My Reading: ‘Extreme Ownership’ by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
(How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win)
The writers are battle-tested SEAL officers and instructors of the SEAL training academy, who participated in the urban warfare at Ar Ramadi (Iraq) during the Operation Iraqi Freedom.
From real-life experiences, they described some factual scenarios and drew a summarised lesson from each section.
These are probably mundane pearls of the same wisdom that have been circulated and practiced for ages. Yet, it’s worth revising those as we can use the same principles in diverse sectors of life.
The fundamental lesson reverberating throughout the book is that our life is absolutely our responsibility. If the results are not satisfactory, we need to continue the iteration of rechecking, detection, and readjustments to solve.
No matter how legitimate and reasonable it seems, we can not open the valve of blaming and complaining. It will only cloud our judgment and create an excuse to take a back seat from working on the problem.
The book particularly addresses the characteristics of leadership positions. However, a leader, first, leads his or her own life before leading a team. Therefore, the lessons come down to our very personal level of practice and improvement.
Selective Summary Reading of the Book
“The best-performing SEAL units had leaders who accepted responsibility for everything. Every mistake, every failure or shortfall — those leaders would own it.”
That is what epitomizes the principle of successful leadership in the Navy SEAL.
We often attribute the success of others to their luck or opportunity, while putting our miseries on the shoulder of excuses, others, and even natural causes.
According to this philosophy, a person can not blame anyone or anything for the outcomes, no matter what. Everything starts with this motto and comes around back to it, eventually.
So, a leader has to take Extreme Responsibility for everything!
The SEAL basic training course is known as the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training (known as BUD/S). The training in this course is designed to ensure that the graduated men are not only physically fit, but, they can also over-think their adversaries in the toughest situations.
In one of the grueling exercises: “The BUD/S students were grouped into teams — “boat crews” of seven men, established by height. Each seven-man boat crew was assigned an IBS — inflatable boat, small. An IBS was small by U.S. Navy terms but awfully large and heavy when carried by hand.”
During the exercise, one team was demonstrating performance that was subpar and unacceptable.
So, the instructors decided to swap out the boat crew leaders from the best (Boat Crew II) and the worst crews (Boat Crew VI) as an experiment.
The result was: “Boat Crew VI was in the lead and maintained first place all the way across the finish line, just ahead of Boat Crew II. Boat Crew VI had won the race. A miraculous turnaround had taken place: Boat Crew VI had gone from the last place to first.”
It was an eye-opening confirmation that “leadership is the single greatest 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. The leader drives performance — or doesn’t. And this applies not just to the most senior leader of an overall team, but to the junior leaders of teams within the team.”
There are no bad teams, only bad leaders!
Now, a legitimate question arises, how the Boat Crew II still managed second place under the worst leadership? The answer is: “Boat Crew Two’s original leader had instilled a culture of Extreme Ownership, of winning and how to win, in every individual.”
“Repetitive exceptional performance became a habit. Each individual knew what they needed to do to win and did it. They no longer needed explicit direction”
During this training session, the subpar leader in the previous example improved himself and graduated, eventually.
However, what if a member of a team continues to underperform, irrespective of the efforts and logistics provided to grow and excel?
To ensure a synchronized team performance, it is crucial to maintain the homogeneity of a high standard.
“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.”
An effective leader sets the standard and, also weeds out the non-improving underperformers if necessary!
Once the officers pass the training courses, operating in the designated scenarios or not. Someone may wonder how these ultra functioning people continue to maintaining fitness and high performing condition. Because the temptation is always there to fall back to the relaxation!
Besides, one key aspect of SEALs is that they are team performers, unlike many supersoldiers of literature and movie operating with individual bravado.
This is how they maintain the fitness of both the individual and the team: “We had trained for hundreds of hours, iteration after iteration, drill after drill, until we could operate not just as a group of individuals, but as a team — a synchronized machine, maneuvering with precision and efficiency through the challenges of chaotic battlefields.
As SEALs, we kept ourselves in peak physical condition so that we could execute tough missions and meet the extreme physical demands of combat.”
“If there was no gym at our training location, we’d be out on the road for a hard run, in the parking lot dragging or flipping heavy tires, or on the mats in fierce grappling and jiu-jitsu contests — whatever we could do to stay strong and conditioned.”
While developing the synchronized team dynamics, they also standardize and practice the basic tasks to reduce the risk of potential confusion, and complexity while operating.
“We standardized the way we loaded vehicles. We standardized the way we mustered in a building on a target. We standardized the way we “broke out” (or exited) from buildings. We standardized the way we got head counts to ensure we had all of our troops.
We even standardized our radio voice procedures so that the most important information could be communicated quickly and clearly to the whole troop without confusion. There was a disciplined methodology to just about everything we did.”
Standardize, and clear-up the brain for other creative thoughts!
Those are logistical details prepared to be mission-ready. However, one piece of non-materialistic aspect is critical to have the whole team committed and run on the motion. There comes the role of the leader with paramount importance!
“In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission.”
“Actions and words reflect belief with clear confidence and self-assuredness that is not possible when belief is in doubt. The challenge comes when that alignment isn’t explicitly clear.
When a leader’s confidence breaks, those who are supposed to follow him or her see this and begin to question their own belief in the mission.”
The leader must be a true believer in the mission!
Being supermotivated and committed will to little to nothing, or even worse, unless the plans and communications are simple and easy to grasp.
“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 a total disaster.”
“Tactical leaders must be confident that they clearly understand the strategic mission and Commander’s Intent. They must have implicit trust that their senior leaders will back their decisions.”
It is critical to keep plans and communication simple!
Once you are in operation in the real field, probably, everything that can go wrong will go wrong! No matter how simple plans or the approach of communications are. Things will get complex pretty quickly and will only grow in numbers.
“On the battlefield, countless problems compound in a snowball effect, every challenge complex in its own right, each demanding attention. But a leader must remain calm and make the best decisions possible. To do this, SEAL combat leaders utilize Prioritize and Execute. We verbalize this principle with this direction: “Relax, look around, make a call.”
When overwhelmed: Prioritize and Execute!
No matter how quickly and efficiently you prioritize to solve a problem, all variables will never be known, counted, or grasped. So, you proceed whatever you have in your hand at the moment.
“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.”
We face this ‘incomplete picture’ in our professional and personal lives as well. A leader, as a person and as a team, needs to make a judgment call, instead of waiting for the complete information which may never be available.
An efficient leader, because of their experience or natural trait, or training, develops an intuitive sense of the situations to make a decisive call for action.
Make a call out of the incomplete picture!
The action gets the things done during the operations. It is also important that highly trained professionals maintain their peak operational fitness without losing the resonance over the period of time.
Developing a lifestyle with disciplinary habit is what provide them the edge of peak performance in the long haul.
“Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say “first alarm clock” because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery-powered, one windup. That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment.”
“If I wanted extra time to work on my gear, clean my weapons, study tactics or new technology, I needed to make that time.”
“Those who were at work before everyone else were the ones who were considered the best “operators.”
“Nothing is easy. The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But discipline is paramount to ultimate success and victory for any leader and any team.
The more discipline you have to work out, train your body physically and become stronger, the lighter your gear feels and the easier you can move around in it.”
Discipline is the key!
Maintaining healthy emotional exposure also really helps!
“It is normal — and necessary — to show emotion. The team must understand that their leader cares about them and their well-being.”
“Leaders who lose their temper also lose respect. But, at the same time, to never show any sense of anger, sadness, or frustration would make that leader appear void of any emotion at all — a robot. People do not follow robots.”
A leader must be calm but not robotic!
“A leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself. Leaders must never get so close that the team forgets who is in charge.”
Maintain a healthy distance with the subordinates!
And, finally, let’s get back to the core principle of this book that a person, leader or not, needs to take the full responsibility of the situations. There is no one else to blame, except to understand and execute to bring in the intended outcome.
“If your boss isn’t making a decision in a timely manner or providing necessary support for you and your team, don’t blame the boss. First, blame yourself.”
“You and your team may not represent the priority effort at that particular time. Or perhaps the senior leadership has chosen a different direction. Have the humility to understand and accept this.”
“If your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win.”
Inspect yourself first, and work to get it done with full responsibility!
Conclusive Remarks
In the book, the writers portrayed some classical principles that everyone can use in their day-to-day life to have extraordinary transformation!
What it sums up is that living our life is a very personal experience, no matter how much connected we all are. It is our individual responsibility, irrespective of how intimately collective we end up.
That we do not have anyone else to blame is a pretty humble and lonely realization!
In retrospect, I find it very enlightening that this apparently helpless stance can also provide us an enormous strength of focus to work on our decisions!
This particular principle tremendously helped me to navigate through the rough terrain of my doctoral journey. That is why I decided to spend time writing this summarized review.
In my opinion, the rest of the book is merely the necessary details to create a plaster of a story corroborating this specific lesson.
A note to improve
I can not agree more with the writers on the notion that no one likes to follow the Robots. Ironically, I found the tone of the book as a bit robotic in the description, and thus void of life and emotions.
This might be attributed to either the brutal lifestyle of the writers or the fact that they described the same lessons in the context of the corporate business world.
This conclusion might also be the result of my oriental mindset and how I am accustomed to seeing the war books/novels unfolding the narrations!
Disclaimer
I quoted the relevant paragraphs from the book as it is to make sure that the readers are getting the exact messages that the writers/officers wanted to convey. However, the selections were based on my personal preference for relevance and necessity. The preface, connecting texts, conclusions, and the overall tone of the article is also subject to my own understanding.
Besides, the writers included separate sections with the example of the corporate business world depicting how the same principles can be applied there as well, which are largely avoided in this article.
Acknowledgment: The writer of this review article acknowledges Anwar Hossain for providing the book.
