Turn the Ship Around!
Turn the Ship Around! is L. David Marquet's account of taking command of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine that was, when he arrived in 1999, the worst-performing boat in the Pacific submarine force. Marquet had spent the previous year preparing to command a different submarine and arrived knowing almost nothing about the Santa Fe's specific systems. Forced by circumstance to stop pretending he had all the answers, he began an experiment in what he calls leader-leader leadership, pushing decision-making authority down to the chiefs and sailors closest to the work and replacing the navy's ingrained culture of permission-asking with one of intent-stating. Within a year the Santa Fe was the best-performing submarine in the fleet and a generation of officers and chiefs trained on her went on to command their own boats. Marquet draws practical lessons for any leader trying to escape a top-down culture.
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When US Navy Captain L. David Marquet took command of the worst-rated nuclear submarine in the Pacific Fleet, the USS Santa Fe, he found a crew waiting for orders. Across one year underway he replaced the leader-follower chain with a leader-leader model where every sailor said the words I intend to.
Yes. L. David Marquet was the captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear submarine, and the book recounts the leadership shift he implemented from leader-follower to leader-leader.
Managers, team leads, and anyone interested in delegation, accountability, and decentralized decision-making. It is widely assigned in MBA programs and corporate training.
Turn the Ship Around! was written by L. David Marquet, published in 2001 by Portfolio.
Turn the Ship Around! is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Turn the Ship Around! takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Turn the Ship Around! is a standalone novel by L. David Marquet, not part of a series.
Turn the Ship Around! is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
