Instaread - Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Guide to

Jocko Willinks & et al

Extreme Ownership

How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win

by Instaread

Please Note

This is a companion to the original book.

Copyright 2015 by Instaread. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of these contents and disclaim all warranties such as warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The author or publisher is not liable for any damages whatsoever. The fact that an individual or organization is referred to in this document as a citation or source of information does not imply that the author or publisher endorses the information that the individual or organization provided. This concise companion is unofficial and is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by the original books author or publisher.

Table of Contents

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin is a guide to applying leadership principles of the United States Navys Sea, Air, and Land Teams (SEALs) to business. At the center of the strategies that Willink and Babin illustrate is taking complete responsibility for everything in which all leaders are involved.

Willink was the commander of Babin who was a platoon commander of SEAL Task Unit Bruiser which was deployed to Baghdad and Ramadi during the Iraq War. Throughout their deployments, they helped clear insurgent forces from large portions of both cities and established a US military presence that helped stabilize the region. They worked closely with US Marines, Army, Air Force, and Iraqi Army troops in missions that extended deep into enemy-held territory. In the course of the complex missions they carried out, Willink and Babin often had to adapt to unusual or rapidly changing circumstances.

When they completed their deployments, Willink and Babin directed SEAL leadership training and witnessed how effective leaders emerged in the most difficult phase of training. After Willink and Babin left the SEALs, they founded the leadership consulting firm Echelon Front to bring the leadership lessons of the SEALs to the private sector. Among the lessons they teach are that a team is only as good as its leader, that ego is an obstacle to finding solutions, and that discipline results in freedom.

Jocko Willink: Jocko Willink was the commander for SEAL Task Unit Bruiser, the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War, in Baghdad and Ramadi. He directed leadership training for the SEALs after his deployment and founded leadership consultancy Echelon Front with Leif Babin.

Leif Babin: Leif Babin was a platoon commander in SEAL Task Unit Bruiser during their deployment to Baghdad and Ramadi. He was mentored by Willink, directed leadership training for the SEALs, and founded leadership consultancy Echelon Front with Willink.

Marc Lee: Marc Lee was the first Navy SEAL killed in combat during the Iraq War. Babin takes responsibility for his death because he was his platoon commander.

Ryan Job: Ryan Job was blinded while deployed as a SEAL under Babins command. He later died of a preventable hospital error.

Mike Monsoor: Mike Monsoor was a Navy SEAL killed during the Iraq War as he shielded his fellow soldiers from an enemy grenade.

Chris Kyle: Chris Kyle was a SEAL sniper in Task Unit Bruiser during the Iraq War. He wrote an autobiography, entitled American Sniper, following his honorable discharge and, after his death, his life was portrayed in an award-winning film of the same name.

1. Leaders must demonstrate extreme ownership with everything they have responsibility over.
2. A team is only as good as its leader. The effects of good leadership are infectious.
3. Leaders are responsible for making sure that everyone on the team understands the purpose of their mission.
4. Leaders must be sure their egos and the egos of team members do not interfere with the teams objectives.
5. SEAL teams practice cover and move within their team and across teams, which is the practice of giving each other support to achieve each others objectives. In business, different divisions of a single company can assist each other to ensure that both meet their objectives.
6. Plans and principles should be simple to ensure that they are understandable by everyone involved and easy to communicate. A plan that is unnecessarily complicated is more likely to fail.
7. In a chaotic combat or working environment, a leader must prioritize the most important things to accomplish and organize team members to execute that priority without distractions. Then the team can move on to the next priority.
8. An effective leader decentralizes command, delegates responsibilities to junior members of the team, trains them in leadership, and trusts in their decision making processes.
9. A thoroughly detailed plan that every team member understands is vital to mission success. A good plan accounts for all likely risks and allows for flexibility.
10. A leader is responsible not just for ensuring the team is informed, but also communicating with their own leaders to ensure that they have the information they need so that everyone is comfortable with and fully aware of operations.
11. When a situation involves uncertainty, leaders must be willing to make a decisive choice based on whether they know enough about the situation. That may be a safe choice or a drastic change.
12. Disciplined habits provide freedom in the form of more time, more confidence, and a better model for team members.

Leaders must demonstrate extreme ownership with everything they have responsibility over.

Analysis

Leaders may feel the need to place blame elsewhere in order to preserve their own self-esteem, but the most effective leaders consider themselves responsible for everything their teams do. Rather than viewing an accident as unavoidable because a team member did it, leaders explore ways in which they could have prevented the accident, perhaps by better educating the team member, supervising them more closely, or simplifying the process in which the accident occurred.

The impulse to search for excuses elsewhere is strong in anyone, even leaders, because admitting to a mistake can sometimes cost someone a job or result in penalties that could be easily passed to someone else who may be considered more responsible. However, effective leaders are not so quick to single out team members for blame because the leader is often responsible for some aspect of the members behavior, right or wrong, and accepting that responsibility can increase the teams and superiors respect for the leader. Doing so also reduces the pressure on team members who may not operate at their best when they feel guilt and when the stakes to be responsible for the projects outcome are high. When leaders take extreme ownership of the teams performance, they should still be ready to review the teams performance and find ways they could each improve, as demonstrated when Willink took responsibility for the death of an Iraqi soldier in a friendly fire incident involving his task unit, but still reviewed the incident in detail with his unit to identify mistakes.

A team is only as good as its leader. The effects of good leadership are infectious.

Analysis

Teams with good leaders can effectively solve problems together because they understand their roles, are united in their mission, and adapt quickly under decisive leadership. Teams with poor leaders have more difficulty because they communicate less effectively, may feel compelled to compete rather than cooperate, and do not receive confident guidance from a single individual. A poor leader may blame team performance on the quality of the team, but that excuse is undermined when installing a good leader to the same team improves the teams performance dramatically. If a team has already worked under a good leader, a poor leader can step in and be improved by the teams habits. When Willink and Babin were directing SEAL training, they witnessed the effect that a strong leader could have on a weak team when the candidates were completing arduous back-to-back boat races. They switched the best performing teams leader with the worst performing teams leader, and the worst team started beating the previous best team.