Extreme Ownership: Leadership Lessons from Navy SEALs

TL;DR

True leadership isn't about blaming others; it's about taking absolute ownership of every outcome, good or bad. This mindset eliminates gaps, builds trust, and drives success. #VentureStep #BookReview #Leadership

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a better leader or a more concise communicator? ¹ In the complex world of entrepreneurship and business, teams often fail not because of a lack of skill, but a lack of accountability. When projects derail, the natural tendency is to point fingers at other departments, unforeseen circumstances, or team members who didn't pull their weight. This creates a culture of blame that stifles progress and guarantees repeated failure.

In this episode of Venture Step, host Dalton Anderson dives into

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, a book that offers a powerful antidote to this problem. ²Drawing from their harrowing experiences as Navy SEAL commanders in the Afghan war, Willink and Babin present a simple but radical framework: the leader is responsible for everything. ³ Dalton explores how this principle applies directly to the business world, from executive strategy to everyday team collaboration.

This review breaks down the book’s core concepts chapter by chapter, translating battlefield lessons into actionable business strategies. ⁴⁴⁴⁴ From understanding the power of "no bad teams, only bad leaders" to the critical importance of communicating the "why" behind a mission, you'll get a clear roadmap for implementing a culture of complete ownership. Whether you're moving into a leadership role or simply want to be a more effective team member, these insights will change the way you approach your work. ⁵

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Total Accountability: Extreme Ownership means you are responsible for everything in your world, including the performance of other teams your project depends on. ⁶
• No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders: A team's performance is a direct reflection of its leadership; a great leader can turn an underperforming team into a top-tier unit by setting high standards and fostering the right culture. ⁷⁷
• Believe in the Mission: For a team to execute effectively, they must understand and believe in the 'why' behind the mission. It is the leader's job to communicate this clearly. ⁸
• Simplify and Decentralize: Complex plans create confusion. Leaders must develop simple, clear plans and empower junior leaders to make decisions, creating a more agile and resilient team. ⁹⁹⁹
• Discipline Equals Freedom: Discipline creates more options and control over your life. By consistently carving out time for what's important, you gain the freedom to pursue your goals without distraction. ¹⁰¹⁰¹⁰

FULL CONVERSATION

Dalton: Welcome to Venture Step Podcasts, where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional book review. ¹¹Have you ever wondered what it would take to become a better leader or a more concise communicator? ¹²Well, if you have, I've got a perfect book suggestion for you:

Extreme Ownership, How US Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. ¹³

Dalton: You are probably familiar with Jocko or Leif. ¹⁴They have a pretty popular podcast, they wrote some books, and they do leadership seminars. ¹⁵I read

Extreme Ownership, and the book's pretty good. ¹⁶I first off want to recommend that you read this book, and I would recommend people who read it to come in with an open perspective. ¹⁷

Who Should Read This Book?

Dalton: The people that I would suggest read this book are folks that are moving into a leadership role, want to be in a leadership role, or are interacting with leadership and need to understand what they're thinking about and their perspective and proper methods of communication. ¹⁸Another reason would be if you just want to be a better team member and be more efficient at your job. ¹⁹One of the ways to be more efficient is to hold yourself accountable, be disciplined, and have ownership of all parts of your project, even if they aren't yours. ²⁰

At the end of the day, if it's your project and another department isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing, the results still reflect on you. That was still your project. ²¹

Dalton: No matter if you're still waiting on this other department or the logistics got messed up or there's some kind of storm, at the end of the day, you could have been a clearer communicator. ²²You could have illustrated the why—the importance of the project, why it was strategic, and how it aligns with the missions of the company. ²³Every obstacle that you had, you could have solved for instead of saying, "Well, it's some other department's problem and they're just not doing what they're supposed to be doing." ²⁴

The Core Principle: What Is Extreme Ownership?

Dalton: Once you remove this inability to be accountable for other people's stuff and you say, "Hey, this is my project. I own it from start to finish," it changes everything. ²⁵You may not be the key contributor, but if you're running into issues or not getting the results you need, then that's on you. ²⁶It's because you didn't communicate the importance or the why, or you didn't allow people to ask clarifying questions. ²⁷

Dalton: If you haven't noticed today, the podcast is about Extreme Ownership. ²⁸I recommend you read the book, but you can also listen to the audiobook on Spotify or wherever you find it. ²⁹The audiobook is pretty good because since Jocko and Leif have their own podcast, they are the narrators of their own book. ^30303030I think it's well done because it's their book, they wrote it, and it's their perspective. ³¹

A Story of True Accountability

Dalton: A little bit of background is Jocko and Leif Babin were Navy SEALs deployed in the Afghan war. ³²They were part of the Bruiser Task Force, in charge of targeted raids where they would go into enemy-controlled territories, take out bad guys, capture them, interrogate, and then rinse and repeat. ³³

Dalton: The first part of the book talks about a firefight they had and just knowing your surroundings and not relying too much on the metrics and the tech. ³⁴In their scenario, technology was faulty, and relying too much on it put them at a disadvantage. ³⁵The lesson is to trust your instincts in certain scenarios, remain composed, and move forward. ³⁶Not making a decision and becoming overwhelmed and freezing up is a decision in itself. ³⁷As they would say, look around, take a breath, make a call. ³⁸

Dalton: The next part is Extreme Ownership, the title of the book. ³⁹Ownership basically means everything's your responsibility. ⁴⁰The premise is that if everyone has extreme ownership on your team, you never have a gap. ⁴¹If you're saying you own everything, and I'm saying I own everything, and another teammate says they own everything, it's not that we all do the same job. ⁴²It means if everybody owns every part of the situation, there are no gaps because you pick up slack when there is slack created. ⁴³

The story in the book is where Jocko had a situation where they had a friendly fire incident and somebody got killed. ⁴⁴A friendly fire incident is not acceptable for any military group, but it's especially not acceptable for the Navy SEALs. ⁴⁵

Dalton: Top brass came to the base and asked what happened. Jocko just took complete responsibility for everything. 46At the end of the day, he's the commander and it was his fault. 47 It's the same in the business world. They gave an example where an executive was failing to deliver on a cost-cutting initiative and blaming others. 48 If people don't understand your idea or your initiative, it's not their problem. It's your problem. 49

No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders

Dalton: I really liked this one. No bad teams, only bad leaders. ⁵⁰ This was a cool chapter where they talked about SEAL training. Leif Babin was observing officers in training. ⁵¹There were two teams. ⁵²One was performing exceptionally and had a great leader who took responsibility and helped pick up the slack. ⁵³The other team's leader was an amazing athlete but felt he was dragging his team and was blaming them for their inability to perform. ⁵⁴

Dalton: They had a suggestion of switching the leaders. ⁵⁵They gave the bad team the good leader, and they gave the good team the bad leader. ⁵⁶What happened was the bad team with the good leader was able to perform consistently first or second, when historically they were last every time. ⁵⁷It was an almost instant impact. ⁵⁸And the bad leader that went to the good team still constantly performed first or second. ⁵⁹

The gist of it was there's no bad teams, just bad leaders. ⁶⁰

Dalton: Why did the good team still perform well with the bad leader? The good leader had already put together high standards and the right culture on the team to not push blame and to be accountable. 61When the bad leader came to the good team, the standards were really high and the expectation was to meet those standards. 62The good leader going to the bad team had to recalibrate the team and get the right standards put in place to change the performance. 63

Believe in the Mission: The Power of 'Why'

Dalton: The next piece I talked about was this one: believe in the mission, explain the why. ⁶⁴In this chapter, they talk about how the US government stated that they would no longer approve any operations without Iraqi soldiers. ⁶⁵This was a big deal because the Navy SEALs typically don't do operations with other groups. ⁶⁶ The Navy SEALs did not like that idea. They would have to work with somebody they don't trust, who isn't trained. ⁶⁷No one was thrilled about that. ⁶⁸

Dalton: Even Jocko was against it at first. ⁶⁹ But after he calmed down, he asked why. The why was that for them to be able to remove themselves from the situation, they had to get a local force that could compete with the terrorist groups. ⁷⁰ If we never get a local defense force that is good enough, who's going to defend this country? It's your generation and the next generation after that. ⁷¹Once you understand the why, it makes a lot more sense. ⁷²

Decentralize Command with Simple Plans

Dalton: The next one is decentralized command. In simple terms, decentralized command is basically where everyone is cross-trained. Everyone has the ability to step up and be a leader. ⁷³If something happens to the immediate leadership, someone else can step up. ⁷⁴The way you can do decentralized command is with simple plans. ⁷⁵If your plan is super complex, it's hard to follow and hard to understand. ⁷⁶

The business example in this book was pretty good. They had this crazy sales compensation plan... it was crazy. ^77777777The salespeople didn't understand how they were getting paid. ⁷⁸They were confused and thought they were getting mispaid because one month they would sell the same amount of units and get different payments. ⁷⁹

Dalton: It caused a lot of confusion and frustration when they could have just made a simple compensation plan. ⁸⁰ They changed it to make it very simple. There were only like three things instead of 15 or 25 different variables. ⁸¹Everyone sold more because they understood which products the company wanted them to sell and which ones they would get compensated more for. ⁸²

Check Your Ego to Collaborate Effectively

Dalton: The next one is check your ego. This was about an elite team that was just being monsters on the battlefield, but they did not assimilate with the base they were on. ^83838383Basically, if you go to someone's house, you play by their rules. ⁸⁴Jocko and Leif's task group decided they were going to abide by the army's rules, take care of themselves, make sure their uniforms were pressed, and shave. ⁸⁵The other group came in there wearing tank tops, not shaving, not collaborating with the commander, and telling the commander they're on a need-to-know basis. ⁸⁶They were kicked out because it causes too much trouble. ⁸⁷You just have to be humble, lead, assimilate, and be respectful. ⁸⁸

Cover and Move: The Essence of Teamwork

Dalton: The next principle was cover and move. This is really about how if you're moving, somebody's covering you. ⁸⁹This is really related to business; you're on the same team. ⁹⁰The business scenario they had was production and supply chain mismanagement where they were on the same company and mission, but different teams. ⁹¹They could have collaborated better, had a simple plan, had extreme ownership, and then covered and moved. ⁹² I had a situation at work where I was trying to collaborate with a different group. At first, they were apprehensive. ^93939393Eventually, we got to the point where we were covering and moving, where we are a functional, multi-part system that moves as a unit. ⁹⁴We're getting stuff done. ⁹⁵

How to Prioritize and Execute Under Pressure

Dalton: The next one is prioritize and execute. The business story was about a successful medical company that had many projects going on: trainings, onboarding, new product launches—all sorts of stuff. ^96969696They had like 20 initiatives going, but they were spreading themselves thin. ^97979797It's not that you don't want to do them ever, it's just pick a couple, get those done correctly, and then move to the next one versus trying to do everything a little bit at a time. ⁹⁸

I have a couple of initiatives for the podcast. I want to scale the podcast. I want to become a Spotify partner. I want to have guests on the show. And I also want to have a website that has all my articles. ⁹⁹

Dalton: The first thing that I'm going to do is get rid of the backlog of articles. ¹⁰⁰ Then after that, I am going to get guests on the show. Then after that, I'm going to work on scaling the podcast. ¹⁰¹ I'm too far behind on the podcast articles. So prioritize that, get that done, move to the next thing. ¹⁰²

Making Tough Calls with Decisiveness

Dalton: The next topic is decisiveness under uncertainty. In this scenario, a CEO gets an email from two of her head developers. ¹⁰³They didn't like each other, and both of them said the other person was looking for a job somewhere else and demanded they be fired immediately. ¹⁰⁴The CEO was freaking out because she needed both of them for crucial product launches. ^105105105105

When I heard this scenario, I said, fire both. You can't have people like that in your company... bickering at the company. ¹⁰⁶It's just a bad situation. ¹⁰⁷

Dalton: What they did is they couldn't figure out who to fire, so they fired both of them. ¹⁰⁸They immediately found replacements by uplifting suggested employees into leadership positions to lead the teams to success, and they said that was a great decision. ¹⁰⁹

The Final Law: Discipline Equals Freedom

Dalton: The last one was discipline equals freedom. I think that discipline gives you the right to dictate what you want to do. ^110110110110I mean it in a way that if you have something that you really want to work on, if you have the discipline to carve out the time consistently, you can get that done. ¹¹¹ How do you get time? The easiest way is to either stay up late or get up early. ¹¹²My problem with staying up late is there are all sorts of distractions. ¹¹³That scenario does not work if you get up early. ¹¹⁴ You're up when they're asleep. You have this time that's just your time. ¹¹⁵

Dalton: That's the time where you can push ahead in these different initiatives that you find important, that you have the grit to get up and get after it, day in, day out. ¹¹⁶You want to find freedom, find discipline. ¹¹⁷If you constantly allow people to push you where you need to go, you'll never go where you want to go. ¹¹⁸

Dalton: Wherever you are today, good afternoon, good evening, good morning. ¹¹⁹Thank you for listening in. Hope you catch the next episode airing next week. ¹²⁰Goodbye. ¹²¹

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's Podcast
• Spotify

INDEX OF CONCEPTS

Dalton Anderson, Jocko Willink, Leif Babin, Ben Horowitz, Extreme Ownership, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Venture Step, Navy SEALs, Bruiser Task Force, Afghan war, Extreme Ownership, No bad teams only bad leaders, Decentralized Command, Cover and Move, Prioritize and Execute, Discipline Equals Freedom, Hell Week, Spotify