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1-Page Summary of Extreme Ownership

Overview

Leadership can be extreme if you’re trying to save a city from violence. This is especially true with Ramadi, Iraq during the war.

This book is based on the insights of two Navy SEAL task unit leaders who served in Ramadi. Their success often determined whether their men lived or died, and they found that these strategies could be applied to any organization trying to succeed with complicated tasks and difficult missions. In this book you’ll learn how to lead by executing “cover and move” and “prioritize and execute,” as well as how accepting blame can save your job; why teams within a corporation should collaborate rather than compete; how facing explosives isn’t necessarily reason enough to abort a mission; etc.

Big Idea #1: Leading a team to success means taking responsibility for each and every one of its failures.

In 2012, one of the authors, Jocko Willink was in Ramadi, Iraq as a SEAL task unit commander when his unit was met with heavy fire from what they thought were enemy insurgents. It turned out that it wasn’t the enemy at all; it was another SEAL unit and during the chaos a soldier lost his life. As the ranking officer on site he took responsibility for this horrible event and saved his job by doing so.

That’s because his superiors realized that every leader makes mistakes, but only the good ones take responsibility for them. They allowed him to keep command of his unit.

The importance of the commander’s attitude can be seen during worst-case-scenario trainings. The units that perform poorly tend to blame either the scenario, their subordinates or themselves for failure.

On the other hand, the Navy SEAL units that perform at peak levels are led by commanders who readily shoulder blame and seek out constructive criticism. When leaders fail to take responsibility for their team’s failures, they pass on a bad attitude to their subordinates. This results in an ineffective team incapable of carrying out its plans.

When you’re on a team, there are always going to be problems. When the leader takes the blame for everything and everyone else makes excuses, that’s not good. The opposite is true when leaders take responsibility for their mistakes and give credit where it’s due. That kind of behavior spreads throughout the organization and people start taking initiative instead of making excuses.

Big Idea #2: To successfully execute your mission, understand its importance.

When the author’s military commanders told him that his SEAL team would be fighting side-by-side with newly minted Iraqi army, he said no. He felt the Iraqis were poorly trained and lacked loyalty to America.

Despite being against the plan, he didn’t speak out. Why? He needed to figure out why it was being implemented first. Once he learned that including the Iraqi army in Navy SEAL operations was actually a strategic move intended to eventually enable US forces’ withdrawal from Iraq, he could believe in the mission and convince his team to do so as well.

So the officer went to work convincing his unit members of why they were there. Once they understood, they were able to commit and help carry out their mission.

However, if Willink had openly questioned the mission, his team would have doubted him. Even if he later realized that it was a bad idea and tried to convince them otherwise, they still probably wouldn’t have supported it.

Leaders must be fully supportive of their team’s objectives. In other words, they should believe in the mission even if it seems like a questionable order.

Leaders are a part of something bigger than themselves, and it’s important that they understand why they’re being asked to do something. If you don’t know the reason for doing something, ask someone higher up in your chain of command. Asking questions can be difficult and intimidating, but not asking is irresponsible as a leader.