In his talk “Greatness,” retired US Navy captain David Marquet shares the unusual approach to leadership he adopted on the USS Santa Fe submarine.
A little context: Marquet spent an entire year learning everything there was to know about the submarine USS Olympia. But instead of captaining that ship, the Navy transferred him to the USS Santa Fe instead, a completely different submarine. He knew nothing about this ship and he didn’t have time to learn it in depth before assuming the captain role.
He wasn’t in a position to lead in the traditional way, so instead of giving orders and approving every little thing that took place on the ship, he included his crew of 134 in the leadership. Instead of telling them what to do, he moved authority to where the information was. Instead of asking permission to do something, his crew would give intent and reasoning.
Main Takeaways:
- Move the authority to where the information is.
- It works better to have a lot of thinking, engaged individuals instead of one leader making all the decisions.
- Top-down systems waste knowledge, talent, and brainpower.
- Everyone can lead out in their area of strength.
Marquet was an effective leader because he learned how to help the people around him become effective leaders. This is what we call a “leaderful” organization.
Hundreds of Leaders
“On my submarine, I have 135 thinking, active, passionate, creative, proactive, taking initiative people. It’s a tidal wave.” -David Marquet
At Redmond, we like to invite suppliers and other partners to our leadership retreats at Lake Powell.
Associates from all over the company staff these retreats, taking care of the boats, facilitating discussions, cooking, taking guests on excursions, interacting and generally creating an amazing experience.
“I’ve been watching the staff,” one partner told us, “and I couldn’t figure out who was in charge!” He saw a team made up of different people of all different ages, doing different tasks and stepping up to help wherever necessary.
Does this mean we have no leaders? Not at all.
In fact, Redmond is FULL of leaders. We just don’t rely on a traditional hierarchy.
Sure, we have formal leadership roles like team leads, but we encourage everyone in the company to practice leadership. From some perspectives we might seem to be “leaderless,” but we actually strive to be a “leaderful” organization.
How Redmond Strives to be “Leaderful”
Leadership doesn’t look like just one thing. It’s not a single quality either.
If you were to ask google for help developing more leadership skills, you’d find hundreds of habits, hacks, and personality traits. There’s no way a single person can have ALL of them, and most wouldn’t work well at Redmond, anyway. (Here’s a great video that explains why.)
If you want to learn more about “leadership,” check out Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, specifically Lie #9: Leadership is a thing.
The typical leadership model–one person leading many others–can produce good results, but it comes with some serious downsides, too.
No one is good at everything, so it doesn’t make sense to have one leader to lead out on EVERYTHING. That usually feels like micromanagement, and no one likes that. It doesn’t make for great work, either.
We strive for better than the typical model. Instead of a handful of people leading and thinking, we have hundreds.
Anyone can use their strengths to be a leader. There are as many ways to be a leader as there are people.
What does this look like?
So what does being leaderful actually look like in practice? Is it utter chaos where everybody tries to boss everyone else around while secretly vying for dominance?
Nope.
As our partner at Lake Powell noticed, a “leaderful” culture can look like chaos from the outside because there isn’t an easily distinguishable structure. We could impose more structure, but we’ve learned to trust a more natural process, instead.
After all, systems in nature don’t rely on leadership to function—nature handles challenges by organizing itself around adaptability and trusting each part of the system to fill its role without imposing control. Problems that need solving will attract those who are ready to make things better, building momentum that strengthens the entire system.
Pretty cool, right?
Being leaderful means everyone on the team is in charge of keeping some area of the work going, ideally because they’re curious and invested in making it better. We don’t assign these roles or even formally document them. But when teams are allowed to work without a hierarchy, everyone tends to find their way to a role that matches their wiring.
Leading out: taking the lead in a conversation, project, system, task, or area where one is helpful, wired, and passionate.
Team leads (both strategic and operational) do have more defined tasks they’re in charge of that need to happen on every team, but anyone can lead.
You might take the lead in process improvement efforts on your team, while someone else focuses on customer experience and another teammate tends to bring conversations back to aligning with the company’s core values. Instead of relying on titles to define our work, we learn to rely on our teams to create great work..
The key is to focus on our 3 Circles journey. Notice what we pay attention to and care deeply about, then get curious about ways we can move our time and energy that direction. This teaches us a lot about where we can lead!
How to Make Leaderful Work
We’ve noticed that two ingredients really help create an organization of leaders. We’re not experts by any means and we’re working on these all the time, but here’s what we’ve figured out so far:
Let information flow freely
David Marquet says “Move authority to where the information is.”
This means that information needs to move around freely so people have the context to make good decisions. He called this “technical competence.”
We need to know what’s going on in the company and with our customers and partners outside of Redmond.
There are always different conversations going on around the company. Some are big picture conversations about the direction of Redmond that reach years into the future, while others are very tactical and address how we’re going to do our best work TODAY. There are countless conversations in between.
This is why we focus on spending time together. Yes, a lot of this information moves in formal meetings, but it moves between those meetings too, like in the few minutes before the conversation officially starts, or passing by in the associate kitchen or the printer, or during activities.
Information needs space and the safety to flow, so we try to minimize hierarchy to foster that space, focusing on developing relationships that are strong enough to handle disagreements and difficult conversations when they inevitably pop up. Knowing that we’re all developing the candor and consideration we need, we can even give each other permission to learn in real time.
We also try not to wrap information in so much red tape that it can’t get to where it needs to go. We don’t like to funnel information through “leadership” roles, choosing a more direct approach whenever possible. (Here’s a great example of what we mean.)
Alignment in Purpose
Our leadership model only works when teams are rowing towards the same shore. We need to be aligned in purpose so we aren’t pulling the organization in different directions. It’s one reason we like to start meetings by clarifying what the meeting is for – it helps each of us volunteer our best when we reconnect to the reason we’re in the meeting together.
Marquet calls this “organizational clarity,” and it played a big role on the USS Santa Fe.
This is another great chapter in Nine Lies About Work. Lie #3 is that the best companies cascade goals, but this isn’t actually true. Goals don’t create the intrinsic motivation to row in the same direction. That’s what mission and purpose is for. (Spoiler alert: The best companies actually cascade meaning.)
When we’re all clear on our purpose as a group, we pull in the same direction, like a rowing team gliding across the water. This is part of why we put so much effort into our culture. Because when everyone is on the same page with our mission and purpose, the possibilities are limitless.
Where Are You a Leader?
Aside from formal team lead roles, we don’t attach leadership to any role at Redmond. In fact, we don’t often consider traditional leadership skills when we structure our teams! Whether you’ve been in your role for two months or two decades, you are probably already taking the lead in some ways.
Note: This is why we call our retreats “leadership retreats.” These aren’t just for formal leaders, but for all full-time associates because they can help you get to know yourself and other people around the company. That will help your natural leadership come out!
You’re probably already leading out somewhere.
Think about it: what bugs you enough that you want to keep bringing it up? What’s important enough to you that you want to keep talking about it?
If you aren’t sure, talk to your team lead or team members. Ask for a 2:1 if you’d like a more focused, in-depth discussion about your strengths.
Your team can help you figure out where you’re a leader. When you start to see it, own it. Lean into it.
And if you haven’t attended a strengths seminar, make sure you do that! That’s a great way to get to know your strengths and start exploring your wiring.
We want you to be a leader. We want you to share what you’re seeing, be passionate, figure out your strengths, and lead out in those areas. Talk about what’s bugging you, because if you’re bugged, you care.
Just because you see something doesn't mean you;r’e automatically the one to do it, but it could mean that.
Share what you’re seeing. It’s your responsibility to express that, to grow and improve, to figure out where you’re helpful, and to engage. That’s how you become a leader in your unique way.
We all contribute
Why do we do this? Why not just adopt the typical model of leadership? It’s much simpler and looks neater.
But we want better than the norm, because it’s the only way to create the world we’re striving for.
Our mission statement says it all:
We want to live in a world with people who are eager for self-discovery.
Where those intentional and aware individuals come together to form exceptional teams.
And where those teams come together to pursue what’s possible and make contributions that really matter.
In order to pursue what’s possible, we need everyone to lead out in their area of strength. Every contribution matters!
We can all contribute to an environment where this works.
When we practice our core values, we can see others' strengths and perspectives, focus on being helpful, and reflect on and learn from our experience, both as groups and individuals.
We can collaborate and figure out what to do next as a team, and lean on each other as we lead together.
This is what it means to be leaderful!
