After reading Chapter One of L. David Marquet’s book, Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say – and What You Don’t for the first time I wanted to scream. I wasn’t mollified much after watching a video from the National Transportation Safety Board https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66bvIgfHwYU. While very few of us will take part in a shipping accident, the same basic problems show up in organizations. The use of the El Faro is an apt central metaphor for bad management in a book on leadership.
In the Introduction, Marquet introduces the concept of a leadership playbook. Leadership is Language intends to deliver a new leadership playbook. The author uses the El Faro disaster to highlight five plays in the industrial-age leadership playbook.
Industrial-Age Play 1: Continue. The captain of the El Faro took the typical course from Orlando to San Juan that he always did. Even though a safer course was available. One of the most gut-wrenching statements any consultant hears is “That is just the way we do it: It is our culture.” The statement takes reflection off the table and sets the hamster wheel into motion.
Industrial-Age Play 2: Escalation of Commitment. Even as the disaster neared he refused to run for a safer course increasing speed to get ahead of the storm. In project terms, the captain was pressing forward because he had already chosen the path. The path was a sunk cost that he refused to acknowledge as sunk. Doubling down on a bad decision makes the bad decision worse. Think about how many big projects you know failed because people kept going.
Industrial-Age Play 3: Obey The Clock. To use a phrase that makes Jon M Quigley, SPaMCAST contributor crazy, time is money. Artificial timelines that don’t adjust with context can become deadlines. The El Faro took the most direct course because it was the fastest. Many failures are the outcome of compromising quality, scope, or people to meet a date.
Industrial-Age Play 4: Coercion (aka motivation). Using power to make people act in a manner that is outside their best interest is a form of coercion. This is a classic command and control tool. If you do not do what you are told your performance review will suffer. Someone told me that they couldn’t change a process because their manager would penalize them during their yearly evaluation. The approach they were taking for the past few months was stale, no one ever paid attention. It reminded me of flight crews reading the pre-takeoff announcements. Or retrospectives the 19th time you ask what went well and what did not.
Industrial-Age Play 5: Conform. This play leads to people acting and thinking the same way. Peer pressure ensures people stay in line and don’t rock the boat. There is a link between the continue and conform plays.
I won’t recount Marquet’s telling of the end of the El Faro. It is safe to say that it did not end well for anyone on the ship. When you read the text, which draws from the bridge recorder, listen to the tone of the words. There were several points where a change in course meant the ship could have survived. No course changes happened. Any change was at odds with the captain’s self-image and hierarchy model. The captain talked, the officers listened, and rarely asked questions. Marquet uses a metric called “share of voice.” The scale is 0 to 1, with 0 being well-balanced and 1 unbalanced. On the bridge of the El Faro the balance was much closer to a 1 than zero.
Experiment: After your next daily Scrum, estimate the amount of time each person spoke. If everyone spoke about the same amount of time, the share of voice is a healthy 0. If it is above a 1 then consider how you can engage all voices.
A quote late in the chapter sums up Chapter 1:
“We need to always remember that the organization is perfectly tuned to deliver the behavior we see, and the people’s behaviors are the perfect result of the organization’s design.“
Old approaches and thinking are risky. When encountering a new situation using the technique from the past can be disastrous. Sailing into the eyewall of a category 3-4 hurricane is not a normal situation.
Dr. Deming taught us “The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” In addition, management owns culture. It is safe to say management is responsible for creating an environment where people are empowered to act.
Previous installments of our re-read of Language Is LeadershipWeek 1 : Logistics, Introduction, Foreword – https://bit.ly/3sTqyu3
