Jocko Willink and Leif Babin<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charlie Medical Facility, Camp Ramadi, Iraq: 2006 \u201cFire – let\u2019s cut down all the meetings. That is one of the reasons things aren\u2019t moving. Instead of finding solutions, right now they just ask you for the solution. When you do have meetings, stop being the \u2018Easy Button,\u2019\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Easy Button? How am I an Easy Button?\u201d the CEO asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy answering every question, solving every problem, and making every decision,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Ramadi, Iraq: 2006<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I reflected upon Jocko\u2019s demonstration of a leader\u2019s responsibility to ensure standards are maintained, I thought about the times in my career when I failed to do so. As a young leader, I knew there were times we needed to improve our performance, do another run-through in the kill house (where we practiced close-quarters combat), or add an additional rehearsal to ensure we were fully prepared. Yet in those moments, I sometimes hadn\u2019t held the line; I hadn\u2019t pushed the team hard enough. Any additional work assigned to the team was going to get pushback and generate complaints. And there were times when I let things slide, confusing the idea of \u201ctaking care of your people\u201d with allowing them not to work as hard. But in the end, that resulted in mediocre performance. And the team never got better, never held each other accountable. This was a failure of leadership – my leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hostile Territory: 2009<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/u><\/strong>Of all the lessons we learned in combat in Ramadi, the most valuable one was this: Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Leadership – at every level – is the critical factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. I witnessed this many times, under the most dreadful real-world circumstances imaginable. When a leader stepped up and took charge, got the team focused and moving together, the results were incredible. This training scenario proved yet again how when all seemed lost, just one person stepping up and making the call meant the difference between victory or defeat. Had we left Big Walt \u201cdead\u201d and out of the scenario, the task unit would have been completely destroyed by the enemy role-players. They would not have seen the importance of battlefield leadership. They would have thought that when things got too bad, nothing could be done to save them. But that is wrong. And as much as we wanted the scenarios to be hard, they also had to educate. It was crucial that the other SEALs in the platoon and task unit personally witnessed how a decisive call from a bold leader made all the difference, even in the most chaotic situations. Seeing this, many of those junior leaders would emulate that leader and step up to lead their teams. The whole point of training was to demonstrate this fundamental truth and build a culture of Decentralized Command where everyone leads, where leaders at every level take charge, act decisively to overcome obstacles and accomplish the mission. In order to achieve this, training had to be challenging; it had to be difficult. It had to push the team members far beyond their comfort zone so they understood what it was like to be overwhelmed, out maneuvered, and on the defensive. But training could not be so challenging that it overwhelmed the team to a point where no learning took place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Baghdad, Iraq: 2003 \u201cI hope he cares! It is his paycheck!\u201d the ops manager yelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHope isn\u2019t a course of action,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd, from his perspective, he has been getting a paycheck consistently for as long as he\u2019s been employed here – regardless of how profitable the company is or isn\u2019t. It simply doesn\u2019t impact him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe should still care about it,\u201d the ops manager insisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf course he should,\u201d I agreed. \u201cAnd in a perfect world, every employee would care deeply about the profitability of the company he or she works for. But these folks have other things to cadre about. Husbands and wives. Kids. Soccer games. Bills and cars and mortgages and the game on Friday night and the broken water heater and the kid heading off to college. They have a ton to care about – and like it or not, the profitability of the company is not high on their list.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo then what do we do?\u201d the ops manager asked. \u201cIf they don\u2019t care, why should they give any extra effort?\u201d \u201cAnd how do I do that? He asked. \u201cHow can I make them care about the company\u2019s profits?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n South-Central Ramadi, Iraq: 2006 \u201cOne of the toughest but most important lessons I learned from Jockco,\u201d I explained, \u201cis that you should strive to have the same relationship with every boss you ever work for, no matter if they are good or bad. Whether they are an outstanding leader whom you admire, a mediocre leader who needs improvement, or a terrible leader for whom no one on the team has respect, you must strive to form the same relationship with all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I explained that the relationship to seek with any boss incorporates three things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Route Michigan, South-Central Ramadi, Iraq: 2006<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n …we did that and strove to do it better than anyone else. When the task group asked for serialized inventory lists of all equipment before departing on operations, we took the extra time and effort and made it happen. The list of seemingly unimportant requests we dealt with was significant, and with the high operational tempo of violent urban combat day in and day out, it was not easy to comply with these requests. But in Task Unit Bruiser, we didn\u2019t complain about the little things that others might have pushed back on. Instead, we understood that there were important reasons for these administrative requirements and got them done. More important, we knew that in doing the seemingly small things well, we built trust that strengthened our relationships with our chain of command and enabled us to challenge an order in the rare circumstances when there truly was a strategic detriment to our mission and increased risk to our troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Staying humble was the key to developing trust with the chain of command. It was also crucial to building strong relationships with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps units we served so closely with in Ramadi – units we depended on for our survival and mission success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will also never forget the importance of humility for a leader. A leader must be humble, must listen to others, must not act arrogant or cocky. But a leader must balance that and know that there are times to question superiors, to push back, to stand up and make sure the right things are being done for the right reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Application to Business<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExtreme Ownership,\u201d I said, repeating the topic just covered in detail. \u201cLet\u2019s talk about where you are taking ownership of problems and getting them solved. More important, where is this not<\/em> happening? Where can you take greater ownership? Where are you casting blame or waiting for others to solve problems that you should be solving?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I took mental note that his comment was itself a lack of ownership, casting blame on the team for poor, ineffective implementation of the new system. True Extreme Ownership meant looking at yourself to examine what you could do better. That is what made it \u201csimple, not easy.\u201d Human nature was to blame others, to allow frustrations with a problem to see everyone else as the issue and not yourself. But his comment wasn\u2019t Extreme Ownership. Such blame casting and excuse making only created more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you\u2019re passive, if you don\u2019t push back,\u201d I said, \u201cyou aren\u2019t leading up the chain of command. The boss needs and wants your honest feedback on this. He may not even know it,\u201d I said jokingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Western Ramadi, Iraq: 2006<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRoger,\u201d Jocko responded simply. While other bosses might have asked for more information, such as why it had happened and who had the AD and if there were casualties and if the target was secure, Jocko trusted that I had the situation under control – and that if I needed help, I would ask for it.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jocko Willink and Leif Babin Part 1: Balancing PeopleChapter 2: Own It All, but Empower Others Charlie Medical Facility, Camp Ramadi, Iraq: 2006Application to Business \u201cFire – let\u2019s cut down all the meetings. That is one of the reasons things aren\u2019t moving. Instead of finding solutions, right now they just ask you for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booknotes","category-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4472,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377\/revisions\/4472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Application to Business<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Chapter 3: Resolute, but Not Overbearing<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Part 2: Balancing the Mission
Chapter 5: Train Hard, but Train Smart<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Chapter 8: Hold People Accountable, but Don\u2019t Hold Their Hands<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Application to Business<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey have to understand why<\/em> – but that why<\/em> has to have a thread that ties back to them, to what is in it for them<\/em>,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>Part 3: Balancing Yourself
Chapter 9: A Leader and a Follower<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Application to BUsiness<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 11: Humble, Not Passive<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 12: Focused, but Detached<\/h1>\n\n\n\n