I first heard about this book from the Head of Architecture at the current company, he was talking about how we can deliver more and better in a mentorship meeting and gave this book as a reference for a good book to read about the subject.

This post is part of the series Learnings from books where my goal is to share what I learned from the book that I read. It is a mixture of review and summary with a bit of my opinion and point of view. But, as reviews, these learnings can say more about me than the book itself, so I trust that you the smart reader will take it with a grain of salt.

Learnings from the book Extreme Ownership

The book is good, as the subtitle says (How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win), it has a lot of military stories and references. Each chapter basically has a military example of a situation, the principle of that situation, and a business example of that principle applied.

This structure is nice if you want, you can just skip to the principle and see the business application if you are not interested in the military example, but you will probably lose some context that helps you understand the context better.

Below I list the main principles that I thought were interesting.

Principle: Extreme Ownership

This is the most important, as it has the name of the book also. Here, the idea is that all responsibility for the success or failures of a team or organization falls with the leader. That means that the leader must own everything. No one to blame, only the leaders themselves.

The principle is simple, but not easy. “Taking ownership for mistakes and failures is hard. But doing so is key to learning, to developing solutions, and, ultimately, to victory.”

If a subordinate is not doing what they are supposed to, it is the leader’s fault as the leader bears full responsibility for not explaining the strategic mission, training the subordinate, or giving enough resources for them to accomplish the job.

That is not easy, as the author points out “Total responsibility for failure is a difficult thing to accept, and taking ownership when things go wrong requires extraordinary humility and courage. But doing just that is an absolute necessity to learning, growing as a leader, and improving a team’s performance.”

If you don’t have a leader in your job title at work, don’t stop reading just now, the nice thing is that this principle applies not only to leaders but to everyone, even in your personal lives.

You will get opportunities to “lead” some initiatives, and taking the view that if something fails is your fault, not others will help you think of ways of improving and doing better next time. If you default to blaming others, you will never improve as in your mind, you have not to improve. You can read more about this in my summary of the book Mistakes were made (but not by me).

Principle: No bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

Good leaders don’t make excuses, they figure out a way to get it done and win. If your team the team is performing badly, it is the leader’s fault. The leader must make the mission clear, train, and provide resources, and even after, the team is still performing badly, the leader must make the difficult call of removing the worst-performing individuals.

Principle: Believe

If the leader does not believe in the mission, the leader will never be able to convince others to believe in it also. The leader must be a true believer in the mission. If we don’t believe in the mission, we were not going to take the required risks to make it work.

Sometimes to believe you must understand not only what must be done, but the why. If you do not believe in the mission or plan, keep asking why until you fully believe in it.

Principle: Check the ego

Assuming ownership for everything, mainly for the faults, is a difficult task as it hurts our ego. “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.”

Principle: Simple

In development, we have the KISS principle, and in leadership, we have to do the same, Keep it Simple. Simplicity is crucial for successful execution, when plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them.

Principle: Prioritize and Execute

When reading this I remember my manager, he always says that for a task to be done it has to have two things, be important and urgent. If it has only one of both, we shouldn’t do it.

It is easy to fail when we are overwhelmed and try to tackle multiple problems and simultaneous tasks, so, “leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute”.

Principle: Decentralized Command

Humans are not capable of managing teams of more than 6 to 10 people, so you have to decentralize the command. Also, the chain of command has to be clear for everyone and every level must follow the Believe principle above.

Principle: Leading up the chain

I have never thought about leading up the chain, we usually assume that leadership only comes from the top down.

But if your boss is not providing you with support or making decisions in a timely matter, don’t blame her or him, take full ownership. Analyze what you can do and what information you can provide to your superior in other for them to make the decision and support you.

Leading up the chain is a lot harder than leading down. “Leading up the chain takes much more savvy and skill than leading down the chain. 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.”

If you don’t understand why the decisions are being made, it is your responsibility to ask the chain up for information and clarifications. “if your leader is not giving the support you need, don’t blame him or her. Instead, reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win.”

Principle: Decisiveness amid Uncertainty

We will never have the complete picture or all the information that we need to make the decisions. But that should not block you from making the decision. “It is critical for leaders to act decisively amid uncertainty, to make the best decisions they can based on only the immediate information available.”

Favorite quotes

These are my 5 favorite quotes from the book.

  • “Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.”

  • “One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your own boss - your immediate leadership. In any chain of command, the leadership must always present a united front to the troops.”

  • “Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead. If you are on your own, I don’t care how good you are, you won’t be able to handle it.”

  • “Relax, look around, make a call.”

  • “In combat as in life, the outcome is never certain, the picture never clear. There are no guarantees of success. But in order to succeed, leaders must be comfortable under pressure, and act on logic, not emotion. This is a critical component to victory.”

These are my learnings from the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. A special thanks to Vancouver Public Library (VPL) for allowing access to the book for free.

Happy reading!