Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Part III - Sustaining Victory
Chapter 9: Plan
Lief Babin recalls a particularly difficult rescue mission that he had to undertake while he was posted in Iraq. The mission depended on stealth for its success as the Seals planned to remain hidden until the very moment they breached the target building’s doors. Lief and his team poured over the plans through the intel they had and drilled the operation. Just as they were preparing to head out for the operation, they received fresh intelligence that indicated heavy defenses at the target building. Lief learned that the terrain would be riddled with IEDs and the presence of bunkered machine gun positions. This did not deter Lief and Jocko, who both understood that their plans were thorough and unlikely to be affected by these defenses. The other Seals who were assigned the mission had a similar reaction, and they were unmoved by the existence of this additional hurdle. The team moved out in good order and executed their mission successfully without error. They were able to secure the hostage, and take control of the building without pulling a single trigger.
Lief used this scenario when he was working to train SEAL operators after he had served in Iraq. Some of the trainees thought they would call the mission off if they had received such sudden information about formidable defenses. Lief explains to them why they would be wrong to do so, he argues that they cannot ever plan a mission in which they could be certain that no defenses existed. In this case, good planning requires that leaders plan for all contingencies, and therefore the confirmation of the presence of the defenses does not necessarily affect the plans that have been created for the mission.
Principle
Lief outlines the key features of a good planning process, which begins with creating the commander’s intent, that not only describes what needs to be achieved but why it needs to be done. All the operators in the team ought to be aware of the end state that is desired since this will allow them to operate with a significant degree of independence in case of any new challenges. It is also important for the leader to delegate the planning process down the chain of command as members will feel more connected to the plan, and it will also prevent the leader from getting stuck in the details of the plan. The leader needs to ensure that the plan is simple since that will ensure that everyone on the team can easily understand it. Lastly, all leaders must carry out a detailed assessment of the plan after it has been executed to understand how well the objectives were achieved to continually improve the planning process.
Application to Business
Lief recounts meeting a highly successful executive who had put together a formidable team that had done wonders for an emerging corporation’s balance sheets. The executive was concerned that his team was unable to plan their operations, but the other members of his team did not feel the same urgency given all the success they had received. Lief tells them about the difficulty he had faced in preparing operational orders in the Seals since his seniors had nearly always torn up his briefs for being insufficient. However, Lief had figured out the true intent of the planning process when he had joined Task Unit Bruiser under Jocko’s command. Lief had prepared one of the simplest briefs for the training exercise that won Task Unit Bruiser the opportunity to be sent to Ramadi. Jocko had insisted that they show their commanding officer that all SEAL operators in their team thoroughly understood the details of the planned operation. Lief was able to convince the executive’s team to pay attention to planning and help them capture the essence of how to ensure plans could be appropriately executed.
Chapter 10: Leading Up and Down the Chain of Command
Jocko and Lief spent an evening watching the firefights ongoing in the city and thought about all the turmoil they had witnessed during their time in Ramadi. They remembered the close friends they had lost in their operations, and Lief was left with a clawing worry as he tried to imagine what impact their operations had on the situation in Iraq. He had returned home and faced a barrage of criticism from all quarters of the US society. The army was criticized for its Iraqi operations, and Lief mostly felt like the criticisms were not grounded in the facts of the matter. These facts became clear to him when he visited Jocko, and saw the presentation that Jocko was preparing for the senior members of the military leadership about what they had accomplished in Iraq. Lief watched in wonder as Jocko worked through the presentation, talking about the significant population they had rescued from the rule of Muj and the precise strategy they had applied. The presentation was shocking for Lief since he had never truly put the bigger picture of his operations together to understand what they were doing through their operations. Furthermore, he understood that because he had not seen the bigger picture, he had also failed to inform his subordinates about the greater impact of their actions. Lief and Jocko both realized that they needed to improve how they communicated down the chain of command that day.
On the other hand, Lief learned how to lead up the chain of command during his time in Ramadi. He remembers a certain day when he had just had enough of the questions that his superiors asked of him before they approved his operation. He tried to explain to Jocko how frustrating it was to plan an operation in the dynamic urban battlefield of Ramadi while fielding questions from higher-ups that demanded highly specific information minutes before an operation was set to begin. At the time, Lief thought his superiors were too unaware of the exacting conditions of Ramadi, and Jocko agreed with him. However, he instructed Lief to see that as a problem that he could rectify since the queries from the higher-ups meant that they felt like they did not have enough information to sanction approval for the project. Therefore he asked Lief to lead up the chain of command, which meant that he had to volunteer more information than he would normally send and organize a visit for their commanders so that they could understand what kind of situation the soldiers were required to face. Lief was able to transform his relationship with the command structure because of his attitude shift as he came to understand that leadership does not just percolate downwards but that it can take place up the chain of command as well.
Principle
The leader and the lowest ranking member of the team do not necessarily have to completely be aware of each other’s work, but they have to possess a basic understanding of each other’s role. The leader needs to ensure that information flows down the chain of command, while the team members need to be able to pass the information along and ask clarifying questions when they come across confusing instructions.
Leaders need to ensure that they push situational awareness up the chain of command when they feel like they are not receiving the necessary support from their supervisors. However, a leader must also understand that sometimes their priorities do not necessarily align with those of the leadership, and when such divergence occurs, a good leader accepts this difference in priority with humility. It is also important that leaders do not allow these differences to become visible to the other members of the team since a break in the flow of command can undermine the whole command structure.
Application to Business
Lief met a manager who was in quite a similar situation as the one he had faced, as he was being haggard by requests for extensive reports from his corporate leadership. Lief saw that the man had adopted the us vs. Them mindset, and he shared his own experience about reports with him. He also helped the manager realize that his superiors did not want him to perform his job poorly, but that they were missing critical information. He helped him have the same realization, that if the leadership is uncertain about something, it's because he has failed to provide them with critical information. The manager was able to understand that leading up the chain meant ensuring that he and management were on the same page, which could be done by critically examining his actions.
Chapter 11: Decisiveness amid Uncertainty
Chris Kyle was one of the most accomplished snipers in all of American history, and Lief believes this success was a result of his ability to maintain difficult positions without losing focus. He recalls a certain operation in Ramadi when he had been leading the sniper overwatch with Chris. The SEAL platoon was providing support to the US army soldiers who were clearing a certain section of the city. Chris brought Lief’s attention to a building a few yards ahead of the clearing force of the soldiers. He had seen a man with a scoped weapon in the window of the building, but he had been unable to positively ID him. Lief contacted the commander of the army soldiers and tried to determine if the army had any of their soldiers in the building in question. The commander confirmed that none of his soldiers were in the said building, and he encouraged Lief to give Chris permission to shoot. However, Lief understood that Chris would not have brought the matter to him if he had been certain that the shadow belonged to an enemy.
Lief asks Chris to watch the target but he does not allow him to shoot, instead, he asks the commander of the army to send a group of soldiers to clear the building. The commander was unhappy about the situation, but Lief would not sanction a hit on an unknown figure, given how close the building was to the group of friendly soldiers operating in the area. However, Lief did not have to wait too long to get an understanding of the situation since he realized their error just as soon as the soldiers tasked to clear the building moved toward it. Lief realized that the sniper had been trained on a building on the other block, and they had been identifying the wrong building to the army. The scoped man in the window had indeed been a US soldier and not an enemy.
Principle
The authors discuss the challenge of making decisions amid the chaos of the battlefield, where leaders rarely have the opportunity to receive complete information about a situation. However, they are still expected to make decisions quickly based on their training, knowledge of the enemy, and battlefield experience. Lief argues that this situation is not limited to the battlefield but can also be found in business, which is why leaders need to be comfortable making decisions without having complete access to all of the information.
Application to Business
Jocko and Lief came across an interesting problem while they had been consulting with a software company that had recently started an engineering company as well. They learned that the engineering company was suffering from a serious personnel issue, as two of the senior engineers in the organization had developed a serious enmity. The CEO had tried to resolve the issue several times, but they were becoming increasingly hostile with one another. The CEO received communications from both senior engineers that they could not work with the other person any longer, and that they should be let go. Both of the engineers also accused the other of being in conversation with recruitment agents from other organizations.
The CEO was uncertain about which of the engineers to believe, and she was worried about what would happen if one of them left given what important roles they fulfilled in the organization. The CEO could not confirm which of the two engineers was telling the truth, and since she could not be certain, she decided to not act. Jocko explained to her that it is rarely a good idea to “wait and see,” and encouraged her to fire both of the engineers. He argued that the critical know-how of the projects in progress probably lay with the teams of those engineers, whose continued presence could only be a bad thing for her company’s morale. She listened to Jocko, and had them both terminated, while their roles were handed off to junior employees that had a greater understanding of the projects.
Chapter 12: Discipline Equals Freedom - The Dichotomy of Leadership
Jocko’s first tour in Iraq featured capture or kill operations that involved evidence gathering, a process that was almost always ill achieved given the fact that the Seals were not policemen. However, they were soon required to standardize their process due to the new legal system of Iraq which required detailed information about how and where a piece of evidence was found. Jocko had one of his subordinates draw up a plan, that appeared to be complicated but was much simpler as it made a single member responsible for breaking down tasks of evidence gathering. Most of the operators were quite reluctant to go along with the plan since they felt that it would take them a lot longer than the forty minutes it generally took for them to achieve the task. Jocko was able to convince them that they were not doing a good job with the evidence and that a standardized procedure would eventually be faster and more efficient. His words turned out to be more true than he realized, as the team was able to cut down the evidence-gathering time to twenty minutes, just after one drill session.
Jocko then lets goes on to discuss the role of discipline in life, as he argues that the best Seals he had met in his life had been the ones who had been the most disciplined. Jocko considers waking up early to be the first test of the day, as he had realized a long time ago that the only way to remain ahead of your responsibilities was to make time for them by getting up early. This realization helped him realize that discipline allowed for more freedom and not less. He proved this theory through his work with Task Unit Bruiser, which was able to achieve higher degrees of efficiency after Jocko introduced standardized procedures for several things that even the Seals did not generally bother about.
Principle
Jocko postulates that the crux of leadership lies in being able to balance dichotomies like that which exist between freedom and leadership. There are several dichotomies that a leader needs to balance, like those between confidence and foolhardiness, competitiveness and graciousness, humility and passive, aggressive and overbearing, and being calm but not robotic.
“A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.”
Application to Business
Jocko was approached by the CFO of a construction company that his consulting firm was working with. The CFO informed Jocko that their organization was being affected by a particularly weak electric division that the CEO was reluctant to shut down because of how close he was to the head of that arm of the corporation. Jocko had an opportunity to sit down with the CEO, and Jocko brought up the losses that the electric division was making. However, the CEO was reluctant to discuss the matter, as it was evident that he was aware of how he was harming the company by continuing to support a hopeless endeavor. Jocko pushed him on the matter and informed him of the dichotomies that a leader needs to contend with, which included being close yet far away from team members so that decisions could be made without being clouded by emotion. Jocko’s words reached the CEO, and he soon shut down the electric division. Furthermore, he found that his relationship with his friend only improved since he had been expecting the move for a while.
