My apology if in a prior column I came across like a ’60’s college freshman after having read Siddhartha for the first time, though I must confess that I’m still giddy about “Extreme Ownership” by Leif Babin and Jocko Willink and keep rereading it and taking more notes, and, hopefully, the truth of it will prove to be more substantial than the passing vapor of what I learned as a part-time seeker at age 19. The last time I was this affected by such a powerful, straightforward book was my first exposure to the pioneering work of Dr. Thomas Gordon’s “Leader Effectiveness Training” which I still consider the “bible” of interpersonal skills. One of my benchmarks for evaluating effective leadership/winning team development instruction is that it be profoundly simple. Examples of this are the Babin and Willink’s basic contentions that “one can’t be a leader without a team”, “there is only one measurement of effective leadership – accomplishing the team’s mission”, and “no excuses, no blame – accept responsibility for mission failure, learn, and improve. There are no bad teams only bad leaders!”. Just those three principles are foundational and essential to mission success whether it be defending liberty or getting an order to the loading dock on time. While they are all important pieces to the success puzzle, they go somewhat against the grain of what’s been proposed during the last 50 years or so of management/leadership training which has focused primarily on “individual improvement”. (Jung, however, would have been a fan of acute accountability since his philosophy is the bane of finger pointing.) Babin and Willink demand that the leader and the team exist as a collective, organic unit with no one priding themselves on being the head or excusing themselves for being only the tail.
The authors go on to explain another dynamic essential to mission success as “purpose/belief”. I’m certain all of us can recall being given tasks or orders which at the time seemed unwise, unfair, undo-able, resource wasting, or just another senior management dog and pony show. Even worse were those times when we perceived the assigned plan was going to benefit someone else (manager’s ego?) and cost us something. From the get-go, if not already dead in the water this plan was going to slowly grind forward burning everyone with hot sparks from all the friction. What on earth can a leader or a team member do about that? First on the “Extreme Ownership” mission success list is to totally explain and understand the “why”. Sounds simple enough, but it takes the courage and commitment to be, perhaps, the lone nail that sticks up (and we know what happens to them, right?) and says, “I don’t understand”. We really need that job, don’t we? We have family, health insurance to pay, personal pride and community prestige, a long list of valid reasons why it seems wise to keep our noses to the grindstone and lips zipped. Effective leaders of successful teams must explain the “why” and winning team members must make sure they understand that “why”. It is from everyone knowing the “why” that the team “believes” in the mission.
An important lesson within this winning dynamic is “clearly communicate the purpose and benefits of the mission”. I distinctly remember the conflict that arose when I worked as a bank officer, and the company for which I worked quickly grew (from 3 to 26 branches within a few years!) large enough to employ a full-time, compliance officer. I managed a sales/loan production department, and it seemed to me this new compliance officer was solely dedicated to throwing one regulatory roadblock after another in front of my smooth-running production train. You could smell the smoke from all the friction, and I was leaning hard against the rail. Eventually my direct boss, the president, sat me down and cleared things right up, “You either go to lunch once a week with the compliance officer and get to know them and what they need or find another job”. That was clear and concise enough. Well, guess what? Attila the Hen turned out to be a Volkswagen owner and VW Bug fan! We not only had something in common but quickly began to understand the “why” of each other’s job. From understanding her “why” I soon bought into and became a dedicated teammate of her mission. And it seemed to be a miracle that not long afterward, that roadblocking compliance officer cut our department a little slack and greased the wheels of MY train. Isn’t it amazing how that works?
The typical response to such a situation would be to blame my boss, right? As the leader HE should have made it more clear to me why it was necessary for our company to have a compliance officer in the first place and why having one would secure my job from zealous federal and state examiners dedicated to picking the loan production meat off our department’s bones or worse. Yes, he should have made the mission more clear, and, perhaps, I would have bought in and avoided a lot of wasted energy and amplified friction. But, remember, one of the essential principles laid down clearly by the authors is: “No blame, no excuses”, and it means just that! As a co-accountable team member I should have in the beginning just stopped and said, “I don’t understand why we have to hire someone to make us jump through all these regulatory hoops”. The “why” of a mission must be communicated thoroughly and clearly to everyone down the line from top to bottom, and, equally important, team members must personally “own” the mission and make sure they understand its reasons and benefits. By accomplishing these fundamental tasks, instead of just being order givers and order takers, a group of people can truly become a team dedicated to a common mission success.
Originally published in Beaumont Business Journal, Heat And Humanity Column
