Incompetent People Who Get Promoted – Jocko Podcast

how is it that some of the criteria for promotion to military organizations are evidently such as to favor people with a pathological degree of achievement motivation this is scary the person that might have a tendency to get promoted is the one that’s looking out for themselves in some cases in the military again it’s important to say this isn’t like the entire military but certainly i certainly saw people in the military that were 100 looking out for themselves and they got promoted yeah that does happen there’s no doubt about it it happens less than you would think a lot of times that transparency that these idiots would have looking out for themselves and trying to make those maneuvers everyone would see it and they’d be like no you’re not getting promoted but it did happen there are grounds for thinking that incompetent commanders tend to be those whom the need to avoid failure exceeds the urge to succeed according to jw atkinson and nt feather such people tend to issue activities which they may show up in a poor light and unless forced to do so refrain from taking on any skilled task where there are any doubts about the outcome so people that are just concerned about themselves they’ll only go into jobs where they know they’re going to win that’s what they’re trying to do they’re just they’re they’re only doing jobs of things that they know they’re going to do they know that they’re going to win at hearing lies a special dilemma though they need to achieve it is the very nature of trying which exposes them to that which they fear most failure they are like people who try to climb mountains out of an underlying fear of heights it would not be surprising to find that such people are attracted to and prosper in the armed services for if one plays it carefully in the military in contrast to the world of commerce offers achievement without tears stick to the rule book do nothing wild explicit approval from the next higher up always confirm form never offend your superiors and you will float serenely if a trifle slowly upward a blimp in both senses of the word that’s the reality you can’t you there you can do that you can join the military and you can just kind of keep your nose clean stay low profile don’t take any additional risks conform and you will get promoted over time in many cases marine corps is tighter though i think i’d like to think that i mean you’re described what you’re describing i can i’m he’s right yeah and i’ve seen it and not not right in a blanket statement no no no but it certainly happens yes yeah no correct and and you’re right in saying like that’s part of the system is is you have you might show for this altruism of how it works and the wrong people get promoted sometimes now it’s not a lot of those people it’s actually a small number like you said but it happens enough that you will see it you’re not going to go a career and go oh i never saw that every single time it was the right person of the right reasons no throughout my career there was examples that i can reflect back on it’s a small number but the system doesn’t work perfectly and i think the thing i was thinking about and this is military i think in general there are enough jobs in the military that have been done enough times that the template is there that you go i can take those head orders and like man it’s really low risk you know i’m going to be cutter the cookie cutter job that’s been done and take the template jacko’s gonna head off to me here’s the you know here’s the script follow the script low profile um low risk you’re gonna look good in the end and you’re gonna get promoted there there are those jobs out there i was lucky in my career to have jobs that either had never been done before or really there wasn’t a lot of history behind them so you know i’m remembering a couple times like when i was in command of an organization where you know i was being told hey um if this fails it’s going to destroy the whole thing like oh that’s uh okay okay that’s awesome i think i’ve told the story before i’m far enough away from it now that i can i can tell it if i haven’t before but when i took over the first f-35 squadron uh the marine corps f-35 program was on probation like they were contemplating canceling the f-35 for the marine corps the b variant which was the marine corps variant and the marine corps already long since committed to that was the only platform there was no plan b there was no alternative to that so if we were going to lose the f-35b the marine corps was going to lose tac air and um as soon as i took command and you know i stood up i told you there’s a guy there before no airplanes but when i took command the airplane started to arrive right when i got there the comrade of the marine corps came down um spent like an hour with me they met him at the squadron was he and his target major and me and my sergeant major and he goes hey i hate to tell you this but you can’t crash an airplane oh like wow that’s oh roger that roger that you know what i mean like if you crash an airplane we’re gonna lose the program marino’s gonna lose that care and so you’re talking about the the balance of the risk of losing is a lot you know the balance that between the benefit of winning well just you know marginal benefit of winning but like there’s zero risk or you know the flip side is hey if i go two years as a squadron commander everything goes great i’m going to get a firm handshake and a congratulations and light’s going to go on but nobody’s going to credit me for doing anything remarkable because the system is the the program is just moving along where it needs to go but if i screwed up you know that downside risk and and i understand the the aversion to that like hey would you rather have a guaranteed win with you know a guaranteed marginal win with no chance of losing or high risk of failure but this is a once in a lifetime thing that would need the right person the right time to go through that a lot of people are reversed to that yep well and this is the other scary thing about that is so you’re the squadron commander you get told don’t crash any birds well how about we fly a little less yes right interesting said that because in the exact same weekend the deputy commandant for aviation the head aviator the marine corps said your number one job is to fly as much as humanly possible damn roger that okay and listen there’s a part of it too that you have to understand this like there is nothing that i could do personally short of shutting down the squadron right to guarantee they don’t care there’s nothing i can do that so there’s a part of that like if you can just let that go just recognize my best chance of me being successful is to micromanage none of this yeah as opposed to trying to macromanage all of it yep you know and that’s such a good point because okay we can either fly as little as humanly possible which means everyone’s paranoid no one really knows how to do their job very like all right we’re gonna fly these things we’d be awesome at it and that’s the right call obviously not everyone would make that decision and even then they’re still even the right call doesn’t guarantee the outcome you can do everything right and you know what yeah you have a mishap on me those air traps yes things break yeah things breaking mid-flight yep that happens they do especially brand new airplanes they’re still being designed while you’re flying them those things happen how many f-35s have crashed not a lot so i believe i have to go back and look i think the first one crashed in my squadron like six months after i left um yeah got out of it um we’ve there’s been a very small it’s been a very safe airplane what does an f35 cost at the time it was 130 million now it’s probably 90 oh so they cut the price down a little bit well those first ones are like you know they were literally the very first ones off the assembly line so that that as you know like that mass production benefit hadn’t kicked in yet so h1 was kind of like a unique article now like they’re jamming them out they’re making a bunch of them and it’s it’s more cost effective i know these are crazy numbers but at the time they were they were expensive 133 a copy i had 14 if you when you fly an f-35 and you’re doing a vertical how how often did you do a vertical takeoff uh like a short take off like the stovall like the yeah like yeah like a hairier yeah not that often sometimes it’s how much gas do you go through taking one of those things off vertically the vertical flying burns a ridiculous amount of gas you just basically have to refuel as soon as you get up it’s not that bad but it’s it’s a lot of gas yeah the the landings are more of a critical because you’re on the clock like you come in you got to be relatively light you can’t land like a fully loaded airplane vertically because it’s too heavy okay so you got to be like a certain limited amount of gas so the plane is light enough to hover but then again like you can’t just you know sit there all day long because you don’t have that much gas it’s nothing like the harrier was those guys it was sketchy like really really sketchy but um yeah you’re burning a lot of gas a lot it was sketchy in a hairier what made it more sketchy um less powerful airplane harder to fly less margin for air less you needed less gas to be able to land and didn’t have as much time you know just i figured i flew the uh harrier simulator out at yuma yeah dude i crashed that thing literally 17 times in a row my total flight time was nine seconds just hope that i just crashed if you got into an f35 right now in the simulator i could over the shoulder walk you through it you landed almost perfectly the first try well that’s like drones man those first drones came out that were like little model airplanes guys were just crashing everywhere and now a three-year-old can fly a drone and that’s that’s no exaggeration yeah