You must brief so that the lowest common denominator can understand. Make sure that people can ask questions when they don’t understand what the key parts of the mission are.

Once the detailed plan has been developed, it must then be briefed to the entire team and all participants and supporting elements. 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 planning process and briefing must be a forum that encourages discussion, questions, and clarification from even the most junior personnel. If frontline troops are unclear about the plan and yet are too intimidated to ask questions, the team’s ability to effectively execute the plan radically decreases. Thus, leaders must ask questions of their troops, encourage interaction, and ensure their teams understand the plan. The more years I go, the more experience I have, the more that nutrition and eating the right foods is important for recovery and things like that.” – Stephen Curry With a culture of Extreme Ownership within the team, every member of the team could contribute to this effort and ensure the highest levels of performance. Being able to battle it out. No matter how you do it, you gotta hold your ground at times. Other times you’ve got to compromise. But never a compromise that you can’t live with.” – Robert De Niro If nothing else in life, I want to be true to the things I believe in, and quite simply, to what I’m all about. I know I’d better, because it seems whenever I take a false step or two I feel the consequences.”– Peyton Manning

It is paramount that senior leaders explain to their junior leaders and troops executing the mission how their role contributes to big-picture success.” Decisiveness and Uncertainty I’ve been a Colt for almost all of my adult life, but I guess in life, and in sports, we all know nothing lasts forever. Times change, circumstances change, and that’s the reality of playing in the NFL.” – Peyton Manning The plan must describe the overall purpose of the mission. The front line troops must understand the intent of the mission, and where it fits into the big picture.

Leaders should learn how to decentralise power and responsibility. Have junior leaders leading their own teams within the larger team. I realized that if my chain of command had questions about my plans or needed additional information or more detailed paperwork, it was not their fault,” I said. “It was my fault. I knew we were making the right decisions and being careful to mitigate every risk we could control. I knew our combat operations were critical to achieving strategic victory in Ramadi. So if my boss wasn’t comfortable with what I was doing, it was only because I had not clearly communicated it to him.” 11. Decisiveness Amid Uncertainty Military Situation If your boss isn’t making a decision in a timely manner or providing necessary support for you and your team, don’t blame the boss. First, blame yourself. Examine what you can do to better convey the critical information for decisions to be made and support allocated. [10] Discipline yourself. To apply the principles of Prioritise and Execute in any business, team, or organisation, a leader must first: It all depends on the leader. If underperformers cannot improve, the leader must decide to fire them and employ those who can do the job. However, if the underperformer consistently fails to meet expectations, a leader who practices Extreme Ownership must put the team and the purpose ahead of anyone. 2. No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

Analyze the mission. Understand higher headquarters’ mission, Commander’s Intent, and endstate (the goal). Identify and state your own Commander’s Intent and endstate for the specific mission. Something that all leaders need to keep in mind is that you are entirely responsible. It all comes down to you. Willink explains that this responsibility is at the core of being an effective leader, that’s why he calls it extreme ownership – you really have to own the actions and outcomes of the team behind you. Whether you’re a Navy SEAL or a communications professional, extreme ownership will dramatically change the way you work. The philosophy requires leaders to set high standards attainable only through deliberate, thoughtful practice. Communication must be clear and proactive. Results must be owned, no matter what. Teams must align and push each other to be better and more productive than they were before. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth the effort when the battle for good business is won.

Disciplined, Not Rigid — Disciplined standard operating procedures, repeatable processes, and consistent methodologies are helpful in any organization. The more discipline a team exercises, the more freedom that team will have to maneuver by implementing small adjustments to existing plans. Disciplined procedures must be balanced with the ability to apply common sense to an issue, with the power to break with SOPs when necessary, with the freedom to think about alternative solutions, apply new ideas, and make adjustments to processes based on the reality of what is actually happening. The conviction and belief necessary to start and join a startup is no trivial matter. That conviction and belief has to permeate every level of the organization as the business scales. Without understanding why, the sacrifice, stress, and pressure of starting and scaling an enterprise will result in under-performance or death of the organization. Without belief in the why, the organization will be misaligned, distracted, and stagnant. With the conviction and belief in the purpose of the mission you will create owners at every level of your enterprise. If the leader doesn’t believe in the mission, they cannot convince others to believe in the mission. I’m very humbled and I’m very honored. I certainly think about how grateful I am for all the teammates and coached that I’ve played with and played for throughout my career.” – Peyton ManningOwn everything in your world, and blame no one else. Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame. [2] As a Leader, you must demonstrate Extreme Ownership throughout the chain of command down. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Rejection might sting, but my feeling is that often, it has very little to do with you.” – Robert De Niro In a hostage rescue situation the SEALs had made a plan. Shortly before the mission they received new intel that there were IEDs in the yard and machine gun nests in the building. They followed the plan, secured the target. They reenacted that situation years later in training. Many of them thought they should have aborted the mission. But a good plan would already account for those types of contingencies. There are many concepts in this book that can be applied to leaders of any kind, whether it be a leader in battle, of a sports team, of a business or even of a family. See what you can take away from this and apply into your own leadership role. Application to business: Remember the story of the 2 senior engineers who couldn’t work together and were undermining each other at every turn. They wanted each other fired. The best course of action ended up being to fire them both. They were a cancer to the company.

A leader must be close with the troops, but never look at one member of the team as more important than another.Your boss will grow more comfortable with you and establish trust in you when you show you are capable.