The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win

by Jocko Willink

  Unfortunately, leaders often get the idea that accountability can solve everything—and in a sense they are right. If a leader wants to ensure a subordinate follows through with a task, the leader can inspect repeatedly to confirm that the task gets done. With enough oversight, task completion can achieve 100 percent success. This is why leaders often want to use accountability to fix problems: it is the most obvious and simple method. The leader tells a subordinate to carry out a task; the leader watches the subordinate do the task; the leader inspects the task once it is complete. There is almost no room for error.

  Unfortunately, there is also almost no room for the leader to do anything else besides monitor the progress of that specific subordinate in that specific task. If there are multiple subordinates with multiple tasks, a leader very quickly becomes physically incapable of inspecting them all. On top of that, while focused down the chain of command and inward toward the team, the leader will have no ability to look up and out—up toward senior leadership to build relationships and influence strategic decisions and out toward the strategic mission to anticipate future operations and understand developments. Finally, when the leader is not present to provide immediate oversight, the subordinate may or may not continue to properly execute a particular task.

  Instead of using accountability as the primary tool of leadership, leaders should implement it as just one of many leadership tools. Instead of holding people accountable, the leader has to lead. The leader must make sure the team understands why. Make sure its members have ownership of their tasks and the ability to make adjustments as needed. Make sure they know how their task supports the overall strategic success of the mission. Make sure they know how important their specific task is to the team and what the consequences are for failure.

  Now, this does not mean that accountability should never be used. In Extreme Ownership, chapter 2, “No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders,” we wrote that “when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.” It is imperative that leaders hold the line and uphold the standards where it matters most. That is another dichotomy nested in accountability: there are absolutely cases when accountability should and must be used. If a subordinate is not performing to standard, despite understanding why, despite knowing the impact on the mission, and despite being given ownership, then a leader must hold the line. That method is accountability. The leader must drill down and micromanage tasks in order to get the subordinate on track. But the leader cannot stay there. The leader must eventually give subordinates leeway to perform based on their own intrinsic drive—not because they are being held accountable, and not based on the micromanagement of the leader, but because they have a better understanding of why.

  And that is where balance must be found: use accountability as a tool when needed, but don’t rely on it as the sole means of enforcement. A reliance on heavy accountability consumes the time and focus of the leader and inhibits the trust, growth, and development of subordinates.

  Instead, balance accountability with educating the team and empowering its members to maintain standards even without direct oversight from the top. This is the hallmark of the highest-performing teams that dominate.

  Application to Business

  “They just won’t do what we tell them to do!” the national operations manager told me. “They just don’t seem to care!”

  The company had started using a new software program about three months earlier to track their product as it was installed and utilized by the customers, which consisted of medium- to large-size businesses. It was a well-thought-out system, built on an existing platform that allowed technicians in the field to input what equipment had been installed, the tests that were completed, issues overcome, and shortfalls of the system. It also interacted with the company’s customer relationship management system, providing salespeople with information about the customers if they needed to approach them about renewal or upgrades.

  “What exactly is it that the field technicians won’t do?” I asked.

  “They won’t use the system. They won’t enter the information. They show up on-site with the customer to take care of an install or a troubleshooting scenario, they do their work, then boom—that’s it. They enter the bare minimum into the system, but no details.”

  “What are the details they should be entering?” I asked.

  “The details are critical—not for them, but for the follow-on,” the ops manager said. “If something else goes wrong and another technician has to go out and troubleshoot, it saves a lot of time and effort if they know what the previous technician did. On top of that, the details really help our salespeople. When they call to offer new services or a renewal of existing services, if they don’t know what the customer has been through, they get blindsided. It makes it seem as if no one at the company cares about the customer at all. Try selling to someone that already thinks your company doesn’t care about them.”

  “I can see where that would be problematic,” I acknowledged. “So what have you done to get them to do what they are supposed to do?”

  “We put a whole bunch of accountability checks into place,” he said. “We started with the technicians themselves. We told them they needed to fill in the details. That barely had any impact. Next, we went to the team leaders. We told them we wanted entries in every field of the software—and that we would give bonuses based on the number of fields filled out.”

  “And how did that work?” I asked.

  “It cost us money but didn’t get us anywhere,” the ops manager replied. “The technicians did as they were told: they filled out every field. But they did so with worthless one- and two-word answers.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Yeah. Ouch,” the ops manager agreed. “Next up were the regional operations managers. We figured if we held them accountable they would make it happen. So we told them if the technicians in their regions didn’t start filling out all the fields—with legitimate details—we were going to drop their volume bonuses by ten percent. We saw a little uptick after that for about two weeks. Then, things went backward—back to where the technicians weren’t filling out anything at all, not even a word in most of the fields.”

  “Not good,” I commented.

  “No. Not good at all,” the ops manager said. “Especially because we reached pretty deep into our budget to have this new software designed, built, and implemented.”

  “Alright,” I declared. “Let me go and talk to some of the team leaders, regional managers, and frontline technicians and see what I can figure out.”

  Over the next few days, I set meetings and went around talking to everyone involved down the chain of command. I started with the regional managers. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on with them. They had tried to hold the team leaders and technicians accountable for filling in every field—especially when their volume bonus was threatened with a 10-percent cut. But it didn’t take them long to figure out that if their technicians spent the additional time filling in all the fields, they couldn’t cover as many installations or customer service calls. By not covering as many installations, they made less money, and that cost them more than the 10 percent penalty for noncompliance with the software. Once they realized this, the regional managers backed off holding the front line accountable.

  The team leaders had another story. They were busy. They handled the schedules for their teams, and it was a huge job: appointments, cancellations, customers not present, jobs taking too long and interfering with other jobs, and, of course, dealing with absent technicians and getting their jobs covered. On top of that, as the technical experts, they spent a fair amount of time on the phone with technicians troubleshooting more complex problems. Finally, they were also the first point of impact for customer complaints. Any issue with the product or the technician came directly to the team leader first—and those calls had to be handled delicately and tactfully. With all of this on their plates, they didn’t have ti
me for much else. And they certainly didn’t have time to load individual technicians’ screens after every call to ensure that the data was being entered. So even though they understood that it needed to happen, they simply didn’t have the time to execute it.

  Finally, I got into the field and talked to some of the technicians. They had some significant problems. First of all, entering information into the system took longer than the senior leadership knew. In the field, different customers in different areas had varying levels of cell phone reception. In areas with poor signals, loading each page could take a minute or two—and there were eight pages to load, so this was a huge waste of time. Furthermore, each page started with the need to reenter the customer’s name, address, and account number. Copy and paste wasn’t a solution because you couldn’t copy more than one field at a time, requiring you to flip back and forth between screens, which took forever. Last, instead of having some multiple-choice options for the most common answers, every answer had to be typed in, which wasted even more time. On top of all that, and most important, no one on the front lines really understood how the data was going to help them.

  When I reported back to the national operations manager with all this information, he was shocked.

  “Okay,” he said in a depressed voice. “Accountability didn’t work. Now what?”

  “Now you lead,” I told him.

  He took a moment to let that sink in.

  Finally, he broke. “Well then, I am at a loss. How am I supposed to lead here?”

  It was a great sign. He was humble enough to admit he needed some help—and what’s more, humble enough to ask for it.

  “Okay, it isn’t that bad,” I replied. “Luckily, you have a bunch of good people out there who want to do the right thing. First, you have got to solicit input on how to make the software better. There are some things that would really simplify it. Multiple-choice answers for one. Making the customer information flow from one screen to the next would be helpful—these guys are typing the same information on every page. And there should be fewer pages. Simplify. I know you rarely have to print these things out, so why do they need to be compatible with a paper format? Put more questions on each screen so the techs aren’t loading screen after screen—that wastes all kinds of time in the field. Those are just some initial suggestions after talking to only four or five of your techs. I’m sure a broader inquiry would yield even more ideas to streamline the software based on direct feedback from the guys who use it.”

  “That makes sense,” the ops manager replied. “I thought we had gotten enough feedback.”

  “Maybe you did in the beginning,” I said. “But once a complex thing like this hits the field, you need to continually get feedback to make it better. That’s just the way it is.”

  “Got it. Anything else?” the ops manager asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “The biggest thing I figured out in talking to the frontline troops about this is that they have no idea why they are doing this—and, most important, how it affects them.”

  “How it affects them?” he repeated.

  “Yes. Right now, they don’t get it,” I said.

  “But they know this data will help us hold on to customers and allow us to upsell them on better, more expensive products,” the ops manager said. “Obviously, that is going to make the company more profitable. What else is there to get?”

  “Okay. Think about what you just said,” I stated. “If the company makes more money, if the company is more profitable, do you think that a frontline technician cares?”

  “I hope he cares! It is his paycheck!” the ops manager yelled.

  “Hope isn’t a course of action,” I said. “And, from his perspective, he has been getting a paycheck consistently for as long as he’s been employed here—regardless of how profitable the company is or isn’t. It simply doesn’t impact him.”

  “He should still care about it,” the ops manager insisted.

  “Of course he should,” I agreed. “And in a perfect world, every employee would care deeply about the profitability of the company he or she works for. But these folks have other things to care about. Husbands and wives. Kids. Soccer games. Bills and cars and mortgages and the game on Friday night and the broken water heater and the kid heading off to college. They have a ton to care about—and like it or not, the profitability of the company is not high on their list.”

  “So then what do we do?” the ops manager asked. “If they don’t care, why should they give any extra effort?”

  “They have to understand why—but that why has to have a thread that ties back to them, to what is in it for them,” I told him.

  “And how do I do that?” he asked. “How can I make them care about the company’s profits?”

  “You have to think it through,” I said. “It’s like this. If you can capture this data that you want, you will be able to better arm both technicians in the field and your salespeople, right?”

  “Absolutely. That’s the whole point,” the ops manager agreed.

  “And once the technicians and salespeople are armed, they can do a better job, right?” I continued.

  “Definitely,” he answered.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now follow me: Armed with this data, the technicians will be able to provide better and faster customer service, and the salespeople will be able to sell more product to more customers. When we provide better service and sell more products, our business grows. When our business grows, we make more money—”

  “That’s what I said! But how does that help?” the ops manager interrupted.

  “Listen,” I told him. “When the company makes more money, we can invest more money in advertising and infrastructure. Once we put more money into advertising and infrastructure, we will gain even more customers and be able to support them even better. The better we perform as a company, the more customers we acquire. The more customers we acquire, the more work there is for technicians, which means overtime and overtime pay. And once the company maxes that out, we will need more technicians. The more technicians we need, the more we have to pay them to be here. So this means down the line, we will increase pay for technicians, especially experienced ones. And lastly, the more technicians and clients we have, the more team leaders and regional supervisors we will need. This opens up a pathway to advancement for every technician at this company. So profitability of the company not only puts money into the pockets of the owners—which the frontline technicians probably don’t care too much about—but more important, it impacts the technicians directly: it opens up opportunity for more pay, higher salaries, and a pathway for career advancement. That’s the thread that ties all of this together and aligns everyone at the company—the corporate leadership team right down to the field technicians. That’s leadership.”

  The operations manager nodded. The light had come on. It was clear.

  Over the next two days, I helped him put together a simple, clear presentation that explained the thread of why. We also talked about the fact that he would still have to occasionally inspect people’s work to ensure that things were being done—there still had to be some level of overt accountability. But most of the accountability would come intrinsically, from the individual leaders and the field technicians themselves, who were now empowered by understanding the why. They would help keep each other accountable, when they fully understood the impact and the direct benefit to them.

  A few days later, the national operations manager briefed the plan during an all-hands morning call. He also put one of the tech-savvy regional managers in charge of compiling feedback about the software system so it could be improved. Most important, he drove home how every member of the company would benefit from collecting data to the best of their ability—which would help every employee improve their lives.

  The troops now understood that, and they went to work.

  PART III

  BALANCING YOURSELF

  Task Unit Bruiser SEALs from Charlie and Delta
Platoons, about to launch on a nighttime direct action capture/kill raid in Ramadi, visit a wounded SEAL brother at “Charlie Med,” the Camp Ramadi Medical Facility, as he awaits MEDEVAC transport to major surgical facilities. An exceptional teammate and friend, the wounded SEAL is the brave young man described in the opening pages of Chapter 1. Leif Babin, Charlie platoon commander, at center. Marc Lee, Charlie Platoon assaulter/machine gunner, at right.

  (Photo courtesy of the authors)

  CHAPTER 9

  A Leader and a Follower

  Leif Babin

  SOUTH-CENTRAL RAMADI, IRAQ: 2006

  An ominous silence blanketed the slow-moving waters of the canal. The night was dark to the naked eye, with only a few streetlights some distance inland that hadn’t been shattered by bullets or shrapnel from roadside bombs. Through the green glow of our night-vision goggles, we saw reeds lining the riverbank on either side. Groves of palm trees and the buildings and walls of the city’s urban sprawl were visible beyond the shore. The laser illuminators from our weapons scanned each side of the narrow waterway, looking for enemy fighters lurking in ambush.

  Our four boats motored slowly along in formation, careful to maintain noise and light discipline so as not to give away our position. The U.S. Marine Corps Small Unit Riverine Craft (SURCs), and the Marines who drove them and manned their heavy machine guns, carried our platoon of Task Unit Bruiser SEALs and the Iraqi soldiers assigned to us, along with the Marines of SALT 6, the Supporting Arms Liaison Team from the 5th Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison Company. Their commander, Major Dave Berke, was the senior-ranking man of our group. He was an outstanding leader, a Marine fighter pilot who had flown combat sorties in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a TOPGUN instructor, he could have gone anywhere he chose, but he’d volunteered for a tour on the ground as a forward air controller. Of all the places he could have chosen in Iraq, he chose Ramadi. We were damn glad to have Dave and his Marines along with us for additional firepower and support. They were an outstanding group. Though Dave outranked me, as officer in charge of the SEALs in Charlie Platoon, I was the ground force commander, responsible for all the elements that would land ashore and patrol on foot into one of the most violent neighborhoods of Ramadi. In the event of enemy contact, there were no friendly forces that could come to our aid for several hours. To carry out our objective against untold numbers of enemy fighters, we had only the firepower we could carry on our backs. To mitigate that risk, we brought a large force, one of the largest I’d ever led—nearly fifty personnel. Our strength in numbers would sustain us until Dave could contact aircraft and vector them overhead to support us.