Intent-Based Leadership

 

Intent-Based Leadership: The story of Capt David Marquet

Capt. David Marquet was a ships captain in the US Navy. More specifically, he was the captain of a nuclear submarine.

David has a passion for leadership since he was a teenager, and he spent a lot of time reading up on it, absorbing as much information as possible on the topic. He also had a dream of being the Captain of a submarine. He later joined the US Navy, and was very passionate about his work, and became the top student in his class. He was certainly destined for great things in the navy.

Leadership was, however, the one thing that David did struggle with. He was not convinced that the traditional model used by the US Navy, and, indeed, many organizations around the world, was the best leadership model to apply. It was the Leader-Follower model. The problem with this model in David’s eyes was that it is aimed at influencing employees to comply with what is required of them to do, but not really to make them think. David argued from own experience, that, in practice, this approach makes people feel marginalized.

In David’s earlier career, as an engineer officer on board a vessel, he tried to use the principle of providing his crew with broad, general guidance, and had them respond to this information by deciding how to achieve what had to be achieved. He decided that this approach would be better than to just give people orders. He reasoned that giving the crew intent (what needs to be achieved) would empower them to make decisions on how to achieve it. It turned out to be a disaster. Poor decisions were made that led to errors. So David went back to the leader-follower model.

Later David was selected to become the captain of a nuclear submarine, the US Olympia. He had to study for over a year to be able to take command, because he had to understand on a very deep level how the submarine operated. This was because the captain of a vessel had to authorize everything that happened on the vessel, without exception.

When David was ready to take command, he was informed that he would not captain the US Olympia, but rather the US Santa Fe because its captain had resigned. It was a different class of nuclear submarine that David had very little knowledge about.  On top of that, it was also the worst performing submarine in the US Navy.

So David took command. Early on, during a very simple drill to simulate an emergency situation, David gave a command: “Ahead two-thirds”. The officer on deck repeated the command, exactly as David gave it. And …. Nothing happened. It turned out the command was incorrect, that there was no two-thirds in the electric propulsion mode on this submarine, unlike on previous submarines that David has served on.  The officer who repeated to command also acknowledged that he knew that the command was incorrect.

What came out of this situation, and is important is that David realized that his crew would to anything that he commanded, even if it was wrong. A recipe for disaster. He then decided to give intent-based leadership another go.

What David started doing was to treat his crew as leaders, not as followers. He started to give them control, and not take control of every situation. He gave them intent (what needs to be achieved), and they gave him intent in response (how are we going to achieve it). The rest is history. The US Santa Fe turned from being last (worst), to being first (best), achieving the highest retention and operational standing in the navy.

Intent-based leadership sounds like a great idea, and it is. Many companies from around the world started to implement it, with enormous success. But we need to understand a few things about it before we blindly try to implement it. It is not a case of blindly allowing employees to makes decisions, rather than leadership making those decisions. That would be abdicating your responsibilities as a leader. There are a few important points to consider and apply before this can work in any organization.

The first important element is a commitment from leadership to embrace the idea of intent-based leadership. It is more difficult than most leaders think, especially those who use a traditional management style. It involves real empowerment of workers, giving control to others, and not trying to hold on to control in the traditional sense of the word. In my opinion it requires a change from traditional management to real leadership, showing direction, not telling others what to do. It also means that leadership has to accept the idea of them not knowing everything, and those in positions where they have all the required knowledge about what needs to be done and achieved will be allowed to make those decisions. Just remember, leadership is still accountable for all outcomes, even though responsibility is assigned to persons in lower positions to make the right decisions. Leadership still needs to maintain an appropriate level of control.

Secondly, if intent-based leadership is going to work, every employee needs to know two things:

·         How things should be done (the technical competence)

·         Organizational clarity (what do we need to achieve)

If these two things are in place, the employees will know how things need to be done (technical competence), and what needs to be achieved (intent provided from leadership). In turn, they provide leadership with intent from their side, how we intent to achieve what needs to be achieved.

The power of this style of management lies in the fact that the psychological ownership for making decisions is moved to the employees. This is cascaded all the way down through the organization. The principle is to give control and create leaders.

In my personal opinion there are a few requirements that need to be in place to enable this leadership approach to work:

·         A competent, experienced workforce

·         Strong, effective communication regarding objectives and goals throughout the organization

·         Shared responsibility for the achievement of objectives and goals

·         A strong set of values that is shared by all in the organization

There may well be other requirements as well, and I would like to get some feedback from the readers of this blog regarding your thoughts.

This is a topic that a lot can be said about, and any leader can learn a lot from the information that has been made available by David. He has written several books on the topic, the most famous being “Turn the ship around!” It is a very good read and contains a lot more information on how to go about intent-based leadership than what I have included here.

I also recommend that you look at the YouTube video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q. It is very informative, but it would be a good idea to get the background first before looking at the video. For some information on the background, you can watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivwKQqf4ixA.

I will try to give more information on intent-based leadership in future. I think it is really powerful. But it takes a confident and capable leader to implement it.

Feel free to leave you your comments or to e-mail me at koosgouws10@gmail.com. Also check out our website at www.sheqmanagementsystem.co.za.

Until next time!

Koos