[alexpotato]

Disclaimer: I have no military experience.

Your points on the lessons he mention are very valid. The particular part of the book that matched your description of "this might not work for non SEALs" was when Jocko described how he took full responsibility for a near friendly fire incident. He goes on to say that he earned a lot of respect for being the type of leader that would take accountability. He points out, IIRC, that this respect was gained from both the enlisted men and the officers.

I remember reading that passage and thinking "I've been in plenty of orgs where if someone did that, sure, the 'enlisted' aka line employees might respect that but the 'officers' aka middle managers would immediately think: 'Ah ha! Here is some noble minded fool we can dump our problems on!' "

I'm exaggerating somewhat but only to reinforce the point that I think the book is excellent and agree with you that the lessons taught don't ALWAYS apply.

[hackermailman]

The most frustrating thing about reading that book is when you encounter management that break all the advice in there, like manufacturing nonstop excuses whenever you bring a work problem to them 'well nobody told me about it...everybody had consensus this was what we were going to do so collectively we all share blame'. After reading you can no longer tolerate this leadership style whereas before I just accepted their answers assuming that's how it worked.