In 1999 David Marquet stepped on to a nuclear submarine he hadn’t been trained to run and decided to take a different tack. He realised that if he was going to succeed, the main thing he needed to do was shut his mouth. Instead of giving orders, he yielded control and unleashed the leader in every member of his crew. In moving from what he calls the “leader-follower” to a “leader-leader” model, Marquet’s ambition was to harness the full capacity, creativity and energy of each person on the team. His vision was of a system in which we value leaders by how well things go after they leave. A system built around freedom, authority and responsibility at every level that results in sustained success, and is not contingent on the presence and direction of a charismatic leader. (All pause, and gulp, as we think about our former teams: what it would be like for us to be judged on their performance after we left rather than while we were there?) Marquet’s approach proved to be a resounding success – inspection results were off the chart, the crew excelled, retention soared – and this continued year after year.
I had already been leading teams for more than ten years when I saw a video about Marquet’s experience. I’d had all the training on formulas for how to delegate work – calculate the risk, make sure the person has the capacity (skills, time and attitude) to do the task, set clear expectations on content and timeline, check in regularly, give feedback, hold to account. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. The hardest part was that mythical step of “letting go”. I was about to take on a major change management role, merging two organisations and leading a group of 250 people into a new (and as yet undefined) structure and operating model. I was pretty daunted, not least because there were fiercely different views on what the right answer was. That submarine stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t need to lead the way; I needed to harness the experience, ideas and power of those 250 people so that they could do it.
Twenty-one years after Marquet\’s journey I hear an eerily similar story coming out of a very different ship: Netflix’s “No Rules, Rules” approach, which has been credited with the company’s skyrocketing and continuing success. CEO Reed Hastings’ tale of “Freedom and Responsibility”, of leave and expenses policies torn to shreds and of no-holds-barred hiring and firing policies, promises pressured CEOs the keys to flexibility, innovation, and that nirvana of an engaged, motivated, and high performing team. We always need to be careful of selection bias in these examples – how many companies or organisations have done the same as Hastings and Marquet only to flounder? – and yet I find something so fascinating in the consistency and parallels between these two very different contexts. I thought that it would be worth a bit of unpacking to see what the practical takeaways might be for me and the leaders I work with.
The core principles in both cases are strikingly alike, even down to the language used: you need competence – “talent density” in Netflix terms – and clarity of purpose if you are going to ‘let go’ and give control and meaningful decision-making to your team. A feature of both systems is candour, whether that’s the importance of well-intentioned, honest feedback between Netflix employees, the regular reporting of failures and bad decisions at all-staff meetings, or the unprecedented space Marquet created (within a military hierarchy, remember) for his people to question his judgement. Candour underpins clarity of purpose: by sharing usually privileged data you ensure as much transparency as possible across the organisation, equipping people at every level with the information they need to make good decisions. The final ingredient, as in most bold endeavours, is having nerves of steel: the self-control not to snap back to giving orders and setting rules when things go awry (which they do). And will.
Notes to self:
- How often do my attempts at letting go flounder because I doubt the skill and ability of my team? What can I do about it?
- Is everyone really clear about what we’re working towards? Do we speak often about our goals and guiding principles to create a framework for decision-making?
- What steps do I take to invite candid discussion and feedback? How do I allow – or even encourage – productive conflict?
Easy, right? Another thing that’s true of both examples is that they aren’t quite as simple as that. The truth is messier and more nuanced. Hastings and co-author Meyer admit that by doing away with any rules on expenses (except for “Act in Netflix\’s best interest”) there are cases where people take advantage or make bad decisions. Expenses are estimated to be 10% higher than would otherwise be the case. But Hastings is clear that the benefits of empowerment, speed and innovation far outweigh the costs to the business. And just because there\’s no single rule book on what is and isn’t allowed, doesn’t mean there aren’t conversations in every team about what’s right. Netflix calls this “leading with context and not control” – each team knows what good looks like in their area. The point is they have the flexibility to discuss it and create principled decision-making frameworks that work for different teams in different ways, and which change over time.
What this suggests to me is that empowerment might be less about ‘letting go’ and more about ‘setting up’. As we get more senior we’re advised to delegate, to get less involved in the detail and to be more strategic. I still remember a boss who said to me “I’m not a micro-manager, do what you think is best and I’ll be here if you need me”. It sounded good. But in practice it wasn’t enough. Instead of feeling like I had autonomy, I felt alone and like I had been cast out to sea while he sat back to see if I could swim. I didn’t realise it at the time, but what I needed were conversations about our goals, space and time to explain and test my thinking, and questions from him that were designed to build my skills and confidence, rather than to test them. How do we consciously and intentionally set our people up for freedom? Rather than just ‘letting go’, how do we give them the clarity, competence and control they need to thrive?
I learned a lot adapting Marquet\’s leader-leader model to that merger. We invited teams of volunteers to co-design the new operating model, setting them up in ways that broke down boundaries between the two organisations and gave the talented and committed people doing the work the freedom to make decisions. There was real debate about what would and wouldn\’t work, and I certainly needed nerves of steel not to draw back to the safety of a top- down approach. In the end, the new structure and ways of working we built have endured and the leaders we created – or unleashed – have gone on to do great things. I\’d be happy to be judged by the performance of the team I left behind (and to work for them one day).
It’s intriguing that for both Marquet and Hastings one of the first steps towards releasing control involved changes to holiday policies. Both started to improve work by making it easier for their people to get away from it. There\’s something beguiling about that. So, if you’re not sure where to start in your organisation, it might be worth looking there.
