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

standard planning process used by small units in the rest of the military.
He expected us to own it—Extreme Ownership.
Through a six-month-long training workup, Task Unit Bruiser
learned to work together as a team across the full spectrum of SEAL
operations in a host of different environments. At the end of every block
of training, the final phase culminated in a series of field training
exercises (FTXs). These were full-scale training missions that required
us to put together a plan, brief that plan to our troops, and then execute.
Our performance in training would dictate where we would be sent on
deployment.
Of the three SEAL task units at our team, not everyone would deploy
to the fight in Iraq. Our team had to allocate one task unit for what would
be a largely noncombat deployment to the Philippines. Task Unit
Bruiser, like the other task units, wanted to fight, to put our skills to use
where we could make a difference. It was a competition: to excel in
training so that we would be chosen by the command to deploy to Iraq.
By the time we were in our final block of training, a decision of who
would go where was imminent. Our SEAL Team commanding officer
(CO) and operations master chief informed us that they would visit us in
Task Unit Bruiser to observe our brief for the final FTX. We knew that
in order for us to be chosen, we had to knock this one out of the park.
“No pressure,” said Jocko to the other SEAL platoon commander and
me with a sarcastic smile. “Whether or not we get the chance of a
lifetime to deploy to the war in Iraq all depends on whether you two can
pull off a good brief.”
Frantically, we put each of our platoon’s key leaders to work
developing a plan for the FTX mission and we began building the brief.
But as we pieced it together, it was clear our brief was lacking in many