Turn The Ship Around!

There are high schools all over America that use the “workshop model” for lessons; the teacher spends five minutes on a lecture, then the students are left to work alone or in groups. Basically, it boils down to “I do and you watch, then you do and I watch.” Some say it’s great, because it teaches the kids to be self-sufficient. But the more advanced students might be happy to do a “chalk and talk” where the teacher lectures and the kids copy off the blackboard. Regardless, by the end of the year the students should be able to handle book reports, school projects, and presentations without a lot of help. If not, then it’s been a waste of time.

People that find themselves in a position of authority are often fixated on obedience and protocol, not on results. The author David Marquet was in that kind of situation. He knew from the get go that as a nuclear submarine captain, he could not be in every place at once, and micromanagement would take its toll. So he simply delegated stuff to his subordinates and that was that. Only it didn’t work. He found defects in the ship’s engineering, repairs weren’t being done, and the crew were silent on what they needed. He had six months to get the ship ready, and if he screwed up, his promotions were finished.

One of the main points of this book is that you have to make the employees responsible for their own work. The early problem in Marquet’s command style was that he’d give an order, wait for it to be carried out, and the seaman would mess up. The reason was simple; the guy had no idea how to do it right, or the orders were too confusing. When he asked why nobody said anything, they’d say “you told us to do it.” These men and women were taught never to question orders, nor say they didn’t know what to do. If the captain wanted something that couldn’t be delivered, the crew were at a loss. They would never say “captain, this ship can’t do that!” If they screwed up, it would be the CO’s problem. If the ship was found to be a mess AFTER the captain left, he was free and clear. It would be the new CO’s problem.

Management is a tricky thing. On one hand you have to give orders to your subordinates, but at the same time you don’t want to insult them or piss them off. You have to make sure they’re doing their jobs, while at the same time you can’t hover over them. Not only does it annoy the employee, but you don’t have time for it either. It also gets in the way of them doing their jobs. Marquet’s radical change was that the sailors had to let him know if the orders couldn’t be done, or if they lacked supplies to make repairs.

After reading this book, along with Michael Abrashoff’s It’s Your Ship, I wonder if perhaps these lessons apply to educators as well.