“Pushing authority down without first building competence would have been irresponsible and dangerous.” – L. David Marquet
Giving people control over their work is only half the equation. The other half is ensuring they have the knowledge and skill to exercise that control wisely. This is especially true on a nuclear submarine, where a wrong decision can have catastrophic consequences. Marquet understood that the leader-leader model is not a recipe for chaos. It is a recipe for distributed excellence, but only if competence is built systematically at every level.
On the USS Santa Fe, Marquet found a crew that had been trained in the minimum required to do their jobs. Training was seen as a chore, something to get through, a box to check. The result was a crew that knew enough to follow orders but not enough to make independent decisions with confidence.
Marquet’s approach to building competence was radical in its simplicity. He made learning a constant, everywhere activity rather than a scheduled, classroom event. The submarine itself became the classroom, and every moment of the day became an opportunity to learn.
Traditional training in most organizations follows a predictable pattern:
Marquet replaced this with a fundamentally different approach:
Marquet instituted several specific mechanisms to embed learning into the fabric of daily submarine operations.
Instead of telling the crew exactly how to accomplish a task, Marquet specified the goal and let them figure out the method. This forced people to understand the underlying principles rather than just memorizing steps. When you tell someone “turn the valve three turns clockwise,” they learn a procedure. When you tell them “achieve a coolant flow rate of 200 gallons per minute,” they learn the system.
The difference is profound. People who understand principles can adapt when conditions change. People who know only procedures are helpless when the situation does not match the checklist.
Marquet established small, informal study groups throughout the submarine. These were not mandatory training sessions with PowerPoint slides. They were voluntary gatherings where crew members explored technical topics together, asked questions, and challenged each other’s understanding.
The groups met during off-watch hours, in mess halls, in control rooms, wherever people happened to be. The key was that learning was social and self-directed, not imposed from above.
Every watch station on the submarine became a learning laboratory. When a sailor was standing watch, the expectation was not just to monitor equipment but to deepen their understanding of the system. Supervisors would ask probing questions:
These questions were not tests designed to embarrass. They were genuine learning conversations designed to build the kind of deep understanding that supports confident decision-making.
Marquet makes a crucial point that competence and control must advance together. If you push control down faster than you build competence, you get chaos. If you build competence without pushing control down, you get frustration, because people have the knowledge to decide but not the authority.
Think of it as a dial with two settings that must be calibrated together:
The leader’s job is to continuously advance both dials in tandem, building competence as fast as they push control down, ensuring people are always prepared for the level of authority they are exercising.
“The more we pushed authority to the people doing the work, the more important it became that those people were technically competent to make those decisions.” – L. David Marquet
The impact of the everywhere-learning philosophy on the Santa Fe was measurable and dramatic. Within months, the crew’s technical proficiency scores improved significantly. More importantly, the character of the learning changed. Sailors began seeking out knowledge on their own, not because they were told to study, but because they understood that their ability to lead depended on their ability to understand.
One of the most powerful effects was the creation of a self-reinforcing cycle. As people learned more, they made better decisions. As they made better decisions, they earned more trust and authority. As they received more authority, they were motivated to learn even more, because the stakes of their decisions increased.
This virtuous cycle was the exact opposite of the vicious cycle that had prevailed before Marquet’s arrival, where ignorance led to micromanagement, which led to disengagement, which led to more ignorance.
A young petty officer on the Santa Fe captured it perfectly: “For the first time in my career, I actually want to understand how this stuff works, because now it matters. My decisions matter.”
Apply the everywhere-learning philosophy in your own team:
How much of your team’s knowledge is concentrated in a few individuals? If those people left tomorrow, what would be lost? What if every person on your team understood not just what they do, but why they do it? How would that change the quality of their decisions?