This week I had the chance to share the basic principles of Extreme Ownership with leaders at my company, O.C. Tanner. While humbling and stressful, it was a fantastic experience.
Throughout this year, I’ve participated in the Extreme Ownership Academy as part of my professional development. It includes online courses, as well as weekly live calls with instructors and 600+ other leaders seeking to learn and improve.
A few months ago, I asked our VP of Software how he would like me to share what I’ve been learning. He asked me to present at his next staff meeting. That went well enough that his boss, our CTO, asked me to share with all of the Tech Team.
This week, I had the opportunity to present to leaders across our company as part of an ongoing leadership development series. Here are my slides from that presentation.
One of the coolest things for me about the presentation was the chance to ask Jocko and other Echelon Front instructors for advice directly on a live call. I asked what they had found most effective to share in a short 20-40 minute window.
Jocko’s answer was an immediate question back to me: “What has impacted you the most from the concepts of Extreme Ownership?”
I realized that for me, at the time, it was asking myself this question before responding:
What if I truly believed everything was my fault?
Basically, it was putting myself in the mindset of taking ownership and realizing that I am to blame, and therefore I can do something to solve the situation moving forward.
Since then, as I have continued to work and incorporate this deeper, I now ask myself a different question when a problem comes up:
How is this my fault?
I start with the assumption, the understanding, the knowledge, that I am responsible. Then I look for what to do differently to achieve success in the future.
It was powerful to share the lessons learned by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin through their combat experiences that have since helped so many people in business and in life.
I also shared about learning from Jamie Cochran and Dave Berke how to use Extreme Ownership at Home. As came up in questions after the presentation, this is the area of life where it is most difficult, and most crucial, to implement these principles.
One of the pressures of presenting such powerful content is the desire to do it justice. These ideas have changed my life, and I worried about being able to explain them so others could experience some of those same benefits, or at least grasp how impactful they could be and want to learn more.
Another stress was the fear of being a hypocrite. I am certainly not perfect at living these principles, and don’t want people to dismiss these ideas when they see me violating them.
My greatest hope is that other leaders in my organization will become passionate about Extreme Ownership and it will become our culture. There is no limit to what we could accomplish if we do that.