PNTV: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin (#297)

Hi, this is Brian.

Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Extreme ownership subtitle How U.S. navy Seals Lead and Win. Jocko and Leif were two of the most senior SEALs on the ground in Iraq, in the most challenging parts of the Iraq conflict. Extraordinary human beings and leaders who, as the subtitle suggests, bring their SEAL wisdom into our lives to help us cultivate our leadership and overall optimizing and actualizing abilities. We've got a Philosopher's Note, a bunch of big ideas. We got five of them here. Let's start with big idea number one. What does it mean to take extreme ownership? It's a very powerful, very simple concept. Here's the deal. Own and every single thing in your life. Here's the equation you can use to know whether you have extreme ownership. You want to take 100% responsibility and have 0% blame. If you are blaming 1%, 5%, 10%, 50%, 100%, you are not being in an extreme ownership position. So check in. What's your ratio? You had 100%? Zero. If so, you are among the most elite possible performers on the planet. Good luck getting to 100% every single moment of every single day. But that's our standard. Figure out how much blaming you are doing in your life and quit doing that. Take 100% responsibility for every single thing in your life. Which brings us to, to big idea number two.

Here.

There are no bad teams. I think this is the second chapter. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. No bad teams, bad leaders. They bring this point home via a cool story. A powerful story from Hell Week SEAL training. Obviously ridiculous. Hell Week is the most intense part of it. And during that time they separate into boat crews, right? So imagine a crew, I think it's six guys, maybe it's eight that have to do crazy stuff, right? It's a World War II era boat, £200. They've got to pick it up, run with it on top of their heads over 20 foot sand berms, miles and miles at a time. They got a row, paddle it out into the ocean, dump it out, over, hop out and then get back in, then paddle back and beat every other team. Or they have to do extra bonus hard stuff. It pays to be a winner is what the officers who are running the show would say to these guys, right? You didn't want to lose. But they tell the story that one of the boat crews was winning every single time. Boat Crew 2, right? And then Boat Crew 6 was losing every single time. And I should mention that each of the boat crews had a leader. The most senior guy was leading the crew, and they had to get the instructions, which were complicated, right? And then take them to their team and get them to do what they needed to do. Boat Crew 2 was crushing it. And they actually had a pretty positive.

Attitude considering what they were going through.

Boat Crew six bickering all, you know, whatever, getting at each other, et cetera. The leader of Boat Crew 6 was convinced that the leader of Boat Crew 2 just got lucky, that he had a great team and that his team just kind of sucked. And then the commanding officer said, you know what? Boat Crew two, Boat Crew six, leaders come up. I want you to switch, right? So suddenly you've got the leader of Boat Crew two, which was crushing it, leading Boat Crew six, which was losing every single time. And then this guy goes over here. Then what happens? Boat Crew 6, that couldn't win ever, is suddenly dominating. They're winning every single time. Now, this boat crew was good, too, because they had a culture that was created, right? But this crew went from being the worst to being first. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. This leader was blaming and blaming and blaming, whereas the other guy took 100% responsibility, said, okay, look, this is what I got to do. Let's go do what needs to get done. Remember, no bad teams, only bad leaders. If you're complaining about your team or you're complaining about your family or any organization you're part of, step up into a leadership position, take 100% ownership, extreme ownership, and make it better. Third big idea to do that. To be an effective leader, you need to be a true believer. Jocko and Leif tell us that if you don't believe, if you don't have a resolute conviction in the power of whatever mission you're on, you're not going to be able to lead, period. And if you aren't a true believer, make yourself get yourself to a point where you can be a true believer. We talk about this in the context of hope a lot. That idea of if you don't believe that your future is going to be better than your present, you're not going to be engaged. If a leader, the research shows, isn't creating hope, right, that they're going to be able to achieve something great, then only 1% of his team will be engaged or her team will be engaged. If there's hope, 69% will be engaged. That's Crazy. If you don't have belief in what you're doing, you're not going to motivate yourself and you're not going to motivate others. This is also the first part of our motivation equation, which we haven't talked.

About in a while.

Motivation equals expectancy times value over impulsivity times delay expectancy. You have to believe that you can achieve something if you want to be motivated. If you don't believe you're going to achieve something, what are you going to do? You're going to procrastinate, you're not going to go all in, you're not going to do what it takes, and you're certainly not going to take extreme ownership. So check in on whatever it is that you're doing. Do you really believe that you can do it if you can't make it? So you can either by getting more capacity to achieve your goal or bringing it back a little bit so it's more doable for you. Challenging and doable. Fourth big idea is what to do when you feel overwhelmed. So the seals in war is such a powerful metaphor for life, because the fog of war there is chaos.

It's easy to get overwhelmed.

And great leaders are able to simplify the battlefield. They're able to prioritize what's most important and then execute that. Rather than spin around in all the possible things they can do, they systematically say, what's the number one thing I need to do right now? What's the thing that needs to happen next for this mission to be a success? If you can't prioritize, you're just going to stay overwhelmed. Then when you've identified the number one thing, you knock that domino over, you've prioritized, and you execute anything other than that number one thing is a distraction. We talk about this all the time. I journal every morning, I write down my number one thing, and I draw that to identify the number one goal. So for you, what's your number one thing? Write it down, know what it is, prioritize it. Notice that anything other than that is a distraction, right? Of course you're going to do other things in your life, but as you're targeting that goal in your professional and creative time, focus on that. Be creative before you're reactive. Don't hop online first thing in the morning. Identify, prioritize, and execute what you've determined is the most important. This is huge, particularly if you're feeling overwhelmed. Most people don't want to take extreme ownership. They don't want to be 100% responsible for this, number one thing. It's a lot easier to diffuse your attention, right. Than it is to say, I'm going all in on this and I'm going to make it happen. But that's what leaders do. They take extreme ownership of what's important and they make it happen. Third big idea, or last big idea rather, is three alarms. So I think this is a story from Jocko who says that he has three alarms to wake him up in the morning. An electronic one, a battery powered alarm and then a wind up alarm. Three alarms that he learned from one of the most intense leaders that he had.

Right?

He was not going to fail to get up on time to do whatever it was he had to do. And he took extreme ownership of it and had three alarms to make sure that he hit what needed to get done. And he said that, look, when your alarm goes off in the morning, if you're waking up from an alarm, that's your first test of the day. And you're either going to pass that test or you're going to fail the test. It's a very simple one, but it's a pivotal moment really in your day. Did you get up and do what you said you're going to do or not? You want to demonstrate extreme ownership such that you can experience the fact that discipline, this is from a chapter on discipline equals freedom. Discipline equals freedom. When we can get ourselves to do what we need to do, when we need to do it, we, we experience freedom. This is a choice we make moment to moment to moment to moment. We call it arete in these talks all the time, every single moment. We're basically looking at a test. We're either going to take 100% responsibility for what we're capable of being in that moment, or not. And the exciting thing is that when you actually discipline yourself, you have the freedom to respond creatively in the context of war. When they have their basic fundamentals nailed it and everything goes wrong, which is pretty much how it's always going to go. Not according to plan, certainly not 100% according to plan. When you have the discipline that you've inculcated by practicing and rehearsing, et cetera, before the event, and then you know what to do in these situations, you have freedom to respond with more creativity. But if you're not eating, to go back to our fundamentals we talk about all the time. If you're not eating well, if you're not moving consistently, and if you're not sleeping consistently, those basic fundamentals are are not in place. There's no possible way you're going to experience the freedom of truly expressing your highest self. Discipline equals freedom. Three alarm clocks. Remember Jocko and his commitment? Prioritize when you're feeling overwhelmed and execute anything other than that number one is a distraction. True believers are what it takes to be true leaders. Remember, you've got to have that belief that that you're creating something great. If you want motivation 1% versus 69%. There are no bad teams, no bad families, no bad groups. Only bad leaders.

Step up.

Be an extreme ownership based leader by owning everything. Check in on how much you're blaming. See if you can get that down to 0% own everything. Extreme ownership. Thank you Jocko and Life for the great book and for your service and all you do. Appreciate it. What was your favorite big idea? What jumped out and landed? Reminded you of something you already knew. Is now a good time to embody that and live it? Get on it. Look forward to sharing more. Have another awesome day. See you.

Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode.

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