The Midwatch

On a submarine, the most important hours happen while the captain sleeps.

We called it the midwatch: midnight to 6 a.m. A skeleton crew runs a $2 billion warship through the dark while nearly everyone, including the commanding officer, is racked out. No one is checking your work. No one is watching. And the ship still has to be run exactly right, because the ocean doesn't grade on effort.

Here's what I learned down there: the quality of the midwatch tells you everything about the quality of the culture.

Not the drills run with the captain watching.

The 0300 decisions made by a 22-year-old who could cut a corner, but doesn't.

That standard didn't come from the captain being present. It came from the captain being clear. Clear about what mattered, why it mattered, and what "right" looked like when no one was around to enforce it.

Every business has a midwatch too. It's every hour the boss is not in the building: the vacation, the sales trip, the day you finally try to step back.

Most of us build companies that run beautifully on the day watch, when we are awake and involved, and then quietly wonder how they'd hold up without us.

You can't be awake for every hour your business runs.

So here's the question: the last time you were away for a week, what's the one decision your team got right that showed you the standard holds without you?