Why is there a trident on the cover?
- Challenges teach lessons
- [Reflect] What leadership challenges have I faced? What did I learn?
- leadership books focus on individual practices and personal character traits
- only meaningful measure of a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails
- [dmr: requires definition of success]
- [dmr: names of units like "Bruiser" and "Ready First" Brigade makes me wonder if naming is easier when you're attaching it to a generic organizational unit grouping (platoon, group, unit)]
- "on the job training" - aka how all engineers learn
- "leadership training curriculum" - what would this look like for leads? ICs? GMs?
- war story is about a "blue-on-blue", meaning they shot someone on their own side
- they pause days of work to do a postmortem (gathering data, filling out paperwork, reviewing what happened). Huge impact to work. Feel like we rarely allow SEVs to actually impact our commitments, but they should if we're to truly learn
- surprised to see use of PowerPoint over docs for important information
- Taking ownership across the same level in an org (as the ICs did in the story in chapter 1) is reasonable, as is taking ownership for your team. But how take responsibility for your boss, or your colleague?
- spoiler: addressed later in book (especially boss part)
- war story is of training camp, and a team (crew 6) that was in last place whose leader was swapped with the team in first place's leader (crew 2); after swap, crew 6 came in first in everything but crew 2 still came in second place
- lesson is that the leader matters; not about luck-of-the-draw w.r.t. how good your team is
- crew2 had learned how to be owners, and so weak leader swapping in didn't cost them much; new leader was pulled up to standard of team as set by previous leader
- crew6 had gotten into terrible habits of blaming each other and not believing in each other, which new leader addressed quickly and turned them into best performers
- focused on the physical goal in front of them (milestone) not the end goal
- "it's not what you preach, it's what you tolerate" - SEVs, bugs, demeanor, punctuality, equity of conversation
- "I like winning" - dmr
- most peole want to be part of a winning team; often don't know how, or simply
need motivation and encouragement
- "most people" - worth confirming if you have those people, and what they're willing to do in order to win
- "motivation and encouragement" - often different kinds. need to understand who responds well to what kind
- How do we win? What does winning look like for us?
- unfortunately, the corporate story is high level and cursory; no detail, too much generic B.S.
- war story is about believing in the mission and getting team to do so as well
- no senior exec team would knowingly choose a course of action or issue an order that would purposely result in failure; subordinate may not understand a certain strategy and htus not believe in it; junior leaders must ask questions and provide feedback up the chain so senior leaders can fully understand the ramifications of how strategic plans affect execution on the ground
- war story is about another group transferring into the warzone and ignoring the info, advice, and support offered by those there. They failed at their mission b/c they wanted to succeed alone
- "Our team made a mistake and it's my fault. It's my fault because ..." ... "You are ...", "You know ...", "Now I need to fix this so it doesn't happen again"
- teamwork
- avoid complexity, there's too much of it already
- if people don't understand what they're supposed to do to their core, so they can execute w/o thinking, they won't be able to handle the chaos of the unexpected
- need detailed planning for "what if something goes wrong?"
- do most important thing
- contingency planning needed to anticipate likely challenges could arise during execution and map out effective response
- tools like pre-mortem, asking "how could this fail"
- analyze --> execute
- enormity of operational plans and intricate microterrain within those plans,
easy to get lost in details and sidetracked or lose focus
- [dmr: consider applying this thought to tech debt and a complex SOA; highly related to "simple"]
- "decisively engaged": combat situation cannot maneuver or extricate from; must win
- Commander's Intent: understanding of the broader mission
- [dmr: for any project, what is my Intent]
- ICs/junior leads say what they're going to do; trust them to make adjustments, adapt plan to unforeseen circumstances while staying within params of guidance given and standard operating procedure
- "Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people" - [dmr: agree, but curious about source of this claim]
- junior leaders must fully understand what is within their decision-making
authority
- [dmr: I think not knowing these bounds has been a problem for me. I need to ask and understand]
- "Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people" - [dmr: agree, but curious about source of this claim]
- junior leaders must fully understand what is within their decision-making
authority
- [dmr: I think not knowing these bounds has been a problem for me. I need to ask and understand. And likely tell my directs as well]
- communicate with senior leaders to recommend decisions outside junior leaders' authority and pass critical info up the chain
- proactive rather than reactive
- execute w/ confidence
- senior leaders must constantly communicate and push information ("situational awareness") to their subordinate leaders
- leaders are not stuck in any particular situation; free to move where they are most needed, which changes throughout the course of an operation
- subordinate leaders and frontline troopers need to fully understand the purpose of the mission, how it ties into strategic goals, and what impact is has
- war story is about last minute intel about IEDs and bunkered machine guns, but team doesn't change their plan b/c there could always be IEDs and bunkered machine guns and their plan accounted for that possibility before they had that intel. Value of the plan is that it involves accounting for what could go wrong, so can stick to plan
- huge value to standardized planning process to get there [dmr: what do we need to consider? does planning change w/ size of operation/project?]
- brief explains who, what, when, where, why, and how a combat operation would be conducted
- all forces involved must understand overall plan, their role in the plan, what to do when things go wrong, how to contact help if worst-case scenario takes place
- building slides vs focusing on important pieces of the plan
- [dmr: top junior officers doing PowerPoint, b/c comms and planning are important]
- as a leader, if you're down in the weeds planning details w/ your guys, you will have the sme perspective as them, which adds little value
- senior leaders want you to succeed; need you to inform them and help them understand some of the challenges you're dealing with
- need to push info down so ICs and junior leads understand bigger picture, what trying to accomplish
- no 100% right solution, never clear picture
- leaders must be comfortable w/ this and able to make decisions promptly, be ready to adjust those dcisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information
- personal discipline makes you better
- more disciplined standard operating procedures (SOPs) a team employs, the more freedom they have to practice Decentralized Command
- freedom to work within the framework of our disciplined procedures
- have to explain whatever small portion of the plan had changed