It's also the leader's responsibility to ensure that a decision about how to proceed is reached. In the book the author discusses how it is the responsibility of leaders to plan missions and to ensure that all voices and concerns are heard during planning. I don't think the way you've phrased this is quite accurate, although I understand what you're getting at. And of course, it's not all black and white, these are matters of degree, including measuring the desperation and force in the tone of an order. If the leader has earned trust, I'll know that they have the bigger picture, and what seems wrong to me now makes sense in some way I can't see from where I am. I'd rather get court martialed back home than die in the dirt. If a leader I don't trust tells me to do something that seems wrong and reckless enough to get me killed, I'm not going to do it. If anything, that means trust plays MORE of a role than hierarchy. In combat, certainly the stakes are higher, and lives are on the line. A general can't and shouldn't make decisions on day-to-day operations at the platoon-level. Out of combat, a top-down command and control hierarchy leads to poor decision making by troops on the ground. This doesn't jive with my understanding of US military (or human nature). > The military demands that soldiers immediately and unquestioningly follow commands given by their superiors (particularly during combat). ![]() Being a 'force multiplier' in business requires a different mentality than in war zones. Meanwhile, in business, I strongly believe leaders need to be in more of a team-servant role - yes, motivating, providing vision, etc., but also cultivating a sense of "your voice matters," if that makes sense. Lives are literally at stake, so any hesitation for even a moment could spell doom. The military demands that soldiers immediately and unquestioningly follow commands given by their superiors (particularly during combat). Not to mention unfortunate, because the sort of leadership that works best in the military is decidedly not the sort of leadership that works best in business. In short, these things sell because American business leaders fetishize these sort of ex-SEAL types. "In the trenches," "boots on the ground," framing sales territories as battlegrounds. There are so many war-isms in business it's impossible to list them all. In their minds, business is war, and "lives are at stake" gets translated to either "jobs are at stake" or "revenue is at stake," depending on the person. It is a challenge to accept the most fundamental challenges of responsibility - how many managers have you met which fail to do that?Ĭorporate business leaders here in America tend to be obsessed with trying to apply military-style terminology and doctrines to their business. This is deliberately not an academic-level treatise on leadership. That may be necessary to drive the relatively few points home, with even fewer actually changing their behavior. ![]() ![]() That said, the book really boils down to continual repetition of a few core points over and over. The war stories are what folks seem to focus on here, but I feel those are there mostly for entertainment, in addition to an example of the underlying value it's trying to demonstrate. * He says that leaders aren’t trusted implicitly in the Seal teams either, btw, and it's part of the job of the leader to build rapport with their teams, sell them on the plan, and make sure everyone understands the higher intent, if the team is really to be effective rather than dysfunctional. It also talks about the dangers of operating in a high complexity environment and the need to develop an understandable and legible method of communication. Even CEO and CTOs are prone to deflecting blame when there's politics and external parties involved.Īll of the case studies show how managers suffer from defense mechanisms and logical fallacies that are harmful rather than helpful. It is primarily about owning responsibility yourself, and not externalizing blame. Extreme ownership is not about the pressure of having to deal with "lives on the line".
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