Takeaways
The leader-leader model is the best model of leadership for the world of knowledge workers today because of the need to unleash human ingenuity and creativity at a massive scale. No longer do all the ideas come from one or a few individuals, they need to come from the masses.
At the core of the leader-leader model is the concept of divesting control to others. But in order to give control in a way that works, it needs to be paired with competence and organizational clarity.
How to institute the leader-leader model
Control
Understand the genetic code for control and rewrite it
Act your way to new thinking
Have short, early conversations
Use ‘I intend to…’ to turn passive followers into active leaders
Resist the urge to provide solutions
Eliminate top-down monitoring systems
Think out loud (both superiors and subordinates)
Embrace the inspectors
Competence
Take deliberate action
We learn (everywhere, all the time)
Don’t brief, certify
Continually and consistently repeat the message
Specify goals, not methods
Clarity
Achieve excellence, don’t just avoid errors
Build trust and take care of your people
Use your legacy for inspiration
Use guiding principles for decision criteria
Use immediate recognition to reinforce behaviors
Begin with the end in mind
Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obediance
Notes
Release people with better leadership
“We are in the middle of one of the most profound shifts in human history, where the primary work of mankind is moving from the Industrial Age of ‘control’ to the Knowledge Worker Age of ‘release’.”
Give competent people a vision and control
“The bridge is control, divesting control to others in your organization while keeping responsibility. Control, we discovered, only works with a competent workforce that understands the organization’s purpose. Hence, as control is divested, both technical competence and organizational clarity need to be strengthened.”
Humans are born in a state of action
“It seemed to me that humans are born in a state of action and natural empowerment.”
Manage the way you’d like to be managed
“I felt I was at my best when given specific goals but broad latitude in how to accomplish them. I didn’t respond well to executing a bunch of tasks.”
Competence has to run throughout the organization
“I concluded that competence could not rest solely with the leader. It had to run throughout the entire organization.”
The belief that we already know something limits our ability to learn
“One of the things that limits our learning is our belief that we already know something.”
It doesn’t matter how good your plan is if your team cannot execute it
“It didn’t matter how smart my plan was if my team couldn’t execute it.”
Human potential is lost when treating others as followers
“A vast untapped human potential is lost as a result of treating people as followers.”
Less specific knowledge may lead to better leadership
“Since I couldn’t get involved with the specifics of the gear, I opened up space to focus on the people and their interactions instead, and to rely on the crew more than I normally would have.”
My note: It’s almost as if less knowledge of specific domains can be a leader’s tool and make them rely more on the team than their own “brilliance”
“My reliance on the crew for the specifics of how the boat operated prevented me from falling into old habits and the trap of leader-follower. I couldn’t have operated that way if I’d wanted to.”
Great leaders are curious
“If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.”
My note: great advice for how to conduct 1:1s too
Little things make indicate bigger underlying issues
“It might seem like a little thing, but on board a nuclear submarine, little things like lack of punctuality are indicative of much, much bigger problems.”
The need for strong incentive programs that think about the long-term
“There is no incentive or reward for developing mechanisms that enable excellence beyond your immediate tour. Imagine the impact of this on the thousands of decisions made by the commanding officers throughout the Navy.”
My note: How to set up incentives to align better for the future?
Shift from avoiding errors to achieving excellence
“In order to break this cycle, I’d need to radically change the daily motivation by shifting the focus from avoiding errors to achieving excellence.”
“The reviews were focused on avoiding errors, as opposed to accomplishing something.”
Connect the day-to-day to something larger to help motivate
“Connecting our day-to-day activities to something larger was a strong motivator for the crew.”
“Once the crewmen remembered what we were doing and why, they would do anything to support the mission.”
Don’t move information to authority, move authority to information
“We were going to deconstruct decision authority and push it down to where the information lived. We called this ‘Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.’”
Institutional mechanisms have a long shelf-life
“Personalities come and go but institutional mechanisms endure and embed the change in the organization.”
Worries about delegating tasks are due to issues of competence and clarity
“I usually find that the worries fall into two broad categories: issues of competence and issues of clarity.”
How to get organizational clarity
“You tackle it by being honest about what you intend to achieve and communicating that all the time, at every level.”
Empowerment needs to be a core principle of an organization to work
“Many empowerment programs fail because they are just that, ‘programs’ or ‘initiatives’ rather than the central principle behind how the organization does business. You can’t ‘direct’ empowerment programs.”
Act your way to new thinking
“When you’re trying to change employees’ behaviors, you have basically two approaches to choose from: change your own thinking and hope this leads to new behavior, or change your behavior and hope this leads to new thinking.”
Being perfect gets in the way of efficiency
“Subordinates generally desire to present the boss with a ‘perfect’ product the first time. Unfortunately, this gets in the way of efficiency because significant effort can be wasted.”
Short, early conversations can help avoid inefficiencies
“Even a thirty-second check early on could save your people numerous hours of work.”
Leader-followers tend to live and die by the leader
“What happens in a top-down culture when the leader is wrong? Everyone goes over the cliff.”
Choose the language you use wisely
“The key to your team becoming more proactive rests in the language subordinates and superiors use.”
My note: rather than using language that asks permission (like “I would like to…”, “What should I do…”, “Could we…”), use language that takes action (like “I intend to…”, “I plan on…”, “I will…”)
Proactiveness lets subordinates behave like superiors
“By articulating their intentions, the officers and crew were acting their way into the next higher level of command.”
The goal of the organization is more important the more control is divested
“As the level of control is divested, it becomes more and more important that the team be aligned with the goal of the organization.”
Resist the urge to provide solutions
“I should have let my officers figure things out...the vast majority of situations do not require immediate decisions.”
“You must take the time to let others react to the situation as well.”
Cherish dissenting views
“If the decision can be delayed, then force the team to provide inputs. Do not force the team to come to consensus; that results in whitewashing differences and dissenting votes. Cherish the dissension. If everyone thinks like you, you don’t need them.”
Don’t adhere to the process at the sake of what you’re trying to achieve
“When it comes to processes, adherence to the process frequently becomes the objective, as opposed to achieving the objective that the process was put in place to achieve.”
Monitor the buzz, not the content
“By monitoring that level of buzz, more than the actual content, I got a good gauge of how well the ship was running and whether everyone was sharing information.”
Thinking out loud helps reduce the need of questioning subordinates
“Think out loud is a mechanism for control because when I heard what my watch officers were thinking, it made it much easier for me to keep my mouth shut and let them execute their plans...Thinking out loud is essential for making the leap from leader-follower to leader-leader.”
Vocalizing an action can reduce errors
“This meant that prior to any action, the operator paused and vocalized and gestured toward what he was about to do, and only after taking a deliberate pause would he execute the action. Our intent was to eliminate those ‘automatic’ mistakes.”
Control without competence is chaos
“I learned the hard way that control without competence is chaos.”
More delegation requires more competence
“The insight that came to me was that as authority is delegated, technical knowledge at all levels takes on a greater importance.”
Replace briefings with certifications
“A briefing is a passive activity for everyone except the briefer...Certifications shift the onus of preparation onto the participants.”
How to judge employee engagement
“An effective survey question to ask your employees is how many minutes a week they spend learning on their own, not mandated, not directed.”
Continually and consistently repeat the message to make sure everyone’s aligned
“What I realized, however, is the need for a relentless, consistent repetition of the message...Repeat the same message day after day, meeting after meeting, event after event.”
Specify goals, not methods
“Specifying goals, not methods is a mechanism for competence...Once they were freed from following a prescribed way of doing things they came up with many ingenious ways to shave seconds off our response time.”
“Provide your people with the objective and let them figure out the method.”
Take care of your people
“Taking care of your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior...What it does mena is giving them every available tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the specifics of the job.”
Use your organization’s legacy for clarity
“It helped provide organizational clarity into what we were about — the why for our service. Use your legacy for inspiration is a mechanism for clarity.”
Use guiding principles for decision criteria
“Guiding principles have to accurately represent the principles of the real organization, not the imagined organization.”
Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviors
“Instead, have awards that are abundant, with no limit...Use immediate recognition to reinforce desired behaviors is a mechanism for clarity.”
How to set individual goals
“He was going to get two fitness reports (fitreps) over those two years as well, and we applied the same approach to the fitreps, making goals measurable and setting in place the tools to collect the data.”
Quantify accomplishments
“I believe the ability to specifically quantify accomplishments, in addition to the focus this exercise required of the officers and the overall reputation of the ship, went a long way toward allowing us to boast disproportionately high selection rates.”
Begin with the end
“While the end-of-tour awards write-up exercise was beneficial because it forced each officer to get clear in his own mind what he wanted to achieve, it also opened the way to helpful dialogue...I discussed what I was trying to accomplish on Santa Fe, and collectively they were able to translate that to what they needed to accomplish within their departments in order to support the higher-level goals.”
My note: what’s the equivalent doc to create for employees? Resume for next job?
Questioning orders is a good thing
“We realized that resilience and effectiveness sometimes meant questioning orders.”
“Encourage a questioning attitude over blind obedience is a mechanism for clarity.”
Less leadership for more leadership
“Instead of more ‘leadership’ resulting in more ‘followership’, I practiced less leadership, resulting in more leadership at every level of the command.”
Core principle of the leader-leader model is giving control
“The core of the leader-leader model is giving employees control over what they work on and how they work.”
Don’t empower, set them free
“Emancipation results when teams have been given decision-making control and have the additional characteristics of competence and clarity.”