The Healthy Workplace Nudge

Chapter 15The MeTEOR Story: Extreme Ownership

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin has become one of the biggest business books of the past decade.¹ And for good reason; it brought a kick-butt, scream-in-your-face, knife-between-the-teeth intensity to the issue of personal responsibility and owning everything—mistakes, successes, failures, improvement.

The authors, retired Navy SEAL officers, know that failure to own it is a failure to lead. Pure and simple. The only way to succeed is to accept responsibility for everything and blame no one and nothing, not even in your most private 3 a.m. thoughts. Own it, dammit, or sell the farm, move to town, and get a job bagging groceries.

When I read the book, I immediately saw MeTEOR Education, a consulting organization in Gainesville, Florida. But I knew MeTEOR when it was Contrax, a school furniture supplier. Even in those days, the owners—Bill Latham and John Crawford—had a much larger dream, an extreme dream: they wanted to transform education in America. Not Gainesville, not Florida, but the whole country. That's pretty extreme. After reading my book, Change Your Space, Change Your Culture,² they thought I was just the guy to help them do that. I listened to their proposition and, after a two-hour lunch, essentially told them I didn't know anything about education: “Look, I'm not your guy.”

But Bill and John were like characters in a 1940s film comedy: when I would walk out my bedroom door in the morning, they would ...