Graham Allcott 0:04
This is Beyond Busy, the show where we talk about work, and all the questions that define how and where we do that work. We talk about productivity, work-life balance, how people define happiness and success, and much, much more. If you're new here, my name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. I'm the author of How to be a Productivity Ninja, and the founder of Think Productive. And this week on the show, we're talking to David Marquet. David is the author of the best selling book, Turn the Ship Around, has an amazing TED Talk with the same title, which we'll put a link to in the show notes. And he's also the author of new book Leadership is the Language. So we're gonna talk in a second to David, this is a pre lockdown conversation that we had earlier this year in London, when he was over here for a few days. So just get into it. Just to say, I hope you're enjoying the sunshine. It's a really lovely few days here in Brighton on the south coast of the UK. And also if you haven't been following me and my Rev Up for the Week, Sunday emails, you can find out more at GrahamAllcott.com were you'd be able to get details of how to sign up from there. And the Show Notes for this episode and all the others are at getbeyondbusy.com.
So let's get straight into the episode. This is a conversation about David's new book Leadership is Language, fascinating book about how language plays such a huge role in how we lead and in fact defines the style of how we lead so we talk a lot about that. We talked about his time as the captain of a nuclear submarine in the US Navy, and much much more. So I think you're gonna really enjoy David really just charismatic, inspiring, interesting guy with that. So many wise things to say so let's get straight to the episode. Here's my conversation with David Marquet.
We've got about 40 minutes I think.
David Marquet 2:10
Yeah, I'm doing another podcast in the hotel at two or one and then as well so I'll be like two minutes late but I really need to, I don't want him standing there wondering what happened.
Graham Allcott 2:24
and where are you based, where do you live?
David Marquet 2:27
South Tampa.
Graham Allcott 2:28
Okay, and so how long are you in London?
David Marquet 2:31
About a week? A couple days I was over Twickenham Friday do some stuff with the sports guys the rugby guys
Graham Allcott 2:40
with like with the English rugby?
David Marquet 2:42
Yeah, there's a Eddie Jones was quoted as he they asked him what he was reading and he said my book turn the ship around my first book so then all the rugby guys that are reading my book, so it's really fun. Cool. Yeah, I don't know much about rugby.
Graham Allcott 2:59
It's like NFL. But without any clear idea of what's going on.
David Marquet 3:03
there's my feeling. I'm not in the dark, it's just design.
Graham Allcott 3:12
So I guess we're going to talk about two boats basically. Yeah. But guess about Santa Fe and El Faro? Yeah. And so your book is leadership is language, the hidden power of what you say and what you're doing. Yeah. And I find it really fascinating. And essentially, you're telling the story of this boat that that sank? And some of the when you read this transcript, because they were able to dig up the transcripts from the bottom of the seabed, essentially, yes, and kind of playback the recordings of what had happened on board and write that into the transcript. So you're kind of using this as an example of how language really affects your style of leadership, right? It is not it doesn't only affect yours. It is your style of leadership and
David Marquet 4:01
So my background was submarine commander, and you really spend a lot of time paying attention to how exactly you say things that we did. And by some tweaks in the language, so for example, instead of saying I, I'd like permission to do this, versus I intend to do this. And like what happens when you cascade that at an organisational level? And the other one is we that the the team size is limited, it's limited at the we they boundary, not what the org chart says. So when you say, Well tell me about these people while we're in the marketing. Well, how about that? Well, they're over an operation. So that's the team boundary, because I've heard the word change. We today because that means that that's a different tribe. So we would say well, just in on submarine we had, we had a loose big tribe, but we had strong, we had engineers and tacticians and officers and enlisted men and so we had lots of mini tribes. And we just said, everyone's going to Refer everybody as we, if you don't, you get ignored. We won't, I'm not going to talk I'm not going to wreck which is awkward when someone's up there saying well they ordered the wrong part and I would just not respond to that and then someone say, hey, we've tried saying we we ordered the wrong part and they look silly and they walk away. But but but what happens is you rewire your brain. The action comes first we activated new thinking, not thinking our way into action. So that so so the genesis of the book was as partially self help, because I felt like why am I asking questions in an unhelpful way I want. I want to ask questions that make it easy for people to share what they know. But But I would find myself saying, Are you sure which is not easy to share? Because Because you're never sure? Is it safe? Will it work? I don't know. But I have to say yes or you're going to torpedo my project. But that doesn't leave the nuance of Well, I'm 99% sure or I'm 51% sure I lose all that nuance there. There's, we have a rush. We're overly we overly rush to reduce uncertainty and variability. When we need to embrace variability so thinking is an embrace variability sport, people apply. Reduce variability, language, that's what I would say. The language is designed to reduce variability and we rush into that and the way you run meetings is designed to reduce variability, but thankings and embrace variability sports, the tagline is, we use a reduced variability playbook, and then embrace variability.
Graham Allcott 6:50
And less come on and read work and blue can Yeah, the differences between those and the second, one of the things that we The interesting about the book is it felt like you show on a light over lots of the the kind of subtexts to how people work and how people make decisions. Like that whole thing of like, you know, are you sure? Right? Like you kind of just have to say yes, right, right. Right. There's actually not just, there's just no actual
David Marquet 7:19
it's not really a question. So is there gonna be a problem? No.
Graham Allcott 7:31
It felt like, it felt like when I when I read some of those parts of the book is like, it's so obvious how, how bad this style of communication is. Yes.
So you had a particular experience, which you talked about in turn the ship around, where basically, I mean, you can tell the story, but like you were trained to deal with one particular ship and then you got moved on to another ship and you had to say They're having to sort of learn how to give orders on a vessel that you don't necessarily understand. Like, how quickly in that process did you start to really question some of those really basic fundamentals about how people delegate and how people how people lead and that kind of way.
David Marquet 8:15
So there was this nagging thought that there was going to be a problem that I couldn't go and be the all knowing commanding officer, which is the system is designed for that. That's why so much time I spent 12 months learning everything. It's called knowing doing and people tend tend to operate in the following axis. If I know it, I tell it, I give the team direction and we're off moving. It feels good for me, the team like we're making product, whatever it is, but I don't know and I say, okay, pause. Let's figure this out together. And those were the dimensions that I operated on, and but very quickly with two weeks, I gave an order that couldn't be done and in the past. Like if you come from that mindset of leader as decision maker mindset, then when you give a bad order the what you need to do is give better orders. That's the antidote to bad orders. But because of a complexity of a nuclear submarine, I was like, I can't there's no way that can happen fast enough. So the problem isn't I gave a bad one of the problems I was giving orders, hmm. And it turns out when the person at the top of the organisation stops telling people what to do, brilliant things happen. Think about it. You have a gas pedal and brake pedal, you know, you just give up the gas pedal. You never use the gas pedal, what's the order? The gas comes from the people. They're pushing forward. You're not having to provoke them. You're not having to prod them. You don't have to check on you have to do anything. You spend zero time managing people. They own it. Now how you make that transition, though, is very dicey. You go too fast. It feels scary. brakes, they just sit there looking at you nothing happens. So you have to sort of very gradually and safely move in that direction. And that's why we use them. And but we did it by language, we were out running the ship. We don't have time to have, you know, an off site, or a way day. So we just we just said, Hey, don't say, request permission to don't say, What do you want me to do say, just use these words I intend to. We never talked about, quote, empowerment. But we had a structure for empowerment, which was Rep. So basically, it's like a thermometer on the wall. I can see what the temperature is. And then I can dial the temperature what I want, that's what so when you take empowerment, and make it real by saying that this sounds like this, we kept asking ourselves over and over again. wisly What would it sound like if, oh, I want people to move collaborative. Okay, what would it sound like? If people were more collaborative? Like describe it? Well, you know, they would talk to you to know specifically what kind of word phrases and so that's when Are you having these conversations on the ship? Yeah, yes. Yeah. All the time, like you've prepared in advance. No, I had no idea. That's all panic and fear and nagging. You know, Matt was making this up on the fly.
Graham Allcott 11:11
And you don't get two days to get off the ship and go and sit in a nice No, no, no, see, that's the thing. We own the ship all the time.
David Marquet 11:22
There, you're so busy all the time. We when the ship comes into port, you know who fixes it? We do? Yeah, right. It's not like being an aeroplane pilot where someone else goes and fix the air, we fix the ship. So there's this tremendous sense of time pressure, and we had to get the ship ready for deployment. And at the same time, we're changing our language. But the good thing is, it's very, very dense. I call it a closely coupled system. We're bouncing into each other all the time. And if I said something in the control room very quickly, people would they would overhear I talked about Generally control people over here, the bounces out and kind of ripples out very quickly. And so I was able to reinforce through multiple, multiple interactions, to behaviours. But it all started with me. This is the other thing. So I got a couple things wrong. My initial reaction was, well, you guys need to be proactive. You need to step up, you need to you, you, you, you, you, you're all screwed up. I'm fine. Right? And this is 180 degrees out of whack. I now believe that the reason that people say that is because they're lazy. They won't do the hard work of changing themselves. No, I Oh, but you didn't tell me. Yeah, but guess what, as leaders, we didn't ask the question in a way that made it easy for you to tell me you can only change your own behaviour. Get that in your head. So anytime So you start with Well, I wish my team were more blank. Now what? How do I change my behaviour to make that easier? Nice.
Graham Allcott 12:59
Let's talk about How that then manifests itself because what was interesting is that there's this I understood the thinking understood the, you know, the shift. And I love that thing that you have talked about before where it's like, move the decision making to where the knowledge is move the authority to enforce
David Marquet 13:19
the authority information. Yeah, not Yeah. So the traditional thing is information gets channelled to the authority who makes the decision that comes back out?
Graham Allcott 13:27
Yeah. And then what it felt like was in this book, you're then putting that into a framework, which is based around the red work and blue. Yeah, idea. So just really briefly explain red work versus blue work. Yeah, and how those two things are different.
David Marquet 13:42
So we use our brains in two different fun, fundamentally two different ways. We work has traditionally defined so imagine someone is talking to a client running a process running into power plants. conducted flying an aeroplane doing an operation. operating a working on an assembly line is requires focus. Which means I'm excluding and deliberately limiting my perspective. So I'm just focusing on what I'm doing because if I don't, I might get hurt, or there's variability in the work. I want all the holes drilled the same. I want the knife cut on the patient to be exactly I don't want squiggly. Okay, so, so, so it's focus. But then the other kind of work we do is thinking, decision making contemplation, reflection, self improvement. This requires a broad perspective, gather new ideas, innovation create. And so that's a fundamentally different way we use the brain and for me, it's sort of like a head down into the work and then a head up. It's not what most people have in their head sort of in the middle all the time. So we're never really truly focused. We're never truly in the world. We're always reserving a little bit of our mental capacity to monitor ourselves. And then we're never truly brought. I did an exact activity the other day. So you're with a company or doing a workshop, you guys do these. And we have 30 executives, six tables of five. And the company says, I want, I don't want everyone to sit with the normal people, I want to have maximum diversity at the table. So I've assigned two seats. So I said, well, there's a different way of doing it. I could just stand in front of room and say, here's the deal. Arrange yourselves in the most diverse manner. And we let them do that. Then we say, Now explain how your tables diverse, and people come up with the most boring. Well, we have different gender. We have different ethnicities, but people sometimes don't actually say that and then we have, but we have different backgrounds. And like to me this is like a scale of two in that level of diversity. versus so there's some, like humans are so diverse. And we'll work kind of things were like what TV shows by watch what? How many kids do I have were like, What languages do I speak? And even now, I'm just scratching the surface. And so, but every once in a while, someone will say something is like, everyone's like, Oh, yeah, now I'm pushing it. But you don't get that until your risk, letting them arrange their own. So. So our when we broaden our horizons, we don't really we're not that broad. And we run meetings where we talk about something and then we we say, Well, what does everyone think? Should we launch the product or not? And then, and then everyone's nodding their head, and it's okay. Well, you all had a chance you could have said something. The mean is not really about making a decision. It's about giving the CEO the ability to say later Well, you all had a chance. If you really want people to make a decision. Ask them first how strongly they feel about it. Let him vote. Now you're looking for the strongest pro and con. And then you invite we call we call embrace the outlier. Yeah, we invite those people that have voice. The, the probability of someone who thinks quite differently to speak up, just gets dampened down. And that's because you go the anchoring, anchoring and
Graham Allcott 17:22
yeah, so like, if you've got, particularly a senior person gives an answer. Yeah, and everybody else is. Everybody else is kind of thinking. I, I think radically differently to that, but I better just give it a little bit differently to that rather than be too radical because I don't want to re fire right. So what how many? How many books should we print first printing?
Unknown Speaker 17:45
And let's say it doesn't need to be it could be anyone in the group for First of all, so yeah, I think about 5000 and you're thinking you were thinking 20,000? So what but what do you say? Yeah, maybe 15. Yeah. So in other words, I've just I've collapsed the variability. Yeah. But on the other hand, if we say, Okay, look, everyone write down on the card, what do you think the initial printing should be? And now I flip all the cards over and I say, Oh, you have? So now I look for the high in the low. Oh, you wrote 1000. Let's hear from you. You wrote 20,000 look like what is it that you're saying that? Now you have now you have a discussion?
Graham Allcott 18:21
Yeah. And then you're asking different questions. Correct. So you're asking, what's the risk here? Yeah. Like how, why why why are you really bullish on this or not bullish on this? or?
David Marquet 18:32
Yeah, so So, a couple things. I like starting the question with what or how even why so so the way you said it sound to me pretty neutral. I would have been okay responding to that. But if you said, Why are you so bullish on this? Now it's, you're sending a very subtle signal not so subtle that I'm not as bullish as you. So now there's, I just put a little barrier, a little hurdle. Now you have to overcome that hurdle and depending upon the power gradients in the office, He may say yeah, you know, yeah, you're right. Yeah, I'm off base and then you just lost you lost for the group but that one person think Yeah, so the phrase we use is were inadvertently and automatically because it's just repeating what we've heard before applying a reduced variability language Yeah. To an embrace very variability game. So we then we have all these work Oh, we're gonna have an away day and we're gonna we're gonna This is brainstorming day an idea meritocracy, we're going to call each other by our first names and whatever. And I'm not to see you today. Well, that's just an admission that our normal meetings are exactly opposite the idea of Korea having created Yeah, and I know you guys probably run into this a lot.
Graham Allcott 19:49
So it's like, yeah, it that. We get to have one day off from the norm. But actually, right now that day, yeah. Today, you can be creative. The other 364 days. Just do it. You're told, so you've got this interface between the red work and the blue work. Yeah, the red work is like the doing
David Marquet 20:07
Yes. Yeah,
Graham Allcott 20:08
I never had the code. And what you're trying to do is like, in the doing part of it, what's interesting is in the doing part, you want to eliminate as much variability as possible. And like, Yeah, because that gives you clarity, right? And then in the thinking part, you're trying to embrace variability as much as possible. Yeah. So how do those two things yeah, interface that how do people transition from one to the other so, so that's hard?
David Marquet 20:34
The Industrial Age solve the problem by saying, okay, we're going to outsource those two different kinds of work to two different groups of people. One group which we're going to call the white collar, leadership management, salaried people are going to do the thinking or the blue work. Another group of people which we're going to call work workers, labour. unionised, hourly People are going to do the doing work. So the deciders choose what the doers we're going to are going to do. And the problem is now or the challenge now is, first of all, that's a terrible life, if you just get told what to do all the time. But it's this phase you've gone through with the Industrial Revolution. Now what we, what I think we want is we need the doers we want to do is to be the deciders. Let the doers be the decider, so which is actually all of us. So the people doing the work should be able to make decisions about the work too as much as possible. But what that means is that this group, this group, we tended to for just said, do what you're told, have a narrow focus now I need to oscillate. So I need narrow, narrow, narrow, Monday through Thursday narrow than Friday, we're going to back up we're going to have a broad focus. That's the hard part. That's where we need to be agile. So we need to make it easier to stop. Hey, we've been so good chopping down these trees, so good printing, doing print films, so good renting DVDs, that we just keep doing it. No, we're gonna put timeout now we're gonna think about it. But you also have to make it easy to get Okay, enough thinking enough contemplation enough. Now let's get back into the doing. Yeah, so both ways I've seen we see organisations stuck on both sides.
Graham Allcott 22:29
Yeah. So what is do you have advice for organisations, if you feel like an organisation is stuck too much in doing? And then not. And this would be the sort of the classic sort of stories of you know, Kodak, not embracing digital photography, and various others and Blockbuster Video and all that. So like, if you're stuck in that cycle of doing and you're not necessarily, you know, thinking about the broader picture, but how can how do companies break out of that and vice versa,
David Marquet 22:58
so At a strategic level, your strategy should be a hypothesis. It shouldn't be. here's, here's our plan, period, it should be. Our hypothesis is that if we do this, we're going to have these outcomes. And then what are we going to learn? And then there should be expiration dates. So every time you make a decision, put an expiration date on. So we're going to decide to do print film, we're going to decide to do streaming video, we're going to decide to make a new app, whatever. And in six months, we're going to reevaluate. So you want to put a marker in the calendar Yeah, to to pause and raise your head. Because once you get going, you'll be so happy and ever you'll be so good at it. But it might be irrelevant for the marketplace. At the sort of operation like quarterly goals, companies often write quarterly goals, but we said, How about what are we going to learn this quarter? So Oh, we're going to do this. We're going to raise revenue. We're going to ship this product, but rarely do I see and we have a deliver plan to learn more about ABC you look at Bezos, his first annual report for Amazon back in 98. He writes, here's what we've achieved. And we have much to learn about internet selling things on the internet. And he talks about it Meantime, jack welch says gee report is all hubris and this lovely done and there's there's nothing in there about and here's what we have to learn more about. Yeah. Now look what happened at the time. I don't know. I you know, I was the Amazon was a pipsqueak and GE was a giant now see what happened,
Graham Allcott 24:45
but then it's also So coming back to that thing I was saying before about your shining a light really on some of the games that sort of the subtext games that are played right so there's subtext game of that is look at how great we are in the show because the game is instil confidence amongst shareholders. And actually, you know, that doesn't that approach doesn't serve innovation or thinking differently. Or, yeah, I call it embracing any kind of vulnerability basically. Exactly.
David Marquet 25:15
Yeah. And I call that and by the way, I don't think it actually instils confidence. I don't. I don't think anyone's tricked by some braggadocio or maybe they were but
Graham Allcott 25:26
I think I think many people are okay.
David Marquet 25:28
All right. Well, that would be podcast number two. Yeah. Yeah, maybe you're right. I take it back. But I guess they wouldn't say then work. But here's the deal. We, I call that your be good self. Yeah. And it happens at a corporate level happens at individuals and this The idea is I got to protect this image that we're good and that I deserve my salary that I that I'm not going to I shouldn't be fired. And it really gets down to that. I'm, I'm afraid. And the problem is the be good self is resistant to admitting that we could be better at seeking feedback. Which is what we need if we're going to play the long game and and say a while. Three years from now, we want to be doing exactly the same as No, no, we should be interacting with clients better than well, that means at some point, we need to say we could be doing better than what we did. Oh, but the problem is now the doers are the deciders. It was us who chose it to be that way. So now I'm having to question myself. And I have to rethink decisions that we made and that only comes from a safe environment. And this was, this is so anathema. As I was a nuclear submarine commander, the whole thing was about scaring the shit out of people. We got a nuclear reactor we had enemies trying to kill us. We got I mean it's tense dicey stuff. It's it is physically there are physical dangers but we live in perpetuate emotional scariness on our people. Hmm. And and you don't have to you Don't provoke people into being brilliant. And and and being great. People are great. No act of greatness, I don't think was because someone was ordered to be great. I am yet
Graham Allcott 27:38
to read about it. And this really comes back to like this, the central premise with you know, in the book where you're talking about el Faro and the sinking of that boat, so you're talking about how there's one bit I really liked, you know, you're just saying they're about decision should be time limited. Yeah. And you talk about here Here was the script for the particular decision to take the boat in this particular direction. Yeah. And then you say what they could have said is, let's move in this way. I'm not 100% certain of this. So I'm going to review this decision at 12 o'clock. Yes, no, until 12. Yeah. And I'll be back just before then. And actually, the longer the situation went on, it's like, everyone's entrenched in the, you know, their authority. And their decision is to is to move this way, right. And so everyone's entrenched in that, and it's like, it almost becomes a thing of, you've got to, you've got to keep proving you're right by staring through the most dice. Yeah,
David Marquet 28:37
so. So that's called escalation of commitment. Today, I'm getting more and more invested in providing right but the other thing is a deviation is just It feels like when I get to a fork in the road, they're not equally weighted. They don't play with equal on an equal playing field. That's like, unless you prove that we ought to turn we're going to keep going straight. And then and play I call it the the framework of the book is six plays that we. And so the play from the industrial age is continue, because you want to run the production line as long as possible because there's big costs of retooling and the downtime is downtime is a very visible, I see it on the balance sheet on the income statement as waste. eliminate that. So there's a huge burden to being the person who says, hold on. I'm not sure that this is right. Yeah. Not I'm not not I'm sure it's wrong. You don't need that. I just need to be I'm not sure that it's right. There's a huge and when I when we talk about that and in with with people, they say well, people don't want to be wrong. Why are we calling it that? We could call it well that's resilience, raising your hand and pausing the the assembly line and double check it I could use the phrase resilience but we don't everyone calls it wrong. So the new plays called complete. Think of the work in chunks Let's complete it. So complete it lets us truly reflect on how we're doing. But the other thing complete lets us do is celebrate. Yeah, if everyday feels the same, we're just turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, there's no pause, there's no celebration, no celebration, no sense of progress, no sense of progress, no fun.
Graham Allcott 30:17
So complete is about committing to, you know, breaking something down, and then committing to the first stage of that then committing to the next stage of that and kind of looking at those things as
David Marquet 30:26
right. And that's the other part of it is because the commitment is shorter. It's not like, we're gonna do an initiative and for the end of time, they're gonna do this, which feels very heavy. It's, hey, let's run an experiment for the next three months. We're going to do is we're going to, you know, when we talk to our client, trying to picture something and kind of the work that we're doing, when we talk to our clients, we're going to do an in person visit. Well, that'll cost more but we'll learn more So does it and our hypothesis is it'll pay off in the long run, so maybe three months might not be long and long enough, but you say, okay, so for six months, three months, a year, whatever, we're going to try it. And the benefit of that multiple benefits, but another one is that it activates people's senses. If you say, No, the new process has changed. We're now doing these in person intake sessions. They're like, okay, that's what we're doing. But if you say, look, we're going to try it for six months. And then we're going to talk about what we learned. As they're doing the new process. Their eyes are looking left and right, and they're saying, Okay, how could this be better? Oh, I can see how this is messed up. Now, that's exactly what you want.
Graham Allcott 31:40
And because you also because you're leaving that labelling it as an experiment, right, so straight away, it's there's like a softness that is like more of a permission to that original fail.
David Marquet 31:51
Yeah. And it's, it's, it's an experiment and so you learn.
Graham Allcott 31:55
Yeah. And that one of the things that I really loved was, so you talk about control the clock Yeah, I'd love you to tell us how that could have stopped lala land from being asked a geologist tell that story. Yeah,
David Marquet 32:12
so three we just had the Oscars three years ago. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. It was the 50th anniversary Bonnie and Clyde. They were there to announce the most prestigious the final award of the evening the award of Best Picture which was being was awarded to moonlight. Come on stage they have the mo they've now they've been in correctly handed the wrong envelope. The envelope they've been handed was for the second elastic word Best Actress. Emma Stone. lala land so the card says Emma Stone lowland bottom left bottom of it it says Best Actress in small letters. And now it was luck would have it will all then was the nominee. So they get on stage and Warren opens the envelope. He pulls out the card. He looks It does. He does. He looks at it again. He checks the envelope for a second card. His. his brow is furrowed, his head is looking down. He looks left and right. He kind of looks off stage. There's nothing he looks again in the envelope. Faye now is getting exasperated. She has just come on, then then you're impossible. He shows it to her.
Graham Allcott 33:23
So the subtext of this point is that the idea of a pause in the middle of the most prestigious bit of the Oscars,
David Marquet 33:30
yes. is terrified is there but I mean, but on the other hand, okay, so and then so she announces it lala land which is supposed to be one line that's very awkward after that, but it is a lot and people say, Well, why can't you just do a little timeout saying signal? No one is shooting at you. You have no nuclear reactor to worry about. It's just people. So on the one hand, I kind of can make light of it is Based on my experience dealing with, quote real things, but it feels very real, I mean, social ostracism and feeling wrong. Well, so what's happening is it's the pressure of the clock which is causing his prefrontal cortex to shut down and his reptile brain is in charge at that moment, his reptile brain wants self preservation. It doesn't want to look bad. If I'm the one who calls timeout, it's gonna be me. On the meantime, if I just let it go phas gonna read it. PwC gave it to me there's there's the fuse and know that people will know he hesitated because there's visuals but law oftentimes at work. We will never know that you saw something. And you could have said something, but you're never 100% sure that's a problem. Yeah. And so you got to make a decision, and we lose it so many times. You've had tragedies where afterwards we, we found out that a sailor or a person saw something or her Something and didn't say anything and and there's the tendency to, to blame them and say, well you know, you need to speak up more and you're going to go to train we're going to send you to assertiveness training
Graham Allcott 35:16
and it's like they should have blown the whistle. They should have been there right whatever right but
David Marquet 35:20
we've structured the system where calling a pause is very difficult so what you want that's called a bang the clock that's why we have words like clock run is comes directly from the industrial age. So you want to control the clock. You want to give the team the ability to say pause is exactly what the Toyota Production System and encore does. And, and and as the leader when you see the team hesitating, our instinct is no let's get going. We're burning daylight.
Graham Allcott 35:47
So they end on quote, just explain so you've got production line. Yeah. And it's like someone recognises something's not quite right, right. And the end on cord and on is like the Chinese the Japanese lanten. Right. Yep. So like when you play This cord, the lantern lights up, and then somebody else in the building knows Hang on. There's a problem. Yeah, over there. I need to go and check that out.
David Marquet 36:07
Exactly. So it's a way for them to assemble signal. Yeah, I was in redwork, I was in production work, I was focused. But I have to shift to a different mode of work, which is, now I'm in problem. So I need to think and solve the problem. And if necessary, if I can't solve the problem, in the amount of time that the part is on my part of the assembly line, then we'll stop the whole line with the supervisor comes over the first words out of his mouth, by the way, thank you. Not, oh, you again, really.
Graham Allcott 36:40
So again, you're you're creating that environment, you're creating the culture where that feels like the more natural, less risky thing to do right? Rather than I'm the one putting my hand up and wrecking the production statistics or whatever.
David Marquet 36:53
So how many times that button gets pushed a week? If It only gets pushed once. Yeah, then it's gonna feel scary. Okay. Apparently it gets pushed like 1000 times a week in a factory. Really? Yeah, it's a huge number. So like I see 1000 times a day, someone was telling me that I couldn't validate it. But it's it's pushed a lot of times it's demystifies. The whole is not. So in others in that culture. if, if, if someone from Toyota, we're running the Oscars is standing there said of Warren Beatty that we just want to set and encored Yeah. Because it's demystified. It's not scary.
Graham Allcott 37:38
Yeah. And you mentioned something there. And a couple things before we wrap up, I'd love to talk about. So you talked the beginning about you kind of partly wrote the book as a self help kind of thing for you. So let's talk about that. And then I want to also just talk about everything you just mentioned there which is like you know, the Because as you know, it's scary to hold your hand up in that situation, but like you're on a nuclear submarine doing like real stressful stuff. I'd love to learn a bit more about that in a minute. Yeah, but the idea of a self help book for you, and thinking about language and, and thinking about that. So obviously, like with Santa Fe, and the story that we'll put the link in the show notes to that little animation video that tells that story. So people can kind of really, really kind of go through that have not read, turn the ship around. But when you started to write that book, like what, what are the what were the most powerful words are the most powerful changes in language that as as you were working, you know, and as as the commander of a ship, you found just made the biggest change and what can people take away from that in terms of management and leadership in the work they're doing?
David Marquet 38:52
So I would just, if I could start the sentence right, I would be on the right track. So for example, my questions tended to be overly binary is it? Will it work? Are we ready? And I wanted I wanted it to be so close that if I start the question with the word how so it wasn't don't ask binary questions. It was start the question with how ready are we? How likely is how likely is this to be the actual enemy? And another one was I wanted to make it I wanted people to understand that there was uncertainty in my mind because in combat you there's the enemy is deliberately trying to spoof you and how you can that kind of stuff so yeah, I would say what concerns what what I'm worried about the thing that keeps me up at night, where, what I'm unsure or what and that kind of thing. And then I also found myself saying at the end of a I give a little talk, okay, at some up Okay, here's so here's the plan. Here's what we've talked, here's the panda. Does that make sense? Even that, that, that that makes the easy path, just this head nod. But then I find out later, you know, I was really confused. I said, but I asked that. Did that make sense? But no one? No, that's not really a thing. Yeah, I say
Graham Allcott 40:12
that all the time. That's real. That makes sense. Just at the end. Yeah, exactly.
David Marquet 40:17
Yeah. So what you want what I wanted to say was, what was unclear? Yeah, what am I missing? How could we be wrong? And so, so what happened is I started with this, like long list. Here's another one. You say the world the way you experience it. Someone says, You miss a meeting, you're embarrassed. And someone says, well, there was an email on it. You don't remember seeing it but what you say is, well, you didn't send it to me, but you don't know that. So then you say, Well, I didn't see it. Would you stossel probably don't know what you would you you didn't you don't remember saying it. So because If you just say the world the way you experience it, I don't remember seeing I sorry, I just don't remember seeing it. No one could argue with you. You didn't send it to me yesterday. No, you're not fruitful. So. So there's this long list. Don't say this say that. But you can't remember that. So there has to be a structure and so there's must be a structure. And so, the way I think about it is you kind of lower the water when the tide goes out, you see, the way the rock this the patterns of the rocks and so we lower the water. And the most overriding structure is the structure between doing language and thinking language. And then the more nuanced structure or the six plays. And then what we talked about a couple instead of obey the clock, control the clock, instead of continue Connect, and the final one is instead of conformed a role. Now instead of continued complete, yeah, and instead of conforming to all connected human beings, but they're sick,
Graham Allcott 41:59
I love it. Prove not prove it. Yeah, just explain that one.
David Marquet 42:02
Well, the idea is, we talked about the get better mindset versus the be good. The idea is, if you're doing mode doing always invokes proving, Okay, I gotta prove that I can do it versus learning is an improved idea. So if it's an experiment hypothesis, then what we're invoking is the mindset of improvement. You want to be have a learning. CEOs tell me all the time, Oh, I'd like to have a learning organisation. But we then run it in a way where everyone has to prove themselves. Well, if you don't always have to prove yourself, it gets in the way of learning.
Graham Allcott 42:39
Yeah. And I'm going to be in so much trouble if I don't let you go. Okay. Can you just give us a couple of words? What's the difference now in your lifestyle between that high pressure? Your commander of a submarine versus what your what you do these days?
David Marquet 42:53
Well, I feel so I go on stage I do as a keynote, so there's no reason why a submarine commander should be any good dude. Came home. So when I started, it was great because there were no expectations. And so I just had fun. And then and then people started paying me. And then I had a lot of pressure. But I've kind of come through that and the best ones are when. So it's sort of a light and slightly extra, hey, I'm going to try some stuff. And I tell the audience Yeah, I'm trying some new, I'm trying a little new structure with you guys. So tell me at the end how you like to structure you can't just say, oh, how do you like this? vague? But are you saying this section here is new? Let me know how how it resonates with you. How useful was it? And you get better at asking the question. So you get the information. That's most than that helps you get better.
Graham Allcott 43:45
Well, I love as you're taking that mindset that you've talked about with turning the ship around into your own keynotes and ensuring we're leading yourself in that way, which is fascinating. I could talk to you for hours and I'm really worried about being in trouble. So I can get it right So the book is leadership is language. Do you want to just say how people can get hold of you and find out more about what you do?
David Marquet 44:07
Yeah, I'm on social media l David marquet. Most social medias LinkedIn and we have a website my name and intent based leadership. That's the name of our programme. And we have a cool cool i think is cool, proven big. programme called leadership nudges, which are a little one minute video. Yeah. And there were like three or almost 300 now on YouTube, so go to YouTube type in leadership nudges and they're just little nuggets, like, you know, start the question with how and still not heavy and we try and keep them
Graham Allcott 44:41
tall. furlings is the one with the toilet thing. Yeah,
David Marquet 44:44
that was what I was in Scotland. Oh my God, look at this. Amazing.
Graham Allcott 44:50
That's great. Well, thank you so much for being on beyond busy. And yeah, good luck with the rest of the trip. And yeah, thanks again. Cheers.
So there you go really recommend Leadership, his language and also turn the ship around to really great books and some good stuff on Ted and elsewhere. If you don't have time to read the book, but you want to kind of get a little bit more of David's stuff, and also really recommend his little leadership short things that he puts out on YouTube, really fun, interesting little setup videos as well. Just a couple of quick thank yous for me. So thanks to Mark Steadman and cogent our producer platform for this show. And thanks also to Think Productive, our sponsors for the show, we run productivity training and workshops and coaching and all kinds of stuff that can really help you and your team. So head to thinkproductive.com. If you want to find out more about that. And we're back in two weeks time we have some really great episodes already in the cache, lined up coming out over the next few weeks, so we'll see you in two. Until then, enjoy the summer.
Take care. Bye for now.
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