Achieving Greatness

In Captain David Marquet's book, Turn the Ship Around,2 he defines leadership as embedding the capacity for greatness in the people and practices of an organization, and decoupling it from the personality.

Giving Intent

In it, he talks about his experience of being a captain of a nuclear submarine and how they learned not to follow the leader into disastrous situations. He vowed never to give another direct order but, instead, to set intent. Rather than giving instructions, give intent. Officers stopped requesting permission all the time, which meant psychological ownership shifted towards them. Marquet talks about the two pillars that supported this idea of giving control – technical competence and organizational clarity.

Moving Decisions to Where the Information Is

Moving the authority to make decisions to where the information is means, in the software space, software engineers can decide when to ship software and to do so when ready...