Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Finally I've listened to "Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win" by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. It's been on my reading list for a long time and I have just not gotten around to it until now.

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin are both former US Navy SEALs who served in the Iraq War. Willink led the Task Unit Bruiser and Babin was one of the commanders leading one of the two platoons of that unit.

The book is about leadership skills that are crucial for success out on the battlefield. These skills can also be applied with proven success in businesses or any other scene where leadership skills are required. Each chapter is one story from their deployment to Iraq, explaining a particular leadership skill, then afterwards another story from the business world where Leif and Jocko could help the company out. The alternating between stories makes the book an easy listen.

The narration is good, clear and to the point. The stories, especially the ones from Iraq were riveting, sucking me in and I listened with great interest. There is just something about the stark, cold simplicity and complexity of warfare, especially when told by US SEAL team members.

In short, some of the skills and lessons they explain are:
(My interpretation, errors may be present, read the book for the true story.)

Extreme Ownership - As a leader you should always take ownership of everything around you.
For instance, if you brief your subordinates about a job and then when they perform it they fail and just don't follow your instructions correctly. It might be natural to blame them for not performing the task as instructed. But in accordance with Extreme Ownership its your fault, you didn't explain the task good enough or checked if all of the members understood the task they were given.

Prioritize and Execute - Its easy to get overwhelmed when there are a lot of things to do and new information comes in and even new events are thrown at you at the same time. A normal instinct is to start doing several or even all things at once. This leadership skill is about relaxing, calming down and look at the situation. Then prioritize which task is most important and execute on that. Then when that is done, move on to the next.

Simple - Anything in life has inherent layers of complexities. Simplifying as much as possible is important for achieving success. For example if you as a leader hold a presentation for a group of people and you feel you did a really good job with the presentation and everything went smoothly. You got all the information into the presentation and managed to keep to the timetable.
None of that matters if the people you presented the information to don't get it or don't understand what you presented. Then you haven't kept things simple and in reality you would still have failed with the presentation.


I thought the book was really good, I like these types of life lessons and learning from experienced people with great knowledge. Compounding knowledge like this will make a huge difference in the long run.

It's a good, easy, exciting listen, I can highly recommend it.



As a side note Chris Kyle, the US Navy SEAL sniper who is depicted in the movie American Sniper, was under Leif Babin's direct command which was under Jocko Willink's command in Ramadi, Iraq.


Jocko Willink and Leif Babin have a business called Echelon Front where they help other companies with leadership, team building and strategy amongst other things.

Jocko also has his own podcast, Jocko Podcast.