Extreme Ownership: Apply This Technique Today To Improve Your Business
The concept of “Extreme Ownership” was coined by former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink. Jocko spent 20 years in the SEALs and retired in 2010 after serving as the commander of a SEAL Task Unit in Iraq.
Origin of the term
During an operation in which he was the commander, there was a friendly fire incident which resulted in the death of a member of the Iraqi military at the hands of one of his own SEALs.
The operation was immediately shut down and everyone came back to base. As Jocko spoke to different troops in order to get a bird’s eye view of what had happened moment by moment, he realized that it hadn’t been one particular thing that had gone wrong, but rather a number of things. Troops had gone to the right locations at the wrong times, or gone to the wrong locations at the right times, for example.
With less than 20 minutes to go before the briefing, Jocko realized the answer: he was the single point of failure. He was the commander of the operation and if anything bad had happened, it was down to him. What he would later go on to call Extreme Ownership was realized, and he defines it as:
“An attitude of not ever making excuses or blaming others. When problems arise you take ownership and solve them.”
Application in your Business
What Jocko experienced when he implemented this strategy in his life can have significant benefits for your business, not just because it’s unexpected, but because it causes your colleagues and staff to pause and think.
When something goes wrong with a marketing campaign, or a customer service issue, or a product launch, instead of pointing the finger at a subordinate and letting the righteous anger flow, you can say, “It was my fault.”
What you’ll find is that your staff will more than willingly refuse to allow you to take all the blame yourself, and then willingly identify ways that they could have improved.
When you create a culture in which those at the very top are willing to take the blame for mistakes, you allow and encourage your staff to strive not to make those mistakes again. The entire company can be oriented towards positive resolutions of poor outcomes, rather than playing the old blame game, which has never been listed as a business principle to be lauded.
President Truman famously had a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk. Extreme Ownership allows you to fold a tangible daily practice of that saying into your business.
Jocko Willink is on Twitter.
