I love this whole speech. I'm curious how people put some of these efforts into practice, particularly holding people to high standards while still giving them autonomy and ownership.
Holding someone to a high standard seems like it requires frequently telling them that their work isn't good enough and they need to refine or redo it in some major way. How can people feel ownership while they're being frequently told their output isn't satisfactory? How do you balance firing people who can't perform without creating a culture of fear?
Disclaimer: I am not a historian, my knowledge of Rickover is probably wrong and probably low quality.
I guess you're kind of asking how did Rickover maintain people's intrinsic motivation (sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose), despite asking a lot from workers particularly in a frequently hostile way?
I think if I had to guess it comes down to two words: "Mission driven."
I think Rickover went all in on purpose. I think every single subordinate had explicit responsibility that mattered. Not only that, but there was the greater context of the cold war. It didn't just matter, it mattered.
My potentially wrong understanding is that Rickover assigned responsibilities, not tasks.
I think Rickover was a pioneer of the technical interview. His interviews were intense and existed to filter out people willing to BS or play games. I think he wanted people who were willing to speak truth to power. I think his interview process, while unconventional, was probably central to his management.
Rickover was a major proponent of (liberal) education (as opposed to technical). He strongly believed in molding quality clay and making experts, rather than hiring experts. That means investment. Investing in a person is validation that they are worth investing in. A person who is invested in probably feels a sense of debt.
> How can people feel ownership while they're being frequently told their output isn't satisfactory?
I think when communicating to someone that their output is unsatisfactory, it can be done in different ways. I think you could tell someone their output is unsatisfactory in a technical way they might even agree with, or you could communicate to someone that they are producing unsatisfactory output. I think that is a night and day distinction. I guess the right question is does the person feel that it is "us vs the problem" or "them vs the manager?" Rickover seemed like a very "us vs the problem" kind of person.
I think some workers also don't get told why their work is unsatisfactory, which is very damaging. Knowing the consequences of unsatisfactory work is centering.
What is clear is that I think Rickover would have debugged the unsatisfactory output, probably himself. Unrealistic time pressure is a failure of management, not a failure of an employee, so I think Rickover would have been upset if a timeline shifted, but only if he was not told early and told why.
My understanding is that it was frequently contractors and people who would fleece the government that would draw his greatest ire.
I think the context of getting yelled at matters, too. Getting a verbal shakedown, especially by a CEO, communicates that what you are working on is important and there are real consequences and that you have the power over them. Yelling means you care. When other people care, you care.
Things like burnout are often thought of as stress issues, when they have very little to do with stress and a lot to do with progress. Feeling stress but not making progress is what creates burnout. Stress with progress is accomplishment and boosts future stress tolerance because the progress ends up justifying the stress.
I don't know if you've heard Gordon Ramsey speak about his abuse, but he makes a distinction between the abuse he experienced from his dad, and the abuse he experienced under Guy Savoy. Guy's abuse was something he valued because it had a purpose, the purpose was to get better food.
> How do you balance firing people who can't perform without creating a culture of fear?
I think if you have a clear ethos about firing vs training this isn't practically a problem. I had co-workers that I wished were fired. Firing those people would have made me respect management as competent. If you fire someone who should be fired I don't think that creates fear. Not firing dangerous co workers might be an even larger crisis.
Arbitrary firing creates fear. A manager firing an employee for what are the managers failures, not the employees, creates fear.
If you read about the NTSB investigation of an ATC issue resulting in a runway plane collision that was posted several weeks ago. I think that's relevant. The mistake the ATC made could have been made by anyone. So firing that ATC would have created a culture of fear because any other ATC could have seen themselves in her position. Boeing has a culture of fear, not because people are fired, but because if you speak up, you suddenly become a person fingers can be pointed at, and therefore a target for legal discovery and firing. The fear comes from the people in power not taking responsibility, not the firing.
If you fire someone, and people can imagine that being them, that's the culture of fear.
Rickover was probably an influence for navy seal leadership which is analyzed in more detail in the very good book Extreme Ownership, which explicitly addresses unsatisfactory workers and firing. If you like Rickover, you'd probably like that book. It is much much better than it looks or sounds.
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I have actually read Extreme Ownership. I agreed with most of it, although one thing I started noticing is what I'd call "fake ownership". Once people realize the value of ownership, they try to game the system and use those tools to manipulate. Boeing CEO's response to the latest disaster comes to mind. He claims "this is our fault, we'll fix it". But it's hard to take it at face value when you know the story. I guess like most aspects of human behavior, there's an element of earnesty that needs to be present.
Have you read any of the books on rickover? I can find three:
1. Rickover and the Nuclear Navy
2. The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference
3. Nuclear Navy, 1946-1962
Would love to know if you have a recommendation or anything else on rickover you'd recommend reading. This guy seems worth studying
Google is surprisingly sparse on him, so combing over his Wikipedia references was my plan. I've also found it hard to find a list of his congressional testimonies, but I am pretty interested in that.
You can also watch some interviews on YouTube. Rickover was a person who successfully spoke truth to power, which made him enemies. I have a hard time telling how much influence the power he spoke truth to has had over his legacy. Watching some of his interviews that can be found on youtube are a very "never meet your heroes" kind of experience.
The greatest criticism of Rickover is that he did not create a system that produced more Rickover's, which created a sort of "succession" problem and "bus factor" problem. On the flip side it is very hard to argue with his results and legacy.
That is exactly the opposite of Rickover's idea of ownership. This is "our" fault means that everyone is responsible, which paradoxically means no one is responsible. In tech "this is owned by everyone" means it is completely neglected except by "heroes" who are on the path to burning out because they have leadership that has no idea what is going on because if they did, then someone would be directly responsible for the state of whatever is communally "owned".
Rickover's philosophy (from what I gather) is as simple as the difference between "our" and "my." Rickover would have definitely said "my" fault. "This is my fault, I am responsible, I will fix it." A CEO has the most power and therefore the most responsibility, so a CEO who diffuses responsibility will find that no one else wants responsibility either. It is debatable whether Rickvoer was properly responsible since there is rumor that during the USS thresher incident he distanced himself from responsibility, but I think his philosophy is very very clear about the distinction between "our fault" and "my fault" and how important that difference is.
Holding someone to a high standard seems like it requires frequently telling them that their work isn't good enough and they need to refine or redo it in some major way. How can people feel ownership while they're being frequently told their output isn't satisfactory? How do you balance firing people who can't perform without creating a culture of fear?