The 4 Laws Of Combat

Several years ago my team group studied Jocko Willink’s books, Extreme Ownership. The premise of the book is that no matter where you are in the chain of command in your company, you must take complete ownership of the outcomes of all situations.  

Yes. All situations. Hence, EXTREME ownership. Makes you think. 

In addition, Jocko outlines the 4 Laws of Combat, which interestingly apply to business and have helped our team to be more cohesive. Here’s how we implement them at InTech: 

Cover and Move. In combat, you need to cover your teammates from fire while they gain better position to defeat the enemy. In the same way, while our teammates are engaged in deep work or a hard problem, where interruption would cause much longer times to resolution, the rest of the team steps up to cover for tasks and communication out to Clients.  

Prioritize and Execute. Each morning at 8:30AM our entire team huddles up to align on the company and individual priorities for the day. We clarify when we won’t be available for calls or slack messages. This daily alignment keeps us on track and greatly increases efficiencies.  

Simplify. The nature of our work is to deal with both people and computer systems. Both of which can be incredibly complex. Mix them together and you exponentially increase complexity. We need to simply both the problems and the execution to assure clear communication to the team and to our Clients.  

Decentralized Command. While InTech holds to strict documentation and Change Management standards, approval from management for every action would slow down progress. We train our team in the InTech Way to solve problems, execute, and communicate. This allows us to trust the decisions in the field in the moment. We decentralize decision making, and make all actions visible to the team so we can move fast. 

Leverage the 4 Laws of Combat to create an agile company. 

LEIA SHILOBOD – CEO of InTech Solutions, author of Cyber Warefare: Protecting Your Business From Total Annihilation and The Three Indisputable Rules Every Manufacturer Must Know Before Purchasing Any IT Product or Service.

As a cyber security advisor, Leia speaks frequently at venues and events such as Harvard, Pennsylvania State Department events, and Accounting and Manufacturing industry events.

Also know as the “IT Princess of Power”, Leia saves mid-market firms from hackers and keeps them compliant by delivering enterprise-class IT security solutions that would otherwise be cost prohibitive.