This is a series of blog posts digging deeper into the seven keys to building a quality culture, which builds on Nicole Parker’s introduction blog. In this article, we will discuss the fifth of these seven keys; Extreme Ownership.
Can Lack of Ownership and Accountability Kill?
The 2015 book “Extreme Ownership”, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, fundamentally transformed how leaders can think. They describe how extreme ownership helps teams perform at the highest levels by translating what they have learned as U.S. Navy SEALs operating in the worst of warzones for the business world. As a quality professional, I have always kept an eye on the behavior of the military in both their product qualification regimen and the processes they develop for extreme situations. While many of us certainly operate in theatres where product quality can result in injury and loss of life, the military is arguably the ultimate theatre for testing people, process and product. If you have not read “Extreme Ownership”, it is a worthy read and one that has changed how I think, how I lead and how I follow.
What is the Concept of Extreme Ownership?
The adjective “extreme” is very purposeful and important. For me, it signifies something beyond the ordinary, above the norm or exceptional…we cannot achieve exceptional quality without being an exceptional organization. So how do we become an exceptional organization? I believe that answer lies in many of the concepts of extreme ownership (EO).
What is extreme ownership? Extreme ownership includes:
- Involving the team
- Risk planning up front
- Taking responsibility for your team’s failures
- Giving the team credit when they succeed
- Actively reflecting to learn and improve from successes and failures
- Making a safe environment for people to ask questions, convey risks, admit their own failures and have them focus on reflecting and improving
Why extreme ownership? It is a tool to radically change the way we lead and the results we produce as leaders and team members.
As I have written in my prior blogs, building a culture of quality is no easy feat, and the recent recalls and tragedies prove how elusive it is. I believe instilling EO in an organization will facilitate that culture shift to help us produce higher quality parts with lower cost. This is our mission.
Leadership Commitment and Accountability
Extreme ownership has to start with ourselves. As leaders, our behaviors are contagious, even the bad ones. There is evidence that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Good leaders do not use excuses, they just figure out a way to succeed. They deny their ego and act with humility to see their errors and acknowledge their own weaknesses. They have the courage to make difficult decisions under pressure. They take responsibility for failure, but give praise to the junior leaders and team members upon success. They never blame, but always seek to reflect and improve. These are all things we can do to help build a culture of quality, but let’s dig deeper into leadership.
We need to teach our teams “Why?”. When we give the team a mission, how often do we tell them why we are doing it? For that matter, does your team truly know why they exist? “Why?” gives us a reason to believe in the mission. Actions supported by beliefs are very powerful. Think about the battles you have heard about where a group was massively outnumbered, yet they won seemingly against all odds. Most of those situations I attribute to the belief in the mission. You can see it easily in volunteer organizations, not just the military. People who are passionate about their cause, will move mountains. Just look at the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and the massive number of mortgages their contributors are able to pay off. Just this month the founder is walking 500 miles for the cause.
Once the team understands the “Why?”, we need to describe the details of our requirements and the desired outcome(s) must be stated clearly, then we must engage the team in the planning process. This will allow us to set new standards in performance – in essence a culture of quality shift. Unlike the military, however, there is often more time to plan and react to the business battlefield because it doesn’t change as rapidly. In the private sector, there is more time to determine risk and brainstorm solutions, likely scenarios, etc. to find the absolute best solution.
Another piece of the leadership puzzle is creating a safe space for our teams so they are comfortable asking clarifying questions, improving the plans, seeing and mitigating risks and even making mistakes. This means their ideas will be considered, dialog is encouraged, to not only extract the very best ideas, but to immerse the team in the mission planning so they are familiar and have inherent ownership in it. This is exactly what we want in a culture of quality.
Identify Priorities, Plan and Efficiently Take Action
As we have discussed in prior blogs, this is the preventive phase. When planning, we need to identify our highest priorities. These are often the highest risks to a mission or the need to avoid or mitigate likely, undesired scenarios. This sounds like Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) to me. Planning will prepare us to focus on our highest priorities when situations get tense. If we keep our priorities in mind, we can stay one or two steps ahead. Taking time with the team to envision likely scenarios will allow us to plan for contingencies and keep the team aware of them so they can put those into action without hesitation. To me, this is the risk-based thinking that ISO and other standards organizations have recently adopted to focus on results, not simply compliance.
In the planning stage, focus on keeping the mission simple, clear and concise. This will enable the plan to be communicated, understood, and ensure the team understands the leader’s intent so the team can easily adjust based on conditions on the ground without compromising the intent of the mission. They must be simple enough that your weakest member can understand and execute.
As leaders we need to see the bigger picture and keep an eye on battlefield conditions and if they change, priorities may need to change. If they do change, inform the team and adjust.
For the junior leaders, clearly articulate their decision-making authority and set expectations that they communicate with senior leadership to recommend decisions outside their authority.
Once we have planned and communicated it to the point that the team understands the mission, goals, target outcomes, and leader’s intent, we can decentralize command. We can break the team into small groups with leaders for each group. Now we have a group of teams well armed to carry out the mission with little need for input – we have a culture of quality.
“Leading Up” the Chain of Command
This is a phrase Willink and Babin use to talk about how we can lead our superiors by effectively conveying critical information for decisions to be made. Leaders also discuss their mission up the organization and push situational awareness up the chain of command – shared understanding of the environment and the strategy and most importantly, to better allocate leadership support by building awareness and confidence.
Effective Execution
During the execution, we need to support every team member of every team. This means we look at the whole organization, we don’t do things in our department that will increase risk or undue burden in other departments. We must work together so all teams gain ground.
Stay calm, take inventory, reprioritize often and then tackle them in priority. Be decisive amidst uncertainty – gather the best information you can in the time you have, assess the situation and take action.
Debriefing, Reflection and Continuous Improvement
After a mission, one of the most important practices you can put into place is a post-operational debriefing. This is a reactive step to reflect and ask the team probing questions like: What went right? What went wrong? How can we adapt to be more effective? This is a great practice to do as a team to help continuously improve processes and future risk management strategies. We have been doing this for years and we become better with every iteration – and it builds a sense of community in the team. It sounds an awful lot like a cross-functional team working on a corrective action system!
Traits of an Effective Leader
Cultures can only make significant shifts with good leadership focusing on planning, execution of the mission and a reflective process after the mission. Jocko Willink identifies the Dichotomy of Leadership in “Extreme Ownership” which is a good summary of effective leadership traits as follows:
- Confident but not cocky.
- Courageous but not foolhardy.
- Competitive but a gracious loser.
- Attentive to details but not obsessed.
- Strong but have endurance.
- A leader and a follower.
- Humble but not passive.
- Aggressive but not overbearing.
- Quiet but not silent.
- Calm but not robotic.
- Logical but not lacking emotions.
- Close but not so close with troops. They must not forget who is in charge.
- Able to execute EO, while exercising Decentralized Command.
As we practice extreme ownership, we will see our team members also practice EO and raise our collective standards. There is a quote from Jocko Willink that resonates with me. He said, “Discipline brings freedom.” It is interesting that if we can constrain ourselves with discipline in our behavior, we will ultimately be given more freedom because people can trust our discipline. If we build these behaviors in ourselves and our teams we can build a culture of quality. In the meantime, we encourage you to download and share our “7 Keys to Building a Quality Culture” infographic below.
