Team Secrets of the Navy SEALs

May 1, 2003
The armed forces are a wellspring of managerial concepts, and in the elite Navy SEALs commando unit, the watchword is teamwork. According to this gung-ho leadership primer, the SEALs take the fostering of teamwork very seriously. SEALs are taught that their very lives, as well as national security, depend on the Team. They pledge to each other that"dead or alive, bloody or broken, Team members--all of them--are coming home!" They endure ritual teamwork training ordeals where they sit huddled together for hours in icy, raging surf, their instructors taunting them as they help each other stave off drowning and hypothermia. Indeed,"every minute of a SEAL's life is geared toward the Team!" If none of this sounds quite right for your organization, be assured that this is at heart a stentorian version of standard-issue civilian managerial advice."Team Secrets for Innovative Thinking," for example, turn out to be 1) posting a suggestion box and 2) asking underlings for input, while the leadership nostrums--don't micromanage, help subordinates develop their capacities and show appreciation for their work, be"a staunch protector of your men and not a self-absorbed weasel"--have been corporate commonplaces for decades. The anonymous author, a Navy SEAL himself, deploys hard-bitten military aphorisms and lots of acronyms to dress up the turgid style and vacuous content of business literature, but no amount of swaggering soldierly camouflage can adequately disguise this boilerplate.

May 1, 2003
The armed forces are a wellspring of managerial concepts, and in the elite Navy SEALs commando unit, the watchword is teamwork. According to this gung-ho leadership primer, the SEALs take the fostering of teamwork very seriously. SEALs are taught that their very lives, as well as national security, depend on the Team. They pledge to each other that"dead or alive, bloody or broken, Team members--all of them--are coming home!" They endure ritual teamwork training ordeals where they sit huddled together for hours in icy, raging surf, their instructors taunting them as they help each other stave off drowning and hypothermia. Indeed,"every minute of a SEAL's life is geared toward the Team!" If none of this sounds quite right for your organization, be assured that this is at heart a stentorian version of standard-issue civilian managerial advice."Team Secrets for Innovative Thinking," for example, turn out to be 1) posting a suggestion box and 2) asking underlings for input, while the leadership nostrums--don't micromanage, help subordinates develop their capacities and show appreciation for their work, be"a staunch protector of your men and not a self-absorbed weasel"--have been corporate commonplaces for decades. The anonymous author, a Navy SEAL himself, deploys hard-bitten military aphorisms and lots of acronyms to dress up the turgid style and vacuous content of business literature, but no amount of swaggering soldierly camouflage can adequately disguise this boilerplate.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.