The main argument in Extreme Ownership is hard to disagree with. If you’re responsible for a team and your first explanation for every failure is that everybody beneath you screwed up, you probably haven’t looked hard enough at your own part in it. That doesn’t mean every failure belongs to the leader. That’s where I…
Sometimes an officer asks a supervisor what to do because he doesn’t know what to do. Sometimes he asks because the decision isn’t his to make. Those aren’t the same thing. I want officers who can think for themselves. If every traffic stop, report question, complaint, or minor problem has to go through a supervisor,…
They’re dependable, they know the work, and they’re usually the person everybody leans on when something needs to get done. That makes your best employee a serious candidate, but I still have to decide whether those strengths fit the job I’m about to give them. The job they’re doing well now may depend on being…
In a previous life, I delegated a lot more than I do now. I had to. I was responsible for more than 2,300 employees who depended, in one way or another, on the decisions I made, and there was no realistic way I could personally handle everything that came with that. On a normal day,…
I like the idea behind Cal Newport’s Deep Work. There are certain things I do better when I can shut everything else out and concentrate on one problem long enough to actually think through it. Writing is one of them. So is working through policy, reviewing a complicated issue, or making plans that affect the…