Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win
Introduction
This book was written by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin with intentions to teach leadership lessons that were first written in blood and learned first-hand in the battlefield. Jocko & Leif were U.S. Navy Seals in Task Unit Bruiser, one of the most decorated units in U.S. Military history. Jocko & Leif met whenever they first got deployed in the same unit to the city of Ramadi, Iraq in 2005 where Jocko was Leif’s Unit Commander. Following their retirement from active duty, both Jocko & Leif came back and led/developed several SEAL leadership training courses to help mold the future generation of SEAL leaders based on their experiences in battle. After their direct involvement with the SEAL teams was done, Jocko & Leif developed ‘Echelon Front’ which is a leadership development company established to help teach these same principles to business leaders and corporate executives.
Review
One of many reasons why books written by U.S. Navy Seals are some of my favorites to read is because they are so inspirational. Hearing some of the things that these people go through, some of the obstacles they overcome and some of their heroic feats really gives you some perspective on what you perceive as the human’s true limitations. But… there are some issues with this type of content. One issue with some content developed by former U.S. Navy Seals, or any other military veteran, is that they are often hard to resonate with for your average civilian. Most of their writing is read more so for entertainment because people can’t comprehend and understand the type of things they went through, or the intensity of the events they are describing. Because the reader typically feels so far detached from anything the writer is talking about, they don’t really know how to apply anything they read to their life. Some of these writers are bad about connecting the dots between their experiences and the readers experiences, but not Jocko & Leif.
That is one reason why I enjoyed this book, and other writing by Jocko & Leif, so much. The way they format their writing allows them to efficiently and effectively bridge the seemingly enormous gap between their military experiences and its application to the real world. The book is broken into three sections: Winning the War Within, Laws of Combat & Sustaining Victory. Each section contains 4 chapters, each titled with the leadership principle being described in it. Within each chapter, there is three parts: The relevant military experience/ story behind the principle, the description of the principle itself, and the ‘application to business’ section where they described how they have used this principle to help a corporate executive in experiences with their company, Echelon Front. With this format, Jocko & Leif are able to not only give you these leadership principles, but they are able to directly tie together the relationship between their military experiences and how civilians can apply these principles in the real world, though they were learned on the battlefield.
The first section, ‘Winning the War Within’, discusses leadership qualities that a leader must internally deal with. These are things that a leader must be able to do before they are in a position to lead a team. As in anything in life, the first step towards progress is an internal assessment. These qualities should be included in your assessment before you can effectively lead others. The chapters included in this section are briefly discussed below.
Extreme Ownership: Of course, this is the first chapter – it’s the title of the book. This chapter mainly discusses exactly what it says – that a leader needs to be able to take extreme ownership… Not only for himself but for his team as well. If his team doesn’t perform as expected, the leader didn’t prepare them correctly. If an assignment was missed, the leader didn’t explain the plan or mission well enough. It also mentions that this does not mean a leader should continuously take the fall for a habitually underperforming team… If there are team members that are continuously not performing, it is your responsibility as the leader to replace him/her with someone who can get the job done. This is not done to be mean to the underperformer, but more so to uphold your responsibility for the betterment of the team as a whole. The leader must take ownership of everything, good & bad.
No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders: This chapter sort of builds off of the first one. It really drives home the belief that the success and/or failure of a team can be traced back to its leader. This is a humbling trait to have as a leader… To be able to look at your team’s lack of success, look in the mirror first, and see what you could have done better. This section also discusses the effect of a good leader on a team. When a team has a good leader, the team members begin to respect and mimic their leader. Good leadership is contagious. This means that at some point, the team is able to function properly without the constant guidance of the leader because the culture has been instilled in the team from a fundamental level. On a good team, performance should be able to be sustained even if the leader is temporarily taken out of the equation. The attitude and culture of a team are a reflection of the team’s leader.
Believe: The power of belief is one that is often times underestimated. One quality that a successful leader must have is the belief in the mission or path that he is leading his team on. In order to convince your team that what you are doing is right, you have to first believe it yourself. Sometimes, as a leader, you will be asked to lead your team in a direction that you may not believe in. In times like this, it is often important (& difficult) to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Oftentimes, there is a rhyme and reason to what your superiors are asking of you, as they obviously aren’t intending to hurt the company… But if you are too focused on the task at hand, and not the overall mission as a whole, you may miss the big picture. Odds are if you are missing the big picture, so are your team members. In order to make your team believe in the mission, you have to believe in the mission. In order for you to believe in the mission, you have to be able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. You have to believe so that your team can believe.
Check the Ego: This is a tough one for most people in leadership positions. Most people in leadership positions are there because they are driven, hard-working, smart & good at what they do. Having an ego to a certain extent is extremely beneficial and oftentimes a requirement for success. The problem is whenever your ego gets too big, and it starts to hinder you from the ability to take constructive criticism or to be able to accept & act on good ideas from other sources. A leader has failed when his ego has led his drive for personal success & recognition higher than that of his team. Sometimes checking your ego takes a painful look in the mirror – a real self-evaluation. Checking your ego doesn’t only mean being open to ideas from other people, but it also includes admitting your mistakes and shortcomings. Before mistakes can be undone and a plan created to overcome them can be made, a leader has to be able to check his own ego – accept the fault – and move on.
The second section, ‘Laws of Combat’, discusses tactics for leaders to implement in their teams in order to make them more efficient. After all, a team’s efficiency is a function of the leader’s ability to instill positive habits and internal processes. The chapters included in this section are briefly discussed below…
Cover & Move: Cover & move is essentially driving home the importance of teamwork. Cover your teammate while their head is down so they can get their work done (or ‘move’), and vice versa when you are needed to ‘move’. Most teams are comprised of several components/departments working together as one well-oiled machine. Complementary work is often a necessity. When doing individual tasks, it is easy to get caught up in the task at hand and forget about what your team is doing in the bigger picture. Your job as the leader is to remind your team of the bigger picture, keep them focused on it and keep all of the machine components oiled and synchronized.
Simple: One of my personal favorite things to say is ‘consistency compounds, but so does complexity’. This is the point this chapter is trying to make. A plan can only be executed if all of the moving parts understand what they are doing. When instructing a team or group, you must simplify things so that the lowest common denominator understands their role. If things are too complex, they are hard to follow when there are a lot of moving pieces. When things are complex & hard to follow, one wrench in the plan can cause a lot of dysfunction. Make sure your plan is sturdy enough to withstand a wrench.
Prioritize & Execute: Oftentimes in life or in business, there are many things going on at once that need addressing. When being in charge of making decisions for a group, a leader cannot let himself/herself become overwhelmed by trying to handle too many moving parts at once. When many decisions are looming, you must be able to take a step back & prioritize each decision and execute these decisions in the prioritized order. Oftentimes, some decisions being considered aren’t even relevant if one of the other decisions leads to the downfall of the team. The leader needs to be able to remain calm in an overwhelming atmosphere, prioritize decisions and execute. In the book they say, ‘Relax, look around, make a call’.
Decentralized Command: The concept of ‘decentralized command’ ties together a few principles mentioned previously such as ‘simple’ & ‘Check the Ego’. Leaders are human and therefore fall to human limitations. No matter how good a leader is, a human can only manage so much at one time. In fact, in the book, it is mentioned that humans are generally not capable of managing more than ~6-10 people at once. Because most teams consist of more than 6-10 people, this requires simplifying the chain of command so that you only have to focus on managing 6-10 people. For this reason, the leader must be willing and able to empower junior leaders below him to lead their own groups, so that the leader can focus on leading the junior leaders alone. This takes humility and trust from the head leader to be able to delegate responsibility to those below him/her so that they can focus on the bigger picture, which is tough for some leaders. If a leader does a good job from the beginning, the principles instilled in the junior leaders will trickle down through the group. In this way, the head leader vicariously leads the entire team, without trying to push beyond human limitations. Trust your teaching and decentralize the command.
The third section, ‘Sustaining Victory’, discusses qualities that a leader must have in order to continue to be a successful leader. A lot of people have made it to the top, but very few have held it there. The chapters included in this section are briefly discussed below…
Plan: As mentioned previously, complexity compounds. When plans are simplified, this reduces the complexity and mitigates the possibility of chaos ensuing after a small mishap. In order to simplify this process for everyone, every leader needs to instill a trusted plan development procedure. Once the planning procedure is complete, there should be zero questions about the intent of the overall mission and/or how it will be executed. A proper planning process includes a zoomed-out view of the bigger picture from the leaders, a developed plan, and a detailed brief to the team where all details are explained intricately, and questions are encouraged. Once the plan has been executed, a debriefing period is necessary. This is where you sit down and look back at how the plan went, what problems arose, and what could be done in the future to make the process better. It is important for this debrief to be done immediately after the execution.
Leading Up & Down the Chain of Command: Leading up & down the Chain of Command is describing the necessary two-way street of communication between the leader and their team. When leading from the top, it is easy to forget what goes on down in the weeds of the daily work that your team does. When entrenched in the weeds, it is hard to remember the bigger picture of why you are doing what you are doing. This requires leadership & communication to/from both levels. If you are the leader, take some time to talk with your team, get in the weeds every now and then, see what problems they are facing & help them face these problems. If you are on the team, your leader isn’t a mind reader. They aren’t always aware of issues going on in the minutia of daily tasks because they are focusing on the bigger picture. If they aren’t helping you… help them help you. Get them the information they need to help you.
Decisiveness & Uncertainty: A lot of times, if you are waiting for the ‘right time’ for something, you will be waiting forever. Likewise, if you are waiting for ‘all’ of the details to unfold before a decision is made, oftentimes it will be too late. Leaders almost never have the full picture or all of the desired unknowns when chaos arises, but these are the times when tough decisions have to be made with the information you have. Leaders cannot be paralyzed by fear, because this paralysis leads to inaction. When uncertainty arises and the leader is presented with a decision based on unknown parameters, the leader has to learn to trust their training, trust their instincts, make an educated decision and then react accordingly as more information arises.
Discipline Equals Freedom- The Dichotomy: The dichotomy of leadership is something I discussed in a recent post, and it is talked about in further detail in this chapter. Leaders, in general, walk a fine line between two seemingly contradicting qualities (or dichotomies). In times when leaders are struggling to successfully lead, oftentimes it is because they have leaned too far in one direction. The dichotomies needed to be balanced are endless, so much so that Leif & Jocko wrote an entirely separate book about these qualities. Being able to hold a balance and slide the scale accordingly in a dynamic environment is one of the many qualities that will help a good leader remain a good leader.
Although relatively lengthy, this post does not do the entirety of this book justice with respect to all of the principles taught. In this post, the principles that are taught are briefly discussed, but how Leif & Jocko taught them is not even close to being portrayed. Sure, these are all good principles and the merit in them is easily digested, but this book allows you to see these principles on display in both a relatable scene (the business world) & a scene that is so seemingly far detached from the typical civilian world. The case studies and real-world examples in this book provide not only valuable insights but actionable advice. Whether you are a seasoned leader or just starting out, this book is a valuable addition to your toolkit.
