Turn the Ship Around!
A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders
L. David Marquet
The most immediately actionable book on this shelf.
Marquet's move from leader-follower to leader-leader is illustrated with a language change so small it sounds trivial and so effective it is almost annoying: instead of asking permission, people state intent. "I intend to…" The person with the authority either lets it proceed or doesn't, and the conversation takes seconds rather than a meeting.
I recommend it more often than anything else here because a team can adopt it on a Monday morning without a programme, a budget or a consultant. And it does something diagnostic almost immediately: within a fortnight you find out exactly how much authority actually sits where, as opposed to where the org chart says it sits. Usually the answer is uncomfortable and highly specific, which makes it useful.
The caveat is one Marquet is honest about and his readers often aren't. A submarine has extraordinary clarity of mission and formal, examined competence standards. Both of those are prerequisites for giving control, and most organisations have neither. Push authority down to people who are not clear what good looks like and have not been equipped to deliver it, and you have not empowered them — you have abdicated, and you will be back within a year re-centralising and calling it governance.
Do the clarity and competence work first. Then change the language.
Our own commentary on L. David Marquet's book. We don't summarise other people's work — if this is useful, buy the book.
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