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There is one book that I have given to a few people in my life. It was, and still is, very influential on me, especially in my perspective on leadership—particularly combat leadership. That book is called “About Face.”

It's over 800 pages long and written by a man named C. David Hackworth. Hackworth was a soldier’s soldier. Born in 1930, he joined the Merchant Marines toward the end of World War II. He was too young—only 14 years old—but he lied about his age to get in. A few years later, when he tried to join the Army, he was still too young and had to lie again. Once in the Army, he went to Europe and served directly under the war-hardened veterans of World War II. Those were the men who brought him up in the ranks and taught him about hard training.

When I first joined the SEAL Teams in 1990–1991, there were still some veterans from Vietnam around. When those guys spoke, you listened because they had something important to say. I absolutely listened. Many of the lessons those Vietnam veterans taught me, I held onto, took notes on, and passed along. A lot of those concepts became the basis of what we wrote about in “Extreme Ownership.”

So here he is, on national television—a colonel in the Army, one of the most highly decorated individuals at the time—calling out the Army, saying it’s filled with shallow dilettantes who run from pillar to post, trying to punch their card and purposely avoiding combat. You don’t see this kind of behavior from Army officers very often.

“I have become emotionally involved in Vietnam. One couldn’t have spent the number of years I spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn’t see the number of young studs die or be terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved. I have seen the American nation spend so many of its wonderful, great young men in this war. I have seen our national wealth drained away. I see the nation being split apart—almost being split asunder—because of this war. And I wonder, to what end is it all going to lead?”

This is the dichotomy that anyone in a combat leadership position will feel. In fact, this might be the greatest dichotomy of all. As a combat leader, you are told—and beyond being told, you are ingrained, and beyond being ingrained, you inherently care about your guys. There is no one more important than your guys. And yet, as much as you care about them, as much as you love them and would do anything for them, it is your job to send them on operations that can kill them.

So here they are—these guys are supposed to be out in the field, and they have all this luxury. That’s something we saw in Iraq. There were certain bases with Starbucks, Subway, and McDonald’s—literally. But the further you went out into the fray, the more you saw guys barely scraping by. I remember visiting some of them on my first deployment to Iraq. We’d go out to some remote areas, and there’d be guys completely in the bush, barely getting by on one MRE a day.

His whole career, he realized he would have to take every trick he’d learned to get these guys into shape. Now, what’s interesting about this is the phrase whipping these guys into shape. I’ve had executives—when I get on with a CEO, he’ll say, I need you to come in here and whip my guys into shape. It’s one of those quotes I have to push back on because they think I’m going to come in like a drill instructor, bark orders, and that people are just going to comply. It doesn’t work that way. You have to do more than that.

“He's a mean son of a bitch, but he knows what he's doing.”

I wanted every one of those SEALs going to Iraq and Afghanistan to be ready for anything. I wanted their training to be harder than real combat. That was the goal.

“All the battalion 439 really needed was a good kick in the ass, which included creating or bringing in leaders who cared for their men and giving the men some sense of real purpose.”

It's the why—why are we here? You would be surprised. It happens with companies, families, the military, teams. They don’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re just doing it as a task, like a robot. And you can't treat people like robots. People have to have some kind of long-term goal. They have to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. That’s like 99% of my answers when someone says, Hey, I've got this problem where these people don't want to follow this rule, they don't want to do this safety task or procedure. I can't get my guys to do it. And I ask, Well, do they understand why they're doing it?

You always hear, They’ve got to hit rock bottom. Somehow, they have to realize, Oh, okay, I’ve destroyed my life. Now I’ll start moving again. And you just wish you could help them before they hit rock bottom.

That’s the true exercise in my mind—having the ability to be outside yourself, look at yourself, and say, You’re being weak right now.

I don't expect anything from anybody.

There aren’t any bulletized lists that will make you a great leader tomorrow. What there are, are principles you can learn, understand, interpret, and apply in different ways, with different amplitudes, at different times, and with different personalities. It’s mayhem. That’s what makes it so challenging and fun. And that’s what makes me love to talk about leadership—because it’s an infinitely complex thing.

If you really want to get things done, make a list of what you need to do the next day. Prioritize it. What you actually need to do is schedule the time when you’re going to execute those tasks. This is a piece a lot of people miss, so I guess it is a little bigger of a hack than I gave it credit for. You have to say, Okay, I’ve got to do these six things tomorrow. Then, put on your schedule when you’re going to do them. That really drives execution because it puts a time limit on it. It makes you get started, get it done, and move on to the next task.

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