would your extreme ownership philosophy have changed or lost confidence if you
had been relieved of command when taking ownership of friendly-fire incident you
described in your first book the book extreme ownership by the way yes
just to to be perfectly clear about this I wasn't taking ownership of the
situations just so that I could keep my job
it wasn't a political maneuver to set myself up to look good I was taking
ownership of the situation because I was the leader of the situation that took
place I was the guy responsible for what was happening I was taking ownership
because that was the correct thing the correct thing is something bad had
happened and I was in charge of it and
yes I could have been fired and if I would have been fired I would have
accepted it and I wouldn't have done anything different so again this is sort
of similar to a couple questions ago like that's extreme ownership is not
about avoiding trouble it's not about avoiding trouble you don't say well I
own it and then you don't get in trouble you know you actually could get fired
you actually could get fired and that's why that's why that idea of pre-emptive
ownership I talked about that at one of the musters if if in the back of your
mind if in the back of my mind I think you know what if the platoon makes a
mistake I can just blame it on them I'll be good well now I'm not really that
worried about their plan because I got that little out if I need I'm not
worried about if the guys understand the rules of engagement cuz I got that a
little out if I need it I'm not that worried about deconfliction because I
got that little out if they screw it up so I haven't out for myself and so I
don't really put 100% effort into the planning and of the of what we're doing
mm-hmm if I have pre-emptive ownership which is
hey no matter what happens out here it's my fault guess what hey guys do you
understand that always let me talk to you about him again hey hey laughs do
you do you guys understand where the where the lines of limits of advance are
so you know where you get dis are you guys an underst
hey do we have it marked out clearly okay great hey do you know like dig in
and when you dig in on stuff then you have less of a chance of something going
wrong but when something does go wrong and you take ownership of it you take
ownership of it not to avoid trouble but to face trouble mm-hmm that's what you
have to do so my my idea hasn't changed in fact if I would have blamed someone
else and then kept my job and someone else gotten fired I would have had a
real problem with that I could not have lived with myself maintaining that
position knowing that I had sacrificed someone below me in the chain of command
for my own good that doesn't sit with me man I wouldn't
have been able to do that I wouldn't been able to do that and that's why when
I was trying to figure out who to blame it on because I was because I was
looking at this big problem because it was a lot of bad things and I'm singing
myself okay whose fault was this and I couldn't figure out why I didn't feel
comfortable saying it was this guy was that guy it'd be like this guy and the
previous one goes well it's bills fault yeah I don't feel comfortable saying
that especially when I'm in charge and I don't feel come from when I don't appear
either if I'm if my peer and we're part of a team and something goes wrong I
don't feel comfortable saying it was the other guy
hmm who does that who feels good about that right don't be that person
and and not only that when you're when you see people acting that way everybody
can identify that that's a bad thing to do
but they do it anyways because their ego
so keep it in check yeah