David Marquet took command of a submarine class he did not know how to operate, which made the normal model — the commander approves decisions — unworkable. His substitution was a single phrase. Department heads would tell him what they were about to do, prefaced with **"I intend to…"**, so he could ask a question or offer a view. But the phrasing carried an explicit rule: **if he was unavailable, they acted anyway.** And even when he disagreed, they were still encouraged to do what they thought best, knowing they owned the result. ### **What I'm thinking about** 1. **It changes the manager's role from approver to improver** – The decision belongs to the person doing the work. The manager's contribution is a question, and questions are optional inputs rather than gates. 2. **Three things happened at once** – Decisions arrived earlier and better-formed, because articulating an intention forces you to have one. Operations sped up because nothing waited on the commander. And because his questions were mostly cross-departmental, heads began pre-supplying that analysis — "each department head started thinking like a commander." 3. **The result is the strongest claim attached to any single practice here** – Worst submarine in the fleet to best; lowest officer promotion rate to highest. 4. **The line that makes it worth installing** – "I feel fully informed, but I am no longer the bottleneck." Both halves matter. Most delegation trades information for speed; this buys both. 5. **It is also the prescribed remedy for a capability gap** – When someone is willing but not yet able, having them send "I intend to…" statements before acting lets you shape their thinking repeatedly without taking the decision away. ### **So what?** This is the highest-leverage delegation mechanic available to anyone who is structurally the bottleneck on technical or strategic calls — which is most competent senior people, because their competence is precisely why everything routes to them. The failure mode to watch is the phrase being used while the underlying dynamic stays the same: people say "I intend to" and then wait for approval anyway. The rule that prevents it has to be stated explicitly and then honoured the first time someone acts on it and gets it slightly wrong. Related: [[Type 1 and Type 2 Decisions]] [[Directly Responsible Individual]] [[Areas of Responsibility]] [[Founder Mode]] [[Executive Operating System MOC]]