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Dichotomy of leadership. Ultimately, leaderships is a balancing act of many factors. While there are some principles that can guide you towards a higher degree of success, leaning towards extremes will not in the long run help you. You must continue to adapt your approach to the circumstances.

Decisiveness amid uncertainty. No decision is also a decision. It is important to make a call with the information you have.
Combat: sniper being unsure if target is enemy combatant. Lief chooses not to engage, friendly fire risk is too high, and the worst case scenario. Pushed for commander to send troops in.
Business: two managers that are competitive with one another, and trying to undermine one another.

Leading up the chain of command: leadership does not stop at your boss. If your boss is asking questions about your plan, or pushing a different approach, it is because you have not made the details of your plan clear enough to your superior. It is also important that you do not break the chain of command in front of your subordinates. If you break the chain, you undermine their authority & your authority.

Lief paints the insurgents as rapists, torturers and murders. The enemy are terrorists.

Lief gives his standpoint on the operations they conducted in Iraq. His frustration with the criticisms from people that never engaged in combat. The frustration he felt from politicians that felt killing enemies only created more later. Lief argues that this is necessary for the Iraqi state to be stabilized. If insurgents are overthrowing the state, it is no good for anyone, especially those at the bottom.

If there is a flaw in this book, it becomes clear that the examples set up in business are often just mouthpieces for the ideas that are being put forward. They are certainly examples of the success. People do not talk like this in real life though. Outcomes are delayed and it measures of success and failure are usually not as clear as in the book.

Also part of planning. Debriefing.

Also important in planning to allow your team to be involved in planning process

Planning is an important process. Planning often faces mission creep, over complication, etc. Who is the plan for? The lowest common denominator on your team. If they can’t get it, it’s not a good plan.

Akram’s study’s have uncovered hidden figures in Islam’s history, that he argues gives women a history of power. He puts the issue not on Islam, but on patriarchy?

Akram practices aestheticism and minimalism. He argues that the esoteric parts of the religion are the most important. When you lose the esoteric, you begin to focus on the exoteric parts of the practice as identity. This is how he gets around some of the more specific commands of the Quran.
Powers continues to draw parallels to western consumerism.

Prioritise and Execute. You complete one task at a time. Often tasks will be thrown at you non-stop. You must evaluate these tasks, but then move them down the line in terms of priority. You can only do one thing at a time. Focus on doing one thing well, then move on to the next thing.

Decentralised Command- People can only manage 4-6 people effectively. Yet teams are often times 20 to 30 people deep. To solve, you need to delegate responsibility to junior leaders, who in turn are put in charge of 4-6 personnel. 6 junior leaders controlling 24 operators. For this to work:
-Clear guidelines on junior leaders roles
-Junior leaders supported when they make wrong call for right decision

Simple. It doesn’t matter how good your plan is if no one understands it.

People aren’t spending their time trying to sabotage you. They’re worried about their own problems.

A big mindset switch is when you realize that people have their own problems. These problems are real, and don’t get wished away just because of your demands on them. If you can help these people with these problems, in the long run, it will help you considerably.

The army has SOP’s and OJT’s. Did not know that.

Ego is a powerful driver. But it should not control you. If it controls you, then your objective will quickly become clouded.

How to deal with dissent. State the opinion openly. Then put your objective against it. You must understand the why to win this argument. If your why is weak, then you haven’t done your job as a leader.

Very pragmatic philosophy. If you’re not winning, you’re not making the right decisions.
Chapter 3 believe is very similar to concept in book “Start with Why”. If you don’t believe, you won’t execute the plan well.

“It pays to be a winner” interesting to see the programming of seals training.

Another example of leaders of boat crews flipping leaders. Leader of boat crew 2 was able to turn around performance of previous boat crew 6. Went from worst to best.

Being a leader ultimately means, how much space can you own for your team. This can mean that individual needs (both of team members and of the leader themselves) must take a backseat.

Jocko goes through his story of blue on blue friendly fire, and how he had to own the mistakes that were made. This isn’t just a word statement, but a call to action. The response though, from his team and his leaders is positive.

The takeaways for a prospective leader are true.
Ultimately, a leader must take responsibility for his team. A leader that blames his people will receive no respect from either his subordinates or his superiors.

The mindset is a clear one. If you as a leader, do not think you can win, you will not win. The most important battle as a leader is the one with yourself. That your team can improve, adapt, and win.

Ramadi is the most dangerous location in Iraq when the story takes place. This is long after the Saddam Hussnain regime has been toppled. It is urban ware fare. The us military seems to have learned from its mistakes in Vietnam, that it is impossible not just to win against the enemy, but build a force that can stand on its own. The problem was the time it would take to build such a force was likely 20 years, not 2.

This is a book on leadership, but very interesting from a boots on the ground perspective of what happened in Iraq. Iraq has always been, from my frame of mind, a colossal failure. US should not have been involved from the start. We got bad intel about WMD’s and destabilized a region irreversibly
Extreme ownership begins really in 2006, where troops are trying to take back control of Ramadi

It’s interesting to think about the mind being an organ that is constantly oozing and secreting chemicals.

The brain secretes hormones to signal to other organs to produce or inhibit certain transmitters. This was discovered through the “Nobel Duel” in which two teams of scientists competed to make this discovery.

After WW1 men used to inject themselves with animal testicles to improve their virility. Obviously it didn’t work. Organelles function only with Instructions from the brain.