“The leader-follower approach had been the way of doing business for a long, long time. It was baked into every procedure, every tradition, every assumption about how a Navy ship should be run.” – L. David Marquet
In 1999, Captain David Marquet received a phone call that would change everything. He was being assigned to command the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered attack submarine based in Pearl Harbor. There was just one problem: it was the worst-performing submarine in the entire Pacific fleet. Morale was at rock bottom. Retention was the worst in the submarine force. Sailors were doing everything they could to transfer off the boat.
Marquet had spent the previous year preparing to command a different submarine, the USS Olympia, studying its specific systems, crew, and history. Now he was being sent to a boat he knew nothing about, with a crew that had been demoralized by years of poor leadership and punishing inspection results.
The USS Santa Fe was a cautionary tale in the submarine community. Its previous commanding officers had tried the traditional approach: tighter control, more inspections, harsher discipline. Each attempt made things worse. The crew was caught in a vicious cycle: poor performance led to micromanagement, which led to disengagement, which led to even worse performance.
When Marquet walked aboard for the first time, he could feel the culture of defeat. Sailors avoided eye contact. Conversations were guarded. The prevailing attitude was: “Tell me exactly what to do, and I will do exactly that, and nothing more.”
Early in his command, Marquet experienced a moment that shattered his remaining confidence in the leader-follower model. During a drill, he gave an order to the officer of the deck: “Ahead two-thirds.” The officer repeated the order and passed it to the helmsman. The helmsman hesitated and said nothing. After a moment, the officer of the deck turned to Marquet and said, “Captain, there is no two-thirds on this class of submarine.”
Marquet had given an order that was physically impossible to execute. And the officer of the deck had repeated it without question.
This single moment crystallized everything Marquet had been thinking about for years:
“That was the moment I decided I would never again give an order. Not because I didn’t care, but because I cared too much to rely on a system where one person’s mistake could go unchecked.” – L. David Marquet
Most new commanding officers in Marquet’s position would have doubled down on control. The boat was broken. The conventional wisdom was to grip tighter, issue more orders, and impose discipline from above. Marquet made the opposite decision. He chose to give control away.
This was not a casual or comfortable choice. It was terrifying. A nuclear submarine is one of the most dangerous and consequential workplaces on earth. Mistakes can be catastrophic. Giving up control felt like jumping off a cliff.
Marquet recognized that the standard turnaround playbook was itself part of the problem:
| Leader-Follower Fix | Why It Fails |
|---|---|
| More inspections | Creates a culture of avoiding blame, not pursuing excellence |
| Tighter procedures | People follow the letter of the rule but not the intent |
| Motivational speeches | Temporary effect; does not change the underlying structure |
| Replacing “bad” people | The system produces the same behavior in the new people |
| Harsher discipline | Drives problems underground rather than solving them |
The insight was that all these fixes operated within the leader-follower model. They tried to make the existing system work better. What was needed was a fundamentally different system.
Marquet began with a simple but radical commitment: he would stop giving orders. Instead, he would create conditions where the crew could lead themselves. This required three pillars, which would become the architecture of the entire book:
Control: Push decision-making authority down to the people closest to the information. Replace “permission to act” with “intent to act.”
Competence: Ensure that people at every level have the technical knowledge they need to make good decisions. You cannot give control to people who do not have the knowledge to exercise it wisely.
Clarity: Make sure everyone understands the organization’s purpose, goals, and decision-making criteria. When people understand the “why,” they can make decisions aligned with the organization’s intent without being told what to do.
These three pillars are interdependent. Control without competence is dangerous. Competence without clarity leads to well-executed wrong decisions. Clarity without control means people know what should be done but are not allowed to do it.
Marquet started making changes immediately. He told his officers that he would no longer be giving orders in situations where they had more information than he did. He asked them to come to him not with questions (“What should I do?”) but with intentions (“I intend to…”). He began removing himself as the bottleneck for routine decisions.
The crew was skeptical, and understandably so. They had been burned before by leaders who talked about empowerment but reverted to command-and-control at the first sign of trouble. Many waited for Marquet to crack under pressure and start barking orders again.
Some officers were uncomfortable with the new approach. They had built their careers on being good followers, and now they were being asked to be leaders. The transition was disorienting. One officer confided that it was “easier when you just told me what to do.”
Marquet’s response was consistent: “I understand that it’s harder. But you’re capable of more than the old system allowed you to show.”
Take a hard look at your own organization. Ask yourself these diagnostic questions:
If the answers reveal a leader-follower culture, you are exactly where Marquet was when he boarded the Santa Fe. The good news is that the path forward has been mapped.
Consider a time when you knew a decision was wrong but followed it anyway because it came from someone in authority. What would have been different if the culture had supported you in speaking up? What would your organization look like if every person felt both the authority and the responsibility to lead?