Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win

In the 2015 military and business book Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win, two of the most highly decorated US Navy SEALs of the Iraq War describe the lessons of leadership learned during combat and how those lessons apply to companies and organizations. Authors Jocko Willink and Leif Babin explain that the single most important element of a team is its leader and that the team succeeds in its mission only if the leader takes full responsibility for every aspect of the team’s efforts. Extreme Ownership became a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Jocko Willink, for 20 years a Navy SEAL, fought alongside fellow SEAL officer Leif Babin during the Battle of Ramadi. Later, they trained SEAL recruits, and, after retiring from the service, formed the consulting firm Echelon Front to teach businesses the principles they learned on the battlefield. Alone and with Babin, Willink is the author of multiple books; he also hosts the Jocko Podcast, which expands on the lessons of leadership.

The 2017 second edition’s ebook version forms the basis for this study guide.

Summary

Extreme Ownership is how great leaders take responsibility for every aspect of their team and its mission. Placing blame for problems prevents them from getting solved, but accepting blame and taking steps to fix a situation moves a mission forward.

The authors were trained in the US Navy SEAL program, arguably the toughest military school for special operations soldiers. SEALs penetrate enemy territory to disrupt opponents, rescue friendlies, gather intelligence, and support invasions. The authors served together in Iraq during the Battle of Ramadi, where an entire city had to be reclaimed, block by block, from determined al Qaeda insurgents. Though SEAL team operations were generally successful, the authors made mistakes in the field: They lost three team members, and eight others were wounded—painful lessons that taught them vital truths about leadership.

During one battle, Army troops fire on a SEAL team, but, in a major test of his commitment to Extreme Ownership, Willink solves the crisis before anyone gets killed. He takes the blame for the communications mix-up, fixes the problem, and promises that it’ll never happen again—and it doesn’t. In later life, Willink shows a company’s director of manufacturing how Extreme Ownership, instead of placing blame, can help the director coordinate distant plants so they work together smoothly.

As a SEAL instructor, Babin demonstrates the power of leadership during a class competition. He switches the front-running crew’s leader with the worst crew’s leader, and the losing team promptly begins to win, while the formerly best team stays competitive and takes second place. Babin later explains to a financial services company that blame doesn’t fix problems, but the firm’s chief technology officer persists in blaming others for the failure of his products. The CEO eventually replaces the CTO with a new leader who promptly turns the company’s fortunes around.

On his second Iraq tour, Willink’s SEALs are ordered to work with ill-trained Iraqi recruits, which greatly slows the SEALs’ progress. Willink realizes that the battlefield is the only practical place to train Iraqi troops, and he comes to believe in that approach. His men pick up on his confidence, and the altered mission moves forward successfully. Willink later shows a business firm how to improve employee compliance with new standards by encouraging employees to ask questions until they understand and believe in the revised goal.

Another SEAL team moves to Babin’s platoon outpost but treats Army and Marine troops as inferior, then goes off on patrol without coordinating with the other units. The colonel in charge gets the arrogant team transferred. Babin builds on the experience to show a drilling company manager how to deal with a brilliant but egotistical drill chief by sidestepping his prideful attitude.

The four Laws of Combat are: Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command. Cover and Move means that teammates protect each other, taking turns providing covering fire as they move forward. This also applies in business, where different departments make sure to coordinate, support each other, and avoid infighting.

Simple plans help prevent confusion during an operation. Projects can become elaborately complex, but this often leads to misunderstandings, and, when implemented, the projects can collapse into chaos as outside factors throw things into disarray. During war and in commerce, keeping missions simple, with instructions that are clearly understood by everyone, helps reduce turmoil.

During one SEAL operation, the teams become trapped inside a building blocked by a huge bomb that’s set to detonate within minutes. Breaking through a wall and escaping, they find themselves exposed on a nearby rooftop while a team member falls through to the street. Babin stays calm and prioritizes the next actions: He sets up guards; then he orders the exit gate breached; then the soldiers exit, weapons at the ready; and finally, using Cover and Move, they escape before detonation. This type of orderly, methodical thought and action works in any type of crisis where a sudden crush of decisions might overwhelm a leader.

During a firefight or a business crisis, a leader shouldn’t try to micro-manage his team members. Willink learns to build trust within his platoons, makes clear a given mission’s goals and rationale, then delegates to his platoon leaders the authority to make tactical decisions. This technique of Decentralized Command allows him to focus on the big picture while his lieutenants take care of the rest. They, in turn, delegate small details to junior staff. At each level, a leader deals with no more than four to six sub-leaders. Critical to this technique is trust and two-way communication so that everyone understands the goals and can tune their actions and decisions accordingly.

Planning is critical to success but only if it’s clear, anticipates problems, delegates details to junior leaders, and focuses the team on the end state, or Commander’s Intent. SEAL teams in Iraq use this system hundreds of times in the field, and author Babin later teaches it to a firm’s emerging markets division, who use the approach to launch products faster, anticipate problems that crop up, and save time and money.

Leaders don’t simply command their junior officers; sometimes they must guide their superiors. Higher-ups often flood lower-level officers with requests for information. While this can seem bureaucratic or a sign of timidity, usually these officers want their people to succeed, and they simply don’t yet have enough information to approve a mission. A junior officer can manage these situations by providing more information than senior officers request, and doing so in a clear, respectful manner. This is an example of leading up the chain of command.

During battle, lack of information can cause a leader to hesitate, which can be fatal, but quick action also might cause a disaster. Leaders must be willing to hold back when, for example, there’s a chance they’ll accidentally fire on friendly forces. They must also be prepared to resist pressure from higher-ups if they sense that the situation before them remains uncertain.

Careful planning, constant practice, and an orderly, systematic approach might seem to hobble flexibility, but in fact, discipline increases freedom. During action, a disorderly approach can break down quickly and severely limit a team’s options. Careful preparation, on the other hand, gives a team much wider latitude to innovate or adapt to sudden changes.

If leaders humbly accept complete responsibility for the outcome of their projects, prepare thoroughly for any eventualities, and encourage team members to take leadership of their parts of a mission, the odds of success skyrocket.