Separating Thinking & Doing Time: Learnings from David Marquet’s “Blue & Red Work”
David Marquet’s “Blue & Red Work”
David Marquet is the former US submarine commander that you may have read his book “Turn the Ship Around!” and his famous video on “intent-based leadership,” which is his take on how to transform a passive team of instruction followers into critical thinkers and autonomous decision makers.
In his second book “Leadership is Language“, Marquet introduces an easy to remember “blue and red work” concept to highlight the importance of separating thinking time and doing time in both individual work and teamwork.
Red Work: Doing Time
We continue to be haunted by the ghosts of Taylorism (“Scientific Management,” 1911), and the decades of promoting the human side of the enterprise, learning organizations and reflective leadership show how pervasive the factory model of business is in the workplace still.
Red work is doing, executing, producing so there’s no work that doesn’t involve…
