Exceptional Leaders take Absolute Ownership
Introduction
Spoiler alert, the five-word quote above summarizes what this exceptional 312-page leadership book explains in easy to understand prose. If you do not take the time to read this book, that is your loss; however, if that is the case, do yourself a favour and remember the quote above and APPLY it. If you don’t fully understand what taking “absolute ownership” means then you will just have to read the book ?.
Why am I writing and posting a book review on leadership on Forever Active, a web site dedicated to improving an older adult’s fitness and wellness? Because, if you embrace the fundamental principals of this book (there are twelve of them) you will lead a better, more complete, balanced, accountable lifestyle. This includes improved fitness and wellness.
If you follow the twelve principles explained and illustrated in this book, “excuses” will no longer be part of your living vocabulary. You will become totally accountable for what you think, say and do and this will lead you to be a better person and leader. You may be the CEO of a large multi national corporation, a manager of a small corporate division, a principal of a school or teacher in a class room, a volunteer coach, a parent, a friend, a husband or wife, a brother or sister. Regardless of the multiple roles you play in life, you are leader in each of them and you will benefit from reading this book. You are the leader of your life and this book will help you manage your life so you will be more successful and happier. As the authors state in the introductory chapter, “when the principles are properly understood and implemented, they enable any leader/person to become effective and to dominate their own battlefield.”
Crap happens in our lives all the time, this is a fact, but what is most important is how we deal with the crap. I will give you an example. A drunk driver runs a red light and his car slams into the side of your car and kills your wife who is the passenger. It is hard to imagine something more horrific than that. What is your reaction, how do you handle and respond to this horrific tragedy? Obviously, you will be angry at the driver. You may even want to seek revenge, “he deserves to die or live in prison for the rest of his life for what he has done.” You may also go through the stages of denial and depression. These are expected reactions and part of what is commonly be referred to as the five stages of grief. The other two stages being bargaining and acceptance. What Extreme Ownership will teach you is how to deal with our own tragedies and help you get through the stages of grief in a healthy productive way. The principles will help you to take ownership of your reactions and of your life, as you deal with your grief and begin to heal. Learning, embracing and implementing these twelve principles is not easy, but nothing in life really comes easy but the rewards of doing so are huge.
As illustrated in the above example, Extreme Ownership is not just for things that we are responsible for but for everything that impacts our lives. In all situations Extreme Ownership leaders cast no blame, they make no excuses. Instead of complaining about challenges or setbacks, they develop solutions and solve problems. They leverage assets, relationships and resources that are available to them to get the job done, to deal productively with the issues before them. To be an Extreme Ownership leader your ego no longer controls you. You control you, and you become accountable for everything that happens in your life. Extreme Ownership gives you the opportunity to live a life free of assigning blame on others. You are in control and that is something very powerful to possess in life.
Extreme Ownership is written by two U.S. Navy Seals, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin who served together in Ar Ramadi,. Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Specifically, in 2006 the were leading the fight in the “Battle of Ramadi” and were responsible for building, training and leading high-performance marine units that proved exceptional in combating and defeating enemy forces.
Their purpose in writing this book was to capture the leadership principles they used and to share them with others because they felt that these principles could have a huge impact on the lives of others beyond the battlefield. They felt that this was true regardless if a person applying them was in a corporate setting, part of a team or small group or just an individual dealing with life’s daily challenges.
Powerfully, they explain what it means to fail, to lose, to be surprised and out-maneuvered, and to lose a fellow soldier in battle. Most importantly however, they explain how they used those “hard lessons” to preserve, to get better, to develop best practises that would produce the desired results. They did this by developing the twelve principles that make up Extreme Ownership.
The Twelve Principals
- Extreme Ownership
- No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders
- Believe
- Check the Ego
- Cover and Move
- Simple
- Prioritize and Execute
- Decentralized Command
- Plan
- Leading Up and Down the Chain of Command
- Decisiveness amid Uncertainty
- Discipline Equals Freedom – The Dichotomy of Leadership
This book is for any person who aspires to better themselves. The authors feel that the battle field is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified. They recognize that the twelve principles that allow you to take Extreme Ownership of your life as well as any leadership situation that you find yourself in are not easy concepts to understand nor are they easy to embrace and implement. To help with this, each chapter dealing with a specific principle is broken down into three subsections. The first sub section identifies the particular leadership lesson learned through their U.S. Navy Seal combat or training experience. The second subsection explains the leadership principle and the third subsection demonstrate the principle’s application to the business world which can then be extended to personal use.
1. Extreme Ownership
In any organization, on any team, all responsibility for success and failure rest with the leader. “The leader (individual) must own everything in his or her own world.” This is a fundamental core concept. Extreme Ownership requires that you do not blame others but you must first look in the mirror at yourself.
As a leader of a team you must take full responsibility for developing and communicating strategy, tactics, training and resources. As an individual, you cannot make excuses for our own failures. You can not blame poor performance on circumstances beyond your control, on your supervisors or subordinates or on anyone but yourself.
Taking ownership when things go wrong requires great humility and courage but is absolutely necessary to learning, growing and improving as a leader and individual.
The principle of Extreme Ownership requires you to look at a situation and at yourself through the objective lens of reality, without emotional attachment or ego. You must accept responsibility for failure, admit weaknesses and consistently work to build a better and effective team/you.
2. No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders
This principle compliments and facilitates the first principle of Extreme Ownership.
Faults or failures rest at the top, with you and no one else. From a team perspective, as their leader you must get each member to buy into the concept of their own individual Extreme Ownership and to support each other in the process of focusing exclusively on the goal trying to be achieved by the team. Once the culture of Extreme Ownership is built into the team at every level, the entire team will perform better.
“When it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.”
From a standards perspective, as a leader or as an individual, it is not what you preach, but what you tolerate that is important. If substandard performance is accepted with no accountability, the poor performance becomes the new standard. You must enforce standards and make sure tasks are repeated until the higher expected standards are achieved.
Constant improvement must become the norm. Be a realist in your assessment of yourself and your team, identify weaknesses, implement strategies to strengthen them and to over come future challenges.
3. Believe (Understanding the “Why”)
“If you understand the why, you can overcome the how.”
As an individual or leader, you must be a true believer in what goals you are trying to achieve. If you don’t believe, you cannot convince others to believe.
In a team environment, the challenge comes when your belief is not explicitly clear to your subordinates. If they do not understand the “why” they must ask questions up the chain of leadership until they understand and are committed and until they fully believe in the “why.”
The leader is responsible to have everyone on the team believing in the mission and clear on the objectives.
The team will believe in the mission only if they understand why.
As a leader you must explain not just what you do, but why.
4. Check the Ego
Ego disrupts everything, from planning to taking good advice to accepting constructive criticism. Everyone has an ego and that is good. It is what allows us to set lofty goals. However, if ego is left unchecked it can become destructive by clouding judgement and preventing you from seeing things as they really are.
“Total responsibility for failure is a difficult thing to accept, and taking ownership when things go wrong requires extraordinary humility and courage. But doing just that is an absolute necessity to learning, growing as a leader, and improving a team’s performance – Jocko Willink
In a team environment, unchecked ego can lead to personal agendas becoming more important than the team, and performance suffers and failure follows.
Extreme Ownership requires a high degree of humility. It requires admitting mistakes, taking ownership, developing strategies for self improvement. It is important to be confident but not cocky. Never think you are too good to fail. Never get complacent.
5. Cover and Move
This is the most fundamental tactic in combat and in any team environment. Each team member must acknowledge that they rely on each other for team success. Each team member must be willing to cover their teammate’s back. If team divisions arise, which they always do, as their leader you must remind team members that the whole is greater than the individual parts and that accomplishing the team goal is most important. If the team succeeds everyone succeeds.
From an individual perspective, you must break down silos and recognize that operating independently is not always the best way. There are times when two heads are better than one. There are times when you will need someone to cover your back, and times when you need to cover for someone else. Isolation leads to vulnerability and often failure. Forge relationships with colleagues and competitors. Greater success will follow.
6. Simple
“Communication is the response you get”
Life, like combat has inherent layers of complexities and complexities compound issues. Goals and strategies, must be communicated clearly, concisely and simply. You must communicate in a way that the lowest common denominator on the team understands. As well, it is critical that team members be able to ask questions to clarify when they do not understand and as a leader you must encourage this communication and take the time to explain.
Individually, if you can not communicate with others in a clear, concise and simple manner, you can not succeed. A 30 second “elevator speech” to explain things, anything, is a good rule to follow. If the person you are communicating with cannot accurately and concisely repeat what you are trying to explain, to them you have not communicated with them effectively.
Keep things simple, Stupid.
7. Prioritize and Execute
“Relax, look around, make a call”
In life, just like on the battlefield, challenges are usually complex. As an effective leader/individual, you must remain calm and make the best decisions possible. Do not become overwhelmed and try to tackle multiple problems simultaneously. Rather, determine the highest priority task and execute.
Preventive planning is an effective way to manage challenging situations. Use your experience to make contingency plans in anticipation of likely challenges that could arise.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff.” It is easy to get sidetracked and lose focus in the details of a situation. It is effective to step back and look at the bigger picture to help correctly prioritize what needs to be done to achieve your goals.
You must remain flexible when prioritizing. It is critical to avoid target fixation on a single issue. Recognize when the highest priority tasks shift and be ready to quickly reprioritize efforts.
Summary
- Evaluate the highest priority problem
- Establish / communicate clearly and simply the highest priority effort
- Execute the solution
- Move onto the next highest priority problem and repeat.
- Don’t develop target fixation. Maintain the ability to see other problems developing and rapidly shift strategy and execution as needed.
8. DECENTRALIZE Command
Research suggest that hands on managing more than 6-10 people is ineffective. Teams must be broken down into manageable elements of ideally 4- 5 people with a clearly designated leader who must fully understand what is within their decision-making authority. As well, there must be open lines of communication to and from senior leaders so informed strategic decisions can be made.
Situational chaos results if senior leaders try to take on too much themselves. They are not close enough to the action. Extreme Leadership requires the empowerment of frontline leaders without micromanagement from the top.
Determining how much leaders should be involved and where leaders can best be positioned to command and control the team is the key. Like wise for individuals, knowing how close to a situation you need to be to make effective decisions is important. Too close and you can’t see the bigger picture and too far removed from the situation does not allow you to have the necessary information to make good decisions. Sometimes, deferring to specialist or consultants who are experts in the field is an effective way of managing the situation when you don’t have team members to rely on.
9. Plan
Planning begins with analysis but it is important not to get bogged down in an overload of detail. Careful prioritization of incoming information is important. Encourage interaction with those that understand the situation best but avoid paralysis by analysis.
Focus on planning for situations that you can control and develop contingency plans to help manage risk. Best practises require constant review of your plans for effectiveness. Try to determine how you can adapt your plan to make it even more effective.
Summary
- Analyze the situation. Consult with team members or experts that know the situation better than you do.
- Identify personnel, assets, resources that are available
- Determine a specific course of action. Lean toward selecting the simplest course of action
- Develop likely contingencies for each phase of the plan.
- Mitigate risks that can be controlled as much as possible.
- Continually check the plan and question the plan against emerging information
- Communicate the plan clearly, concisely and simply to all participants
- Conduct post execution debriefs to identify areas of weakness with the plan so improvements can be made.
10. Leading Up and Down the Chain of Command
Leading down the chain of command involves communicating clearly, concisely and simply with sub-ordinates about the importance of their role in the execution of the overall plan. This communication can involve face-to face conversations as well as observing field level employees to better understand their particular challenges.
“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. If you are on your own, I don’t care how good you are, you won’t be able to handle it.”
On an individual basis this can involve communicating with anyone that can influence how you deal with a particular situation or in achieving your goal. This can involve discussions with professional experts or ordinary people who have experienced a similar situation.
Leading up the chain of command requires the use of caution and respect. If your leader is not giving you the support you need, don’t blame them. Instead, re-examine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence or convince that person to give you what you need in order to succeed.
11. Decisiveness amid Uncertainty
Whether you are a team leader or just an individual making a critical decision, it is most likely that you don’t have 100 % of the information needed. However, it is critical that you make decisive decisions amid this uncertainty. Waiting for 100% right and certain solutions leads to delay, indecision and an inability to execute. You must be prepared to make an educated guess based on previous experience, present knowledge and likely outcomes.
This principle applies to almost every aspect of your individual life. Outcomes are never certain and success is never guaranteed. You must develop the ability to be comfortable acting decisively amid uncertainty.
Rarely is there a 100 % right solution and it is important to be ready to adjust your decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information.
12. Discipline Equals Freedom
Extreme leadership requires finding a balance between many contradictory qualities;
- Leader vs a follower – sometimes another team member might be in a better position to develop a plan or make a decision due to their particular expertise or experience. A good leader must welcome this to ensure the greatest chance of accomplishing team success. A leader must be confident enough to follow someone else when the situation calls for it.
- Aggressive not overbearing – a good leader knows when to push but not dominate their team. You need team members to buy into your plan and not resent doing it.
- Calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions – it is normal to show emotion, but a leader must be in control of their emotions. A leader who loses their temper also loses respect. On the other hand, to never to show any sense of anger, sadness or frustration would make the leader appear void of any emotion at all – a robot.
People do not follow robots - Confident but never cocky – confidence is contagious but over confidence causes complacency and arrogance, which makes the team vulnerable for failure.
- Courageous but not foolhardy – a leader must be willing to accept risk but never be reckless. A leader must always mitigate risks that can be controlled.
- Competitive spirit but a gracious loser – a leader wants to push themselves and their teams to the highest level possible but never put their own drive for personal success ahead of overall team success.
- Attentive to details but not obsessed by them – don’t get bogged down by small details that distract from the bigger picture.
- Must be strong but have endurance – A good leader must have the ability to perform at the highest level and sustain that level for the long term. You must be able to recognize your limitations and know how to pace yourself so that you can maintain a solid performance indefinitely.
- Humble but not passive – the ability to control one’s ego and listen to others, admit mistakes and failures to take ownership of them is very important. Likewise, the ability to figure out a way to prevent them from happening again is essential.
- Close to subordinates but not too close – you never want one subordinate to become more important than another or more important than the good of the team. Neither should they be so close to you that they forget who is in charge.
- Execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command – you are responsible for everything but for team success you must be able to delegate responsibility to sub ordinates and field employees so they can participate in plan development and execution.
Summary
Reading Extreme Ownership is a gate way into becoming a more effective leader and living a more accountable and productive life. The twelve principles of Extreme Ownership, based on real life experiences in the battlefield, are a road map that you can embrace and follow. It will take practice and perseverance and more than likely you will veer off course occasionally but by re-engaging the twelve principles you will quickly find your way back. Few leadership books are as engaging and effective in delivering in a clear, concise and simple message. Just the way effective leadership should be.
If you’d like more info please contact Mike.