Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Part I - Winning the War Within
Chapter 1: Fog of War
Jocko describes one of the first operations that he undertook as a commander of the Seals in the chaotic urban environment of Ramadi. He talks about the literal fog of war that descended on the battlefield when multiple sections of the United States Armed forces engaged the Muj (Mujaheddin) in Ramadi. Jocko comes upon a large Abrams tank that is being prepared to engage an unidentified and well-provisioned enemy which is taking shelter in a building. Jocko had two teams of SEAL snipers deployed in the region, but one of these teams had lost contact when they had been forced to relocate. Jocko felt that something was amiss, and he directed the army tank to hold fire, as he strongly felt that his sniper team should be in the region. Jocko was right, as he suddenly came face to face with a SEAL chief with a badly shaken team. He informs Jocko that they had killed a single enemy as he had been trying to sneak into their position, but that the retaliating attack had been devastating.
Jocko quickly realized that the Seals had accidentally shot down an Iraqi soldier from the contingent that was working alongside the US Army, and the army had engaged the Seals without realizing who they were and what had occurred. Jocko quickly has the SEAL team extracted, as he tells them that they had been involved in “blue-on-blue” action. The common expression used to describe the horrific act of friendly fire, and fratricide, something that the Seals have very little tolerance about. After the operation, Jocko was informed that his seniors would be visiting the camp to receive a full briefing about the nearly fatal incident. He begins to put together a presentation as he identifies the critical failures in the operation that led to the friendly fire. However, he isn’t completely satisfied with his presentation since he hasn’t quite identified who was truly to blame for the fiasco.
Jocko continues to consider the question even as the authorities arrive and gather for the briefing along with the Seals under Jocko’s command. He suddenly realizes the answer that he had been seeking and begins his presentation by posing the same question to them. Several Seals take responsibility as they tell him why and how they failed, but Jocko refuses them all. Finally, he tells them that the blame lay on him since he was their commander, and his actions had directly led to the disaster. However, he also tells them that the situation will never arise again, and he then leads the Team in discussing the failures in their system, and how they can be addressed. Jocko asserts that taking responsibility for the accident allowed him to gain a stronger relationship with his teammates, and developed trust between him and the leadership. Though they still had close encounters of friendly fire later onwards because of the difficult nature of urban warfare, none of the situations ever escalated to that extent.
Principle
A leader does not just take responsibility for the role that he is selected to perform because he is also responsible for the performance of his subordinates. The Navy Seals have understood this concept, and have used it to dominate the battles they have fought. It is difficult to stop making excuses for failures and to stop blaming other external factors for them. However, the right steps that we need to take to win can only become clear to us when we take Extreme Ownership of the failures that we encounter.
Application to Business
Jocko describes an assignment that he undertook for his consulting firm, Echelon Front, who was brought along to work with a Vice President of manufacturing in an esteemed organization. The VP had been asked to decrease the manufacturing costs, and ramp up production. He had come up with a three-pronged plan but had then failed to execute it. The VP had been blaming everyone from the plant managers to the distribution managers for their failure in executing the plan. Jocko had a meeting with the VP to get a better grasp of the situation. He developed a good liking for the VP who was an intelligent and effective worker. Jocko also got to understand why the VP’s subordinates were resisting the changes, and why the VP did not consider them valid. Jocko bluntly told the VP that he needed to accept that he was ultimately responsible for the failure, a fact that he needed to accept and admit to the board. The VP was very resistant to accepting the blame, but Jocko enforces the point by reminding him that no one is truly perfect, and accepting your failure is necessary for overcoming it. A lesson that the VP ultimately learned and used to devise a clearer path of execution for his plans with a focus on what he could do better.
Chapter 2: No Bad Team, Only Bad Leaders
Lief Babin recounts an exercise from the Navy SEAL’s Basic Underwater Demolitions training from Hell Week, a ritualized test of will for those selected to rise to esteemed ranks of the Seals. Lief explains how watching the training as a part of the instructor cadre allowed him to understand a fundamentally important rule about leadership, that there are no bad teams but only bad Leaders. Lief tells the reader about an exercise involving seven-member boat crews that were led by a leader who was responsible for giving the crew instructions that had been conveyed to him by the instructors. Lief watched the leader of the worst performing crew, who lost every race and had to bear the punishment for losing. He understood that the leader was not doing the right things, but he became immensely interested when an instructor suggested that they swap the leaders between the worst performing crew and the best performing one. Lief watched with surprise as the old leader of the best performing crew led the worst performing to win the next race. Lief recounts an experience from his training where he realized that he needed to lead his people, and have them focus on the immediate objectives when facing something as challenging as the BUD training.
Babin considers himself responsible for the SEAL members that died in the action in Iraq, and he ensures that the future Seals remember their lives by organizing a run for them. The First Navy SEAL killed in combat in Iraq was Marc Lee, and his tragic death was followed by that of Mike Monsoor, Ryan Job passed away while he was undergoing surgery for the war wounds he had received while serving under Lief.
Principle
Lief believes that accepting the fact that there are no bad teams, but only bad leaders is a fundament aspect of Extreme Ownership. This does not mean that all faults lie with the leader, but that the leader needs to be the force that unites the members to improve and push the envelope. Leaders need to have the mindset of constant improvement, which will then trickle down to the rest of the team and encourage them all to practice Extreme Ownership. Leaders need to be very careful about accepting substandard performance, as they wouldn’t be fulfilling their role as a leader if they were allowing a singular member to disrupt the team’s mindset.
Application to Business
Lief explains the concept through an account of a financial services firm that had brought on Echelon Front to teach their employees the concept of Extreme Ownership after they had suffered some setbacks in launching a new product line. Lief built a good rapport with the CEO but he faced a significant challenge in the CTO when he tried to put forward the concept of Extreme Ownership. The CTO bristled at being told that the company was making the wrong decisions since he had been at the forefront of the new product line. He refused to accept the morals from Lief’s account about the consequences of bad leadership from his account about the BUD training. Lief categorized the CTO as a tortured genius, who refused to accept any blame as they believed that people were just too stupid to see their genius and instead felt like victims of their circumstances. Lief passed on this information to the CEO, who was eventually forced to replace the CTO since his attitude had begun to be such a hindrance to the company’s development.
Chapter 3: Believe
Jocko had been shocked when he learned that the authorities had made it mandatory to use Iraqi troops for all operations. He looked at the directive, and he was immediately overcome with frustration as he believed that his higher-ups had little understanding of the battlefield which was why they were insisting on such a counterproductive measure. Jocko explains how different the Seals were from the conventional armed forces, who were not only poorly trained but they were also very poorly equipped. The Iraqi soldiers could not hope to keep up with the highly trained and thoroughly armed SEAL units, and insisting on the use of such soldiers would only limit their collective ability to be effective. The Navy Seals were responsible for training the Iraqi forces, but the demanding nature of the battlefield meant that few soldiers could be spared from their duties, irrespective of how challenging they made it. However, Jocko had a moment of epiphany as he realized that his superiors were all intelligent individuals who wanted to win. He then began to ask himself why his superiors would want them to use the Iraqi forces, and he understood that winning in this war meant training the Iraqis to deal with the threat of the Muj on their own.
Jocko also realized that the Iraqi forces could not be trained to face the enemy in any short amount of time, but they could be trained to deal with a weakened enemy which would require the Seals to undertake more aggressive missions. He conveyed the order about the Iraqi forces to his troops and allowed them to vent their frustration, voicing the concerns that he had in his mind. Jocko then got them to focus on the reasons for the order and allowed them to see why they needed to work with the Iraqi soldiers. Jocko had to reinforce the point a couple of times, but ultimately all the SEAL operators understood the reasons for the order, and this helped them push the enemy back with the help of the Iraqi soldiers that were closely led by the Seals. Jocko understands that this would not have been possible if he hadn’t understood the order, and believed in it enough to ensure that his team followed it with as much conviction.
Principle
Jocko explains that he had learned to extricate himself from the immediate tactical goal to understand how it fits into the larger strategic goal of the organization. He understood that leaders needed to be in alignment with the real reasons for the goal, as that conviction was communicated to the team members who needed to execute the tactical measure. However, if such an alignment did not occur then the leader would certainly encounter all the pitfalls that came with an unsure workforce. Jocko argues that the army could march forward if the frontline troops understood why they were being asked to push the battle line. He believes that it is as much a leader’s duty to communicate why an order is being given as it is to give the order, and the lower-level leaders must question their commander when they are unable to understand why they are being told to follow an order.
Application to Business
Jocko had the opportunity to see firsthand how this principle functioned in a corporation as he came across a set of executives that were too scared to question their CEO about a change to the compensation plan for their salespeople. The managers feared that the new plan would drive their talent to the opposing firms, and they had never asked the CEO why she had wanted to enact the plant because they had been too afraid of her. Jocko brought the problem to the CEO who understood the concerns of the executives, but she understood that the plan would only be problematic for non-performers while the better workers would be rewarded better. However, she had been unaware of the concerns that the executive had, and she took the first opportunity to ensure they understood her reasoning. Jocko restates that it is important to ensure people understand the why of your orders, but it is also important to ask questions if you aren’t able to understand why when you don’t understand an order.
Chapter 4: Check the Ego
Jocko describes engaging the enemy in Iraq in greater detail through accounts of their encounters. He goes on to discuss how his Task Unit Bruiser had gone about ensuring that the Seals were on good terms with the soldiers of the US Army and the Marines since it was always rather difficult to manage relationships between conventional soldiers and Special Operations units. Jocko’s efforts in integrating the unit with the rest of the US Armed forces apparatus allowed them to have a devastating effect on the capabilities of the enemy. The Seals supported the Army and Marines with their snipers, and when their positions became known they transitioned to functioning like fortified outposts. The success of Task Unit Bruiser allowed other units in the region to understand that success could be achieved in Ramadi, and so a highly trained and equipped unit was dispatched to a quarter of the city.
The resident SEAL Commander of the camp expressed his concern about the higher capabilities of the arriving unit, and Jocko picked up on the man’s reluctance to help the new unit get acquainted with the situation in Ramadi. He reminds the commander that their enemy lay outside the camp and that he needed to check his ego because they would all be winning if the new unit could leverage its greater resources to make a difference on the battlefield. The intelligent commander took the lesson to heart, but unfortunately, the arriving unit failed to appreciate the experience of the soldiers that had served on that battlefield far longer than them. The situation devolved rather quickly and the colonel of the camp was forced to send the unit back, without allowing them to operate since they were so hostile to the rest of the conventional soldiers in the camp.
Principle
Egos have no place in Extreme Ownership, even though we all have egos that drive us to win and be better. However, the ego becomes destructive when it clouds your vision of reality and affects your judgment. Extreme ownership requires humility because it insists that you take accountability for failures, analyze where you went wrong, and devise a plan to prevent it from occurring again.
Application to Business
Lief talks about a mid-level manager working in a mining operation that called him out of the blue to deal with a pressing issue. One of his mining superintendents had made a bad call on the job that had resulted in damaged equipment which was going to cost the organization a lot of money. However, the manager felt like he was unable to have a conversation with the superintendent because the man had more experience in the field than him and if he were to be offended he could end up taking a job elsewhere given the competitive nature of their industry. Lief explains that it is a leader’s job to manage the expectations of his team and that he could do so through the principles of Extreme Ownership. The superintendent’s ego would certainly be ruffled if the manager approached the conversation as if the superintendent had been at fault and needed to correct something. Instead, he needed to understand that it was his fault because he had failed to explain to the superintendent why he needed to run certain decisions with his manager and address how they could ensure that such a situation did not arise again in the future.
