5. Turn The Ship Around by L. David Marquet
“Turn the Ship Around isn’t a typical business book. It’s not about business at all, but it offers a fundamentally critical lesson for all leaders and managers. The key premise is that when people come to you for permission to do something, they rarely consider all the outcomes and rarely take on full accountability. The author, an experienced Navy officer, took commission and control of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, and overhauled the performance of the crew–leading them from last place in the fleet to first place. Instead of having his crew ask permission and seek orders, he told them to come to him with intent. Instead of ‘Captain, may I turn the ship starboard 10 degrees?,’ he wanted people to come to him and say ‘Captain, I’m going to turn the ship starboard 10 degrees.’ The difference seems minor, but the effect is enormous. ‘May I’ puts the responsibility on the manager or leader. ‘I’m going to’ puts the responsibility on the person taking action. By stating intent, that person must live with the consequences of their action and will think more completely about the action and its consequences. This small change turns followers into leaders, and as I’ve seen in my own company, works incredibly well in business.”

–Ross Kimbarovsky, founder and CEO of crowdSPRING, one of the world’s leading marketplaces for crowdsourced logo design, web design, graphic design, product design, and company naming services

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