Personal Highlights from Reading Extreme Ownership

Firstly, I encourage any aspiring leader to buy and read Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Laif Babin. The audiobook is read by both authors. The book has incredible storytelling from both authors, coupled with many clear, battle-tested lessons.

The general format in each chapter is a story, a principle, and a business application. Essential concepts of the book include: extreme ownership, check your ego, cover and move, keep it simple, prioritize and execute, decentralized command, plan, lead up and down the chain of command, be decisive, and most importantly, discipline equals freedom. A chapter is dedicated to each of these principles.

Here are my fifty-some highlights from reading the book. There are so many gems in this book. Definitely buy, read, and study the book. The amazing storytelling combined with great lessons make this my favorite read of the year so far.

1. For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective.
2. On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame.
3. “That might be one of the issues: in your mind you are doing everything right. So when things go wrong, instead of looking at yourself, you blame others. But no one is infallible. With Extreme Ownership, you must remove individual ego and personal agenda. It’s all about the mission.
4. when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.
5. substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard. Therefore, leaders must enforce standards.
6. In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission.
7. When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must ask the question: why? Why are we being asked to do this? Those leaders must take a step back, deconstruct the situation, analyze the strategic picture, and then come to a conclusion.
8. If they cannot determine a satisfactory answer themselves, they must ask questions up the chain of command until they understand why. If frontline leaders and troops understand why, they can move forward, fully believing in what they are doing.
9. Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism.
10. Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team. Ego can prevent a leader from conducting an honest, realistic assessment of his or her own performance and the performance of the team.
11. Cover and Move: it is the most fundamental tactic, perhaps the only tactic. Put simply, Cover and Move means teamwork. All elements within the greater team are crucial and must work together to accomplish the mission, mutually supporting one another for that singular purpose.
12. break down silos
13. Combat, like anything in life, has inherent layers of complexities. Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success.
14. when things go wrong, and they inevitably do go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise.
15. Simple: this principle isn’t limited to the battlefield. In the business world, and in life, there are inherent complexities. It is critical to keep plans and communication simple. Following this rule is crucial to the success of any team in any combat, business or life.
16. Prioritize and execute. Relax, look around, and execute.
17. Teams must be careful to avoid target fixation on a single issue
18. The team must maintain the ability to quickly reprioritize efforts and rapidly adapt to a constantly changing battlefield.
19. “Of all the initiatives, which one do you feel is the most important?” I asked. “Which one is your highest priority?”
20. no person had the cognitive capacity, the physical presence, or the knowledge of everything happening across a complex battlefield
21. Instead, my leaders learned they must rely on their subordinate leaders to take charge of their smaller teams within the team and allow them to execute based on a good understanding of the broader mission (known as Commander’s Intent), and standard operating procedures. That was effective Decentralized Command.
22. Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people, particularly when things go sideways and inevitable contingencies arise.
23. Those leaders must understand the overall mission, and the ultimate goal of that mission — the Commander’s Intent.
24. There are, likewise, other senior leaders who are so far removed from the troops executing on the frontline that they become ineffective. These leaders might give the appearance of control, but they actually have no idea what their troops are doing and cannot effectively direct their teams. We call this trait “battlefield aloofness.”
25. Leaders must delegate the planning process down the chain as much as possible to key subordinate leaders.
26. Team participation — even from the most junior personnel — is critical in developing bold, innovative solutions to problem sets.
27. While the senior leader supervises the entire planning process by team members, he or she must be careful not to get bogged down in the details. By maintaining a perspective above the microterrain of the plan, the senior leader can better ensure compliance with strategic objectives.
28. Doing so enables senior leaders to “stand back and be the tactical genius” — to identify weaknesses or holes in the plan that those immersed in the details might have missed.
29. The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?
30. post-operational debrief examines all phases of an operation from planning through execution, in a concise format. It addresses the following for the combat mission just completed: What went right? What went wrong? How can we adapt our tactics to make us even more effective and increase our advantage over the enemy?
31. it is critical that each have an understanding of the other’s role. And it is paramount that senior leaders explain to their junior leaders and troops executing the mission how their role contributes to big picture success.
32. Leaders must routinely communicate with their team members to help them understand their role in the overall mission.
33. Rather than blame them for not seeing the strategic picture, you must figure out a way to better communicate it to them in terms that are simple, clear, and concise, so that they understand. This is what leading down the chain of command is all about.
34. “Leadership doesn’t just flow down the chain of command, but up as well,” he said. “We have to own everything in our world. That’s what Extreme Ownership is all about.”
35. Leading up the chain of command requires tactful engagement with the immediate boss (or in military terms, higher headquarters) to obtain the decisions and support necessary to enable your team to accomplish its mission and ultimately win.
36. Leading up, the leader cannot fall back on his or her positional authority. Instead, the subordinate leader must use influence, experience, knowledge, communication, and maintain the highest professionalism.
37. One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss — your immediate leadership.
38. always present a united front to the troops. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels. This is catastrophic to the performance of any organization.
39. at the end of the day, once the debate on a particular course of action is over and the boss has made a decision — even if that decision is one you argued against — you must execute the plan as if it were your own.
40. That “us versus them” mentality was common to just about every level of every chain of command, whether military unit or civilian corporation. But breaking that mentality was the key to properly lead up the chain of command and radically improve the team’s performance.
41. If you have questions about why a specific plan or required paperwork is coming down the pipe, don’t just throw up your hands in frustration. Ask those questions up the chain to clarify, so that you can understand it.
42. leaders cannot be paralyzed by fear. That results in inaction. It is critical for leaders to act decisively amid uncertainty; to make the best decisions they can based on only the immediate information available.
43. There is no 100 percent right solution. The picture is never complete. Leaders must be comfortable with this and be able to make decisions promptly, then be ready to adjust those decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information.
44. Waiting for the 100 percent right and certain solution leads to delay, indecision, and an inability to execute. Leaders must be prepared to make an educated guess based on previous experience, knowledge of how the enemy operates, likely outcomes, and whatever intelligence is available in the immediate moment.
45. “incomplete picture” principle is not unique to combat. It applies to virtually every aspect of our individual lives, such as personal health-care decisions or whether or not to evacuate from the predicted path of a major storm.
46. Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say “first alarm clock” because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup. That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day.
47. If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win — you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.
48. discipline demands control and asceticism, it actually results in freedom. When you have the discipline to get up early, you are rewarded with more free time.
49. Instead of making us more rigid and unable to improvise, this discipline actually made us more flexible, more adaptable, and more efficient. It allowed us to be creative. When we wanted to change plans midstream on an operation, we didn’t have to recreate an entire plan. We had the freedom to work within the framework of our disciplined procedures.
50. balance between discipline and freedom must be found and carefully maintained. In that, lies the dichotomy: discipline — strict order, regimen, and control — might appear to be the opposite of total freedom — the power to act, speak, or think without any restrictions. But, in fact, discipline is the pathway to freedom.
51. leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. The simple recognition of this is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. With this in mind, a leader can more easily balance the opposing forces and lead with maximum effectiveness.
52. The team must understand that their leader cares about them and their well-being. But, a leader must control his or her emotions. If not, how can they expect to control anything else? Leaders who lose their temper also lose respect. But, at the same time, to never show any sense of anger, sadness, or frustration would make that leader appear void of any emotion at all — a robot. People do not follow robots.
53. best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people — their lives and their families.
54. leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself. Leaders must never get so close that the team forgets who is in charge.
55. Generally, when a leader struggles, the root cause behind the problem is that the leader has leaned too far in one direction and steered off course. Awareness of the dichotomies in leadership allows this discovery, and thereby enables the correction.