Create an Environment of Greatness

Leadership: Embedding the capacity for greatness in the people and practices of an organization, and decoupling it from the personality of the leader.

This is a really great abridged talk on leadership and greatness by David Marquet during the 2013 Fortune Leadership Summit.

My favorite part of the video is at 7:14 when David outlines the key to greatness in an organization. Move the authority to where the information is. Instead of having a single all-powerful commander making exclusive decisions for an organization, responsibility should be delegated to the people best equipped to make a decision.

This leads to better decisions from better information, faster decisions from less red-tape, and a greater feeling of importance from the increased responsibility assigned to the decision maker.

Win. Win. Win.

If you like the speech, check out David’s book Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders.