The Leader-Leader Framework
How to Implement the Leader-Leader Approach in Your Engineering Team
In the previous article, we explored David Marquet's Leader-Leader approach and how it shifts the mindset from permission-seeking to intent-driven leadership. Based on the lessons from "Turn The Ship Around", I brought some examples from my engineering leadership practices.
Today, I want to take a step back and explore a simple, actionable framework for finding practical steps to apply these principles in your engineering team.
Leader-Leader Model: Core Concepts
David Marquet discovered a fundamental truth: simply "empowering" individuals doesn’t do much without the proper supporting mechanisms.
A famous quote says:
"Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves."
Sure, that makes sense when elevating talented people who face self-doubt and are at the beginning of their careers. But there is no shortage of self-confident people among software engineers, who are sure about their skill set.
With that in mind, what's critical are the systematic changes to how the organization functions. Marquet identified three critical mechanisms that enable this transformation:
control
clarity
competence
These mechanisms form the basis for an effective Leader-Leader culture by redistributing authority, clearly defining purpose and context, and continuously building expertise within the team.
Side note: In the book, "Wiring Winning Organizations" there is a similar emphasis. Instead of focusing on individuals, tools, instrumentation, or technicalities, the author concentrates on improving "Social Circuitry". That is - the layer that includes the processes, standards, and communication patterns that guide how people work together. Read more here.
Control, Clarity, Competence
Let's briefly introduce each of these core mechanisms before we dive deeper into the practices:
Control Mechanisms: Shifting from external control to intrinsic motivation by pushing decision-making authority to where the information lives. In Marquet's words: "Don't move information to authority, move authority to the information." On the submarine, this meant no longer requiring permission but instead using the language of intent: "I intend to..." This signaled both ownership and forethought.
Clarity Mechanisms: Ensuring everyone understood the organization's purpose and how their decisions served it. As Marquet puts it: "We achieve excellence not by telling people what to do, but by letting them take action based on the guiding principles and goals of the organization."
Competence Mechanisms: Building the technical excellence needed to handle that control effectively. After David Marquet: "Control without competence is chaos." The Santa Fe submarine implemented technical competence programs to ensure every sailor had the knowledge to execute their authority responsibly.
What makes a transformation remarkable is not any single practice but how these three mechanisms reinforce each other.
Control without competence leads to errors; competence without clarity leads to wasted effort; clarity without control leads to frustration.
9-grid Leader-Leader Model
Each of these mechanisms has three actionable practices, creating a simple yet powerful 9-grid framework. Let's see how we can adapt it to the world of software engineering leadership.
