As a continuation from the last 3 weeks, I read the expert from MSP magazine and wanted to share its break down.
No. 3 Prioritize And Execute
When Jocko ran these SEAL Leadership trainings, he went to great lengths to make them as realistic as possible.
“We had high-speed paintball guns like real guns. Set designers from Hollywood to make our training sites look like they were villages in Iraq. Special effects people, pyrotechnicians, actors, and actresses.”
This is how the training would play out.
A SEAL platoon would go to clear a building, and as soon as they kicked in the door, there would be explosions, people screaming, fake blood everywhere, nonstop gunfire: It was chaos. Which meant you had a whole lot of crazy going on all at once that needed to be handled.
That’s why Jocko’s Third Law of Combat leadership is to prioritize and execute.
Identify the problem that needs to get solved and get it fixed now. And keep going. Prioritize. Execute. Repeat.
Note that the mistake people often make is to think this means you only take on one problem at a time. Wrong.
Let’s say one of our top owners has had a serious security breach. They’ve been hacked and you need to make things right now.
If you have 10 people on the team, that doesn’t mean you have all 10 doing the same thing. You prioritize and execute on multiple fronts. You start by containing the damage, running an antivirus, and probably resetting passwords. You figure out which systems were corrupted and what data’s been compromised. You make sure the owner is getting status updates and understands what you’re doing to resolve the situation. There may be interaction required with law enforcement. And so on and so forth.
You can’t allow yourself or your team to get fixated on a single target. You need to make sure you understand what your priorities are, then assign responsibilities to handle everything that needs to get done.
But it can’t all fall upon your shoulders alone. And that brings us to the importance of … (wait for next week)
