Who’s in Charge?

I’ve made no secret of my respect for the leadership and management lessons taught in the bestselling book, Extreme Ownership. At the root of the Extreme Ownership concept is the belief that a leader is in charge of everything under his command.

Is it reasonable to think that a manager can control absolutely everything that happens in his division? The best answer to that question is the old adage, “If you shoot for the moon and fail at least you’ll land among the stars.”

A manager who truly accepts responsibility for everything that happens on his watch can’t help but improve divisional performance. What needs to be done to improve sales? How could customer service be improved? Are tardiness and absenteeism a problem? Are the right people in the right jobs? Am I sending conflicting messages to staff members?

How do you go from a mindset of, “Stuff happens” to, “That will never happen again”? The answer is relentless attention to detail. Success over the long term is never random. Success goes to the manager who insists that every transaction be as good as it can be, not almost as good.

One of the great lines from Extreme Ownership is, “It isn’t what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.”  Rules are not designed with the expectation that some of the employees will follow them some of the time. If you think about it, every rule is created in response to a problem. Without problems we would need no rules. Successful managers create as few rules as possible but insist that every rule be followed every time. Managers who are lax in their follow-up or inconsistent in their enforcement of rules will soon be tuned out by their subordinates.

It is fairly easy to look back at a failure and make necessary corrections. It is much harder to identify problem areas before they happen and take steps to avoid a failure. The combat examples in Extreme Ownership made it clear that lives were always on the line and mistakes could be catastrophic. For that reason, they planned rigorously for every contingency.

With enough thought and discussion most situations can be anticipated. With proper training it is reasonable to expect that negative interactions can be substantially reduced. In our business, we interact with thousands of customers. A 95% success rate sounds good until you realize that we disappointed 100 customers, some of which will never give us another chance. Could we reach 100% satisfaction? Maybe not, but a successful manager stays awake at night thinking of ways to get there.

What do you do when you’ve designed and implemented great training plans but not every employee follows the rules? Face it, not every employee wants to be great at their job. If efforts to change his attitude are not successful, you must make plans to replace him.

It is healthy for any organization to routinely cut low performers. Remember, not only do low performers negatively impact coworkers, a bad employee occupies a position a superstar could fill. Weak managers assume they must tolerate low performers while strong managers excitedly search for new talent.

The title of this installment is “Who’s in Charge?” As the manager, the answer is completely up to you. Are you willing to dig into every aspect of your operation or are you content with average performance? Are you willing to enforce your rules all the time, or only when you get frustrated? Are you willing to identify and cut low performers, or do you allow fear to overrule your managerial instincts? Are you willing to accept responsibility for everything which happens under your command – or are you looking for someone to blame?



Answer these questions honestly and you’ll have the answer to the title.