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Turn the Ship Around!

A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

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Turn the Ship Around!

Written by: L. David Marquet, Stephen R. Covey - introduction
Narrated by: L. David Marquet
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About this listen

“One of the 12 best business books of all time…. Timeless principles of empowering leadership.” – USA Today

"The best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.” —FORTUNE


Marquet was a Naval Academy graduate and an experienced officer when selected for submarine command. Trained to give orders in the traditional model of “know all–tell all” leadership, he faced a new wrinkle when he was shifted to the Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine. Facing the high-stress environment of a sub where there’s little margin for error, he was determined to reverse the trends he found on the Santa Fe: poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention rate in the fleet.

Marquet ran into trouble when he unknowingly gave an impossible order, and his crew tried to follow it anyway. When he asked why, the answer was: “Because you told me to.” Marquet realized that while he had been trained for a different submarine, his crew had been trained to do what they were told—a deadly combination.

That’s when Marquet flipped the leadership model on its head and pushed for leadership at every level. Turn the Ship Around! reveals how the Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet by challenging the U.S. Navy’s traditional leader-follower approach. Struggling against his own instincts to take control, he instead achieved the vastly more powerful model of giving control to his subordinates, and creating leaders.

Whether you need a major change of course or just a tweak of the rudder, you can apply Marquet’s methods to turn your own ship around.
Entrepreneurship Management & Leadership Military & War Small Business & Entrepreneurship Workplace & Organizational Behaviour Business Leadership Submarine Military Leadership
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Most Relevant
Nobody valuable tools for your organization, but an engaging story overall. The reading style took a bit to warm up to but in the end the earnestness of the author came through and I quite appreciated it.

A brilliant take on developing leadership and healthy autonomy in organizations.

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Love and care leadership will eventually have it's day over power and fear, this is proof!

Leadership at its finest

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I might be bias because I serve in the surface fleet and this is book is from a submariner's experience. Felt like it is was a long winded long sea tale about the old days about the experiences he went through on his old boat and then carried those experiences to his new boat. Throughout, just lightly adding some leadership advice.

If anyone took anything practical away from this book, that is ok. I just personally prefer straight to the point, no nonsense advice that I can take lots of notes on.

Lacking Pragmic Advice

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