Book Report
From: Lowell Hohstadt
Date: 2021-03-29
Book Title: Extreme Ownership (How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win)
Author: Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
Subject/Topic: Leadership
Short Summary (Author’s purpose):
“Why then would we choose to write a book? As battlefield leaders, we learned extremely valuable lessons through success and failure. We made mistakes and learned from them, discovering what works and what doesn’t. We trained SEAL leaders and watched them implement the principles we ourselves had learned with the same success on difficult battlefields. Then, as we worked with businesses in the civilian sector, we again saw the leadership principles we followed in combat lead to victory for the companies and executives we trained….We wrote this book to capture those leadership principles for future generations, so that they may not be forgotten.”
Relevance (Why I chose to read this book):
“Several other leadership books I have read recently referenced this book, and military leadership is one paradigm of leadership conspicuously lacking in our current American culture.”
Background Knowledge (Things I already knew about topic):
The leadership lessons set forth in this book were not new to me. Many other leadership books I have read echoed these principles. What I found to be encouraging was that in some of the most extreme pressures, in life and death situations, these principles still were effective at holding the bonds of leadership successfully in tact.
Main Points in this Book:
- “The only meaningful measure for a leader is whether the team succeeds of fails…Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not.”
- “A leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win…Total responsibility for failure is a difficult thing to accept, and taking ownership when things go wrong requires extraordinary humility and courage.”
- “Leadership is the single greatest factor in any teams’ performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance or doesn’t.”
“It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate. When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable – if there are no consequences – that poor performance becomes the new standard. Therefore, leaders must enforce standards.”
“Repetitive exceptional performance became a habit…They no longer needed explicit direction from a leader.”
- “In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission…If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win.”
“Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead.” - “Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. If can even stifle someone’s sense of self-preservation. Often the most difficult ego to deal with is your own.”
- “Combat, like anything in life, has inherent layers of complexities. Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success. When plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them. And 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.”
- “On the battlefield, countless problems compound in a snowball effect…But a leader must remain calm and make the best decisions possible…When overwhelmed, fall back upon this principle: Prioritize and Execute.”
“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. That leader and his or her team are far more likely to win.”
- “In a striking realization that military units throughout history have come to understand by experience, it became clear that no person had the cognitive capacity, the physical presence, or the knowledge of everything happening across a complex battlefield to effectively lead…my leaders learned they must rely on their subordinate leaders to take charge of their smaller teams within the team and allow them to execute based on a good understanding of the broader mission (known as the Commander’s Intent), and standard operating procedures…They couldn’t ask, ‘What do I do?’ Instead, they had to state: ‘This is what I am going to do.’”
“I advise many officers that the right amount of involvement – the proper position for them – was somewhere in the middle, generally with the bulk of their force: not so far forward that they get sucked into every room clearance, but not so far back that they don’t know what is going on up front. Contrary to a common misconception, leaders are not stuck in any particular position. Leaders must be free to move to where they are most needed, which changes throughout the course of an operation.” - “Planning begins with mission analysis…The mission must explain the overall purpose and desired result, or ‘end state,’ of the operation…The planning process and briefing must be a forum that encourages discussion, questions, and clarification from even the most junior personnel…The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?”
- “Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well…We have to own everything in our world…Leading up the chain takes much more savvy and skill than leading down the chain. Leading up, the leader cannot fall back on his or her positional authority. Instead, the subordinate leader must use influence, experience, knowledge, communication, and maintain the highest professionalism.”
- “In combat as in life, the outcome is never certain, the picture never clear. There are no guarantees of success. But in order to succeed, leaders must be comfortable under pressure, and act on logic, not emotion. This is a critical component to victory…It is critical for leaders to act decisively amid uncertainty; to make the best decisions they can based on only the immediate information available…There is no 100 percent right solution. The picture is never complete. Leaders must be comfortable with this and be able to make decisions promptly, then be ready to adjust those decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information.”
- “Discipline equals freedom…Waking up early was the first example I noticed in the SEAL Teams in which discipline was really the difference between being good and being exceptional…by discipline, I mean an intrinsic self-discipline – a matter of personal will. The best SEALs I worked with were invariably the most disciplined.”
“As I advanced into leadership positions, I strived to constantly improve my personal discipline. I realized very quickly that discipline was not only the most important quality for an individual but also for a team. The more disciplined standard operating procedures a team employs, the more freedom they have to practice Decentralized Command and thus they can execute faster, sharper, and more efficiently…We had the freedom to work within the framework of our disciplined procedures.”
Connection (3 ways this new information connects to my growth):
- I am challenged by the concept I also learned by studying John Wooden’s methodologies of holding a team to the highest standards, even in details such as how to tie a shoelace. The above leaders noted that although they had standard operating procedures, they continued to define even more minute disciplines in order to focus their men.
- In leading, on one difficult occasion, the leader found it helpful to give his men short-term immediate goals to motivate them as they were accomplishing a long and arduous training program. This is a good motivating tool.
- As these men led their teams in taking the city of Ramadi, in the Iraq war, they saw some of the most intense fighting anywhere in the world. For their leadership to remain calm when things went awry is challenging to me. They give the following strategy in times of stress in Prioritize and Execute:
- Evaluate the highest priority problem
- Lay out in simple, clear, and concise terms the highest priority effort for your team
- Develop and determine a solution, seek input from key leaders and from the team where possible
- Direct the execution of that solution, focusing all efforts and resources toward this priority task
- Move on to the next highest priority problem. Repeat.
- When priorities shift within the team, pass situational awareness both up and down the chain
- Don’t let the focus on one priority cause target fixation. Maintain the ability to see other problems developing and rapidly shift as needed
Application (2 ways I will incorporate what I have learned):
- I will endeavor to develop myself in the Prioritize/Execute discipline, to be prepared in potentially stressful situations that need quick decisions
- I will continue to stretch my team towards greater discipline and focus on the details.