Human Interactions are Either Competitive Or Influence – Jocko Willink

western conceptions of the international struggle among nations and other political actors often use binary war or peace labels to describe it the actual truth is more complicated so out of the gate we’re already getting somewhere out of the gate we have to recognize that you can be competing with someone but you’re not at war with them and there’s an infinite degree of gray area in there and guess what right out of the gate that’s what struck me right out of the gate guess what when you’re influencing someone there’s a whole degree of levels of pressure that you can exert to go from influencing because let’s face it if i put a gun to your head is that influence yes yes it is so influence and competing very very similar continuing on actors on the world stage are always trying to create a relative advantage for themselves and for their group sometimes this maneuvering leads to violence but the use of violence to achieve goals is more often the exception than the rule now here’s here’s where this again if i’m trying to influence echo charles there’s levels of influence could one of those levels be a double leg takedown yes and grounding pounds yes it could we how often does that happen i mean how often do people physically fight not very often when you when you think of all the human interactions that we have where we’re trying to influence each other or trying to compete with each other see it’s a weird thing though because on the one side you’ve got competition on the other side you’ve got influence and the continuum of how you apply these pressures are all over the place uh so it continues on instead most actors use other means in their competitive interactions right to achieve their goals so we’re not looking to go to war the competition continuum encompasses all of these efforts including the use of violence okay so there you go continues on and by the way this idea of competitive interactions and influence interactions this is what’s happening this is what is happening right when we’re interacting so many of the interactions that we have with people are either competitive or their influence right we’re constantly trying to get someone to do something get something to come on our side get someone to give us the support that we need get them to move in this direction that’s what people are doing continuing on there are several reasons for explaining the competition continuum to marines the first is to make them aware that from recruitment to retirement they are an integral part of the nation’s strategic competition with other actors marines are always competing even when they are not fighting in combat so this is something to think about as a person as a leader as a leader you’re always influencing even when you’re not standing up in front of the troops giving a speech about where you’re going or what the strategic even then even when you’re sitting down to eat ciao guess what you’re doing you’re influencing you’re competing this is always happening then it rolls into this when you understand those things it says next understanding unleashes creativity the marine corps coming at you with unleashing creativity right when you go to art school do you think they say well listen the goal of this art school is to get you to unleash your creativity no the marine corps will say that and isn’t it interesting we’re two paragraphs in and we’re talking about the creative aspects of competition and then hand in hand with that the creative aspects of influence carrying on once marines understand the nature and form of competition their innovative spirit will lead to the development of new kinds of competition new kinds of competitive advantages finally this publication expands the discussion on how and where marines fit into the continuum and where to look for their natural partners in competition by design this is a small book with a construction that parallels marine corps doctrinal publication one war fighting which is one of the first publications we covered on this podcast it is not intended as a reference manual but it is designed to be read from cover to cover this publication does not contain specific techniques or procedures we should adopt rather it provides broad guidance in the form of concepts with illustrations intended to stimulate thinking and encourage additional learning it requires judgment in application this is uh this is the way i like to learn this is the way i like to teach so when i and the really easy thing to talk about is jiu jitsu right you want to be able to teach it the advantage of this broad position is this the thing you need to do when you’re in this situation broadly is win this underhook whatever whatever the thing is and that’s what this book is it’s not like hey here’s in this situation it’s not formulaic continuing on we live in a time of renewed great power competition in an era of exponential technological and social change marines enjoy a rich heritage of advancing our nation’s interests in these kinds of struggles as we look to the future we must ensure today’s and tomorrow’s marines do the same like maneuver warfare and just that statement followed by anything kind of warms my heart like maneuver warfare competing is a way of thinking it’s a way of thinking and man dave i kind of went berserk on like decentralized command as a way of thinking not too long ago right i mean i went on ef online i would spend two or three days of the of the sessions talking about decentralized command as a way of thinking and it’s so interesting how much that changes your perspective about something when you think of it not in a linear way like oh this is what you’re going to do but this is the entire way of thinking it’s like saying oh when you fight someone you can get them to the ground and you can grapple with them instead of punching them that’s just a whole new way of thinking you don’t even know one single move about it but you know this idea that you can then utilize we must understand the importance of strategic competition and the essential role marines play in it for our nation only i miss this line it says we all need to read study and debate this publication with our fellow marines you chimed in on that one didn’t you dave yeah what do you like about that i like that i like the explanation of this i went through the same thing initially when i was kind of looking at this there was parts of it that i was thinking was gonna be like warfighting but it had this kind of intellectual this little thought process thing this idea that what he’s saying the guy in charge of the marine corps you need to go out there and debate this and think about this and he’s using words like creativity and intellect those those have a those are not the words you would normally think of when you think of the marine corps creativity intellectual and debate those are just not the things you’d think of and those are things he’s saying that you need to do and what i really like about it is we think of the marine corps we think of the military in general and then we think of the marine corps of course of being this hierarchy that is just as strict as you can imagine and here’s a document and and general david h berger to comment on the marine corps is saying the purpose of this document is to make you debate not to not to just obey what it says but to make you debate we want you to think that’s a beautiful thing so there we are we are now done with the forward let’s get into what the book actually says the nature of competition chapter one total war and perfect peace rarely exist in practice instead they are the extremes between which exist the relations among most political groups this range includes routine economic competition more or less permanent political or ideological tension and occasional crisis among groups so what’s that that’s from that’s from warfighting the the marine corps manual number one and by the way these things that we’re talking about tensions competition not not violent competition but just competition where do those things exist they exist sure they exist between countries but guess where else they exist they exist between companies and guess where else they exist between departments inside of companies and guess where they exist between people inside of departments inside of companies inside your family there’s competition going on these words from the marine corps warfighting philosophy framed the idea of competition for marines they also serve as a springboard for marines to think about how they can contribute to winning the nation’s competitions including the ones taking place below the threshold of violence which by the way is 99 999 percent of competitions violence is rare and when we get into influence look it’s almost cheesy for me to talk about influence of like well i could put if i put a gun to your head or i beat you with a baseball bat to get you to do what i want you to do right that’s that’s that’s a rare form of influence that doesn’t happen all the time but there’s a threat there is a threshold of violence and i think as we talk about it and i haven’t fully i haven’t fully hashed out these ideas in my head but there’s a transition time when it when when you’re influencing there’s a transition time when you go from indirect to direct form of influencing there’s a transition that you cross and it’s not quite a threshold of violence but there’s a there’s a transition that takes place and i think we’ll find some comparisons to it in here but i think about that all the time how how much at what point do you go from indirect to direct and it’s funny we we had somebody on ef online the other day and this type of question came up but what i was explaining was the the the escalation of counseling right and you start off by saying hey bro are you good you know you’re okay and then it goes to like hey this is a problem and then go say hey i’m gonna write you up and then you get written up and and then you fire somebody if you have to and i’m sitting there talking to go you know how many times in my life i made it past the lowest level of escalation of counseling the times that i said hey dave it doesn’t look like the gear was ready in time and dave was like dude sorry we lay blah blah blah and it never happens again that’s 97 there’s another two percent where it was like hey bro that’s the second time we almost missed our movement because the gear wasn’t ready do you need help no i got it and it never happens again that’s another two percent now we’re at 99 there’s another point whatever percent where i actually had to write something up and there’s point zero zero whatever where i had to take you know action to fire somebody or get rid of them the same thing as you go through this escalation of war you should be able to get people to do what you want them to do through non-war without breaking the threshold of violence