It's Your (Leader) Ship

Business analysts suffer no shortage of bleak analogies to describe today's economic climate. A burst bubble. A derailed train. A withering rose.

Captain D. Michael Abrashoff would likely compare today's struggling companies to the USS Cole -- the guided-missile destroyer that was attacked in Yemen on October 12, 2000. Business leaders have suffered a devastating blow. They're hurting badly. And they're more determined than ever to regroup, rebuild, and brandish their firepower once again.

Abrashoff can relate. In 1997, he took command of his own sinking ship: the USS Benfold. Though physically unscathed, the Benfold was drowning under the weight of outdated policies, poor morale, and an unimpressive performance record. Within 20 months, Fast Company joined the crowd of Abrashoff admirers when it learned of the ship's remarkable journey from embarrassment of the fleet to winner of the Spokane Trophy for combat readiness. We called the Benfold "a model of leadership as progressive as any celebrated within the business world."

Since that article appeared in April 1999, Abrashoff has retired from the Navy and devoted his time to dissecting the leadership principles and tactics that helped him steer the Benfold to victory. As a speaker and private consultant, he has applied his leadership framework to companies and organizations well outside the military scope. Regardless of the setting, Abrashoff says he finds one common trait among the best leaders: the ability to conjure greatness from others.

"There is no rocket science to leadership," he says today. "Leadership is a collection of seemingly minor things that, taken as a whole, create a climate in which people feel honored and valued. When people feel as if they own their company, they want to do great things to help it and its leaders succeed."

Simplicity and consistency are key, Abrashoff says in It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy (Warner Books, 2002). In the book, he lays out 10 distinct principles of grassroots leadership that apply on an 8,600-ton vessel or in an eight-person startup.

Recently, Abrashoff sat down with Fast Company to talk about leadership -- again. In the following interview, he shares five leadership guidelines that can help managers, presidents, and CEOs withstand the torpedo blasts of 2002.

The Problem Is You

Whenever I didn't get the results I was looking for on the Benfold, I tried to look inward before flying off the handle. I asked myself the same three questions each time: Did I clearly articulate the goals I was trying to achieve? Did I give people the time and resources they needed to succeed? Did I give them enough training to get the job done properly? Eighty percent of the time, I found that I was part of the problem and that, through my actions alone, I could have altered the outcome significantly.

By resisting the temptation to place blame, a leader effectively aligns his actions with his words. It creates distrust in an organization when a leader's actions fly in the face of his vision and advice to others. Today, it creates even more than distrust. It creates disgust, especially now that employees realize their 401(k) plans and job security may be compromised by a leader's dishonesty. Employees today will not forgive deceit among their leaders.

Question Every Rule

When an officer or sailor came to me for approval or a signature on something, my first question was always, Why do we do it this way? If the answer was, Because this is the way it's always been done, I would say, That's not good enough. Find out if there is a better way to do this.

After a while, people began doing their homework before they ever brought issues to me. And they could explain, This is why we do things this way. Or, We've thought of a better way to get this accomplished. It drove my officers crazy, but by creating a culture in which we questioned everything, we were training our people to keep their eyes open to new ways of doing business.

Build Trust Through Responsibility

Give people responsibility, train them, and push decision making down the chain of command. When a leader places greater confidence in his people and provides them the training they need to succeed, they will respond by performing at levels higher than what's expected of them. As they achieve greater results and greater confidence, they will trust that their leader will help them get the training and opportunities they need to succeed.

People will fail. How a leader handles that failure is infinitely important. I disagree with Jack Welch on this point. I don't think you should follow a policy that gets rid of the bottom 10% of performers every year. While I don't recommend tolerating poor performance, an arbitrary standard like that eats away at internal trust. It places emphasis on individual performance rather than team or company performance. It pits people against each other. And it doesn't view failure as a learning experience -- an opportunity to sit back, examine the causes of a problem, and devise solutions that will benefit the group. I think that's important.