The Rogue Warrior's Ten Commandments

The Rogue Warrior's Ten Commandments of SpecWar:

1. I am the War Lord and the wrathful God of Combat and I will always lead you from the front, not the rear.
   
2. I will treat you all alike - just like shit.
   
3. Thou shalt do nothing I will not do first, and thus will you be created Warriors in My deadly image.
   
4. I shall punish thy bodies because the more thou sweatest in training, the less thou bleedest in combat.
   
5. Indeed, if thou hurteth in thy efforts and thou suffer painful dings, then thou art Doing It Right.
   
6. Thou hast not to like it - thou hast just to do it.
   
7. Thou shalt Keep It Simple, Stupid.
   
8. Thou shalt never assume.
   
9. Verily, thou art not paid for thy methods, but for thy results, by which meaneth thou shalt kill thine enemy by any means available before he killeth you.
   
10. Thou shalt, in thy Warrior's Mind and Soul, always remember My ultimate and final Commandment: There Are No Rules - Thou Shalt Win at All Cost.

Richard Marcinko. http://www.dickmarcinko.com/

I don't know why, but somehow I really like these commandments, which I first encountered when I read "Rogue Warrior" by Richard Marcinko and John Weisman, the first novel in the Rogue Warrior series published in 1992. Now there are more than 10 novels already in the series. I haven't read all of them yet (I think I have only 4 of them), since it is rather hard to find them in any of those "low cost" book shops, unlike fictions by Sheldon, Clancy, Brown, Ludlum, King, Grisham etc. I'm sure I can easily find these books in MPH, Borders, Popular or Kinokuya stores, but I have to pay much higher price-lah!

I would like to mention that the language in the novels are "no holds barred" and very-very "colorful" (to put it mildly), which perhaps might influence the way I write in this blog. Hehe. You can read more about Marcinko and his work at embedded link above.

Mind you, these commandments are actually copyright protected and I publish this without permission whatsoever, so I hope Mr Dick Marcinko himself (an ex-Navy SEALS) would not hunt and kill me silently with his own big fucking hands!

Anyway, although the commandments above are specifically for SpecWar personnel (commandos, special forces operators etc.), if you notice, they are also very much applicable to our personal and work life. In fact, they should be the epitome of what leadership in any corporate world is all about, or leadership in our home, in our family, in our work place, in our community, in our society for that matter.

Refer to the very 1st commandment, "...I will always lead you from the front, not the rear", isn't it what a real leader should be? Does "Leadership by Example" come to mind? Don't we aspire to be leaders rather than followers? No matter whether we are leaders in our own home, family, work place or larger community or society, we should always lead from the front, not the rear.

Btw, Marcinko also wrote two books on leadership and management:

"Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior" (1996)

"The Rogue Warriors Strategy for Success: A Commando's Principles of Winning" (1997)

After retiring from Navy SEALS, besides writing books, Mr Dick is now the Chairman of the Board of Red Cell International Corp., a private security consulting firm based in Washington, DC, and President of Richard Marcinko, Inc. and President of SOS Temps, Inc., a motivational and team-building company, with clients like General Motors, AT&T, Domino's Pizza, Motorola, BellSouth, and several other Fortune 500 companies.

In my future writings, I might come back to these commandments as and when appropriate, besides other guidelines, principles, knowledge etc. from other great minds in the world, and not forgetting the teachings of my religion Islam itself (I am a Muslim after all), which I will put as the first and foremost always.