Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (Extreme Ownership Trilogy Book 1)

I found this book an excellent read. Gives very logical and hands-on guidance on key leadership principles that enable you as a leader to improve your organisation. The examples from the Seals makes it very real and will help to get credibility when explaining the principles to team members.

Thought provoking and inspiring read.

The CEO and COO of my company highly recommended this book. As a combat veteran (with the scars to prove it) and someone in business now, I looked forward to reading the book.

The authors, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, served as Navy Seals in some of the toughest fighting the US military has seen in many years, the fight for Al Anbar in Iraq.

First, Jocko and Leif are real heroes, and their actions both during and post combat are to be lauded.

The format of the book is that each substantive section has a relatively lengthy war-story as a set-up, and then, a pithy lesson, and then, how one might apply the lesson in the business world.

The central theme in the book is that leadership as exemplified by extreme ownership wins all in combat and in business.

The specific lessons are: (in my own translation) extreme ownership, no bad teams – only bad leaders, believe, keep egos in check, support one another, keep things simple, work on the most important things, power down to subordinates, plan, managing up is as important as managing down, be brave in the face of uncertainty, and be disciplined.

Sheeeewwww! That is a lot to take in. There are so many different lessons, and they are often at odds, Jocko and Leif say that you have to balance things. It is kind of like saying, “don’t be too hot or too cold.” Well, yes, with advice like that, you can never be wrong, but often you are of limited use.

All of the proffered concepts have the potential to be useful, some of them are “truer” than others.

The combat stories were the best part, and I’m pretty sure that this was the main reason for the phenomenal sales of the book.

Why not five stars? Some of the lessons have limited applicability in real-world business (even in the world of combat based on person leadership experience – I commanded an Army division and served as a battalion, brigade, and echelons above division commander in combat and know something about how this all works).

Say this together with me, “Seal teams do not necessarily represent my business.” Say it again, Seal teams do not necessarily represent my business.

Which lessons from the book almost always apply? They are: keep egos in check, work on the most important things, plan, support one another, and be disciplined. Those work nearly all the time. Which work much of the time? They are: believe, be brave in the face of uncertainty, and extreme ownership. The rest fall into a more limited use category – in other words, they might be useful, but you have to carefully evaluate your own situation before applying blindly.

Military lessons are tricky. Jocko and Leif are not alone in overapplication. Simon Simak wrote a book that is also widely lauded called “Leaders Eat Last.” In the book, Simon says, “leaders might go hungry, but they won’t.” The lesson is that good leaders have the loyalty of their subordinates, and they will sacrifice their own food to feed the leaders. It is a noble sentiment, but often as a good leader you do go hungry because your personnel know and believe that you would rather they eat than for them to go hungry on your behalf. Sorry, Simon, you know I love you, but you got the lesson almost right, but not quite.

In “Extreme Ownership,” the better lesson would be the Albert Einstein quote, “make things as simple as you can, but not simpler.” As leaders, I have seen many organizations flounder because the leadership tried to reduce a very complex situation into something simple for ease of understanding. Certainly, the situation in Iraq in 2003-05 fell into this category. The reality was that there was a very complex society with a greatly interdependent economy that the Bath Party held together with charisma and complicated machinations. The dumb downed version was “Saddam was bad. Saddam was a Bathist. All Bathists are bad. Throw all the Bathists out, which led to over a dozen years fighting an insurgency – that never had to be.

Another modified lesson is “delegate what you can, not what you want to.” I have seen many a business leader put faith in subordinates to undertake complex tasks that the subordinates honestly thought that they could do, but they did not know what they did not know, and the leader blindly trusted them. This hard lesson is especially true today when ten minutes on YouTube makes every new employee think that they can do the most demanding and complex task the way that the expert did in that cool video. Leaders need to be discerning and excel in mentoring and be able to say things like, “how about if we work together on it.” Do this complex project in chunks, and I will help with quality assurance and some guidance and training. Then, follow-up in a supportive, kind way. Everyone wins.

Perhaps the most egregiously overapplied lesson from the book is that “there are no bad teams, there are only bad leaders.” In both business and in combat, I found that nearly every organization has personnel who are simply unsuited to doing some of the hard jobs required. By the by, at least at the beginning of the war, this was nearly independent of rank. Some of my most senior officers and enlisted personnel were the most incompetent and (really) cowardly. If you want your organizations to succeed then sometimes these personnel must be either removed or at least neutralized.

A final caveat, in truly elite, business organizations, one huge mistake that I have seen leaders make is that they try very hard to make their very bright subordinates feel special by repeatedly praising them and telling them they are the best in the world. Pride cometh before a fall. The lesson to keep the egos in check means all the egos, not just the leaders. Military personnel in general and our special forces folks in specific go through a period where they get the stuffing knocked out of their egos. Those periods are called boot camp and qualifying courses. There is not an equivalent in the civil, business world in today’s environment, but there should be. We used to start workers at all levels off in a probationary status whether that was the mail room, the copy room, receiving, or some other, vital, but ultimately hard to get wrong job, and then, once they showed that they could keep their ego in check, they were allowed to progress up the chain. There is great wisdom in that.

Why would these very bright and very motivated leaders, Jocko and Leif, have gotten some of this wrong? Well, look at the units they served in. They were with Seal teams. Guess what? That’s right, seal teams are not really good representatives of organizations in general.

There is much good in this book, and I recommend it, but read it for the story value, and then, be more than a bit reticent about blindly applying the lessons to your own organizations.

Even though I am well into my senior years my voracious reading passion is as strong as ever, especially if it has anything to do with the U.S. Navy SEALS. Whether it is their superior fitness programs, realistic combat techniques, great swimming methods, warrior philosophy or their fantastic leadership principles, I have attempted to read everything I could find about these Special Forces Warriors. This is why when I saw this fantastic 322-page hardcover edition of (Extreme Ownership: How the U.S. Navy SEALS lead and win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin) on Amazon I had to purchase it.

This is the kind of leadership book that once you begin to read it; it is difficult to put down. This book explains how the SEAL leadership training principles apply not just to combat situations, but these same rules apply to business success and just living a full and productive life.

The basic philosophical principle is simple really, but like everything in life, “the devil is in the details.” “Extreme ownership” as the combat experienced authors define it, is not making excuses and blaming mistakes made on everyone else, but taking full and complete responsibility when they are the assigned to lead their men and women.

I found it interesting in this book how some so-called business leaders seem to refuse to accept the “extreme ownership” philosophy and stubbornly kept blaming everything and everyone else. In my experience, as both a regular Navy veteran, and a retired law enforcement officer, good leaders lead from the front and take full responsibility for their decisions.

I love the way the authors provided examples taken from their actual combat experiences to show the importance of good leadership decisions, and they show how these very principles apply to business problems. The three parts in this excellent book covers the following: “Winning the war within, laws of combat, and sustaining victory.” There are also several very interesting color and black and white photographs included in this volume.

If you are willing to face reality when it comes to taking complete responsibility in your leadership role this is a book that should be your reference source. I have read numerous other books on leadership principles, and this is one of the best ones I have read in decades.

If you are blessed (or some might say cursed) with the responsibility of leading people, this book should be in your personal library as a reference and inspiring source.
Rating: 5 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: Tactical Principles of the most effective Combative Systems).

This is an invaluable read for anyone looking to improve themselves or their organization. Jocks and Leif share critical lessons and show how they apply to any situation.