Discipline Equals Freedom

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By John R. Nocero & Jennifer L. Kennedy
JenniferKennedy@barberinstitute.org

Tremendous thanks to Kris McGuigan for sharing her thoughts on courage. This week, we are moving from courage to its seductive partner, discipline, and its brutal taskmaster, Jocko Willink.

Now, Jocko Willink did not invent discipline, but he is one of the scariest human beings ever imagined. He spent 20 years in the US Navy and commanded SEAL Team 3’s task unit Bruiser, the most highly decorated special operations unit in the Iraq War. Upon returning to the US, Jocko served as the officer in charge of training for all West Coast SEAL teams, designing and implementing some of the most challenging and realistic — and perhaps psychotic — combat training in the world. After retiring from the Navy, he co-founded Echelon Front, a leadership and management consulting company and authored the number one New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win. (Ferris, 2017). Did we mention that he also is a lean 230 pounds, Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert who used to tap out 20 Navy SEALs per workout and a legend in the Special Operations world?

Look at his eyes in the picture above. They look like they are looking through you more than at you. Strong eyes. Sullen eyes. Disciplined eyes. We know the eyes have it. We’ve learned that the disciplined eyes crush it. At its core, being disciplined is suppressing your basic desires and showing restraint. Doing what you should be doing even though you don’t want to. It’s acknowledging and then DOING those things that make you better, faster, stronger – both mentally and physically. And like we’ve said before, you don’t have to like doing these things; you just have to do them.  If everyone loved working out, reading extensively, and reflecting on themselves, we’d all be slim, trim, and mentally healthy and engaged.  All you have to do is look around to see that’s not the case.  When set correctly, discipline empowers subordinates to make decisions quickly and confidently, without the need to check in.

Jocko’s life philosophy is discipline equals freedom.  As he said in a recent Success talk: “If your alarm clock goes off at 4:30 a.m. and you immediately give up and surrender to the snooze button, well, what’s the rest of the day gonna look like? If you have the discipline when that alarm goes off you get up, you get in the gym, you do something physical, you’re setting the tone, you’re holding the line, and that discipline is gonna maintain.”

To Jocko’s point – it’s discipline that keeps an organization on the straight and narrow; that keeps them focused on compliance.  Good intentions are great, but if you don’t train yourself to “get up when the alarm goes off,” those good intentions are worthless. Most organizations that find themselves on the front page had good intentions – they meant to do the right thing, they just hit the snooze button on compliance. Our job as compliance professionals is to train the business to be disciplined when it comes to following the rules that govern our industries.  You don’t have to like the rules, they don’t have to make sense to you, but you do have to adhere to them.  It’s discipline that saves the day.

So get up and get to it. Build that muscle memory for your organization.  Drill it into them and set the example every day.  Explain why discipline is important and why good intentions certainly won’t keep your organization off the front page when things go sideways.

In Jocko’s words, “Don’t count on motivation; count on discipline.”

References
Ferris, T. (2017).  Jocko Willink on Discipline, Leadership, and Overcoming Doubt. Retrieved May 6, 2017 from http://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/

3 COMMENTS

  1. I’m surprised, in a space where I usually see insightful, thought-provoking commentary, to find this adoring celebration of this master killer and violence machine turned self-marketing ninja, whose methods the authors themselves suggest may be “psychotic”, as a valid model for leadership. Are we really supposed to be impressed by this pin-head guy with the huge chin and the eyes that, the authors write, “look like they are looking through you more than at you. Strong eyes. Sullen eyes. Disciplined eyes.” Is this really a model of leadership the authors, or a blog on compliance and ethics, wants to champion? Paaa-LEEEZ!

    Even setting aside morality for a moment – and why not, right? this blog is only about professional ethics, after all – and looking at this cynically, despite preposterous book titles like “Extreme Ownership: How Navy Seals Lead and Win,” clearly designed to get patriotic hearts pumping, a closer look at how well the Navy Seals, all the other black ops maestros, and the rest of the US military, have actually “led and won” in the Middle East in the last 15 years, or anywhere else since WWII, despite a military budget that is greater than the next 10 largest national military budgets of the world put together . . . well, I think we can find better people to follow into the 21st century than Jocko.

    No?

    • Good Morning Martin,

      Thank you very much for your opinion. I have to ask though – do you have any familiarity with Jocko Willink other than through this article? Have you listened to his podcast at all? I would encourage you to reach out to review some of his work.

      If you are asking me about having strong eyes, then yes indeed I want them. The hardest thing anyone can do is be authentic. Strength – which is not gender-specific – is important. Not just physical strength – but mental and emotional discipline.

      I come from a very strong military family and I have also made many bad choices in my life in the past. Staying disciplined keeps me from making bad choices now. This is not about bullying or intimidation. It’s about discipline.

      Discipline never fails anyone.

      Thanks for commenting. Happy to discuss anytime.

      Very respectfully,

      JRN

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