Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by Marquet David

Author:Marquet, David [Marquet, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Mechanism: Embrace the Inspectors

We applied “embrace the inspectors” not only to one-time critiques and problems such as the shore power mishap, but also to entire inspections. We would utilize the inspectors to disseminate our ideas throughout the squadron, to learn from others, and to document issues to improve the ship.

This mechanism sends the signal that we are in charge of our destiny, not controlled by some force. It runs counter to the instincts expressed by many of my officers and chiefs to minimize the ship’s visibility to the outside, especially when problems were involved. EMBRACE THE INSPECTORS is a mechanism for CONTROL, organizational control. In other words, the crew of Santa Fe are responsible for Santa Fe. We found we needed this parallelism with internal control. Later, we’d hand out T-shirts that jokingly read, “DON’T BE A VICTIM.”

Concerning areas where we were doing something exceptionally innovative or expertly, we viewed the inspectors as advocates to share our good practices with. Concerning areas where we were doing things poorly and needed help, we viewed them as sources of information and solutions. This created an atmosphere of learning and curiosity among the crew, as opposed to an attitude of defensiveness.

Later on in my command, Santa Fe had a material inspection by a group of officers from the Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV). Their reports carry significant weight and expose the submarine force to “big Navy” observers. Officers have lost their commands over bad INSURV inspections. When the INSURV team reported to our submarine, I handed them a list of known deficiencies. These were things that were so fundamental to the design or so difficult to repair that we had been unsuccessful. By getting them documented in the INSURV report, we ensured that the Navy would apply resources to fixing the problems, thus making all submarines more effective warships.

Embrace the inspectors turned out to be an incredibly powerful vehicle for learning. Whenever an inspection team was on board, I would hear crew members saying things like, “I’ve been having a problem with this. What have you seen other ships do to solve it?” Most inspection teams found this attitude remarkable.

As a result, Santa Fe was getting superior grades on inspections. Over time our sailors learned a lot and became incredibly good at their jobs; they also continued to evince a hunger for learning.

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