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142 of 148 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow--Sun Tzu meets Malcolm Gladwell, December 2, 2008
This review is from: The Mission, The Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander (Hardcover)
Finally a warrior writes about what really happened and the key life lessons we can all take away: `Always listen to the guy on the ground', `When in doubt, develop the situation', and my favorite, `It's not reality unless it's shared' are all embedded in these amazing real-world mission story's. His underlying premise is that the key to understanding the complex world around us is our ability to recognize, understand, and adapt to the underlying patterns that drive the behavior of everything around us, which I wholeheartedly agree with. But what really amazed about this book about patterns, is how many patterns there are in the book itself. Just about everything he writes about--from his childhood 'bombing cars' to his walk across the Gettysburg battlefield is linked to some other event, mission, or lesson somewhere else in the book. I read this book over the weekend, and I wrote so many notes in the margins on the patterns that I discovered, that I'm now going back through for the third time. He says things like `don't charge the machine-gun nest, go around it', and 'treat life like a movie, not a snapshot', that I have always believed in myself, but had never been able to put in words or phrases before. Pete writes about Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and yes, Montana, with a fresh narrative that makes each mission come to life in a unique never before heard way, while also making what actually happened much easier to understand. The chapter on Gorrilla (not a spelling error) Warfare in Bosnia is magnificent, as was his short story on what we should really have learned from John Walker Lindh--why wasn't this ever covered in the press? The chapter on Ali Mohamed (the wayward terrorist) should be read by our new President, so he doesn't get burned like his predecessors did. Finally, I want to point out that the maps in this book set a whole new standard for battlefield maps. Google earth technology was used to create maps that make you feel like you are flying over the battlefield with a birds-eye view of everything going on below. This may be the best book I've ever read.
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71 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Way of Thinking, December 13, 2008
This review is from: The Mission, The Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander (Hardcover)
What I expected was a good book about really cool missions, what I got was a great book about really cool missions and a new way of thinking about the world, which has radically altered the way I understand and think about problems and opportunities, as well as the way leaders can lead and manage organizations and other human social systems to solve those problems.
After the first two chapters I realized that I wasn't just reading some amazing never-berore-heard stories from the front lines, but I was learning life lessons that I could directly translate to my personal and professional life.
My brother and my best friend also read the book and all of us have our own personal Pete Blaber take-aways--here are mine:
1) Make and take time to think, our minds work in three elementary phases, saturate, incubate, and illuminate. It's ok to not know what to do when first exposed to something, we need to immerse ourselves in the situation, we need to 'Develop the Situation'.
2) To succeed in our personal and professional lives we must consider the impossible, the improbable, and the unlikely as a matter of course. We must Imagine! But to make sure we set ourselves up for success, we have to create an environment where our imaginative juices can flow full throttle. Humor and outrageousness are the fertile fields where the seeds of imagination are planted grown and harvested. Never again will I tell my team 'let's get serious", or 'knock off the joking'. As Pete Blaber so adeptly conveys in his chapter on Gorilla warfare, if you want to come up with truely innovative ideas, you have to laugh!
This book is outstanding, everyone should read it!
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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Reading for the Leader and Manager, December 5, 2008
This review is from: The Mission, The Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander (Hardcover)
This book is fast moving and immediately draws the reader in with great anecdotes and chronicles of the enigmatic world of the "Unit", its members, and life "behind the fence" at Fort Bragg. Pete's principles about leadership and management are universal, transcendent, and are just pure commonsense. Moreover,they are eminently practical and stay with you long after you put the book down. He schools us in the Die Gestalt of leadership -- learn well.
Blaber's book should be on the "must read" list at the SOF University, Command and General Staff College and the War College. Make it essential reading for every officer basic course on the Nine Principles of War, in particular, in a study on "Mission". On second thought, the principles Blaber lays out here cover the eight remaining axioms with equal aplomb. Even Wharton's Business School and Havard's Kennedy School of Government would likewise, do well to make this book mandatory reading - it is that good!
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