Let me tell you a story. I was in Afghanistan in 2012, and we were getting after it every single day. We got into a lot of gunfights with the enemy, and we won every fight. We felt invincible.
About four months in, we started getting complacent. When you first arrive in country, your attention is at its max. You’re scanning for any threat. But over time the daily grind sets in. You win, and you win, and you win. And then you start allowing small things that you never would have allowed in the beginning.
One day we set up an outpost for the Afghan National Army to man. They couldn’t man it, so they pulled out. We had to head back to base, and we knew the Taliban would do something to that site.
The next day we roll back in. One of the Army guys attached to us blows right past us in a big armored vehicle, into an area we haven’t cleared yet. We stopped him, but he should have been stopped fifty meters before that. Our EOD tech started backing him out. He turned the steering wheel, and the tire was sitting on an IED. That tire went flying and took off half of our EOD tech’s calf.
That was our fault. We let ourselves get too casual, and it didn’t happen all at once. In the SEAL Teams we have a saying. Casualness creates casualties.
Nobody is shooting at you at work
I know nobody is shooting at you at work. But casualness is still costing you. It costs you customers. It costs you momentum. And it costs you your best people.
And it gets into a company the same way it got into our platoon. The first time somebody shows up ten minutes late and nobody says a word, that becomes the new standard. Your standards are the behaviors you allow and the behaviors you don’t allow. And those behaviors become your culture.
“We’re doing fine”
When the numbers are good, it’s easy to believe everything is fine.
But casualness never shows up in your results first. Results are a lagging indicator. By the time it’s in your numbers, it has been living in your hallways for six months.
The leading indicators are small. Meetings start three minutes late, and then five. A routine gets a little shorter every time somebody runs it. A commitment quietly turns into a suggestion. We were winning every fight in Afghanistan too, right up until that tire.
Casualness creates casualties.
The standard is what you walk past
I sit down with CEOs and executives all the time, and I ask them, “How’s your culture?” They say, “Oh, it’s great.” So I ask them, “What are your values? What are your standards?” And they say, “Hold on, let me go look for them.”
If you don’t know your standards and you don’t live them, they’re just recommendations. The standard is what you walk past. Every exception you tolerate is a silent vote for a lower bar.
And your team is watching what you allow from your top people most of all. I’ve mentored leaders who had a top closer crossing a line the company preached against. And I told them, “You’ve got to let him go. That’s your standard.” Some of them didn’t listen. Three months later they had a mass exodus, because the team saw what was allowed.
If you raise the bar high, you lose the people who don’t want to meet it. If you set the bar low, you lose your winners.
This doesn’t mean running a boot camp
Refusing to be casual doesn’t mean building a culture where everybody walks on eggshells. An elite leader is never casual about the standard, and an elite leader is never casual about their people either.
So we hold a standard around making people feel valued, seen, heard and respected. That’s a standard too. Caring about your people and holding the line are the same job, because protecting the standard is how you protect your best people.
That is where Lead Elite Academy starts. In week one, your leaders learn how casualness gets in. And then we spend a year making sure it stays out.
