From one of the great naval leaders of our time a master class in decision making under
pressure through the stories of nine famous acts of leadership in battle drawn from the history
of the United States Navy with outcomes both glorious and notorious At the heart of Admiral
James Stavridis's training as a naval officer was the preparation to lead sailors in combat to
face the decisive moment in battle when it arises and make the best decision possible given the
situation at hand. Over the course of his illustrious career he returned again and again to a
relatively small number of legendary cases in point holding them to the light repeatedly to
see what lessons they yielded. Now in To Risk it All he offers up nine of the most useful and
enthralling stories from the US Navy's nearly 250-year history and draws from them a set of
insights that can be of use to all of us when confronted with fateful choices. Conflict.
Crisis. Risk. These are words that have a meaning in a military context that we hope will never
apply in quite the same way in our own lives. At the same time as To Risk it All shows with
great clarity many lessons are universal. The first is simply understanding whether you're
really in an acute short-terms crisis or are confusing it with a more long-term challenge that
can't and shouldn't be met with a short-term fix. Second while fortune favors the bold it
favors the prepared even more. A huge part of preparation is learning how to observe a
situation clearly on its own terms first avoiding biases and misinformation before applying
the lens of your values and analysis. Easier said than done but there is a learning path. With
the right preparation you can force time to slow down and draw on the best of yourself and
leave the rest out of it. To Risk it All is filled with heroic exploits thrillingly told but
it is anything but a shallow exercise in myth burnishing. Every leader in this book has real
flaws as all humans do and Admiral Stavridis takes the analysis of their flaws as seriously
as he does their strengths. The stories of failure or at least decisions that have often been
defined as such are as crucial to the book as the stories of success. In the end when this
master class is dismissed we can feel lucky for the hard situations we will never have to face
and better armed for the hard decisions we surely will whether we expect them or not.
