A statement commonly said by Americans when meeting someone who is or has served in the military is, “thank you for your service.” As much as it is said with respect, to me it seems to barely scratch the surface of the commitment, intense training and sacrifice of those who volunteer for a branch of the military. After reading No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL by Mark Owen, that feeling was only amplified.

Owen is the pen name for a member of U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six that was part of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. No Hero is a follow-up to his first book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, and it tells his life story from his initial interest in being a SEAL to numerous missions around the globe. It was given to me by my “brother-from-another-mother” in response to a phrase he used that I have never heard before. This phrase is among the takeaways I had from this book.

Assess, Prioritize, Act – The book gets into detail of the grueling training designed to weed out those who are not SEAL material. In one such training Owen was in a dark room with a hood over his face and when it was removed he had to react to neutralize the situation all the while surviving. He was taught to assess the entire situation, prioritize it and act accordingly – all within mere seconds. Where most of us are not in life and death situations in our daily lives, this approach to problem solving is one I try to remember when an issue arises. Try is the key word there.

After Action Review – Abbreviated as AAR, it is a report written after a mission with contributions by everyone involved. It is designed to be an honest assessment of what worked and what did not, as well as be shared with other SEALs as a learning tool. In general business, a similar term used is “post-mortem” but they are usually comprised of a meeting where people go around the conference room table and talk of similar wins and losses, but not with the same honesty as an AAR. In the Agile/Scrum world, a retrospective at the end of a sprint is supposed to bring out similar facts and sentiments and is perhaps a little more true than a post-mortem. Where these events try to mirror an AAR, true lessons learned and improvements based on them are needed throughout all worlds.

Three-Foot World – This term was the catalyst for me getting and reading No Hero. One day I was talking with my friend and he said he is trying to control his three-foot world to which I responsed, what world? It comes from a training exercise that Owen participated in where he was free climbing a rock face in the Las Vegas desert. When concerned with falling, his instructor told him to only be concerned with his three-foot world, and make sure he had control of what was in front of him and to forget about how high he was up and falling down. The phrase really resonated with me, and when in the quagmire of my daily work and life I have to focus on my three-foot world and try to control what I truly am able to. Try is the key word there too. Needless to say it is a work in process.

The concept of the Three-Foot World also got me reading more about it beyond this book. Where I found several articles about it, there was no central site on it – no threefootworld.com. Now there is, as I registered the domain name and it is pointing to this very post. I reserve the right to write more on the topic, perhaps once I master it myself.

No Hero is a no holds barred story of the emotions and actions take in war and other conflicts that America has been immersed in recent years. When you read all that goes into what makes a SEAL and what they have to endure in battles, it is thought provoking. I recommend this book to everyone. As I give all my books away, I am sharing this with a friend who is a regular reader of this humble blog whom I believe will truly appreciate this story.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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