âCaring for your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior. It means giving them every opportunity to succeed and standing by them when they take risks.â â L. David Marquet
Control and Competence are necessary but not sufficient for the leader-leader model. The third pillar, Clarity, provides the context that allows people to make good decisions autonomously. Clarity means that everyone in the organization understands the purpose, the goals, the priorities, and the values that should guide their decisions. When clarity exists, people do not need to be told what to do because they understand what the organization is trying to achieve and can figure out their own contribution.
At the heart of clarity is trust. Without trust, people will not take the initiative that the leader-leader model requires. They will not state their intent, challenge bad decisions, or take calculated risks. Trust is the foundation on which everything else is built.
When Marquet arrived on the Santa Fe, trust was at zero. The crew did not trust their leaders to care about them, and the leaders did not trust the crew to perform. This mutual distrust created a toxic cycle: leaders micromanaged because they did not trust, and the crew disengaged because they felt controlled rather than trusted.
Marquet understood that trust had to be rebuilt from the ground up, and it had to start with him.
Marquet identified several specific actions that built trust on the Santa Fe:
Take care of your peopleâs futures. Marquet invested significant time in the professional development and career advancement of every crew member. He wrote recommendations, mentored officers, and ensured that sailors had the training and qualifications they needed for promotion.
Follow through on commitments. When Marquet said he would do something, he did it. Consistency between words and actions is the foundation of trust.
Be honest about uncertainty. Marquet did not pretend to have all the answers. When he did not know something, he said so. This honesty made his confidence credible when he did express it.
Admit mistakes publicly. When Marquet made errors, he acknowledged them openly. This gave the crew permission to do the same and created a culture where mistakes were learning opportunities rather than career-ending events.
Protect your people from above. Marquet shielded his crew from unnecessary bureaucratic pressure and took responsibility for failures with his superiors, while sharing credit for successes with the crew.
âTake care of your peopleâ is one of the most commonly stated and least consistently practiced principles in leadership. Marquet made it concrete through specific, visible actions.
Taking care of people is not about being nice or being liked. It is about:
âThe crew didnât need a cheerleader. They needed someone who believed in them enough to let them lead.â â L. David Marquet
Beyond interpersonal trust, Clarity in the leader-leader model means ensuring that every person in the organization understands the âwhyâ behind their work. On a submarine, this means understanding the mission, the strategic context, and how each personâs role contributes to the whole.
Marquet noticed that in the traditional Navy model, orders cascaded down through the chain of command, becoming more specific and less contextual at each level. By the time an order reached the sailor turning the valve, they knew exactly what to do but had no idea why they were doing it.
Marquet reversed this. He spent significant time explaining the mission context to every level of the crew. A sonar operator who understood why the submarine was in a particular location and what they were looking for made fundamentally different and better decisions than one who was just told to âmonitor the sonar screen.â
When people understand the why, they can adapt their actions when conditions change. When they only know the what, they are helpless in the face of the unexpected.
Marquet used several mechanisms to build and maintain organizational clarity:
Begin with the end in mind. Before any operation, state the desired outcome clearly. Let people figure out how to get there.
Immediate recognition. When someone makes a decision aligned with the organizationâs values and goals, recognize it immediately and specifically. This reinforces what âgoodâ looks like.
Use guiding principles, not detailed rules. Rules tell people what to do in specific situations. Principles tell people how to think about any situation. Principles scale; rules do not.
Achieve excellence, donât just avoid errors. Marquet shifted the Santa Feâs focus from âdonât make mistakesâ to âpursue greatness.â This single reframe changed the crewâs orientation from fear-based to aspiration-based.
This distinction deserves special attention because it represents one of Marquetâs most important cultural insights. Most organizations, especially large ones, are primarily focused on error avoidance. The dominant question is: âWhat could go wrong, and how do we prevent it?â
Error-Avoidance Culture:
Excellence Culture:
The counterintuitive insight is that excellence-oriented organizations typically have fewer errors than error-avoidance organizations. When people are pursuing excellence, they are engaged, attentive, and invested. When they are merely trying to avoid mistakes, they are disengaged and going through the motions, which paradoxically leads to more errors.
When Marquet reframed the Santa Feâs culture from error avoidance to excellence pursuit, the effect was visible almost immediately. Sailors who had been doing the bare minimum to avoid reprimand began looking for ways to improve systems, suggest better procedures, and help each other succeed.
One chief petty officer described the change: âBefore, I came to work thinking about what I couldnât afford to mess up. Now I come to work thinking about how I can make things better. Itâs the same job, but it feels completely different.â
This is the power of clarity. The crewâs tasks had not changed. Their equipment had not changed. What changed was their understanding of why they were there and what they were striving for.
Apply these clarity-building principles in your organization:
If you asked everyone in your organization why they come to work every day, what would they say? Would they describe a paycheck, or a purpose? The gap between those two answers is the gap in your organizational clarity. What would it take to close it?