Welcome to Thomas Morales' Extreme Ownership Book Notes! Enjoy 🙂

To check out some of my other Book Notes, Click Here.

Table of Contents

Introduction:

INTRODUCTION:

• Combat is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified — Decisions have immediate consequences, and everything is at stake
• Leaders must own everything in their world - There is no one else to blame

PART I: WINNING THE WAR WITHIN

Chapter 1: Extreme Ownership

The burden of command and the deep meaning of responsibility: the leader is truly and ultimately responsible for everything.

• BUT, if the underperformer continually fails to meet standards, then a leader who exercises Extreme Ownership must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual
• If the underperformer cannot improve, the leader must make the tough call to terminate them and hire others who can get the job done - It is all on the leader
• With Extreme Ownership, you must remove individual ego and personal agenda - It's all about the mission

How can you best get your team to most effectively execute the plan in order to accomplish the mission?

That is the question you have to ask yourself

There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

• Leadership is the single greatest factor in any team's performance
• Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader
• The leader's attitude sets the tone for the entire team
• The leader drives performance — or doesn't
• Executing with monumental effort just to reach an immediate goal that everyone can see, makes it easier to continue to the next visually attainable goal and then the next
• When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable — if there are no consequences — that poor performance becomes the new standard
• Consequences for failing need not be immediately severe, but leaders must ensure that tasks are repeated until the higher expected standard is achieved
• Leaders should never be satisfied — They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team

• In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission
• When leaders receive an order that they themselves question and do not understand, they must the question: Why? Why are we being asked to do this?
• Leaders must take a step back, deconstruct the situation, analyze the strategic picture, and then come to a conclusion — If they cannot determine satisfactory answer themselves, they must ask questions up the chain of command until they understand why
• It is critical that those senior leaders impart a general understanding of that strategic knowledge — the why — to their troops
• If you don't understand or believe in the decisions coming down from your leadership, it is up to you to ask questions until you understand how and why those decisions are being made

Ego clouds and disrupts everything:

1. The planning process
2. The ability to take good advice
3. The ability to accept constructive criticism

• When personal agendas become more important than the team and their overarching mission's success, performance suffers and failure ensues

PART II: THE LAWS OF COMBAT

• Cover and Move: It is the most fundamental tactic, perhaps the only tactic
• Often, when smaller teams within the team get so focused on their immediate tasks, they forget about what others are doing or how they depend on other teams

• Simple, clear and concise information is they key to communication, particularly during stressful moments
• Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear and concise
• As a leader, it doesn't matter how well you feel you have presented the information or communicated an order, plan, tactic or strategy — If your team doesn't get it, you have not kept things simple and you have failed
• You must always brief to ensure the lowest common denominator on the team understands

• "I had to remain calm, step back from my immediate emotional reaction, and determine the greatest priority for the team. Then, rapidly direct the team to attach that priority. Once the wheels were in motion and the full resources of the team were engages in that highest priority effort, I could then determine the next priority, focus the team's effort there, and then move on to the next priority. I could not allow myself to be overwhelmed. I had to relax, look around, and make a call. That was what Prioritize and Execute was all about."
• To implement Prioritize and Execute in any business, team, or organization, a leader must:
1. Evaluate the highest priority problem
2. Lay out in simple, clear, and concise terms the highest priority effort for your team
3. Develop and determine a solution, seek input from the key leaders and from the team where possible
4. Direct the execution of that solution, focusing all efforts and resources toward this priority task
5. Move on to the next highest priority problem — Repeat
• When priorities shift within the team, pass situational awareness both up and down the chain
• Don't let the focus on one priority cause target fixation — Maintain the ability to see other problems developing and rapidly shift as needed

• Teams must be broken down into manageable elements of four to five operators, with a clear designated leader
• Every tactical-level team leader must understand not just what to do but why they are doing it
• Junior leaders must fully understand what is within their decision-making authority — the "left and right limits" of their responsibility
• SEAL leaders on the battlefield are expected to figure out what needs to be done and do it — to tell higher authority what they plan to do, rather than ask
• Senior leaders must constantly communicate and push information, what we call in the military "situational awareness", to their subordinate leaders — Likewise, junior leaders must push situational awareness up the chain to their senior leaders to keep them informed, particularly of crucial information that affects strategic decision making
• Contrary to common misconception, leaders are not stuck in any particular position — Leaders must be free to move where they are most needed, which changes throughout the course of an operation

PART III: SUSTAINING VICTORY

• A broad and ambiguous mission results in lack of focus, ineffective execution, and mission creep
• The mission must be carefully refined and simplified so that it is explicitly clear and specifically focused to achieve the greater strategic vision for which that mission is a part
• The mission must explain the overall purpose and desired result, or "end state", of the operation
• Giving the frontline troops ownership of even a small piece of the plan gives them buy-in, helps them understand the reasons behind the plan, and better enables them to believe in the mission, which translates to far more effective implementation and execution on the ground
• Leaders must carefully prioritize the information to be presented in as simple, clear, and concise a format as possible so that participants do not experience information overload
• The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?
• There are some risks that simply cannot be mitigated, and leaders must instead focus on those risks that actually can be controlled
• Father of the U.S. Navy, John Paul Jones, said: "Those who will not risk cannot win."
• A post-operational debrief examines all phases of an operation from planning through execution, in a concise format — It addresses the following for the combat mission just completed:
What went right?
What went wrong?
How can we adapt our tactics to make us even more effective and increase our advantage over the enemy?
• A leader's checklist for planning should include the following:
Analyze the mission

— Understand higher headquarter's mission, Commander's Intent, and endstate (the goal)

— Identify and state your own Commander's Intent and endstate fo the specific mission

Identify personnel, assets, resources and time available
Decentralize the planning process

— Empower key leaders within the team to analyze possible courses of action

Determine a specific course of action

— Lean toward selecting the simplest course of action

— Focus efforts on the best course of action

Empower key leaders to develop the plan for the selected course of action
Plan for likely contingencies through each phase of the operation
Mitigate risks that can be controlled as much as possible
Delegate portions of the plan and brief to key junior leaders

— Stand back and be the tactical genius

Continually check and question the plan against emerging information to ensure it still fits the situation
Brief the plan to all participants and supporting assets

— Emphasize Commander's Intent — Ask questions and engage in discussion and interaction with the team to ensure they understand

Conduct post-operational debrief execution

— Analyze lessons learned and implement them in future planning

• You need to brief so that the most junior man can fully understand the operation, the lowest common denominator — That's what a brief is
• When everyone participating in an operation knows and understands the purpose and end state of the mission, they can theoretically act without further guidance

• A leader must push situational awareness up the chain of command
• If your leader is not giving you the support you need, don't blame him or her — Reexamine what you can do to better clarify, educate, influence, or convince that person to give you what you need in order to win
• Major factors when leading up and down the chain of command:
Take responsibility for leading everyone in your world, subordinates and superiors alike
If someone isn't doing what you want or need them to do, look in the mirror first and determine what you can do to better enable this
Don't ask your leader what you should do, tell them what you are going to do

• Part of being decisive is knowing and understanding that some decisions, while immediately impactful, can be quickly reversed or altered — Other decisions, like shooting another human being, cannot be undone
• It is critical for leaders to act decisively amid uncertainty — To make the best decisions they can be based on only the immediate information available
• There is no 100% right solution — The picture is never complete
• Leaders must be comfortable with this and be able to make decisions promptly, then be ready to adjust those decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information
• Intelligence gathering and research are important, but they must be employed with realistic expectations and must not impede swift decisions making that is often the difference between victory and defeat
• As a leader, your default setting should be aggressive-proactive rather than reactive
• Instead of letting the situation dictate our decisions, we must dictate the situation

• A leader must be ready to follow — Good leaders must welcome this, putting aside ego and personal agendas
• A leader must be aggressive but not overbearing
• A leader must be calm but not robotic — It is normal and necessary to show emotion, and the team must understand that their leader cares about them and their well-being
• A leader must be confident but never cocky
• A leader must be brave but not foolhardy — Willing to accept risk and act courageously, but must never be reckless
• Leaders must have a competitive spirit but also be gracious losers
• A leader must be attentive to details but not obsessed by them
• A leader must be strong but likewise have endurance, not only physically but mentally
• Leaders must be humble but not passive; quiet but not silent
• A leader must be close with subordinates but not too close
• A leader must exercise Extreme Ownership — Simultaneously that leader must employ Decentralized Command by giving control to subordinate leaders