Engineer handled an incident at a barber shop
Extreme Ownership
8 Years Ago.
It was a Sunday when the main microservice owned by my team crashed, affecting multiple customers. I was a junior engineer on-call at the time. I paged Jon, our most experienced engineer and team tech lead, along with a few others for assistance.
Jon received my page while he was at the barber shop, getting his hair and beard done. He could have said - “Please check with Josh, I am out and will check back once I reach home”.
Instead, he joined the incident call via phone, and started providing debugging instructions: "Can you run iptables to check for dropped packets? I suspect the kernel upgrade on the node", while his neck was under a blade.
Others on the call chuckled, commenting, "If he isn’t responding from a barber shop, he isn’t Jon."
That’s Extreme Ownership.
But what does that mean? What are its benefits and challenges, and how can you apply it in your career without burning out? Today, as an engineer with significant experience and having done my fair share, I'll share my perspective to answer these questions.
👋 Hey there, I am Gourav. I write about Engineering, Productivity, Thought Leadership, and the Mysteries of the mind!
What Jon Was Doing?
Jon was applying his infrastructure expertise to assist the team, regardless of his location or circumstances. He prioritized resolving customer impact and minimizing downtime.
He didn’t dwell on the lack of knowledge or runbooks within the team; instead, he took accountability and felt responsible for resolving the issue.
When I joined the call, I identified the root cause and began working on mitigating the problem. Despite knowing the situation was under control, Jon continued to provide guidance, effectively leading the resolution effort from a low-network environment at the barber shop.
It took 3 hours to resolve the issue. In the postmortem, Jon said that he could have done better to mitigate issue and took blame for it.
This exemplifies extreme ownership.
What’s Extreme Ownership?
It’s when a leader deeply accepts responsibility for their team, product, and customers, using their influence and knowledge to restore order amidst chaos.
This approach means leaders don’t blame others when things go wrong; instead, they take ownership and work towards solutions, regardless of the conditions.
It’s a leadership concept popularized by retired Navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in their book Extreme Ownership.
Benefits
Career Advancement: Promotes rapid career progression by fostering a proactive, accountable mindset.
Accountability: Encourages leaders to take full responsibility for outcomes, nurturing a culture of accountability within teams.
Trust: Builds trust as team members see leaders taking ownership of mistakes and actively working to correct them.
What are its sharp edges?
Burnout: It can lead to leaders feeling overwhelmed, as they might take on too much responsibility, leading to burnout.
Overdo: You might start over-optimizing solutions to the problems at work.
Blame Shifting: There’s a potential for Blame Avoidance by your team members as they might become overly reliant on the leader to solve problems, hindering their own growth and initiative.
My opinion on how to pursue Extreme Ownership
We should strive to become extreme owners. But, as a leader, if you try to control all variables, which isn't always possible in complex environments, you will get burnt out. It can also lead to the case where you confuse taking responsibility and doing things on others’ behalf.
This is where Dichotomy of Control comes in. It goes with extreme ownership. But, it suggests that you take responsibility for things "only in your control". For things outside your control, you can still use it well. Use it to process the outcome well and not get burnt out overoptimizing.
Other important aspect leaders may lose on exert is force multiplication. They try to do things themselves. Part of extreme ownership is to spread it out such that every member of the team feels that, and you get more done with the help of others.
Key Takeaways
Focus on what you can control, avoid burnout and over-optimization.
Exert Force multiplication and empower team members to lead.
Foster a culture of accountability and sustainable growth.
Shoutouts 🔊
Let’s Connect 🤝
Sponsorship | Collaboration | LinkedIn | 1:1 Mentoring | Twitter
Gourav Khanijoe