Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

the CTO had barged into his office and warned that the concept of
Extreme Ownership had “negative repercussions.” This was laughable.
“There are no negative repercussions to Extreme Ownership,” I said.
“There are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective. Effective
leaders that lead successful, high-performance teams exhibit Extreme
Ownership. Anything else is simply ineffective. Anything else is bad
leadership.”
The CTO’s performance and the performance of his team illustrated
this in Technicolor. His abrasiveness affected his entire team and other
departments in the company that had difficulty working with him. The
CEO understood. His company wasn’t winning, and he cared too much
about the company he had built and the livelihood of his other
employees to allow the company to fail. They must do better.
He let the CTO go.
A new CTO came on board with a different attitude—a mind-set of
Extreme Ownership.
With this change in the leadership of the company’s technology
team, other departments began to work together with success, and that
teamwork played a key role as the company rebounded. Once failing and
struggling to survive, the company was now back on a path toward
profitability and growth. Their success illustrated once again that
leadership is the most important thing on any battlefield; it is the single
greatest factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. A leader must find a
way to become effective and drive high performance within his or her
team in order to win. Whether in SEAL training, in combat on distant
battlefields, in business, or in life: there are no bad teams, only bad
leaders.