Book notes: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Relax. Look around. Make a call.
The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not.
The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas. They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it.
leadership is the most important factor on the battlefield, the single greatest reason behind the success of any team.
Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.
The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame.
They will respect your Extreme Ownership. Take personal responsibility for the failures. You will come out the other side stronger than ever before,” I concluded.
there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.
Leaders must push the standards in a way that encourages and enables the team to utilize Extreme Ownership.
If frontline leaders and troops understand why, they can move forward, fully believing in what they are doing.
The leader must explain not just what to do, but why. It is the responsibility of the subordinate leader to reach out and ask if they do not understand.
If you ever get a task or guidance or a mission that you don’t believe in, don’t just sit back and accept it. Ask questions until you understand why so you can believe in what you are doing and you can pass that information down the chain to your team with confidence, so they can get out and execute the mission. That is leadership.”
Discipline in such a situation started with the little things: high-and-tight haircuts, a clean shave every day, and uniforms maintained. With that, the more important things fell into place: body armor and helmets worn outdoors at all times, and weapons cleaned and ready for use at a moment’s notice. Discipline created vigilance and operational readiness, which translated to high performance and success on the battlefield.
Often, the most difficult ego to deal with is your own.
As a leader, it is up to you to explain the bigger picture to him—and to all your front line leaders. That is a critical component of leadership,
‘Our team made a mistake and it’s my fault. It’s my fault because I obviously wasn’t as clear as I should have been in explaining why we have these procedures in place and how not following them can cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When things go wrong, and they inevitably do go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise.
all animals, including humans, need to see the connection between action and consequence in order to learn or react appropriately.
“Our standard operating procedures were always kept as simple as possible. Our communication plans were simple. The way we talked on the radio was as simple and direct as possible. The way we organized our gear, even the way we got a head count to ensure we had all of our people was broken down into the simplest possible method so we could do it quickly, accurately, and easily at any time. With all this simplicity embedded in the way we worked, our troops clearly understood what they were doing and how that tied in to the mission. That core understanding allowed us to adapt quickly without stumbling over ourselves.”
A particularly effective means to help Prioritize and Execute under pressure is to stay at least a step or two ahead of real-time problems. Through careful contingency planning, a leader can anticipate likely challenges that could arise during execution and map out an effective response to those challenges before they happen.
Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people, particularly when things go sideways and inevitable contingencies arise.
Decentralized Command does not mean junior leaders or team members operate on their own program; that results in chaos. Instead, junior leaders must fully understand what is within their decision-making authority—the “left and right limits” of their responsibility.
simplicity is so important,” I answered. “Proper Decentralized Command requires simple, clear, concise orders that can be understood easily by everyone in the chain of command.
A leader’s checklist for planning should include the following:
Analyze the mission. —Understand higher headquarters’ mission, Commander’s Intent, and endstate (the goal). —Identify and state your own Commander’s Intent and endstate for the specific mission. • Identify personnel, assets, resources, and time available.
Decentralize the planning process. —Empower key leaders within the team to analyze possible courses of action.
Determine a specific course of action. —Lean toward selecting the simplest course of action. —Focus efforts on the best course of action.
Empower key leaders to develop the plan for the selected course of action. • Plan for likely contingencies through each phase of the operation.
Mitigate risks that can be controlled as much as possible. • Delegate portions of the plan and brief to key junior leaders. —Stand back and be the tactical genius.
Continually check and question the plan against emerging information to ensure it still fits the situation.
Brief the plan to all participants and supporting assets. —Emphasize Commander’s Intent. —Ask questions and engage in discussion and interaction with the team to ensure they understand.
Conduct post-operational debrief after execution. —Analyze lessons learned and implement them in future planning.
“As a leader, if you are down in the weeds planning the details with your guys,” said Jocko, “you will have the same perspective as them, which adds little value. But if you let them plan the details, it allows them to own their piece of the plan. And it allows you to stand back and see everything with a different perspective, which adds tremendous value. You can then see the plan from a greater distance, a higher altitude, and you will see more. As a result, you will catch mistakes and discover aspects of the plan that need to be tightened up, which enables you to look like a tactical genius, just because you have a broader view.”
Leaders must routinely communicate with their team members to help them understand their role in the overall mission.
If your boss isn’t making a decision in a timely manner providing necessary support for you and your team, don’t blame the boss. First, blame yourself. Examine what you can do to better convey the critical information for decisions to be made and support allocated. Leading up the chain of
Discipline Equals Freedom
A leader must be calm but not robotic. It is normal—and necessary—to show emotion.
Leaders must be humble but not passive; quiet but not silent. They must possess humility and the ability to control their ego and listen to others. They must admit mistakes and failures, take ownership of them, and figure out a way to prevent them
The Dichotomy of Leadership
A good leader must be:
confident but not cocky;
courageous but not foolhardy;
competitive but a gracious loser;
attentive to details but not obsessed by them;
strong but have endurance;
a leader and follower;
humble not passive;
aggressive not overbearing;
quiet not silent;
calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions;
close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge.
able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command.
A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.