Customer Reviews

Secrets of Special Ops Leadership: Dare the Impossible -- Achieve the Extraordinary

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I am motivated to write this review by the off-base review preceeding this one.

To fully comprehend the wisdom of this and similar books, a person has to approach the subject matter with an open mind.

Simplistic folks draw the obvious (and wrong) conclusion that the military world is so completely divorced from the real world of business that there are few, if any, useful parallels. The preceding reviewer tells us to read books about specific companies. OK, but let's start with examples such as Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, etc.

There MUST be some reason that survey after survey reveals that the US Military holds the highest admiration of any profession in the eyes of the American people.

I am not in any way related to the author. In fact, I have tried to contact him by email on several occasions and have been ignored, so I can't be classified as a shill for him. Never-the-less, I deeply admire this and his other works.

To give you some background on my credentials for making this positive assessment, I offer that my own direct military experience was limited to being a US Army Infantry Officer in Vietnam. I currently teach at two graduate schools of business. I can say without hesitation that some of the best management and leaderhip training I ever had was in military schools. If civilians will open their minds to the principles of leadership outlined in this book, I can assure you that you and your organization might also some day accend to the heights of admiration of the American people.

This is a very useful book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants insights about how elite organizations operate.

I am neither a war lover nor a military enthusiast. However, I do believe I can learn a lot, business and personal wise, from the endeavours of special op guys who, supposedly, had gone through training and fighting far beyond the capabilities of an average civilian under the most adverse conditions. In that respect, this book satisfied me well. Although the 14 principles prescribed by the author (see table of content) are common or even a little bit cliche, his good and diverse choice of commando stories of SAS, Spartan, SEAL, etc etc (and not just big battle or war stories in books of its genre) accompanied by real life business cases, and his vivid telling of them make the lessons much more memorable and lively, thanks to his military expertise and outstanding presentation skill (afterall, the author is a retired Major General and now a professor). In short, a great read! Highly recommended!

p.s. As usual, below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference:-

"Who dares, wins." British Special Air Service SAS motto. pg 50
Ordinary people ask why - Commandos ask "Why not?" pg 59
Lieutenant Kerrey (a SEAL)'s wounds were serious, and he lost a leg becuase of them and was forced to retire disabled from the Navy. However, the principles of his commando service in the SEALs never left Bob Kerrey, not as governor of Nebraska, not as a U.S. Senator, and not as a university president. He remained at the head of those he led, out in front. pg 76
It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. - General Douglas MacArthur pg 85
Nothing is more harmful to the service than the neglect of discipline, for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army superiority over another. - George Washington pg 98
Too bad, Kwame. (The loser in the final round of the first season of Donald Trump's apprentice). You cannot depend on the undisciplined, and especially someone, no matter how brilliant or well educated, who is unwilling to follow the orders of those in authority. pg 100
You cant communicate too much in a time of crisis....Get the data. Solicit opinions. Listen carefully. Be open minded. But at the end of the day, trust your own instincts. Plays that look good on the chalkboard dont always work on the field. - Anne Mulcahy, CEO/Chairman who turned around Xerox pg 156
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. - Theodore Roosevelt pg 176
I rate the skillful tactician above the skillful strategist, especially him who plays the bad cards well. - Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell pg 176
Victory belongs to the most persevering. - Napoleon pg 191
Press-On: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genuis will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. - Ray Kroc pg 195 (Remark: Thanks to the comment by Honus Wagner, it is originally from President Calvin Coolidge though, not Ray Croc.)

Cohen is certainly well-qualified to reveal and then discuss various "secrets" which he converts into "lessons" by which to guide and inform business initiatives. He understands far better than do most of his readers that many comparisons and contrasts between the military and the business world are inappropriate. For whatever reasons, however, executives constantly use military nomenclature when explaining how they plan to "attack" a market segment, introduce a category "killer" product, "blow" a competitor "out of the water," launch a "guerilla" marketing campaign, etc. Whereas in other books which "look only at the individual commando organizations with which a particular author is familiar," Cohen takes a comprehensive approach: "There is a commonality in how organizations are led in all successful commando units. This book synthesizes these techniques. It covers the essential methods that commando leaders in the British Special Air Service (SAS), Israeli Sayeret Mat'kal, and [U.S.] commando units employ. But it also covers techniques that have been used by commando units throughout thousands of years of history to accomplish extremely challenging tasks against vastly superior odds." In this brief excerpt, Cohen has identified what differentiates his book from any other of which I am now aware: It examines commando units from a number of different military services in several different countries as well as other commando units pre-20th century.

With regard to the aforementioned "secrets," there are no head-snapping revelations among them nor among the core principles which most (if not all) leaders of commando units share in common nor among the "fourteen key strategies" which Cohen analyzes in Part 2. Of greatest interest and value to me is what Cohen has to say about specific assignments or situations. For example, when Gideon led a group of 300 Hebrews to victory against a vastly superior number of well-trained, battle-experienced Midianites in a fortified encampment. That was around 1100 B.C.

Other exemplary (special) operations include those when 300 Spartans led by Leonidas held off about 225,000 Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.; when Col. James Doolittle led 16 B-25Bs during a raid on Japan in 1942; and when Brig. General Dan Shomron led the IDF rescue of 105 hostages at the Entebbe airport in 1976. I also appreciate Cohen's inclusion of examples from the business world where, after only minor adjustment, each of the principles of special ops leadership can also be effective, especially when there seems to be no acceptable alternative to "commando" initiatives. Hence the importance of those principles to the leaders of the Manhattan Project, Lockheed's "Skunk Works," and Xerox PARC.

Is this book about great special ops leaders and what they and their associates achieved, often against what seemed to be prohibitive odds?

Or is this book about what can be learned from them that is relevant to the contemporary business world?

In a word, Yes.

The market for "military metaphor" leadership books is saturated, but retired Major General William A. Cohen issues a worthy, if not outstanding, addition to the field. It reflects painstaking work by its highly qualified author, a former special ops pilot who has gathered stories from virtually every field of human endeavor to illustrate his leadership principles. Strong in its depth of detailed and inspirational anecdotes, particularly from the annals of military history, this book is less effective at describing how managers specifically can apply its principles to their daily business lives. This is a routine shortcoming of the genre, which tends to offer more shots than targets. We recommend this book to managers and executives seeking inspiration, rather than specific business advice, and to leaders who enjoy military history and vivid war stories.

It was not quite what I wanted but it was interesting. I was hoping for a deeper analysis of how the military worked and how special forces teams are organized and why. I remember once hearing that the SAS was organized into three man teams so as no specific leader emerged. To make this work, they choose people with extreme levels of self-discipline to get away without having a defined leader. While, I did not necessarily need to hear about the SAS, I was hoping to hear some very specific details about one or more special forces teams.

This was not that book...instead, Cohen took a step back and extracted principles from the military that had strong analogs in business. He reinforced these with lots of examples of sucessful leaders both in the military and in the business world. Some of his principles include:
- Hire the best
- Give the big challenges
- Strong discipline
- Build strong teams
- Dominate the situation
- Rewards
- Dare the impossible
- Persistance
- etc...
Thus, it was written at a higher level of abstraction than I was looking for.

There were some hidden gems in there though.

If you want to check out the book for yourself, here is a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Special-Leadership-Impossible-achieve-Extraordinary/dp/0814408400/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3804308-2223961?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186368167&sr=8-1

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I just saw the movie Blackhawk Down and was very interested in how the attitude of the delta force troops really brought home one of the concepts of the book. That of Persistance. Several times in the movie, they pushed through and overcame obstacles that just stopped the also elite rangers. I have no idea how real the movie is or how representative it is of true elite troops in combat but it did hit home part of what the author talked about.

-alan www.frydaz.com

I liked the book Leadership Secrets of Navy SEALS and figured I'd get another book from a special operations officer that made the parallel into the business world.

The author was a commando in the Air Force and has written numerous papers and given many lectures on business leadership. He seems very qualified to write on this subject.

Between the historical events of wars and conflicts he touches on and his insights into business, he does a good job of educating the reader and providing real tools for leaders and managers to follow in a corporate environment.

Here is a link to the other book I recommend.
The Leadership Lessons of the U.S. Navy SEALS : Battle-Tested Strategies for Creating Successful Organizations and Inspiring Extraordinary Results

Love leadership books and love and admire our special ops guys but this one didnt do it for me. Has good points but its one more attempt by someone, this time military, to make the leap to business and while there is some crossover I just find the examples when it comes to business pie in the sky. it will play with from General to CEO but the troops know better. And there are more special ops than the Air Force ... disappointing but if you like special ops stories they're okay but leave it out of business please at this level anyway