Rating Qualities

8
Applicable
Innovative

Extreme Ownership
How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin | St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015

Curious about Extreme Ownership? Read our review below. While we’re awaiting the
copyright holder’s go-ahead to summarize this book in our usual summary format, we
hope you’ll find our review just as helpful.

Review
Former US Navy SEAL officers and New York Times number one best-selling authors Jocko
Willink and Leif Babin served in the Iraq War, including the 2006 Battle of Ramadi. They fought
in SEAL Task Unit Bruiser, an outstanding special operations unit. The two officers created and
led leadership training for SEALs and later opened Echelon Front, a leadership consultancy for
building and leading winning teams. Their combat record is exemplary, and they fought in some
of the war’s toughest battles. Willink held higher rank than Babin, but their communication,
commitment and willingness to examine the efficacy of their actions created a lasting bond.
They now consult together, helping companies solve leadership problems. However, leadership
lessons make up barely half of their book. Combat stories fill most of the text and prove far
more engaging. In the war-story section of each chapter, the authors detail the planning and
execution of a combat mission. Surprisingly, the section of each chapter that often turns out
to be the most illuminating about leadership is the combat debriefing. While always politically
neutral, getAbstract recommends these compelling war stories to those who prefer a military-style
leadership structure and are willing to examine their own mistakes with ruthless candor.

Willink and Babin set out to give readers the leadership lessons they learned as Navy SEALs. Each
chapter begins with a combat photo showing the authors as tough, competent warriors. Their

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 prose mirrors their military background. They write in hard-nosed direct sentences, with few
adjectives, although they use the ones that they like often. They also repeat certain events and use
some words – “wary” and “deference,” for example – incorrectly. But never mind all that. Even
given that the manuscript would benefit from a rigorous edit, its flaws haven’t deterred its readers.

Perhaps that’s because the authors’ clumsy, plodding style and tendency to fall back on clichés
can’t blunt the excitement of their account of their wartime experiences. The downside is
that sometimes the flatness of their authorial voice – which seems to spring from a warrior-
dude refusal to evoke emotion – drains some of the drama out of their combat sagas and the
illuminating leadership lessons they exemplify.

“Extreme Ownership”

In a combat debriefing, every SEAL explains what he (the SEALs opened the door to female sailors
in 2016 but as of April 19, no one had gone through it) did and why. Each SEAL tries to find every
mistake he made. This vulnerable willingness to hunt down and own their individual – possibly
life-threatening – errors offers more profound leadership lessons than the formal lessons that
follow. Few leaders or followers ever like to admit they’re wrong. Indeed, does anybody?

Yet the authors state that owning your errors is a core aspect of the SEAL warrior culture.
This is the “extreme ownership” of the title: Each man is responsible for his actions and their
consequences and doesn’t flinch from being told how to correct his mistakes. Paradoxically, the
ability to look fellow warriors in the eyes and say, “It was my fault,” seems as courageous as going
into battle. At the same time, this also seems like a leadership model that could flourish in a tiny,
self-selected elite unit, but perhaps not in a dog-eat-dog corporation. Yet, the authors work hard to
teach that sort of loyalty and humility to corporate America.

Business Lessons

Willink and Babin’s business lessons form the closing sections of each chapter and fall strangely
flat. They attempt to show parallels between a combat leadership lesson they lived through in
wartime and a business leadership lesson they’ve taught a client company. If this book contained
only directly business-related leaderships lessons, it would be a slim volume. Most lessons – even
though the detailed narrative recounting the authors’ interaction with clients goes on for multiple
pages – could be, and in some cases is, distilled down to one or two sentences.

After the adrenaline rush of the combat stories, the ensuing accounts of how the authors
corrected business mistakes sometimes fail to engage. The lumbering prose makes many lessons
unnecessarily hard to read and digest. The authors detail each lesson sharply in the combat
section of each chapter. Yet, while reading the business teaching, you may search in vain for a
clearer link between the combat lesson and the corporate lesson. A further hindrance is that
each business lesson section follows a similar structure: The businessperson relates a problem.

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 The SEALs pose a commonsense solution. The client initially resists, claiming contrary previous
practice or some other excuse. The SEALs explain their solution yet again and, sometime later,
the client admits that the Navy men were right in the first place. This can wear you out. Replacing
each labored business lesson with a simple summary of the lesson as learned in combat would
make the book more readable and immediately applicable. Some astute readers might simply
relish the combat tales and skip the less compelling business class altogether.

“My Fault”

Willink learned one of his most illuminating, enduring lessons during an incident of “blue on
blue” or “friendly” fire. The SEALs under his command and the soldiers who were with them made
dangerous mistakes that led to a fellow SEAL being wounded. As expected, his superiors told
Willink to cease all operations until he had given them a thorough briefing. He interviewed the
participants and set up the usual PowerPoint display detailing the combat action step-by-step.

As he reached various points in his briefing, he asked different SEALs in the room: “Whose fault
was this?” As each man tried to take blame, Willink said he was wrong. At the end of the briefing,
Willink told the room: “There is only one person to blame for this: Me.” The SEAL lesson is:
Whatever happens under your command is always your fault. A leader owns “everything in his or
her world.” If subordinates fail, leaders must provide better training and instruction. And leaders
must prioritize loyalty to those they lead. This, too, is extreme ownership.

Ego Problems

When dealing with egos, your own will always be the most problematic. Staying aware of that can
be difficult, and it will only become more difficult when someone has to point it out to you in no
uncertain terms. Vesting in extreme ownership means acquiescing to “humility.” To assess your
performance honestly, you must disconnect from the demands of your ego. As hard as that is,
when you demonstrate this level of honesty, you will inspire great and enduring team loyalty and
motivate your people to put their own egos aside.

“Prioritize and Execute”

The leader in any combat situation faces multiple simultaneous problems, most of them life-
threatening. Willink and Babin warn that leaders can become overwhelmed if they try to solve
several problems at once. Keep a calm head, evaluate the severity of each problem, prioritize
them accordingly and execute a solution to the one you determine to be most pressing. Describe
the highest “priority effort” to your team in the simplest, briefest way. Ask your subordinates for
suggestions and select a solution. Use every available asset to apply the solution. When you’ve
dealt with that problem, execute the solution to the next one, and then shift to the next.

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 Stay alert to other issues that may develop as you solve the most pressing concerns. The authors
note that in combat, prioritizing and executing must take place as quickly as possible. In business,
you are more likely to have enough time to weigh each problem more carefully. The most efficient
way to build the ability to prioritize and execute is to prepare diligently. If you understand a task’s
likely problems, you will be better positioned to prioritize solutions to those obstacles more rapidly
when they occur. In combat and business, decisiveness is a core virtue.

The authors are quite clear that you must always make your directives and policies as simple
as possible. In any action, in any realm, something will go wrong. The more complex your
commands, the more likely it is that they will foment confusion. If you give your subordinates
concise instructions on achieving a primary goal, they can focus and handle any issues that arise.

About the Authors

Former US Navy SEAL officers and New York Times best-selling authors Jocko Willink
and Leif Babin served in SEAL Task Unit Bruiser during the Iraq War. They created and led
leadership training for SEALs and now run Echelon Front, a team leadership consultancy.

This document is restricted to the personal use of Tareq Hakeem (t.hakeem@shc.gov.sa)

getAbstract maintains complete editorial responsibility for all parts of this review. All rights reserved. No part of this review may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, photocopying or otherwise – without prior written permission of getAbstract AG (Switzerland).

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