Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

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

As a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate. If there are no consequences, that performance becomes the new standard.

If you are interested in how to become a good leader, how to stay calm in any situation, a never be overwhelmed by the number of problems check out this book. It is written by two Navy Seals, which is an American special forces unit, and who better to teach you than two combat veterans with years of experience under their belts.

The ideas and principles in this book are the same that Jocko and Leif teach their own junior leaders in the army, so you don’t need to worry if these concepts work or not. They have been “field” tested.

You should by all means read this book for yourself. Below, I have written out my book notes, but I couldn’t cover hundreds of pages in just a couple of bullet points. That is why I highly encourage you to create your notes whilst going through the book, and for the time being use mine as a guide on what this book is about.

For more books check out Best Self-Improvement Books or Best Classic Books, and for a full self-improvement guide, you can also take a look at my Roadmap to Overman.

Book Notes

Three ways of achieving victory

Victory from within: extreme ownership, clarity, and belief(why), manage your ego

To achieve any victory you must first conquer yourself and your team. In order to do that you should use the following three principles:

• • Implement the mindset of extreme ownership. You must realize that in order to fix any problem at all, you must first take ownership of it. We already talked about the concept of extreme ownership in the previous section whilst explaining responsibility, and I want you to implement exactly that. Also, keep in mind one thing, there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
  • You must believe in the mission yourself before your team does. The most important question you must have an answer to is why believe in that cause. If you remember the ideas we talked about in the chapter about principles of reality, you will realize the importance of belief.
  • And finally, managing your ego. There is not a lot to talk about here, we already established the fact that ego is an illusion, and every true leader must overcome this illusion to lead successfully.

Victory in combat: teamwork, simplicity, prioritization, decentralization.

Now that we have established rules for conquering ourselves, the next step is to conquer the enemy. To do so, here are 4 rules to follow:

• • I believe that teamwork is very much self-explanatory. Without teamwork, there truly is no team nor a need for a leader. To achieve teamwork, there is no linear set of rules you could follow, it is a process of its own that you will learn on your journey to becoming a leader.
  • Simplicity is key to everything in life. By using simplicity in your planning, execution,… you directly help your team members more easily understand and therefore believe in your mission. There are many more implications of this rule, and for that reason try to apply it whenever possible.
  • Always remain calm, step back, and determine the greatest priority. Otherwise, you risk being overwhelmed by the number of problems. There has to be a clear priority number one at all times. To make it easier under pressure, try to stay a step ahead of the problems that may arise.
  • Decentralization means having a clear line of command. No single man can lead 1000 men alone, but if you decentralize the line into more manageable pieces, you see how it becomes much easier to lead.

Sustaining victory: Sound planning, lead up and down the chain, be decisive amidst uncertainty

And finally, once we establish victory, we must learn how to sustain it. The following principles will help you with that:

• • Develop a standard planning process. This way you will minimize time wasted and have a clear-cut way of developing plans.
  • Lead both down and up the chain of command. Don’t ask your leader what you should do, let them know what you are going to do.
  • You must be decisive amid uncertainty. Instead of letting the situation dictate our decisions, we must dictate the situation.