Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink - Book Summary

This is my summary of ‘Extreme Ownership’ by Jocko Willink. My notes are informal and tailored to my own interests at the time of reading. They mostly contain quotes from the book as well as some of my own thoughts. I enjoyed this book and would recommend you read it yourself (check it out on Amazon).

What is leadership?

• Your responsibility as a leader:  

  • The direct responsibility of a leader includes getting people to listen, support, and execute plans. You can’t make people listen to you. You can’t make them execute. That might be a temporary solution for a simple task. But to implement real change, to drive people to accomplish something truly complex or difficult or dangerous - you can’t make people do these things. You have to lead them. 

• There are no bad teams, only bad leaders: 

  • Leadership is the single biggest factor in any team’s performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team. 

  • When a strong leader is temporarily removed from a team, performance continues to improve. 

  • “There are no bad units, only bad officers.” - US Army

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Extreme ownership

• Definition: 

  • Absolute ownership - not just of those things for which you are responsible, but for everything that impacts your mission. The leader is truly and ultimately responsible for everything. 

  • Examples: 

    • If a supporting unit didn’t do what we needed it to do, then I hadn’t given clear instructions. 

    • If one of my machine gunners engaged targets outside of his field of fire, then I had not ensured he understood where his field of fire was. 

    • If the enemy surprised us and hit us where we hadn’t expected, then I hadn’t thought through all the possibilities. 

• Make no excuses: 

  • Take ownership of failures, seek guidance on how to improve, and figure out a way to overcome challenges on the next iteration. Cast no blame.

  • When a bad leader walks into a debrief and blames everyone else, that attitude gets picked by subordinates and team member, who then follow suit. They all blame everyone else, and inevitably the team becomes ineffective and unable to properly execute a plan. 

  • Examples: 

    • “There is only one person to blame for this: me. I am the commander. I am responsible for the entire operation. As the senior man, I am responsible for every action that takes place on the battlefield. There is no one to blame but me.” 

    • “This isn’t his fault, it’s yours. You are in charge, so the fact that he didn’t follow procedure is your fault. And you have to believe that, because it’s true. When you talk to him, you need to start the conversation like this: ‘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. You are an extremely skilled and knowledgeable super-intendent. You know more about this business than I ever will. It was up to me to make sure you know the parameters we have to work within and why some decisions have got to be run through me. Now, I need to fix this so it happens again. -- If you approached it as he did something wrong, and he needs to fix something, and he is at fault, it becomes a clash of egos and you two will be at odds. That’s human nature. But, if you put your own ego in check, meaning you take the blame, that will allow him to actually see the problem without his vision clouded by ego. Then you both can make sure that your team’s standard operating procedures - when to communicate, what is and isn’t within his decision-making authority - are clearly understood.” 

—

Discipline equals freedom

• By discipline, I mean an intrinsic self-discipline - a matter of personal will. 

• Discipline starts with the small things: 

  • Discipline starts every morning when the first alarm goes off. That moment is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win - you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. 

  • High-and-tight haircuts, a clean shave every day, and uniforms maintained. With that, the more important things fall into place: body armor and helmets are worn outdoors at all times, and weapons cleaned and ready for use at a moment’s notice. 

• Those SEALs who were at work before everyone else were the ones who were considered the best “operators”. That meant they had the best field craft, the most squared away gear, they were the best shots, and they were the most respected. 

• They worked out every day. Some of them even went out on the town, drank, and stayed up until the early hours of the morning. But they still woke up early and maintained discipline at every level.

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Leading others

• Build relationships: 

• What you are trying to do in a leadership position: build relationships. That’s what business is. What’s what combat leadership is. That’s what life is. That’s how you lead people. You build relationships with them. How do you build relationships? Respect people. Be humble. Listen. Have integrity and tell them the truth. 

• Leaders sometimes use half-truths and they shadow things. You can’t do that because people see right through it. Even if someone doesn’t know what the truth is, they definitely know when they’re not getting the truth. 

• Ownership helps you build relationships. You have to take ownership when there are problems - and then you have to get the problems solved. Then, when things go right, you pass the reward and credit on to your team. 

• Inspire confidence: 

  • In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission a leader must be a true believer in the mission. Even when others doubt and question the amount of risk, asking, “Is it worth it?” the leader must believe in the greater cause. Actions and words reflect belief with a clear confidence and self-assuredness that is not possible when belief is in doubt. 

  • Always operate with the understanding that you are part of something greater than yourself and your own personal interests. 

• Communicate clearly with your Commander’s intent and mission brief: 

  • Keep things simple: 

    • The mission must explain the overall purpose and desired result, or “end state” of the operation. The frontline troops tasked with executing the mission must understand the deeper purpose behind the mission. While a simple statement, the commander’s intent is actually the most important part of the brief. When understood by everyone involved in the execution of the plan, it guides each decision and action on the ground. 

    • Leaders must carefully prioritize the information to be presented in as simple, clear, and concise a format as possible so that participants do not experience information overload. 

  • Connect the dots: 

    • It is paramount that senior leaders explain to their junior leaders and troops executing the mission how their role contributes to big picture success. Even when a leader thinks his troops understand the bigger picture, they very often have difficulty connecting the dots between the tactical mission they are immersed in with the greater overarching goal. 

  • The true test for a good brief: 

    • The true test for a good brief is not whether the senior officers are impressed. It’s whether or not the troops who are going to execute the operation actually understand it. Everything else is bullshit. 

    • If your team isn’t doing what you need them to do, you first have to look at yourself. Rather than blame them for not seeing the strategic picture, you must figure out a way to better communicate it to them in terms that are simple, clear, and concise, so that they understand. 

  • Encourage participation: 

    • The planning process and briefing must be a forum that encourages discussion, questions, and clarification from even the most junior personnel. Leaders must ask questions of their troops, encourage interaction, and ensure their teams understand the plan. 

• Rely on decentralized command: 

  • Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people, particularly when things go sideways and inevitable contingencies arise. 

  • Instead, leaders must rely on their subordinate leaders to take charge of their smaller teams within the team. Those leaders must understand the overall mission, and the ultimate goal of that mission - the commander’s intent. Every tactical leader must understand understand not just what to do but why they are doing it. 

  • Junior leaders must be empowered to make decisions on key tasks necessary to accomplish the mission. They shouldn’t ask, “What do I do?” Instead, they should state: “This is what I am going to do.” 

  • Simplicity is important. Proper decentralized command required simple, clear, concise orders that can be understood easily by everyone in the chain of command. 

  • I wanted every guy to think that he was the most important guy. I wanted the radioman to think he was most important because he could call in fire support. I wanted the combat medic to think that he was most important because he was going to save everybody. I wanted the machine gunners to think they were most important because they were going to lay down the fire and get us out. You need them all, because it’s a team.

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Execution

• Focus on the overall strategic mission: 

  • It falls on leaders to continually keep perspective on the strategic mission and remind the team that they are part of the greater team and the strategic mission is paramount. 

  • When the team succeeds, everyone within and supporting that team succeeds. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. 

  • When smaller teams within the team get so focused on their immediate tasks, they forget about what others are doing or how they depend on other teams. They may start to compete with one another, and when there are obstacles, animosity and blame develops. This creates friction that inhibits the overall team’s performance. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission. 

• Prioritize and execute: 

  • Leaders can be overwhelmed if they try to tackle multiple problems or a number of tasks simultaneously. The team will likely fail at each of those tasks. Instead leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. 

  • Remain calm, step back from your immediate emotional reaction, and determine the greatest priority for the team. Then, rapidly direct the team to attack that priority. Once the wheels are in motion and the full resources of the team are engaged in that highest priority effort, you can then determine the next priority, focus the team’s effort there, and then move on to the next priority. Relax, look around, and make a call. 

• Be decisive: 

  • Leaders cannot be paralyzed by fear. That results in inaction. It is critical for leaders to act decisively amid uncertainty; to make the best decisions they can based on only the immediate information available. 

  • As a leader, you want to be seen - you need to be seen - as decisive, and willing to make tough choices. 

  • There is no 100% 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 based on evolving situations and new information. 

  • Intelligence gathering and research are important, but they must be employed with realistic expectations and must not impede swift decision making that is often the difference between victory and defeat. 

  • US Navy sailors in WWII whose ships had been severely damaged, with their ships taking on water and in danger of sinking, those sailors sometimes had to secure the hatch to a flooded compartment when men who were their friends were still in those compartments, in order to save the ship. That’s an unbelievably hard decision. But they knew that if they did not make that call, they risked everyone else. They needed to make the toughest decision in order to save the ship and save all the other men aboard. 

• Disagree and commit: 

  • Senior leadership wants you to succeed. 

  • If you don’t understand or believe in the decisions coming down from your leadership, don’t throw up your hands in frustration. It is up to you to ask questions until you understand how and why those decisions are being made: 

    • Not knowing why prohibits you from believing in the mission. When you are in a leadership position, that is a recipe for failure, and it is unacceptable. 

    • 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. 

    • Provide them with constructive feedback so they can appreciate the impact those plans or requirements have on your operations. 

  • Once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision - even if that decision is one you argued against - you must execute the plan as if it were you own. 

  • Leadership must always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization. 

—

Other interesting ideas

• Parallels with ideas from the world of product: 

  • Continuous improvement: Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. 

  • Dual-track agile: Stay at least a step or two ahead of real-time problems. 

  • Retrospectives: The best SEAL units, after each combat operation, conduct what we call a “post-operational debrief”. No matter how exhausted from an operation or how busy planning for the next mission, time is made for this debrief because lives and future mission success depends on it. 

• Stakeholder management: 

  • Engage with them. Build a personal relationship with them. Explain to them what you need from them and why, and ask them what you can do to help them get you what you need. Make them a part of your team, not an excuse for your team. 

  • The enemy is out there. The enemy is all the other competing companies in your industry that are vying for your customers. The enemy is not in here, inside the walls of this corporation. You are all on the same team. You have to overcome the ‘us versus them’ mentality and work together, mutually supporting one another. 

  • Invite your senior executives out to the field to see your team in action. 

• Team size: 

  • Teams must be broken down into manageable elements of four to five operators, with a clearly designated leader. The SEAL teams and the US military, much like militaries throughout history, are based around building blocks of four-to-six-man teams with a leader. We call them ‘fire teams’. 

• Resilience: 

  • A phrase we used when facing anything particularly challenging or miserable: “Good times.” 

• Support your own boss: 

  • One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss. 

  • Don’t ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do. 

• Decision making - type 1 vs type 2 decisions: 

  • Some decisions, while immediately impactful, can be quickly reversed or altered; other decisions, like shooting another human being, cannot be undone. If we waited to take this shot we could later change course, while a decision to pull the trigger and engage this shadowy target would be final. 

• Idea generation: 

  • Some of the boldest, most successful plans in history have not come from the senior ranks but from frontline leaders. Senior leaders simply had the courage to accept and run with them. 

• Giving feedback: 

  • Don’t confuse being honest with being blunt and untactful and a jerk. 

• Accountability:

  • 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. Leaders must enforce standards.

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