Extreme Ownership is a leaf non-fiction book on leadership. It advocates for leaders to take ownership and accountability as a defining principle of the job.
- The leader must own everything in his or her world. All responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader.
- There are no bad units, only bad officers: leadership is the most important thing on a battle field
- It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate: leaders must hold their team to high standards and drive to better performance.
- A leader must be a true believer in the mission: A leader must believe in the why behind a mission. He must work to impact that way to his chain of command.
- A leader must practice humility and check their ego at the door - ego can cloud operating at a high-level and interfere with executing the mission.
- Cover and Move: means teamwork. All of the parts of a team must work together to accomplish the mission. A leader must not allow his team to develop friction with other teams imperiling the mission. Rather than blaming a counter-part, seek to understand their problems and help them execute the overall plan.
- Keep things as simple as possible. It’s essential for the teams to understand the mission, so reducing complexity reduces the ways in which something may go wrong. A leader’s communication should be simple and clear.
- Prioritize and Execute is used to deal with competing priorities.
- Contingency planning where a leader can stay ahead of problems before they happen. This reduces decision time as the scenarios arise.
- Teams within teams: teams must be kept manageable in size (6-8 at max with smaller been better). These smaller teams map up into a group. Critical to this hierarchy is that each tactical leader of a squad must understand not only what to do but why to do it.
- Decentralized command tactical leaders must be empowered to act within their space, in order for that to happen, leaders must push information, situational awareness, down to their tactical leaders. This allows for rapid response to problems and a faster Kill Chain
- In a decentralized command, a leader must be close to the action without being too close and micromanaging. A leader should be not too far forward but not too far backward.
- Dichotomy of leadership
Cite
- Willink, J. & Babin, L. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2015).
Metadata
Title:: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Year:: 2015 Publisher:: St. Martin’s Press Location:: New York ISBN:: 978-1-250-06705-0
Abstract
The #1 New York Times bestsellerSent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership―at every level―is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields.Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment.A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win. .