MarTech Book Club: Extreme Ownership
To help support our veterans during this Memorial Day, a group of us in the Marketo User Group community are pledging support to the Lead the Way Fund, a non-profit group that supports US Army Rangers and their families who are injured or killed in action (KIA). If you'd like to participate in this donation, please send us a message or visit www.leadthewayfund.org.
Many members of the MarTech community - and indeed the corporate community at large - are veterans. We asked one of them, Kyle Morris, who served in the Army Rangers from 2003 to 2007 to share his experiences making the transition to a Salesforce entrepreneur starting Kicksaw and SifData.
The book focuses on the experiences of two members of the US Navy SEALS as they acquire and apply their training from the battlefields in Iraq to the challenges in today's corporate boardrooms. The book talks culminates with a chapter on the Dichotomy of Leadership outlining the challenges in these points*:
- A leader must lead but also be ready to follow.
- A leader must be aggressive but not overbearing.
- A leader must be calm but not robotic.
- A leader must lead but also be ready to follow.
- A leader must be aggressive but not overbearing.
- A leader must be calm but not robotic.
- A leader must be confident but never cocky.
- A leader must be brave but not foolhardy.
- A leader must have a competitive spirit but also be gracious losers.
- A leader must be attentive to details but not obsessed by them.
- A leader must be strong but likewise have endurance, not only physically but mentally.
- A leader must be humble but not passive; quiet but not silent.
- A leader must be close with subordinates but not too close.
- A leader must exercise Extreme Ownership. Simultaneously, that leader must employ Decentralized Command by giving control to subordinate leaders.
- A leader has nothing to prove but everything to prove.
*Willink, Jocko. Extreme Ownership (p. 274-277). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
