Customer Reviews

Leadership Lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALS : Battle-Tested Strategies for Creating Successful Organizations and Inspiring Extraordinary Results

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I chose to buy and read this book because one of its authors was a Navy SEAL, and it promised to highlight military leadership lessons from a SEAL perspective. I soon discovered an outstandingly balanced and informative organizational leadership book that took an honest military leadership perspective and effectively applied it directly and indirectly to civilian business environments. This real-world leadership book should appeal to any military-related person and anyone interested in better understanding the military and business leadership connection.

This book was written by a brother duo, one a successful corporate executive and the other an experienced SEAL officer. In their introduction, they accurately assessed what made the book stand apart from other leadership books I have read: "Be forewarned: This book does not pay homage to godlike CEOs, legendary generals, and other corporate cult figures. It is our view that masterful leadership and effective teams, not colorful mavericks, produce success...Every great leader has a great team above, around, and behind him or her...[The book is] a collection of lessons from SEAL training and SEAL operations that have been tested in the business world."

The book is broken down into six chapters (Setting Goals, Organization-Create Structure or Fight Alone, Leadership-The Hardest Easy Thing, The Thundering Herd, Building a Thundering Herd, and Now Maintain Your Momentum), with embedded lessons related to each chapter title. Each lesson starts with a SEAL mission (a SEAL team sea-story or experience) and ends with a suggested business take-away. The lessons stimulated thought and offered ideas for improving individual and organizational leadership. The authors left it to the readers to decide which lessons applied to their situations and then challenged them to apply those lessons.

The authors' candid perspectives and observations were refreshing and were reflected in their equally straightforward lessons. A sampling of the authors' colorful lessons includes:

*Avoid creating a capability and then looking for a mission to justify it
*Build boundaries to prevent infighting and cannibalism
*If you think no one else can replace you, you're an egotistical S.O.B. who's failed
*There are probably good reasons why your marching orders seem screwed up
*Identify your lead dogs, feed them well, and build a pack around them
*If you need to scream, you need to practice

The team-building and teamwork concepts emphasized in this book apply to military and business leaders and organizations. If you want time-tested ideas to improve your leadership, or your organization's effectiveness, then you should read this book.

I liked the book. I think it hit the mark for it's intended audience. The lessons learned from the school of hard knocks are clear, simple, direct; very military at the front lines. Each point is illustraged with a war story from both the civilian and military perspective. Being ex-military I liked the war stories.

The lessons are very useful, but like many books of its ilk, not new. The key lessons were learned and documented many years ago by the Greeks and Romans. I think the thing to keep in mind is that communication has not ocurred until both sides understand the message. In that line, I think this book does a very good job of describing key leadership traits and tools and introducing them to a new audience.

The book is organized by chapters, and key points and illustrations within each. There are contradictions in the points that are not brought up or discussed. I think this is true due to the nature of human interaction and its complexities, that a tool or technique works until it doesn't. The key is for the leader to recognized the difference. The book is weak here, but I also think that is something better learned from experience.

Some major take aways for me was the dicussion on organizational structure, the need to follow SOP, until there is a greater need to not, good leadership demands good followership, followers have major responsibilities towards their leaders (how and when to tell the boss the path we are following is wrong).

For me this is not new, but it is great to be reminded of these things. This book is not the best I have read on the topic, but very useful for the key insights form practical life and death experience.

If you've declared war on your company's lackluster performance, this book will help you launch an all-out assault. Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals demonstrates through the experiences of this elite military unit of Sea, Air and Land commandos that combat lessons can apply to the corporate world. The book provides examples of SEAL tactics and missions, along with their corporate applications, particularly in strong team building. Authors Jeff Cannon and Lt. Cmdr. Jon Cannon combine their experience in business and the U.S. Navy in a no-nonsense, practical guide. They zero in on setting goals and commanding your troops with deadly accuracy. While their problem-solving text gets straight to the point, it isn't novel and they repeat lessons under different titles. The book is a laundry list, a useful approach in allowing you to choose what you need. We found that the Cannons fire off a good how-to book for corporate strategists who want to develop battle plans for improving their teams and organizations.

This book is the most accessible leadership book i've read recently. It is presented as a case by case basis (The Misson) with lessons learned from it (The Take Away), albeit in a corny way.

Those who are military buffs will surely enjoy this book, however, the corporate world is a far different outfit. The best example from the book would be the case where the officers of the same rank were placed together to pitch a tent in the dark. Due to that, everyone was barking orders to each other in order to stand out and appear superior.

It is almost impossible to reprimand your subordinates without risking a resignation and the balance between enforcing your right as a superior and eliciting favours is a fine line. My philosophy of leadership is fairly simple. Lay down the expectations from day one, and hire those who can accept those expectations, never force someone to do something that they are not willing to do (Chapter 4, Lesson 1). You cannot trim down your troops through attrition in the corporate organization (no boot camps here) by piling so much work that your employees quit and only the best remain. There's just not enough time and not enough people to complete any project implementation. Only a handful of organizations can do that ie. Nordstrom via psychological preasure rather than physical.

Chapter 3 focuses on building leadership, while chapter 4 focuses on being a grunt. 2 sides of the coin which are highly important. In summary, a must read. (Highly recommend, Built to Last)

This stuff is all pretty obvious and can be learned anywhere, not just in the environment of a SEAL team. We could have called this "Leadership Lessons of the Plastic Injection Molding Production Supervisors" or "Leadership Lessons of the Rental Car Management Trainees." Seriously. The SEAL stories were nice, but I was expecting some powerful lessons learned under the stressful conditions of special operations combat. The "how many officers does it take to put up a tent" example wasn't exactly the impactful example that I was looking for. I, too, was a naval officer and could generate better illustrations of these leadership and management skills from my mundane times on a surface ship. No need to slap the SEAL trident on the cover, though I guess it would sell more books.

If you've declared war on your company's lackluster performance, this book will help you launch an all-out assault. Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals demonstrates through the experiences of this elite military unit of Sea, Air and Land commandos that combat lessons can apply to the corporate world. The book provides examples of SEAL tactics and missions, along with their corporate applications, particularly in strong team building. Authors Jeff Cannon and Lt. Cmdr. Jon Cannon combine their experience in business and the U.S. Navy in a no-nonsense, practical guide. They zero in on setting goals and commanding your troops with deadly accuracy. While their problem-solving text gets straight to the point, it isn't novel and they repeat lessons under different titles. The book is a laundry list, a useful approach in allowing you to choose what you need. We from getAbstract found that the Cannons fire off a good how-to book for corporate strategists who want to develop battle plans for improving their teams and organizations.

As a lead for a software development team, this book was remarkable in its discussion of what makes a good team, be it a seal team or team creating software. Well written without all the jargon and over analysis found in most leadership books.

The stories in this book from the days as a Navy Seal are great. But, I bought this for the coorelations the author can make to the business world. From that viewpoint, this book falls short from meaningful business and leadership content. It has the content, don't get me wrong. But the content is very basic. If you've read any leadership book in the past, this book will teach you nothing new.

This is a book for anyone who is interested in leadership principles. It does not matter whether it is a
Military operation, a business plan, or any other field that requires leadership, this book will provide the time-tested principles used by the elite U.S. Navy SEALS.

There are six detailed chapters which outlines how to achieve certain goals and how it relates to leadership. Chapter one covers setting goals and includes specific advice taken from actual SEAL missions and than relates it to business models. There are sixteen important lessons in this chapter.

Chapter two explains in eight lessons how to organize and how to create structure in an organization. Chapter three deals with leadership principles, and has twenty seven lessons to learn. Chapter four emphasizes the importance of learning from those more experienced than you, and how to be a team player. The fifteen lessons in this section explain in detail what it takes to be a leader.

Chapter five deals with developing a "thundering herd." The thirteen chapters emphasize the principles of how to build a winning team and why it is important to get the best people for the job. The final chapter emphasizes the need to maintain your momentum once you have built up your team so that they keep moving forward.

In conclusion, this short review cannot do this book justice because there is so much information to learn from this text. If you are serious about learning to be a leader, this is a must book to read.

Rating: 5 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: PR-24 Police Baton Advanced Techniques)

I did at times like the "war stories" written by the authors and being former Navy, I thought I would be able to carry over some of the teachings into the fire service. This books tried to allow a SEAL to share his war stories to a business section of the population. I had very little that can be carried over and wasn't written very well at all. Maybe if the format of the book was done different it might have had an easier time hitting it's point. It was a very hard read too.