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

would enable us to complete the task with far greater efficiency and
speed than our undisciplined ransack method.
My AOIC had developed an excellent plan that promised to greatly
enhance our evidence collection. Now we had to brief that plan to our
SEAL platoon. I had the AOIC put together some PowerPoint slides that
laid out the new process. It was a relatively simple brief explaining the
roles, responsibilities, and sequence of the method. We called in the
platoon and ran through the plan.
Since human beings tend to resist change, we met instant dissent.
“This will take too long,” one SEAL complained.
“Why are we changing the way we do this? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix
it!” another added.
“I’m not going to sit on target waiting to get shot while we do all
this!” a senior SEAL exclaimed. “This is going to get somebody killed.”
According to him, implementing this plan would spell our imminent
doom.
Virtually our entire SEAL platoon was vehemently against the new
plan.
So I had to explain why. “Listen,” I started: “Who here has searched a
room that had already been searched?” The platoon admitted just about
everyone had. “Who here has looked into a messy bedroom on a target
and wondered whether or not it has been searched?” Again, most
everyone had done so. I continued, “Who searched the upstairs bathroom
on our last target?” They looked at me with blank stares. I knew the
answer and told them: “No one.” Upon our return, we had determined
that the bathroom hadn’t been searched at all; we had missed it. “The
fact is we are not doing the best job. Evidentiary standards are
increasing. We have to do a better. This method gives us a good standard