The video, published by Inno-Versity, is an animation film adapted from Captain David Marquet’s talk on Greatness, based on his book ‘Turn the Ship Around!’. The book explores the traditional lines of leadership at sea contrasting them with radical approaches where the ‘take control’ is substituted by the ‘give control’ model, to address the crews’ poor performance. Captain Marquet’s speech underlines how important is for leaders onboard to ‘create an environment’ rather than giving orders.
David Marquet, the Captain of the nuclear-powered submarine ‘USS Santa Fe’, was surprised to see that when he gave an impossible order to his crew, the crew would realize it anyway without questioning it.
This led the author to turn into a radical approach of leadership, moving from ‘take control’ to ‘give control’, in full contrast with traditional military principles.
In this way, a new ‘leader-leader’ model comes to substitute the classic ‘leader-follower’ model, ensuring that a work team – even it is a submarine crew or a corporate staff- maintain their direction and are able to operate efficiently, even when the leader is not there.
