. And we don't do anything with that. Part of it comes from my experience in the Navy, I couldn't change that. So I'm not the right person to ask about that. As somebody else, here's what we're really good at, we're going to taking whatever structure you have, and making the language that you guys use in meetings in one on one conversations, in email on texting better, in a way that naturally makes it easy for people to speak up. Everyone. Everyone's organisation came from, from this an industrial age model. What's the model leaders, followers, Thinkers, Doers, these people get these people to do what this person decided they needed to do? And the problem is, well, we can change a policy I can write it, whatever it is, but the language that people use the way we talk in meetings, and one on one conversations that what what sounds normal, like we have all hands if I go to a software company in Silicon Valley, for their annual all hands meeting, and no one thinks is weird.

Unknown:

Yeah,

Troy Norcross:

I have, I have the privilege of working for a startup that's based in Hong Kong. I won't name them at the moment. But we've got one particular member of the team, who is probably the loudest voice but always does so in the largest groups and usually throws rocks. It's almost never constructive. And so I'm trying to find a way to coach and to help and to adjust. Yes, you need to have a voice. Yes, you should speak up. And it should be in the spirit of where we're all trying to go together and not just pointing holes in everything you see. So I I'm, I'm looking for help in that area, too. But whatever. Yeah, I

David Marquet:

would have a big Sorry, I have a hard time with that person. First of all, no one gives a hoot. What do you think? Okay, you be curious about other people think. So if someone says something different than you don't go, I call this. I call it be curious, not compelling. Like, don't don't compel them into what your thinking is. I don't care. Be curious about what they see that you don't see and what they know that you don't know. Now, at the end, if you're the decision maker, you don't have to do what they seem to be recommending. I'm okay with that. But it happens after an honest, curious, thoughtful investigation, because when you do decide whichever way it is, they're gonna say afterwards, well, at least they listen to me. Versus now. This loud mouth sucked all the oxygen out of the room again. And so the question is why, like, why does this person feel I need to do when we when I talked about this? Talk about the ship yet? I can't remember

Troy Norcross:

all this again.

David Marquet:

Yeah, so So this ship. This is one of the core stories and leadership is language. This ship sailed into a hurricane and 25th into this hurricane in 2015. And saying all 33 people died and we have a transcript. We have a 500 page transcript we publicly the US government collected what they said. And one of the things that we did was we simply counted the words. And what we saw was when there were three person team, the captain, that officer and a crewman on the bridge, and I added up the number of words that that happened during that two three hour period that these three people were on the bridge. The captain always said the most number words every time. The officer then said the next most number words and then crewman, usually by a wide disparity was kind of like this. And they made bad decisions because they all die and they all die. We there's a fragility that happens when we have unbalanced. The phrase we use a share of voice, we mathematically compute it into a thing called team language coefficient. But the idea is when it's unbalanced, there's a fragility in the decision making because the decision Making will represent what this one person thinks. And no matter how brilliant that person is, when that person makes a mistake, everyone's going to end up. Great, great, great, great, great death. So there's an arrogance and thinking, you know the answer. I suspect this person is probably smart. They've generally known the answer in school system, the school system reinforced, quote, knowing the answer, raise your hand knows the answer. Oh, john. Oh, john. Oh, john. Great, john, you're doing so good. So that's the behaviour that you're simply saying represented. And it's the arrogance of thinking, you know, the right answer. And even if you do know the right answer, you want to create a mindset where you're not sure because the other person is closer to the information and closer to the problem than you are. That's not how people think, in this model. See, this person, the foreman over here is going to be the decision maker. We all know that. But these people, they know the job better than that person. Why? Cuz they're spending eight hours a day doing it. They know exactly. They're making Raiders, they know what if I twist the wire this way, it's harder for my wrist and this way, or if I sit my chair, they know that they know stuff about the job this person doesn't know. And that's what's happening in your person with your person.

Troy Norcross:

Thank you. And on that note, Marcus bring us home.

Marcus Kirsch:

So this is this was definitely, you know, so far one, my favourite. Your book is one of my favourite business books, if not generally books to read, because the story in itself is so compelling. The change and the impact you made is so evident. And I'm really happy you were that angry to write this book. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for your time here and all these insights, I think we've got some really great stuff here. And I maybe we have your back for once we read the new book, I'm sure it's as brilliant as the first one. And it's more impressive that you wrote another one. I think language is really interesting, because, you know, I've been looking at wicked problems, more and more complex problems. And I think language itself is an amazingly smart and essential part of what seemingly is is is is a big puzzle piece of all the problems out there. So, as usual, we have all the links to the books and things in the notes. For now. I'll just say. Thank you, David, thank you for your time insights and being here. Thank you.

Unknown:

Thank you.

Troy Norcross:

You've been listening to the wicked podcast with CO hosts Marcus Kirsch and me Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch:

please subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross:

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked n beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm