Jocko Podcast 285: STRATEGY. How the Long Way Around is The Shortest Distance Between Two Points.

this is jocko podcast number 285 with echo charles and me jacob willink good evening echo good evening and also joining us tonight dave burke good evening dave good evening all right so we are going to dive into some work that i have been waiting to dive into it i i waited because i wanted to do it justice i waited because i wanted to i wanted to be thorough in covering it i waited because there’s a lot of work to cover and going going into this this particular book books series of books articles individual the more i read over the years it it got better and better it kept getting better and kept making more sense to me from a from a tactical battle war perspective from a leadership perspective from a how to lead perspective and also contrarily like a red cell type how not to lead from a relationship leadership capital perspective and a jiu jitsu perspective so so basically i was just seeing everything in my life wrapped up in in this particular this particular individual and his work and on top of that so that there’s another podcast that i’ve got waiting in the wings or it’s going to take a series of podcasts but it’s waiting in the wings i’m super excited to do it but i can’t do that podcast until i do this podcast or at least this podcast or at least a couple podcasts on this individual this one man highly influential man a guy named bh liddell hart basil henry liddell hart you can probably guess if you don’t know who he is if you know military history and military strategy and military theory at all you know who he is if you don’t know who he is you can probably guess that he’s british because he has the first name basil right sure i mean that’s a pretty british name he didn’t go to buy basil i guess he went by bh i guess i’m guessing um that’s how he writes his books mother’s maiden name was liddell she was scottish um you know born and raised i guess on the border of england the heart side the liddell the heart side was farmers [Music] he was he was went to some really nice private schools in so he grew up in england born in france but grew up in england he went to some really nice private schools the first one of the private schools that he went through is called saint paul’s which is in london and it was founded in 1509 high school founded in 1509 okay so you’re that’s just kind of crazy when we think about england uh then he ended up at cambridge university which by the way was founded 300 years prior to that in 1209 1209 12 09 well he left cambridge university when world war one broke out volunteered for the british army he was in the king’s own yorkshire light infantry i’m glad we did that light infantry podcast recently dave you timed it all you you liked that one didn’t you i did made you start thinking about some light infantry because it’s a mindset yeah it’s not just a it’s not just a way that people are trained it’s a way of thinking yeah and i got to pull that real time at muster i listened to it all the way to muster and put it into my brief what was that point that you made well the whole point behind that like the largest theory when you went into it was the size of the force is not the deciding factor so there’s a lot of this if if you have a smaller force doesn’t guarantee your defeat and the whole point of this was like hey how are we going to move think maneuver in a way that a smaller force that looks weak on paper and just outmaneuver these big giant forces because they’re inflexible immobile they’re dug in so that theoretically in my mind resonated with all sorts of stuff can you imagine as i was learning jujitsu and thinking about that actual thing how many how many thi how many elements started to just come into view like come out of the fog as i’m thinking through that very thing i’m learning jiu-jitsu i’m like oh if i can maneuver myself over here and put all my force against a smaller portion of their strength i can win all right so he he goes into the british army he is part of the king’s own yorkshire light infantry shout out to yorkshire he spent time on the western front world war one uh got sent back from the front two times because he was blown up and had concussive injuries cool hey listen you you went to the front you got blown up so bad that you got sent back because you had concussive injuries cool you good okay go back all right you get blown up again boom you know what you’re good okay go back again third time he goes back cool um gets back just in time for the battle of psalm and during the battle of the psalm wounded three times continued to fight finally he gets gassed badly enough that he can’t continue fighting his battalion was just about wiped out on the first day of the offensive battle of psalm this so his battalion was some of the 60 000 casualties on day one and that event and those events clearly left a mark on his mentality because you’ve heard me go off and talk about the i don’t know if i’ve used the word stupidity before because it’s not the right word but the the the problem with world war one of hey okay we just lost a battalion at zero six hundred cool zero six oh five dave your battalion is going okay dave’s battalion just got wiped out okay echo it’s 610 your battalion go and that’s what we’re doing that left a mark on him uh eventually after he’s wounded started to heal up went back trained new recruits wrote the infantry training manual after the war after so then after the war he ends up writing the infantry training manual he got married got married to a woman named jesse stone we’re wondering what layers are there had a son he retired in 1927 became a journalist a military historian military theorist wrote the most wrote so much it’s ridiculous so much it’s just writing all the time deep historical writing analysis worked for prime minister chamberlain and he was he was kind of maneuvering in and getting people to think in a different way a different way of using air power or different way of using tank power a different way of using maneuver warfare and of course we all know what happened with prime minister chamberlain he was weak and churchill took over and when churchill took over they kind of used the more traditional war strategy in the beginning guess who didn’t do that you know who didn’t do that hitler the nazis who were actually paying attention now there’s some question around how much influence hart liddell heart had over the nazis there’s definitely some meaning they were reading you know the line in in uh patton i read your book right so patton’s saying he read rommel’s book well there’s there are actual connections between rommel and some of the other um more known more well-known and some of the lesser well-known nazi leaders that were reading his stuff and be like this makes this makes sense there’s also a lot of people that will say that that b h liddell heart kind of inflated that a little bit but there was some influence and also regardless of how much of a connection there was even if there wasn’t a connection they were both thinking the same things right they were both taken learning the same lessons right uh which that’s what that happens sometimes you know you put somebody in one situation they’re in a vacuum from someone else if you put them in a similar situation like world war one there’s a pretty good chance that they could come to similar conclusions like maybe it’s not smart just to line up and start attacking all at once maybe we should use some decentralized command maybe we should use maneuver warfare so they all kind of came to the same conclusions meaning bh liddell hart meaning some of the german and nazi leadership and so that stuff kind of came into play so he wrote a bunch of this stuff down um he wrote a book called the strategy of the indirect approach which was also printed as the way to win wars which is pretty cool and what this is kind of what kicked me into hyper drive of doing this and we talked about this on the underground so i did a post about about the civil war i didn’t post a social media post about the civil war about the battle at chancellorville about jackson taking the indirect path going 14 miles around to the flank of the union troops and winning the battle in an hour as opposed to just taking the direct assault towards the union troops which is a half a mile and and some of the comments in there you know were of course what do i focus on but most of the comments were like yeah that makes sense use the indirect approach and i talked about using it towards people and in a leadership position how the indirect approach is normally the best way to go and people were like you know you should just tell the truth like are you saying you should lie to people so it was that whole thing and so i look i i know where i got these ideas from it’s no mystery to me and part of it is the fact that you put me in and you put someone in an environment and you make them figure something out they’re going to come to the same conclusions right so some of this stuff i was thinking man going to the flank makes a lot of sense and it makes a lot of sense from leadership but but i also know that these ideas were dripped into my head over the years i mean when you do a basic seal assault on a target guess what you set up a base element that puts down covering fire and then a flanking element goes around that’s what you do this is not it’s not rocket science so i know that some of my indirect my theory my thoughts around in the indirect strategy the indirect approach i know some of those were just from being in the military but i also know that some of it came from reading heart and so it made me crack open some of these books again and made me kind of fast forward in my mind to getting to these sooner in this podcast um because let’s face it when well the theory is based in reality right and that’s what that’s what’s interesting about this when you have someone that spend time in the military because the the the name of this book that one of the books we’re going to look at today is is the strategy of indirect approach and it’s about the theory right but if you have someone when you have someone that’s been in war and spent time as a military leader and spent time in combat and spent time in the worst kind of combat like the actual worst combat the actual worst combat battle the song like the worst combat actual worst combat it’s it doesn’t it’s not theory anymore right that theory becomes based deeply in reality and that’s what we have with with this book and we’ll be covering two of his books today um or at least trying to cover two of them we might make it through i don’t even know how much because there’s a lot to talk about one is called the strategy of the indirect approach which which like i said was also reprinted as the way to win wars and the other one’s just called strategy straight up so i guess we’re gonna get to it anything dave i wrote down the word travesty when you were talking about world war one i just wrote that word down just to remind me of the thing that i think about is you you when you talk about losing a battalion it’s a that’s a scale that i think is actually kind of hard to comprehend when you think of a battalion i mean i have we have lost i’ve been on patrols where we lost a vehicle i lost people in a whole vehicle a battalion is on a scale and just sort of the willingness the willingness to allow that to happen over and over again and then then in retrospect thinking and i was thinking of this as you said it was the germans had to learn that same lesson they had to have learned the same lesson you know the marine corps takes a little bit of pride in sort of showing up having the similar experience and then saying we’re we’re not doing this anymore really takes pride in that and we teach that history but in actual world war one is what you’re talking about yes in actual order 101 of showing up sort of after the war had been underway for quite some time getting on board with how is how it was do uh being done and then suffering massive casualties in the very initial engagements and saying we’re done with this direct assault approach and the larger point to that is the idea that not just for him but for germany as well the the idea that the way we did that was a travesty and that that that you would see how those lessons apply to well beyond just warfare that that would sink into your psyche and every single everything you did in your life would be informed as such a bad way to describe like its influence on a level that you wouldn’t just rethink how you did war you would rethink every aspect of your life if you suffered the casualties to that degree because of the willingness for leaders to just say just like you described your battalion’s gone you’re up next and the fact that it influenced every aspect of his life is actually not even remotely surprised to me yeah and it boils down to it and i know you like when i say this dave it it becomes not just a theory not just a strategy but a way of thinking a way of thinking is what it becomes and what’s interesting is we’re about to hear exactly how that transpired in his head and this is something we covered this we actually covered this on the underground but i just i i had to touch on it on the underground but we’re going to go deep so here we go here’s the preface my original strat my original study of the strategy of indirect approach was written in 1929 published under the title the decisive wars of history it has been out of print for some time so there’s another third title that this book has been published under in the following year in the years following its publication i continued to explore this line of thought and from the results of such further study compiled a number of supplementary notes which were privately circulated since the course of the present war has provided further examples of the value of the indirect approach and thereby given fresh point to the thesis the issue of a new edition of the book provides an opportunity to include these so now he’s writing this he’s putting this one out in world war ii and actually it’s towards the end of world war ii because well he’s he ends up talking about world war ii and what’s happening when in the course of studying a long series of military campaigns i first came to perceive the superiority of the indirect over the direct approach i was looking merely for light upon strategy so he starts off just looking like okay wait how does this work how can we win seems like this indirect thing is pretty cool it seems like a good strategy for the battlefield with deepening reflection however i began to realize that the indirect approach had a much wider application that it was a law of life in all spheres a truth of philosophy [Laughter] right a law of life in all spheres so this is where we get crazy because there’s so many people so many people this like oh you you got to be direct like that’s just such a common theme in the world hey you got to be direct you got to be frank you got to so so i get it i get it i get it he found that this has a much wider application and it’s a law of all all a lot of life in all spheres a truth of philosophy its fulfillment was seen to be the key practical achievement in dealing with any problem where the human factor predominates and a conflict of wills tends to spring from an underlying concern for interests okay so here’s where this gets awesome so he’s talking about conflict right a conflict of wills and what we might fail to realize is that if i’m on the same team as dave we can also still have a conflict of wills because dave wants to do a and i want to do b so even though we’re on the same team that’s like one of the other perspectives that i think about this you know what i said about leadership capital and relationships that’s this applies 100 there too in all such cases in all such cases so this is cases that where you have the human factor anytime you’ve got the human factor in all such cases the direct assault of new ideas provokes a stubborn resistance thus intensifying the difficulty of producing a change of outlook dave how long have you how many times have you heard me tell this to clients to people this is it it’s i don’t have the vocabulary to explain how often we say that in some version of that sentence in everything but i got to be careful because i could probably just it’s just hearing it it invokes so many things to think about but he’s almost articulating it like when there’s a human component to this and i’m thinking to myself so when is that not when in my life am i not interacting with another human being if we’re if we’re doing uh computer software design right we don’t need to worry about this right if we’re we’re actually programming a machine of some kind we don’t need to worry about it yeah other than that other than that if you directly assault an idea it’s going to provoke stubborn resistance so if i impose my plan on dave it’s going to get resistance even though dave’s on my team i impose a plan on him it’s going to be resisted and it’s going to make the change of outlook harder it’s going to make the change of outlook harder so if my wife wants something and i attack it it’s going to be harder for her to change her mind there’s going to be more resistance for her changing her mind on where we’re going out for dinner that’s what’s going to happen back to the book conversion is achieved more easily and rapidly by unsuspected infiltration of a different idea or by an argument that turns the flank of instinctive opposition so you’re going to get more easy more easily and more rapidly conversion of their brain will come when you flank them check and faster and faster rapidly and more easily by an unsuspected infiltration of a different idea and by the way don’t let well we’ll get to it so so there’s some people that are thinking right now oh so what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna lie to dave no i’m not gonna lie to dave doesn’t mean i lie doesn’t mean i say well actually dave we should use my plan because and i’m gonna make up some intel that supports my plan i’m gonna make up a timeline that supports my plan no that’s not what i’m talking about at all back to the book in commerce the suggestion that there is a bargain to be secured is far more potent than any direct appeal to buy and in any sphere it is a proverbial that the surest way of gaining a superior’s acceptance of a new idea is to persuade him that it is his idea hello this is something um again i maybe i should just start paying uh what is it paying royalties i just owe royalties to because leadership strategy and taxes oh that’s just all in there let us make it their idea as in war the aim is to weaken resistance before attempting to overcome it and the effect is best attained by drawing the other party out of his defenses great we’re not attacking hardened positions this idea of the indirect approach is closely related to all problems of the influence of mind upon mind [Laughter] all problems of the influence of mind upon mind all problems any times it’s my mind against someone else’s mind this is where we need to go indirect the most influential factor in human history yet it is hard to reconcile with another lesson that true conclusions can only be reached or approached by pursuing the truth without regard to where it may lead or what its effect may be on different interests so what do we say in there now he’s saying wait a second wait a second what shouldn’t we be going after the truth like isn’t it look if i’m working with dave and i think my plan is better well then i need to tell him that that’s the truth the truth is my plan’s better and what’s so hard about this this is one of those universal things that pisses me off i got you is there’s no one that it’s it’s a it’s it’s against all uh moral high ground to lie right so the opposite of lying is what truth telling the truth so if we’re starting to think that this is not telling the truth then what are we doing we must be lying so how do so how do we reconcile that’s what we’re saying how do we reconcile this wait i have a different plan than dave i think my plan’s better i should tell them the truth that’s what i should do i shouldn’t lie to him we’re not talking about lying to him back to the book history bears witness to the vital part that the prophets have played in human progress which is evidence of the ultimate practical value of expressing unreservedly the truth as one sees it okay so now we’re gonna get he’s gonna use the example historical examples and there’s countless of prophets someone that is a prophet that stands up and says this is the truth as i see it and tells the truth yet it also becomes clear that the acceptance and spreading of their vision has always depended on another class of men what’s the other class of men leaders leaders who had to be philosophical strategists striking a compromise between truth and men’s receptivity to it so lately i’ve been saying a lot of what good is telling the truth if no one hears it or no one listens to you you if you if you stab somebody in the eye with the dagger of truth what are they gonna do they’re gonna be pissed they’re gonna they’re gonna lash out at you they might even you know pull out a sidearm and shoot you in the gut but they definitely don’t want to hear anything from it and they’ll do their best to pull that thing back out and stab you with it so you even made any progress at all so that’s what a prophet does a prophet says this is the truth and they stab you in the eye with it a leader has to find that compromise between telling the truth and getting people to actually listen to it their effect has often depended as much on their own limitations in perceiving the truth as on their practical wisdom in proclaiming it so how are you going to tell the truth practical wisdom how are you going to what are you going to say how are you going to say it where it will actually be listen to and then he goes on to say this the prophets must be stoned that is their lot that is their test of their self-fulfillment right what happens to the prophet the prophet gets stolen the prophet gets crucified that’s what happens but a leader who is stoned may merely prove that he has failed in his function through a deficiency of wisdom or through confusing his function with that of a prophet this is pure brilliance by the way this is absolute pure brilliance so if you’re that if you’re in a leadership position and what you do is you start stabbing people with the dagger of truth in the neck and you think you’re doing a good thing guess what they’re going to tackle you and they’re going to stone you to death they’re going to execute you because you were stabbing people and it offended them and it hurt them and that you didn’t convince anybody of anything so sometimes you get a leader that’s like oh look the truth is listen dave i gotta tell you the truth here that’s not good it’s not gonna help you dude it’s crazy you’re like on page one i know page one half yeah i think the the phrase that’s been coming to mind a lot lately when you talk about this is is a truth that it’s imposed upon somebody compared to the truth that they discover for themselves the difference between those two and i’m thinking of all the like the phrases that people use when they’re going to reveal the truth let me stop you right there actually like and when you hear people prepping for the the direct assault which is i’m now going to let you know and even the preparation for that just that phrase alone puts the other person in a position where all they want to do is defend themselves and the words that come next almost don’t even matter because if i say actually jocko the reality is the reality is the first thing you do is is you mentally you are dug in no matter how truthful i’m going to be after that it’s just the connection he’s making though like the how universal that is to all interactions is just it’s it’s crazy listening to this and then the the application to every interaction you have like with every with any human being and how instinctive it is to i guess tell the truth and how ineffective that way of thinking is if there’s an outcome that you’re trying to shape um echo charles yes sir have you ever seen the movie raiders of the lost ark yes sir okay so there’s an ark right the ark of the covenant and i think the truth is kind of like that if you reveal that truth in an improper way people’s faces are melting oh yeah that’s what happens yeah so people people treat the truth as if it’s only benevolent as if it can only do good yeah but you got to remember there’s collateral that truth causes collateral damage and people don’t pay attention to that so when you start pulling off the lid maybe you got to like you got to prep people for it you got to say hey turn your eyes for a second here there’s going to be some bright lights if you don’t prep them for and what what we want to do what we want to do is we want them to reveal the truth to themselves that’s what we really want a really good leader look a prophet will show you the truth maybe you’re getting melted a really good leader you somehow discover the truth i mean they showed it to you but you don’t even know it so the whole expression the truth hurts you know that that’s because that’s kind of common right so would that be an indicator of maybe a profit or or at the time at least not the correct that’s profit all day long profit is like look echo truth hurts but i’m going to tell you something you know what i mean how how sus how open-minded are you when i get done with that statement oh i would meet it with stubborn resistance check and you know we like to think that well you know i really have a good relationship with some you know great there might be one person in your entire life that you can be like hey dude that was jacked up and you’re like cool got it what adjustments do i need there’s one person in your life you can do that with yeah maybe isn’t that at the end of the day in a way the indirect approach anyway because you know you say okay that one person yeah but you know why is that one person because you have this years and years and years and years and years of this indirect you know kind of approach or whatever and then yeah so you open up that little hole that yeah you have that direct line all day now yeah now exactly yes you are correct even that approach because if you would have met that person day one three years ago and said you know i was looking at that video you made i’m not feeling it actually you know the camera angles that you use kind of marginal right [Music] with you before i could be like bruh the soundtrack no actually you put a christmas song in there it was actually right away uh back to the book time alone can tell whether the effect of such a sacrifice redeems the apparent failure as a leader that does honor to him as a man so there’s a chance that you could you could present something in over time people go yeah he was right at the least he avoids the more common fault of leader of leaders that of sacrificing the truth to expediency without ultimate advantage to the cause so occasionally a leader is like you know what we just need to tell the truth and you sacrifice it it gets killed it gets thrown away and then one of the books that i’m or the podcast that i want to move to from this one which i will get to and i’m not 100 sure when but they got all these examples of problems in in the military and military thinking and one of the problems and i forget the exact number but there’s been like 20 major advancements in naval warfare in the last 500 years and every one of them was met with absolutely stiff resistance no not everyone 17 of them were met with stiff resistance by all senior naval leaders in the world you know they started making ships uh from steel instead of what a bunch of like this is griot you can’t repair steel we can eat a welder like they resisted uh switching to the steam engine switching to gas whichever diesel switching to like all the every people resisted every one of these things every one of them well sorry 17 out of 20 of great advancements it happens all the time because somebody goes hard with the truth and people defend they go on instant defense mode so like remember the movie uh independence no no armageddon i don’t think i ever actually saw it but stupid it’s good flick i’m sure it’s i wasn’t up for several oscars anyway armageddon bruce willis oh yeah uh asteroid coming in right what was the what was the plan that wanna do you watch armageddon deeper sorry dude bro independence it’s okay i’ll explain to you asteroid coming in right world uh world ending asteroid global killer so they’re like hey let’s just throw uh blast it with nukes and blow it right out of the sky then the smart scientist is like that’s a bad idea everyone gets all mad right no that’s it we’re gonna eat a direct approach lunch nukes right can’t get any more direct than that but the smart scientist said nope this is what you’re going to do you’re going to go in there you’re going to drill a little hole you’re going to put a nuke in that hole you’re going to just nudge it just a little bit from the side so now the trajectory the trajectory gets changed you see insane that was the smarter approach same thing yeah exactly right right here i am going through historical books trying to figure this stuff out and i couldn’t figure it out with uh armageddon bruce willis yeah you don’t gotta bother with all this check back to the book we good yes armageddon yeah i’m just saying these ideas are everywhere we go man uh for whoever habitually suppresses the truth so this is this is where this is where you have to pay attention because again it’s not me lying to dave and saying well actually dave uh the timeline that’s required for the plan you but we better use my plan whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interest of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of this thought so you can’t you can’t lie about what you’re saying you have to maintain you have to maintain the truth but you have to take an indirect approach that’s it it’s not a lie it’s an indirect approach bound to the truth he explains it a little bit more is there a practical way of combining progress towards the attainment of truth with progress towards its acceptance so is there a way to get dave to think about my plan and utilize my plan with also doing it in a way that he is open to accept this idea is there a combination of those two things of telling dave the truth about what i think of his plan and at the same time getting him to accept my opinion that’s what we want right a possible solution of the problem is suggested by reflection on strategic principles which point to the importance of maintaining an object consistently and also of pursuing it in a way adapted to the circumstances this seems so obvious is that we we we continue to focus on the right thing but then we continue to move towards this objective but as circumstances change we adjust we adjust we maneuver we say oh yeah there’s a massive enemy uh location right here let’s not continue in that direction let’s go around it isn’t it smart to do that with our ideas as well it doesn’t mean we abandon the objective it doesn’t mean we we say oh we’re going to change this objective or we’re not going to continue towards it means we adjust our approach and maybe instead of going direct we go indirect opposition to the truth is inevitable that’s a good thing to remember opposition to the truth is inevitable especially if it takes the form of a new idea but the degree of resistance can be diminished by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach avoid a frontal attack in a long established position instead seek to turn it by a flank movement so that the more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of the truth but in any such indirect approach take care not to diverge from the truth for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into the untruth so for the people that commented when i talked about the indirect approach and were like oh so you’re just gonna lie to your people no no we’re not gonna lie to our people the truth is the objective but we are going to adjust our approach so that we’re not offensive to the individuals or the groups that we’re talking to so that we don’t cause them to put up a more stiff resistance to fight against our idea to to for them to look at it as if it’s not the truth we’re gonna we’re gonna flank that’s what we’re gonna do and then he goes on here and he says the meaning of these reflections may be made clearer by illustration from one’s own experience looking back on the stages by which various fresh ideas gained acceptance it can be seen that the process was eased when they could be presented not as something radically new but as a revival in modern terms of a time-honored principle or practice that had been forgotten so here’s his one of his little indirect approaches is to take a new idea and and and camouflage it with an old idea it’s kind of like what the what the christians did with the vikings right easter you know where you know the term easter sure and yeah it’s it’s a it’s a pagan thing but we call it’s a pagan word and it’s a pagan ceremony but the christians are like oh yeah you can call the thing in the spring we call that easter it’s cool it’s about christ rising but you know we call it easter it’s sort of a thing that you guys already do they just kind of take an old idea and re-brand it that’s actually what they did yeah i think they did that with christmas did that with christmas too so that’s what we’re doing we’re kind of camouflaging this idea so it’s a little more open to it hey you know how you guys do the the springtime thing and you guys celebrate birth right we we had you know like a rebirth kind of co-brand that thing we’re good it’s kind of like your dog right when you feed them the heart pills right heartworm pills okay you put it yeah yeah put a little put a little uh piece of steak around that thing yeah you know like you’ve been eating this food this whole time yeah yeah yeah just put the put the heartworm pills in there he goes he goes on to say here this required not deception but care to trace the connection since there is nothing new in the sun right you can always figure out something that ties into what you’re doing a notable example was the way that op the opposition to mechanized mechanization was diminished by showing that the mobile armored vehicle the fast-moving tank was fundamentally the heir of the armored horseman and thus the natural means of reviving the decisive role which cavalry played in past ages which is what we call what do we call armored cavalry now why is that because people resist this tank it’s going to get stuck it takes gas i mean a horse can go forever you can eat off the land how are you going to refuel these tanks people just resisted that idea resist and then it’s like oh no no this is the new cavalry oh okay kind of cool then we’re down so what can you do as you try and convince people of ideas take an old idea repackage it and it’s true because there’s no new ideas under the sun it’s not like you’re lying to them i i don’t know obviously what’s coming uh in terms of you know the how much detail is in and what we’re going to discuss but even just even just the word the truth how that’s the the it’s the topic that you’re trying to get across yes and even what what that means like if i have an idea that’s different than me like trying to get you to understand some sort of like hey two plus two is four and you’re gonna say no okay as opposed to i think we should do this and the abandonment of of that truth versus all right listen i can’t just walk up to jock and go hey this is how we’re gonna this is the new way we’re going to do is solve this problem and even just the word truth has a connotation like i’m right and you’re wrong as opposed to hey i’m trying to get you to see this a different way and it might not end up exactly how i’ve drawn it out maybe my drawing is like ends up in 80 or whatever but i could see people getting hung up the idea that i have to convince jocko of the truth meaning i know the answer and he doesn’t and if he doesn’t then i’ve got to figure out how to and maybe the fast way to just shove it in his face and go dude this is what we’re doing as opposed to getting him to see that there might be another way of doing it which is actually the truth as opposed to it has to be exactly my way and if there’s a minefield between you and me i i guess i could go into that minefield but it’s not going to help me get you to see something different and he i think said the quote is resistance to the truth is inevitable yep resistance to your ideas are inevitable so let’s not let’s not pretend like you might be able to avoid that resistance that minefield that that barrier that wall it is there i just think the idea of the truth of us committing to it is this way as opposed to i want to think of something a different way yeah no that’s a great point because what we’re really well when we start talking about it in a leadership capacity it becomes hey it’s my idea yeah and as we were talking on ef online today it’s like my assumption is that my idea is flawed right and i can present my idea to you but i i still present it as if not it’s the truth but it’s an idea of a possibility now what’s interesting is what does that do to my idea it makes it indirect totally it makes it indirect me packaging the idea that i have as a possibility or as a thought or an idea for me as opposed to this is the way we should do it it makes it an indirect approach and what we talked about today on ef online i actually believe that so i don’t have to like act i don’t have to pretend like hey i’m gonna pretend like this isn’t the best idea ever and like dave should just shut up and do it my way i’m gonna i’m gonna pretend that so that way it’s a little more indirect no i actually think you know what this is my idea seems like a good idea but there could be some holes pumped into it which is which is fine i’m okay with that so yeah when we start talking about getting people’s ideas and anytime you i mean there’s very few things that i actually here’s something i’ve said early podcasts is the amount of times that i say dave bro listen this is what we should do yeah the only reason i’m going to say that is if i am 100 percent 100 percent convicted that i and it you probably have never even heard me say that because it’s so rare now look there was times where in the seal team somebody wanted to do something that was bad oh you wanna you wanna set up on two sides of a road and ambush someone in the middle okay so that means we’re gonna be shooting at each other like this is bad we do not wanna do that of course how often did guys present a plan to me like that almost never so most of the time it was you know hey think through that but very rarely very rarely do i have the approach that i actually know the capital t truth right so this is a very good point to make you you whoever you are you don’t know the truth very seldom are you 100 convinced hey my idea is the truth don’t walk around with that attitude it’s not good all right we’re getting into this next section here which is called history as practical experience starts off by saying fools say that they learn by experience i prefer to profit by others experience this famous saying quoted by bismarck but by no means original to him has peculiar bearing on military questions for it has often been remarked that the soldier unlike followers of other professions has but rare opportunities to practice his profession isn’t that interesting look you’re in the military cool you’re a professional soldier awesome how often do you actually get to do that job the answer is not as often as a normal not as often as a carpenter not as often as a plumber not as often as a software engineer you might get to train for it you might but how often are you locked and loaded and in combat with someone else in the military back to the book indeed it might even be argued that in a literal sense the profession of arms is not a profession at all but merely casual employment and paradoxically that it ceased to be a profession when the soldier of fortune gave way to the professional soldier when mercenary troops who were employed and paid for the purpose of war were replaced by standing armies which continued to be paid when there was no war so if you’re a mercenary you’d be like oh there’s a war over there cool i’m gonna go do it that’s kind of like a plumber oh there’s a different one over here cool i’m gonna go to that one oh there’s a different world over here coleman that’s a little bit more of an actual profession you might end up in more combat in your life than if you’re in a standing army that’s doing that job even when there’s no war going on this logical if somewhat extreme argument recalls the excuse often made in the past for paying officers a rate inadequate to live on and by some of those officers for doing an inadequate day’s work the contention being that the officer’s pay was not a working salary but a retainer paid to him for the benefit of having his services available in case of war this reminds me of some of the some of the information about the the british army and how just the officers during certain phases were just actual aristocrats that had almost no interest in fighting wars and almost complete interest in going to the country club some of the um some of the biographies of some of the guys that led the boor war were pretty embarrassing and then they showed up for the boomer war with pianos and just it’s like crazy if the argument that strictly there is no profession of arms will not hold good in most armies today on the score of work it is inevitably strengthened on a s the score of practice by the increasing for infrequency of wars so there’s less and less wars now are we then left with the conclusion that armies are doomed to become more and more amateurish in the popular bad sense of that much abused and misused word so hey look if you’re in the military you’re not getting a fight all the time does that mean you become an amateur over time for obviously even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical and experience and you know what i like well the reason i wasn’t going to do this section but guess what it’s the same thing with leadership it’s the same thing with leadership you’re in a leadership position how often are you actually in a challenging situation in leadership how often does someone say hey boss i’m not doing this how often does someone say that i’m not working with that person like you you end up with combative situations but how often is that because normally people are hey yeah yeah got it boss hope that sounds like a good plan like that’s what you’re normally getting you’re not normally as a leader hopefully you’re not normally being combative so it’s the same thing how do we train for that bismarck throws a different and more encouraging encouraging light on the problem it helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience direct and indirect and that of the two indirect practical experience may be more valuable because it’s infinitely wider so look you can get that experience of dealing with a bad employee but how often do you actually deal with i mean how many marines did you have to write up hardly any yeah ever i mean like how many seals did i have to write up how many seals did i have to fire when we’re working with companies we were with companies with thousands of employees the combative situations are much more rare than the day-to-day hey this is what we’re doing normal leadership yeah and how often is the problem even as bad as you think it is you know when we’ll get questions about hey how do i deal with a boss who um you know wants my team to fail when i say hey if you really think about the problem they’re not they’re often not as bad or as significant and not of the magnitude that we even make it out to be right even in the most active career especially a soldier’s career the scope and possibilities of direct experience are extremely limited in contrast to the military the medical profession has incest in practice right they’re doing a surgery a day two surgeries a day three surgeries a day yet the great achievements in medicine and surgery have usually been due to the research worker and not to the general practitioner direct experience is inherently too limited a form to form a secure foundation for either theory or application so if the only combat experience you’re gonna get is combat experience you’re you’re going to be you’re going to be screwed at the best it produces an atmosphere which is value in drying and hardening the structure of our thought if you only have a little bit of combat experience that’s what you become if you don’t open your mind up if you only have a little bit of leadership experience that’s what happens when you get in the seal teams you know we’d have the on the job training leadership that’s how guys would become that’s how they get their leadership training just by watching their platoon chief for their platoon commander so if they weren’t good that bad example would dry and harden in their mind and become the way they would be too because they didn’t open their mind up to different indirect experience the greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent right history is universal experience the experience not of another but of many others under manifold conditions boom so we can learn about leadership from everywhere here we have the rational justification for military history it’s preponderant practical value in the training and mental development of a soldier but but the benefit depends as with all experience on its breadth on how closely it approaches the definition quoted above and on the method of studying it so we got to study and look the whole premise of this particular podcast is understanding human nature is understanding leadership by understanding how people act in war why is that why don’t we study a bunch of business cases well because if you want to see human nature be revealed you got to put some pressure on it you got to put some bread there’s no better pressure no better pressure than combat soldiers universally concede the general truth of napoleon’s much-quoted dictum that in war the moral is to the physical as three to one cool we covered that on this podcast and all of napoleon’s maxims but here we go the actual arithmet arithmetic proportion may be worthless for morale’s app to decline if weapons be inadequate and the strongest will is a vet little use inside of a dead body but although the moral and physical factors are inseparable and indivisible the saying gains its immortal value because it expresses the idea of the predominance the predominance of moral factors in all military decisions so obviously it’s not like okay here’s the numerical you have this much you have this much physical situation oh don’t worry morale’s three to one that’s not what we’re talking about but it’s that idea on them constantly turns the issue of worn battle and in history of war they form the more constant factors changing only in degree whereas physical factors are fundamentally different in almost every war in every military situation that’s the important part of this that’s the important part of this you’ve got the you’ve got the physical factors right the physical but that changes but what doesn’t change the history of war they form more constant factors to green changing only in degree the physical factors go all over the place because we got machine guns we got tanks we got people with night vision like it’s there’s different physical things but the but the human nature doesn’t change this realization affects the whole question of the study of military history history for practical use the the method in the last few generations has been to select one or two campaigns and to study them exhaustively as means of developing both our minds and a theory of war but the continual changes in military means from war to war entail a grave danger even a certainty that our outlook will be narrow and and lessens fallacious in the physical sphere the one constant factor is that means and condition are invariably inconsistent so so the physical stuff we can study it like okay would how did you maneuver in this situation how did you how did what weapons did you use over here well guess what you fast forward 30 years and we got different weapons you fast forward six years and we go from no night vision to all night vision so if that’s what we’re studying what are we looking at in contrast human nature varies but slightly in its reaction to danger some men by race by environment or by training may be less sensitive than others but the difference is one of degree not fundamental so people are people the more localized the situation and our study the more disconcerting and less calculable is such a difference of degree it may prevent an exact calculation of the resistance which men will offer in any situation but it does not impair the judgment that they will offer less if taken by surprise than if they are on alert this is like so it doesn’t matter where you look in history the person that’s surprised versus the person that’s on alert you’re going to get the same almost the exact same reaction less if they are weary and hungry than if they’re fresh and well fed look we go back thousand years 2 000 years well-fed troops that are well-rested are ready to rock and roll weary hungry they’re not the broader the the broader the psychological survey the better foundation it affords for deductions so you have to look throughout history and see all these different battles and see what the psychology of the soldiers and leaders was the predominance of the psychological over the physical and its greater consistency point to the conclusion that the foundation of any theory of war should be as broad as possible an intensive study of one campaign unless based upon unless based on extensive knowledge of the whole history of war is as likely to lead us into pitfalls as onto the peaks of military achievement so if you just look at one campaign and that’s where you base everything on you’re wrong but if a certain effect is seen to follow a certain cause in a score or more cases in different epochs and diverse conditions there is ground for regarding this cause as an integral part of any theory of war you see something one time it doesn’t mean jack if you see something four times but it’s all in the same campaign and the same locale and the same soldiers fighting against the same other soldiers again it’s a minimal but when you take it over centuries or millennia and you see the same thing over and over again maybe you should pay attention to that one the thesis set force in this book is the product of such an extensive examination it might indeed be termed the compound effect of certain causes these being connected with my task of military editor for encyclopedia or britannica that’s kind of crazy for while i had previously delved into various periods of military history according to my inclination this task compelled a general general survey of all off and against my uh inclination so he was the military editor for the encyclopedia encyclopedia britannica you know what that is echo charles of course yes well i’m just saying are you a millennial no i’m not taco some people i bet a kid right now does not know what the encyclopedia britannica was when we were kids that was kind of it right that was google that was google yeah yep that was google gotta go find the letter yes spine yeah on that spine boom pull it out there you go and there are some letters that were like two and one like q and r all right cool we’re good with that book with that volume so this guy was the ed the military editor and even though previously he would just kind of study what he wanted to study but then all of a sudden he had to go back and study all these other things and he starts seeing all these continual similarities through everything he’s seeing and here we go um he says and a survey or even a tourist if you will has at least a wide perspective and can at least take in the general lie of the land where the miner knows only his seam so if you if you study one war one battle and that’s when you just go deep in that scene hey you know a lot about that one scene but the guy that’s up up at altitude surveying all land he’s got the whole lay of the land during this survey one impression grew ever stronger that throughout the ages throughout the ages decisive results in war have only been reached when the approach has been indirect in strategy the longest way round is apt to be the shortest way home [Laughter] more and more clearly has the fact emerged that a direct approach to one’s mental object or physical objective and he use he uses this term a lot as as you’re going to hear me read he just calls something the object we always call it the objective and he actually goes into like why that’s not a good word so a lot of times you’ll hear them say object um more and more clearly has the fact emerged that a direct approach to one’s mental object or physical objective along the line of natural expectation for the opponent has ever tended to and usually produce negative results so if you take that path that’s kind of expected chances are we’re not gonna we’re not gonna it’s not gonna work out well the reason has been expressed vividly in napoleon’s dictum that the moral is the physical is three to one it may be expressed scientifically by saying that while the strength of an enemy country lies outwardly in its numbers and resources these are equally dependent upon stability or equilibrium of control morale and supply to move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent’s equilibrium and by stiffening it augments his resisting power i think that comment the one you made just a minute ago that quote the longest way around is the shortest way home i think that’s the piece that that for whatever reason i think we see is the most hard to to to accept that and and i think my point is probably better served by saying the opposite is also true the shortest way around is the longest way home there’s this belief like if i just get to the point i will get to the end faster and the opposite is true and just the the willingness to recognize the more indirect i i am the longer this journey is to get this other person to see the truth the faster this is going to be and that’s such a hard thing i think for people to embrace for example what you just said is is the more you see me taking this direct path towards you the more the more dug in you will become because you see it coming and what i’m doing is so much less important than how i am doing it that you won’t hear any things i’m saying any of the ideas that i’m offering or any any of the the truth that i’m delivering and it will take me longer and the i’m a direct person i have to tell the truth that’s just how i am the recognition that that is the longest the longest way and and sometimes you’ll never get there yep yeah the the way i often explain this to clients is i i usually just preemptively say i know what you’re all thinking you all are thinking is that doesn’t sound very efficient it’d be much more efficient for me just to say dave this is how we’re doing it be way more efficient to do that and it’s just like you said it’s just so hard to realize that that’s the longest way home that’s the longest way home the line i just read to move along the line of natural expectation that’s the shortest route consolidates the opponent’s equilibrium so when you when you are going where they expect you to go that’s where they put their defenses that’s what happens that’s why in jiu jitsu you have to mess with their balance you have to come from a different angle and by stiffening by stiffening it augments its resisting power by the way because when you know where i’m coming at you from you are ready to fight and you know what to do to fight in war as in wrestling the attempt to throw the opponent without loosening his foothold imbalance can only result in self-exhaustion increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him victory by such a method can only be possible through an immense margin of superior strength in some form and even so tends to lose decisiveness so if we’re wrestling which let’s face it we’re wrestling if what we do is attempt a a takedown with no setup or attempt a submission with no setup it doesn’t work it doesn’t work like we’re training with kerry today carrie’s a white belt right guess what he’s a wipeout been training for a year if you grab his arm you’re not gonna get it you’re not gonna get it you have to do something else you have to set him up even a white belt in jiu jitsu in contrast an examination of military history not of one period but of its whole course brings out the point that in almost all the decisive campaigns the dislocation of the enemy’s psychological and physical balance has been vit the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow dislocation he uses that word a lot dislocation putting people off balance getting getting that getting in their head not letting them well i guess it’s the true opposite it’s the opposite of consolidation of equilibrium right like here i am i’m stable oh dislocated now i’m not where i i’m not where i want to be this dislocation has been produced by a strategic indirect approach intentional or fortuitous so sometimes people just accidentally end up off balancing somebody cool it may take varied forms as our analysis reveals for the strategy of the indirect approach is inclusive of but what and but wider than the maneuver sir lay derriere which is french which i don’t even want to try but it means maneuver behind someone which general cayman’s researches showed as being the constant aim and key method of napoleon in his conduct of operations while cayman was concerned primarily with the logistical moves the factors of time space and communications this analysis seeks to probe deeper into psychological foundations and in doing so finds an underlying relationship between many strategical operations which have no outward resemblance to a maneuver against the enemy’s rear yet are none less definitely vital examples of the strategy of the indirect approach so sometimes it doesn’t look like what you’re doing is an indirect maneuver but it is to trace this relationship and determine the character of operations is not necessary and is indeed irrelevant to tabulate the numerical strengths and detail the details of supply and transport our concern is simply with historical effects in a comprehensive series of cases and with the logistical or psychological moves which led us led up to them if similar effects follow fundamentally similar moves in conditions which vary widely in scale nature and date there’s clearly an underlying connection from which we can logically deduce a common cause and the more widely the conditions vary the firmer this conduction this deduction and and what he’s saying there is look when you take a bunch of examples over time throughout history it becomes really clear that this isn’t just a fluke this is the reality of the situation and that’s so so here’s what we’re gonna do um this guy is a historian right and the next giant chunk of these books is he goes historical what was that book we were reading where people went statistical oh yeah that’s right it was one of those world war ii thing somebody went statistical sometimes yeah the officer went statistical on me started telling me about how how long officers were living he’s like the average officer’s living about living about four and a half hours up there good luck he went statistical on me what bh liddell hart does he goes historical and he goes from the 5th century to the 20th century he goes from the greek wars the roman wars the byzantine wars the medieval wars the 17th century the 18th century the french revolution napoleon he gets to the first world war the second world war and he goes through just detailed battles and talks about the indirect approach and what we’re going to do is we’re actually going to bypass this and there’s a couple reasons why number one get the books get the books number two this is what we do all the time on this podcast this is actually what we do all the time on this podcast we talk about napoleon we talk about his push into russia we talk about world war one we talk about world war ii we talk about vietnam we talk about korea and we’ve seen and pointed out the indirect strategy all the time all the time that’s what we do we how do i usually talk about it the flank right this is this we talked about maneuver warfare this is what this is about this is what this whole podcast is about is these historical lessons and and ph ladell heart he he serves them up for us in this book the so so if you want to get those and who knows maybe one day we’ll jump into these but if you want to jump into them get the book get the book strategy by bh lodell heart you can get in depth on these things but what i want to do is i want to kind of jump ahead to his book strategy where he goes into the theory of strategy and he starts off by saying having drawn our conclusions from analysis oh by the way the analysis that he’s talking about that he draws conclusions from is like 315 pages so this is this is no this is when when he’s talking about oh you need to study all these different errors he does it and points out the indirect approach and how it wins every single time even if it was by accident it’s what makes us win he says having drawn our conclusions from analysis of history it seems advantageous to construct on the fresh foundation of a new dwelling house for the strategic thought so he’s looked at all these things that have happened and we gotta kind of get we kind of gotta hit the reset button he says let us first be clear on what is strategy klauswitz in his monumental work on ward defined it as the art of the employment of battles as a means to gain the object of war in other words strategy comes strategy forms the plan of war maps out the proposed course of the different campaigns which compose the war and regulates the battles to be fought in each now this is probably since episode seven of this podcast people have been like hey you need classmates you gonna do classmates on war hey you gonna do one war and there’s a couple reasons why i haven’t done it yet and i’m sure we will and i owe it to military history to do it but there’s a couple reasons one reason it’s like kind of it’s such a popular one that’s like hey you know what that’s right out there is it really the first one i want to hit i’d rather hit some other strategical ideas i mean i guess i did do sun tzu on war so this is not this is more of an excuse maybe i’ve always known that klaus wits or i always felt that klaus wits you know respect respect crosswitz we’re giving him respect um by the way here’s why this crossfits is no just hey military theorist right this is a guy that sat in a ivory tower and thought about war uh he entered the military at age 12 as a lance corporal you know what i’m saying like this is no joke uh fought in the rhine campaigns fought in the napoleonic wars went to the military academy at berlin worked worked for charnhorst who i’ve talked about a bunch on this podcast because when it comes to maneuver warfare he’s kind of that guy in the beginning that lost with the prussian army to napoleon at the battle of jenna and when he did he looked around said what the hell just happened and realized there was some decentralized some indirect warfare going on and started kind of making that well well classified kind of was under his wing and then when the prussians made an alliance with napoleon klaus was like no and he joined the uh imperial russian army and then when they broke up that alliance he went back to the the prussian army it was the chief of staff a three core and just battles napoleonic battles uh at the battle of waterloo he was he was in that campaign he was preventing some of napoleon’s reinforcements and showing up which which obviously caused the problem went back was an instructor and then the director of the of the military academy at berlin and by the way this whole time he’s writing down what his thoughts are and then he he ended up dying of cholera before he had these before he was able to complete his works and really before you might say and lydell hart kind of makes the assumption that he was kind of heading in a different direction so he’s cr he’s respectful but critical of koswitz that’s kind of that’s i don’t say that’s the way i’ve always felt but i kind of have always felt that way a little bit i don’t know maybe that’s because i’m a little bit of a contrarian but maybe more than that klaus woods says things that i go really really and by the way the klaus wits mentality is kind of what brought us to world war one and that mentality of mass which is one of his primary premier uh principles is like hey we’re gonna get i have more people than you i’m gonna win which as we know when we compare that to the the principles behind light infantry it’s not what we’re looking for there’s also a connection in there too even between what was talking about earlier between the physical and the moral of these physical attributes and you know they vary from campaign to campaign which is part of the reason why you don’t want to overreact to the lesson the physical lessons of a particular campaign because even as simple as like desert warfare versus jungle warfare those lessons forwarding rivers those are physical lessons and then it’s not that they’re invaluable but the the physical principles of mass or or those components are less important now one without the other you have to have them both but i was even just sitting here thinking of when tom fife was here who’s talking about world war ii korea and vietnam not from a a um historical standpoint but from actually a participant standpoint but the lessons he was talking about he didn’t spend a bunch of time when world war ii we were dealing with this physical environment it was the universal the universal nature of his lessons were take care of your people i mean how many books have we have i listened to on this podcast or read that the fundamental principle of leadership in success in battle was taking care of your people you know i’m looking at about faces as i’m looking at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages and he probably has a whole bunch of physical lessons and and it’s not to say that those aren’t important but those are never the ones that the leaders really when they’re talking about the lessons they learn and that that moral component i’m just using moral to use the same language it’s the human nature piece like you were talking about and how much more important that is and i remember even in getting a master’s degree was was klaus was sort of central to the strategic studies and there’s a physical focus on that and the principle of mass is a great example and listen i would love to go to war with an advantage in mass every time i that’s a that’d be awesome but but we know that that’s not the deciding factor we know that interestingly as you pointed to about face um there’s one book that we haven’t covered on this podcast by colonel david hackworth which you would think would be just like prime it’s called vietnam vietnam primer and vietnam primer is a book to get you ready to go to vietnam and it literally shows like hey here’s how far out you should put your claymores on it’s it’s just we could cover it i’m sure we could we could get some lessons from it but compared to about face not even close here’s the other thing that’s interesting is that cover move right cover and move the first law of combat leadership if you’re in the jungle you better cover and move if you’re in the desert you better cover move if you’re doing a river crossing you better cover and move if you’re doing an assault you better cover and move if you’re in an airplane if you’re in an airplane at 38 000 feet ac kicking yeah you better cover and move so that’s i think what was weird for me was as like cover move and that’s another thing cover and move cover and move movement you win by maneuver you don’t win by sitting still and when you start talking about klaus switz and mass it’s like we’re here yes so that’s again i’m not trying to dude i’m not trying to like get crazy and to talk smack about klaus fitz like i said if you were a lance corporal at age 12 i salute you and i will listen to what the hell you have to say a hundred percent but i will not i will question anybody i questioned it i questioned hackworth you know re read my opening like there’s like hey man guy was not guy was not perfect i mean he’s he you use him as the prime example of a lesson we teach in business all the time is if you lose your influence and he and and probably the most influential figure in your life as a leader is still your prime example of what not to do in a particular situation so i think the contrarian component of it is is important look close woods is awesome on war is awesome there’s a bunch of good stuff in there too for sure and i know that you’re saying that but just to link it back to that conversation and and the the human nature component and thinking about the direct approach and thinking of human nature if you just thought before you took the direct approach on anything how would i react to somebody doing that to me 99 of the indirect uh 99 of the direct assaults would go away if you could just take that perspective on it unless you lie to yourself seriously yeah like unless you lie to yourself which many many many people will do which is man i just want dave just to comment hey if i’m wrong just come and tell me yeah like if you lie to yourself then you you probably just keep taking the direct approach all the time yeah which is not gonna work out great and if you’re if you’re the person that prides themselves in listening to other people’s direct assault on you there’s high risk too that you are lying to yourself check all right back to the book one defect of this definition that was the definition of of strategy which was the art of employment of battles as means to gain the object of war so that that’s klaus fitz’s definition one defect of this definition is that it intrudes on the sphere of policy or the higher conduct of war which must necessarily be the responsibility of government and not of military leaders it employs as its agents in the executive control of operations so he’s he’s gonna go through this but there’s you know you know what we say all the time you can think strategic all the time that’s what he’s about to about to address 14 different ways and he’s going to actually go into a chapter i don’t know if we’ll get there today but there’s a higher level strategy called grand strategy and so he’s thinking grand strategy policy another defect is that it narrows the meaning of strategy to the pure utilization of battle thus conveying the idea that battle is the only means to the strategical end it was an easy step for klaus whit’s less profound disciples to confuse the means with the end and to reach the conclusion that in war in every in war every other consideration should be subordinated to the aim of fighting a decisive battle so so think about that that’s your attitude is like hey the whole purpose of strategy is to engage in decisive battle that’s what we’re doing so then what do you do in world war one you put more people on the line and you put more people on the line and you put more people online you send another battalion another brigade another division over the top that’s what you do and there’s people that lead like this in companies and organizations in their families and they the way they lead is by trying to win battles that’s the way they lead and the commitment that every argument is a decisive battle that has to be won and not not being able to recognize where and i think i think he called them like inflection points or something along the lines of the recognition of this is where it this is this is decisive and be able to recognize what an inflection point is in combat as opposed to like every in every engagement is not an inflection point it’s not a decisive point and being able to recognize where those points are and and fighting those as opposed to every single engagement you mean the idea of picking your battles hey pick your battles oh who’s been told that before yeah hey pick your battles commons seems like such common sense and yet all the time people look at every discussion argument contention as the decisive battle for their ego yeah relational policy to break down the distinction between strategy and policy would not matter much if the two functions were normally combined in the same person as with frederick or napoleon but but as such autocratic soldier rulers have been rare in modern times and became temporarily extinct for the 19th century the effect was insidiously harmful for it encouraged soldiers to make preposterous claim that policy should be subservient to their conduct of operations and especially in democratic countries it drew statesmen on to overstep the definite border of his sphere and interfere with his military employees in the actual use of their tools so there’s got to be a line between these two things and we got to stay in our lanes a little bit hey here’s the policy how do you want to execute it hey here’s the resources i need oh don’t know change your policy reached a clearer and wiser definition in terming strategy quote the practical adaptation of the means placed at a general’s disposal to the attainment of the object in view monkey’s another uh prussian guy chief general in the 1860s and uh he’s the guy that kind of i would say he had that the idea of the oh making sure you have an overall objective and make sure that people understand what the overall objective is the german word alph trogstactic no overall objective this definition it fixes the responsibility of a military commander to the government by which he is employed his responsibility is that of applying most profitably to the interest of higher war policy the force allotted to him within the theater of operations assigned to him if he considers that to force a lot it is inadequate for the task indicated he is justified in putting this out and if his opinion is overruled he can refuse or resign the command but he exceeds his rightful sphere if he attempts to dictate to the government what measure force should be placed at his disposal so like i said there’s a line here that he’s talking about on the other hand the government which formulates war policy and has to adapt to it to conditions which often change as a war progresses can rightly intervene in the strategy of a campaign not merely by replacing a commander in whom it has lost confidence but by modifying his object according to the needs of its war policy while it should not interfere with him in handling of his tools it should indicate clearly nate the nature of his task thus strategy has not necessarily the simple object of seeking to overthrow the enemy’s military power when a government appreciates that the enemy has the military superiority either in general or in a particular theater it may be wise to enjoin a strategy of limited aim before i get into limited aim let’s tie this back to corporate leadership and business leadership what are you doing if you’re in charge to make sure that you are empowering your subordinate leaders to make things happen and not saying hey here’s exactly how i want you to do it here’s what i want you to do with your team here’s what i want you to do with your tools here’s that’s when you’re crossing the line you shouldn’t have to do that you shouldn’t have to have those conversations we should be able to say hey dave this is what we’re trying to make happen how do you want to do it yeah and dave who’s on the front lines says hey boss here’s what i’m thinking looks good go execute and by the way dave might come back soon and say hey boss we can’t do that unless you give me some more resources and i say hey that’s all we got sorry and you said well we need to cut back then or we need to not do this market area because we don’t have the we don’t have the resources we need okay cool or maybe i say well i think it’s just because you suck you’re fired echo you got the con yeah so let’s make sure that we delineate the roles and responsibilities clearly enough that we know what what we’re trying to do up and down the chain of command now now to get back to this point of a strategy of limited aim he goes into it a little bit here this is the strategy of limited limited aim it may desire to wait until the balance of force can be changed by the intervention intervention of allies or by the transfer of forces from another theater it may desire to wait or even limit its military effort permanently while economic or naval action decides the issues it may calculate that the overthrow of the enemy’s military power is a task definitely beyond its capacity and not worth the effort and that the object of its war policy can be assured by seizing territory which it can either retrain retain or use as a bargaining counter when peace is negotiated so so right every one of those things is indirect it’s it’s it’s a it’s a limited aim it’s like oh you know what i wanted to kick dave’s ass but he’s way bigger and way better at jiu jitsu than i thought he was so you know what i’m gonna do i’m gonna like say hey man instead of let us fighting why don’t i buy you a hamburger and we’ll talk about some stuff and you know what i’m saying like it’s a different it’s just taking a different approach it’s a totally different approach you know what i i think dave can actually kick my ass echo’s going to be here in about 30 minutes echo’s bigger and stronger than dave he’s been training more just so i’m gonna wait till hey hey hey dave do you mind if we i’d rather have you roll with echo right so i’m bringing in some reinforcements that’s the strategy of limiting limited aim such a policy has more support from history than military opinion has recognized and is less inherently a policy of weakness than some apologists implies so just because i say you know what dave i’m not really looking to roll with you i’m gonna wait till echo gets here that’s not necessarily weak in fact it might be smarter in fact if i think you can beat me and i’m pretty sure you’re going to beat me it’s way smarter for me to wait till echo shows up to kick your ass it is indeed bound up with the history of the british empire and repeatedly proved a life buoy to britain’s allies as well as of the permanent benefit to herself however unconsciously followed there’s ground for inquiry whether this conservative military policy does not deserve to be accorded a place in the theory of the conduct of war so how often did britain go yeah you know what maybe we don’t want to fight that war maybe we want to give that up maybe we want to give that area up maybe we need to bargain and move move into an area that we know we can take and then we’ll we’ll negotiate for it back later the more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force wait until echo shows up a change often sought and achieved by draining the enemy’s force weakening him by pricks instead of risking blows what if while you know what hey dave i don’t you know i don’t really want to roll today echo’s going to be here in a little while but while you’re waiting why don’t you roll a couple rounds with carrie and he wants to roll a couple rounds with dean and then so here you are fighting all these battles by the time echo charles shows up fresh he’s just had a discipline go he’s ready to rock and roll you’re tired you’re nine rounds deep that’s my that’s my that’s a great plan great plan so i i weakened you by pricks instead of risking blows the essential condition of strategy such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself because i was sitting over on the corner keeping time that’s what i was doing while you were rolling with guy after guy after guy i’m keeping track of time for you the object may be sought by raiding his supplies by local attacks which annihilate or inflict disproportionate loss on parts of his force by luring him into unprofitable attacks by causing an excessively wide distribution on of his force and no least by exhausting his moral and physical energy this is like the exact example right i don’t think i can kick your ass but you know what echo’s going to be here in a little while and in the meantime i’m going to entice i’m going to go hey hey dean go get a couple rounds go go get a couple rounds with dave boom and just rough you up and gonna hit you with a couple different people by the time echo shows up no factor that’s what i’m doing yeah and i’m also thinking of just the idea of even going to war with the american military and and most of our opponents certainly more recent history the aim wasn’t to destroy the american military it was to make those series of little pricks over time become intolerable where we are no longer willing to have these little successive losses so we’re we’re not going to have that decisive campaign at all because you made this intolerable for me and that connection to policy too we talk about that all the time of you know the will you know somebody’s will to be doing that is hey i don’t want to keep doing this over and over again these small little things these little those things add up over time as opposed to like somehow the objective is we’re going to have a force on force you know culminating event between some military in the american military which which again generically speaking nobody wants that nobody wants to have a decisive engagement with the american military so we’re going to do some other things instead and make that intolerable for us which by the way we suck in many areas of this the united states in general think of the propaganda damage that gets done to us on a regular basis that has been done to us on a regular basis basically since vietnam anytime we get into i mean anytime we get into a conflict now the propaganda that is used to turn us against ourselves and this country is it’s it’s crazy how effective it is if you look at the vietnam war it’s crazy how effective they were yeah at turning americans against americans in that war yeah back to the book this closer definition sheds light on the question previously raised of a general’s independence in carrying out his own strategy inside his theater of operations for if the for if the government has decided upon a limited aim or grand strategy the general who even within his strategic fear seeks to overthrow the enemy’s military power may do more harm than good to the government’s war policy so what is that saying that’s saying like i got dave out there he’s super aggressive and he’s like you know what i’m gonna i’m gonna take this whole area and meanwhile i’m thinking dave don’t take that whole area then we’re gonna have to occupy it i don’t have the people to occupied and now we’re going to cause more problems so just because you’re winning doesn’t mean you’re winning usually a war of limited aim a war policy of limited aim imposes a strategy of limited aim and a decisive aim should only be adopted with the approval of the government which alone can decide whether it is worth the candle old school expression i didn’t really know what it meant i had to look it up worth the candle means we’re gonna do something is what we’re doing worth the candle that the light it’s going to take to for us to be able to do whatever we’re doing yeah is it worth the candle like we’re going to oh we got some work to do tonight cool light the candle but how much are we really going to get done it’s not worth the candle this is back in the day kind of like is the juice worth it it’s worth the squeeze exactly we can now arrive at a shorter definition of strategy as quote the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy end quote for strategy is concerned not merely with the movement of forces as its role is often defined but with the effect when the application of the military instrument merges into actual fighting the dispositions for and control of such direct action are termed tactics the two categories although convenient for discussion can never be truly divided into separate compartments because each each not only influences but merges into the other which is why leadership strategy and taxes is called leadership strategy and tactics kind of convenient that it worked out that way but but listen here’s what’s important is what we’re doing it doesn’t matter what matters is how it ends up yeah what matters is the strategic effect that’s why we have to think strategic all the time that’s what we need to do next section higher or grand strategy as tactics in as tactics is an application of strategy on a lower plane so strategy is an application on a lower plane of grand strategy so he goes one level up a whole nother thing we got tactical we got operational he doesn’t really talk about operational that must be a modern thing tactical operational strategic and then grand strategy while practically synonymous with policy what was your would you study in college policy dang what’s up man do you want to chime in bit i do let us know you’re rolling man but i mean there there’s so much kloss whizzy and stuff in there but the the previous comment it was as i’m thinking of sort of like the business alignment of this this military uh concept is how often are we are we engaged in tactical battles that don’t promote or support the strategic goal and i think it was i think it was the debrief podcast but you said this is if what you were doing if the tactical engagement you’re in supports the the big picture strategy it’s not tactical it’s strategic and if it doesn’t it’s tactical and you’re engaged you shouldn’t be doing it like how often do we dig in on these these small things that even in the end if we win don’t reinforce the big picture goal the objective and how often do i on with my team the marketing team dig in on how i want to do this this thing and i’m going to fight with the the sales team over resources and supplies and equipment and priority that don’t actually help the company the company achieves some some sort of success and being able to look at that as a leader and going hey hey listen this this doesn’t matter this we don’t need to dig in here let them have this we’re playing the longer game here because what we want is the company to win and how hard it is for us to decouple this idea that every battle is a strategic no it’s not it’s not very few of my very few yeah absolutely um for the role of grand strategy higher strategy is to coordinate and direct all the resources of a nation or band of nations towards the attainment of a political object of the war the goal defined by fundamental policy grand strategy should both calculate and develop to economic resources and manpower of nations in order to sustain fighting services also the moral resources for the foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess more concrete forms of power which is why you need to pay attention to what’s going on in your country when it comes to propaganda that’s being used against you grand strategy too should regulate the distribution of power between the several services and between the services and industry moreover fighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategy which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure diplomatic pressure commercial pressure and least of ethical pressure to weaken the opponent’s will a good cause is a sword as well as armor likewise chivalry in war can be a most effective weapon in weakening the opponent’s will to resist as well as augmenting moral strength this is why we always say take the high ground to the hydra thank you yeah take the high ground take the high ground to the good cause is a sword as well as armor and and when you give up the high ground when you get down into the mud and i think there’s a quote you’ve references when you get down in the mud you’re not getting muddy because somebody’s throwing mud at you it’s because you went down there and how hard it is once you’ve got up the high ground to get back up onto the high ground once you give that up back to the book furthermore while the horizon of strategy is bounded by by the war grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace it should not only combine the various instruments but so regulate their use as to avoid damage to the future state of peace for its security and prosperity the sorry state of peace for both sides that has followed most wars can be traced to the fact that unlike strategy the realm of grand strategy is for the most part terra incognita still awaiting exploration and understanding that means unknown territory so this is this is you know beyond thinking strategic and it’s kind of the way we term thinking strategic you know if if you and i have a relationship and i’m gonna bark and order you where does that get me even if you do that thing where does it put us in the future how’s our relationship if we have a client and we decide you know what we’re going to bill them anyways even though they didn’t you know they didn’t participate but we’re going to bill them anyways how’s that going to work out for us cool we get a little bit more money right now how does that how does that affect us in a year when that client needs help so the grand strategy looks beyond the ward a subsequent piece how often are we doing that looking further in the future goes into pure or military strategy having cleared the ground we can build up our conception of strategy on its proper plane and original basis that of the art of the general strategy depends for success first and foremost first and foremost first sorry first and most on a sound calculation and coordination of the ends and means of the end and means the end must be proportioned to the total means and the means used in gaining each intermediate end which contributes to the ultimate must be proportioned to the value and the needs of that intermediate end whether it be to gain an objective or fulfill a contributory purpose and excess may be as harmful as a deficiency so that’s first of all that’s a freaking run-on sentence but but second of all but second of all it’s important because what he’s saying is you should constantly be assessing if if the juice is worth the squeeze you should constantly be saying like listen we’re going to put this much effort towards this client or we’re going to put this much effort towards this relationship we’re going to put this much effort towards this team who’s we don’t know how they’re going to do so you constantly have to check yourself if the end that you’re going towards is your investment worth it what’s the roi and by the way spending too much it can be as bad as not spending enough totally and and and spending a much to to win a particular battle or win a particular war but you spent so much so you look around and go well that was not the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze it wasn’t worth the candle yeah what do we accomplish and that that next level up to grand strategy and of course i think the connection he’s making is on this large scale man i literally took a class called american grand strategy check and the military is a is a is a component of all these other things you named a bunch of them diplomatic you know uh economic there’s a whole bunch of different tools that are inside there that are actually you know they’re all connected but the military is one arm of that one of many of course you’re in uniform you think the whole world revolves around military power we know we say it all the time we know that’s not true but an example that you use all the time in in just trying to explain this idea of utilizing resources and making decisions when you talk about means our means everybody has limited means we don’t have unlimited means or unlimited resources and if i’m looking at this particular area i want to i want to open up a shop here open up a couple of locations in this physical uh you know this geographic area to compete with our competitors and i take all of my resources every penny i’ve got every tool that i’ve got and i get in there go bake or go home that’s right and in the end we get in there we get in that region and i don’t know it doesn’t quite work out or even if it does but we now have no other tools and resources to do anything else the larger piece of that is the strategy isn’t to get into that area the strategy is actually to make our company stronger and that limited understanding or that understanding being limited of hey we’re here to take over this region if that is not connected to the company being successful that larger piece of it all the all the means or all the resources to getting into that area they don’t help you waste it it’s a waste you burn that candle yeah yeah uh and you know what’s interesting is from a leadership this is a totally this is a leadership capital discussion right it’s hey is it worth me expending this leadership capital on getting dave to follow my order on getting dave to you know pick up a client that i know is going to be painful and i’m forcing him to do it and whatever whatever the case may be is it worth that leadership capital we we have to weigh that out and you know when you were talking about oh we got the the diplomatic we got the the the commercial pressure the financial pressure the ethical pressure all those things and the military’s part of that guess what in from a leadership perspective the military thing is hey this is my rank i outrank you and we’re just going to go by force that’s force that should be there’s six seven eight twelve other components that i can utilize as a leader to make something happen and the worst one to use the one that cost me the most leadership capital is the military one which is my rank which is hey i’m the boss you sh you listen to me to compel someone through the threat of force as your only tool to get them to comply the threat of force and even you know the the the moral high ground i mean how convenient would it be if you and i were in a situation looking at something and mine was the moral approach and yours was the immoral approach which requires no money no time no resources no equipment you go oh you know what hey listen if we do this we take the if we take the unethical and we get found out and somebody just goes oh hey man you’re right you no listen man i was you’re right we we need to do just we just need to do the right thing here the the strategic win from that alone or the opposite end of the spectrum the military end is i come through force and demand and through risk of of destruction is how i’m getting you to behave in a way that helps the team yeah i’ve got this quote later on and i don’t even remember where i got the quote from but i talked about on this podcast maybe i talked about an ef online it’s it’s something along the lines of cool you win and now you’re in charge of a wasteland great oh yeah you won the war cool now you have uh burnt scorched earth that’s what you have cool good job what did you win nothing yeah back to the book a true oh this is a true adjustment would establish a perfect economy of force in the deeper sense of that oft distorted military term so all the time we heard the term economy of force but because of the nature and uncertainty of war and uncertainty increased by lack of scientific study even the greatest military ability could not achieve a true adjustment and success lies in the closest approximation to the truth again his use of the word truth is a little bit is a little bit broad but what he’s talking about how much should i apply to this how much force should i apply we want to apply the minimum force required but we’re not going to be perfect with that so we want to get as close as we can this relativity is inherent because however our knowledge and of the science of war be extended it will depend on the art for its application art can not only bring the end nearer to the means but by giving a higher value to the means enable the end to be extended this complicates calculation because no man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity nor the incapacity of will so there’s all these things that we have to account for as leaders you know and we’re and and we’re not going to get it perfectly right but how close can we get it next section elements and conditions in strategy however calculation is simpler and a closer approximation to truth possible than in tactics so this is a very interesting it’s easier to calculate big broad strategic things because you’re a little bit further away from the the human component for in war the chief incalculable is the human will which manifests itself in resistance which in turn lies in the province of tactics strategy has not to overcome resistance except from nature its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance and it seeks to fulfill this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise now that’s cool and everything i would say that there’s definitely that’s a stretch because we’ve seen collect the collective will of a people change the outcome of strategic situations for sure so even though i said hey it’s it’s closer to it still can have a huge impact i mean look at vietnam it was like oh well we can beat them because we can kill 150 vietnamese soldiers and viet cong soldiers for every one of our people that killed so we’ll win no actually we won’t win right because guess what their collective will is freaking incredibly strong yeah but movement and surprise movement lies in the physical sphere and depends on calculation of the conditions of the time topography and transport capacity by transport capacity has meant both the both the means by which and the measure in which force can be moved and maintained okay so there’s the physical fear sphere of movement surprise lies in the psychological sphere and depends on a calculation far more difficult than in the physical sphere of the manifold conditions varying in each case which are likely to affect the will of the opponent so you got two things you’ve got movement and you’ve got surprise this is how we’re gonna kind of win this is how we’re gonna win by movement and surprise movement physical surprise psychological although strategy may aim more at exploiting movement than at exploiting surprise or conversely the two elements react on each other so even though they’re different spheres they’re still closely woven together movement generates surprise and surprise gives impetus to movement so this is jujitsu right if you surprise somebody they have to react to it so you can make someone move by surprising them with something for a movement which is accelerated or changes its direction inevitably carries with it a degree of surprise even though it be concealed while surprise smooths the path of movement by hindering the enemies counter measures and counter movements so if i surprise you you don’t have time to react to it you’re not defending it yeah this is obviously not something this guy was thinking about when i think about flying in stealth airplanes the psychology of that is what i what i have discovered and it’s true not just an airplane it’s true in every situation more often than not people’s reaction to being surprised is not the right reaction they don’t usually react well even when they react it’s still like an overreaction under reaction think about how you react to when you’re surprised are those usually like good smooth effective responses 100 yeah all the time and when when you look at stealth airplanes the advent of americans showing up with stealth airplanes and sort of the culminating event really was in desert storm when nobody even knew we had them and all of a sudden stealth airplanes are over baghdad dropping bombs and the iraqis didn’t under they did not understand what was happening and their reaction was obviously wrong now you know that they’re proliferated that’s why a significantly undersized force when you’re flying around in a stealth aircraft and then i’m fighting against you and your conventional aircraft and the first call you hear is hey the first four of your airplanes are all dead and and the psychological response to that is almost always the wrong response the reaction they they behave erratically they move in different direct they don’t know what to do the psychological response to surprise is almost always the wrong reaction and the power of creating that reaction in your opponents is really hard to overstate and that’s really one of the things that stealth airplanes have allowed us to do is get our opponents to behave incorrectly to give us an even more of an advantage you’re going to off-balance them somehow because what you just said when you say they either overreact or under react guess what you either you’re off balance right a balanced measured response would be like okay we didn’t really get them off balance but you either overreact or you underreact and through surprise you cause them to move too far in one direction too far in the other direction that’s what’s gonna happen and that’s what we’re gonna take advantage of and you’ve explained this a ton like if i attack your arm and you under react to a point where you do not almost don’t react at all and you just let me have it then i may actually culminate with an armbar yeah but more than likely you’re gonna overreact and i want you to overreact to that so i can attack something else but it’s like you said it’s it’s the lack of a balanced response it’s usually an overreaction usually that reveals a weakness somewhere else that i can then exploit yep as regards the relation of strategy and tactics while in execution the borderline is often shadowy and it is difficult to decide exactly where a strategical movement ends and a tactical movement begins yet in conception the two are distinct tactics lies in the fills tactics lies and fills the province of fighting strategy not only stops on the frontier but has for its purpose the reduction of fighting by the slenderest possible proportions so the purpose of strategy is to not fight goes on with the aim of strategy this statement may be disputed by those who conceive the destruction of the enemy’s armed force as the only sound aim in war who hold that the only goal of strategy is battle and who are obsessed with the klaus fission saying that blood is the price of victory yet if one should concede this point and meet its advocates on their own ground the statement would remain unshaken for even if decisive battle be the goal the aim of strategy must be to bring about this battle under the most advantageous circumstances and the more advantageous the circumstances the less proportionately will be the fighting it’s a whole goal of strategies we’re not fighting that’s what we’re doing the perfection of strategy would be therefore to produce a decision without any serious fighting history now think about that from a leadership perspective i never get in an argument because dave’s doing what i need him to do to make it happen that’s the most effective strategy it’s not how do i outwit dave in an argument that doesn’t matter why am i having an argument history as we have seen provides examples where strategy helped by favorable conditions has virtually produced such a result and he goes through some examples here and again he’s he’s recalling back to some of the examples that he talks about in the book while these cases while these were cases where the destruction of the enemy’s forces the enemy’s armed forces was economically achieved through the disarming by surrender such destruction may not be essential for a decision and for the fulfillment of the war aim in the case of a state that is seeking not conquest but maintenance of a secure of its security the aim is fulfilled if the threat be removed if the enemy is led to abandon his purpose with such while such bloodless victories have been exceptional their rarity enhances rather than detracts from their value as an indication of latent potentialities in strategy and grand strategy despite many centuries of experience of war we have hardly begun to explore the field of psychological warfare from deep study of war klaus fitz was led to the conclusion that quote all military action is permeated by intelligent forces and their effects nevertheless end quote nevertheless nations at war have always striven or been driven by their passions to disregard the implications of such a conclusion instead of applying intelligence they have chosen to batter their heads against the nearest wall so here’s klaus so it’s like hey it’s it’s an intelligence yeah you know we’re doing what but all the time we countries people leaders teams we get we do stupid things we bang our heads against the nearest wall because we get emotional we’re not intelligent and we gotta look out for that it rests normally with the government responsible for the grand strategy of award to decide whether strategy should make its contribution by achieving a military decision or otherwise just as military means is only one of the means to the end of grand strategy one of the instruments in the surgeon’s case so battle is only one of the means to the end of strategy if the conditions are suitable usually it is usually the quickest in effect but if conditions are unfavorable it’s a folly to use so cool you can go to battle but if you haven’t prepared for it and you don’t have the advantage it’s stupid let’s assume that a strategist is empowered to seek a military decision his responsibility is to seek it under the most advantageous circumstances in order to produce the most profitable result hence his true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision its continuation by battle is sure to achieve this so we’re not engaging in battles that we don’t know we’re gonna win and if we know we’re going to win them why can’t we convince the opponent that we’re going to win and they bow down yeah in other words dislocation is the aim of strategy its sequel may be either the enemy’s dissolution or his easier disruption in battle dissolution may involve some partial measure of fighting but this is not but this is not the character of battle so that’s what we’re trying to do we’re trying to win the fight without fighting we’re trying to win the argument without having it i’m trying to get dave one out to do what i want him to do without him even knowing that that’s what i want him to do it’s his idea yeah and think about that statement about you getting me to do do it do what you want me to get done without fighting with me and take a step away from this book which is talking about fighting your enemies like your literal enemies to someone on your team on my team my team my guy yeah because the human nature doesn’t change it doesn’t change if we’re in the jungle desert if we’re in 1842 if we’re in 1916 if we’re in 1942 it doesn’t matter if you’re my enemy or you’re my friend if there’s if there’s a component of human will then we need to utilize these principles effectively next section action of strategy how is the strategic dislocation produced in the physical or logistical sphere it is the result of a move which a upsets the enemy’s dispositions and by compelling a sudden change of front dislocates the distribution and organization of his forces b separates his forces god i got a little a little little little tingle in my spine when i saw that endangers his supplies d menaces the root or roots by which he could retreat in case of need and re-establish himself on the base so there’s these ways that we can cause strategic dislocation a dislocation may be produced by one of these effects but is more often a consequence of several right we’re gonna we’re gonna dislocate them from multiple different directions differentiation indeed is difficult because a move directed toward the enemy’s rear tends to combine these effects their respective influence however varies and has varied throughout history according the size of armies and complexities of their organization with armies which live on the country drawing their supplies locally by plunder requisition the line of communication has negligible importance so if you’ve got an army that’s out there living off the land they kind of know what they’re doing you can you don’t you can’t really cut their supply lines because they don’t have any even if a higher even in a higher stage of military development the smaller a force the less dependent it is on the lines of communication for supplies the larger an army and more complex its organization the more prompt and serious in effect is a menace to its line of communication so depending on who you’re fighting you’ve got to make some adjustments where armies have not been so dependent strategy has been correspondingly handicapped that and the tactical issue of battle has played a greater part nevertheless even thus handicapped able strategists have frequently gained a decisive advantage previous to battle by menacing the enemy’s lines of retreat the equilibrium of his dispositions or his local supplies that’s what we’re doing so we’re throwing people off just by messing with the supply chain by messing with their communication and by the way i’m probably going to mention this 15 15 000 more times he’s talking all the time about disrupting your enemy’s communication each one of those is the red cell the red team for us to go man am i communicating properly every time you hear that’s one of the main ways that the indirect approach works is by disrupting the enemy communication what does that tell us about our communication it tells us it’s freaking critical he goes into some some uh talk about how to disrupt communication to be effective such a menace usually must be applied at a point closer in time and space to the enemy’s army than a menace to his communication and thus early in warfare it’s often difficult to distinguish between strategical and tactical maneuver in the psychological sphere dislocation is the result of the impression on the commander’s mind of the physical effects which we have listed the impression is strongly accentuated if his realization of being at a disadvantage is sudden and if he feels that he is unable to counter an enemy’s move psychological dislocation fundamentally springs from his sense of being trapped that’s straight out of like the jujitsu world yes sir and this is important so we feel we feel dislocated we feel nervous when we get trapped guess what you should never do as a leader hey dave i know you want to do this but what if that happens why am i trapping him why am i trapping you don’t trap people that are on your team that’s another little red cell little red team if you’re tr if i set you up to trap you you’re going to be uncomfortable you’re going to get defensive you’re going to be unstable and my interest in interacting with you the next time you know like oh here we go let’s see what what jocko is going to try to do to me this time talking about loyalty and respect and the things that you actually want from me in the end you know when when when you’re the leader that likes to set your people up so you can hammer them dude that’s a classic like i won that argument on that argument man that worked out for you in that meeting good job he won’t want to step up again this is the reason why it is most frequently followed a physical move on the enemy’s rear an army like a man cannot properly defend its back from a blow without turning around to use its arms in a new direction turning temporarily unbalances an army as it does a man and with the former the period of instability is inevitably much longer in consequence the brain is much more sensitive to any menace to its back oh this is why in jiu jitsu what are we trying to do we’re trying to attack the back that’s why in the battlefield we’re trying to we’re trying to come around to the rear because then they have to maneuver and face you and they’re exposed in in contrast to move directly on an opponent consolidates his balance physical and psychologically and by consolidating it increases his resisting power when i attack you from the front you know exactly what’s coming at you and you can resist it more what does that mean from a leadership perspective that means that i i don’t want to have you resist my ideas by coming right at you for in the case of an army it rolls the enemy back towards the reserve supplies and reinforcements so the original front is driven back and warned thin new layers are added to the back so when you make the enemy retreat well guess what this is what the russians did to napoleon and to the nazis we’re just going to retreat yeah yeah you good job you beat us today cool we just got closer to our supply chain yeah we just got more reinforcements our communication lines got got shorter you made our job easier at the most it imposes a strain rather than producing a shock thus a move around to the enemy’s rear against the a move around the enemy’s front against his rear has the aim not only of avoiding resistance on its way but in its issue in the profoundest sense it takes the line of least resistance the equivalent in this psychological sphere is the line of least expectation they are two faces of the same coin this is to widen our understanding of strategy if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also and this line may no longer be the line of least resistance used to when we used to go on recons reconnaissance missions and we’d get put on reconnaissance missions like camp pendleton and you get up to camp pendleton and you’re supposed to be observing some area and there’s a one spot to observe from there’s like one bush you’re like we cannot it’s so tempting to go to that bush but guess exactly where the they’re gonna look they’re gonna look at that bush so you’re better off digging a hole doing whatever you got to do taking the worst looking bush you know there’s four bushes three of them are pretty good one of them sucks go to the one that sucks in studying the physical aspect we must never lose sight of the psychological and when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach calculated dislocate the opponent’s balance the mere action of marching indirectly toward the enemy and on the rear of his dispositions has not constituted the strategic and direct approach so just because you try and come around the rear doesn’t mean because if that’s what they think you’re going to do it doesn’t matter strategic art is not so simple such an approach may start by being an indirect relation to an enemy’s front but by the very directness of its progress towards the rear may allow the enemy to change his disposition so that soon becomes a direct approach a direct approach on a new front check because of the risk that the enemy may achieve such a change of front it is usually necessary for the dislocating move to be preceded by a move or moves which can best be defined as the term distract in a literal sense to draw asunder so we have to do multiple moves just like in jiu jitsu you can’t just do one move you can’t resin you can’t really even just do two you got to do multiple moves to make the enemy not sure what’s really important what’s really going on and you know i was i was doing a little bit of research because i always people will sometimes bring up d-day what about d-day frontal assault right yep yeah kind of guess what the deception that the allied forces did to make hitler and the nazis unaware i think it was something like i don’t think hitler committed all of his forces to normandy for seven weeks because they were expecting general patton that was the whole big scam like hey we got pat and he’s gonna come in this other spot and and so for seven weeks the nazis were like no don’t commit so even though it was it looked like a direct assault there was a massive fake going on that that germany didn’t commit their forces for seven weeks that’s crazy so it looked like a frontal soul i get it but man there was some distraction going on well just like he was he was just saying it’s it’s it’s only a frontal assault if the enemy recognizes as a frontal assault and then lines up his defenses against that frontal assault and the psychology of that the human nature reaction is the thing that actually matters the most is your response to my interaction and if you think it’s a frontal assault they’re going to react like it’s a frontal assault and you’re going to dig in and it was like hey something’s going something’s going on here like actually it’s a frontal assault you don’t know it yeah it actually isn’t a funnel at all it’s a flank because they are putting their defenses elsewhere yeah the purpose of this distraction is to deprive the enemy of his freedom of action and it should operate both the physical and psychological fear spheres in the physical it should cause a distension of his forces or their diversion to unprofitable ends so that they are too widely distributed and too committed elsewhere this is exactly what d-day was to have the power of interfering with one’s own decisively intended move which was we’re gonna hit it in the psychological fear sphere the same effect is sought by playing upon the fears this the fears of and by deceiving the opposing command stonewall jackson aptly expressed this in his strategical motto mystify mislead and surprise fur to mystify and mislead constitutes distraction while surprise is the essential cause of dislocation is through the distraction of the commander’s mind that the distraction of his forces follows the loss of his freedom of action is the sequel to the loss of his freedom of conception a more profound appreciation of how the psychological permeates and dominates the physical sphere has an indirect value for it warns us of the fallacy and shallowness of attempting to analyze and theorize about strategy in terms of mathematics to treat it quantitatively as if the issue turned merely on superior concentration of force at a selected place is as faulty as to treat it geometrically as a matter of lines and angles it’s not just numbers even more remote from the truth because in practice it usually leads to a dead end is the tendency of textbooks to treat war as mainly a matter of concentrating superior force in his celebrated definition of economy of force fock termed this the art of pouring out all one’s resources at a given moment on one spot of making use there of all truths and to make such a thing possible of making those troops permanently communicate with each other instead of dividing them and attaching to each fraction some fixed and invariable function its second part a result having been attained is the art of again so disposing the troops as to converge upon and act against a single new objective end quote it would have been so so there’s the there’s the uh economy of force like hey we’re going to put all of our forces in the right spot at the right time which we all know we learn that all the time and that’s that’s part of prioritize and execute that is part of prioritize and execute is listen you got multiple things you need to concentrate your forces on an objective efficiently it would have been more exact and he’s going to take up a little a little hit on this quote from from fox who by the way this is birdman uh uh ferdinand fox this is the the french allied commander world war one so we kind of already aren’t super stoked on him because guess what he did he carried out his strategy hey well we got to get more forces as we got to do concentrate all our forces when we blow that whistle we’re going to break through this time no here’s why it would have been more exact and more lucid to say that an army should always be so distrib distribute distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration this is what cover and move is this is what cover and move is is you and and there’s a doctrinal term and i used to tell this to the young seals there’s a doctrinal term called supporting distance and what supporting distance is you dave and me your platoon and my platoon or your company and my company or your battalion and my battalion we aren’t going to get so far apart that we can’t support each other so that means if if we only have rifles we’re going to be 400 500 yards from each other you know depending on the terrain if the terrain is you know mountainous or we might be closer than that because i want to be able to provide support to you if we have mortars cool now we can stretch it out a little bit more if we have artillery we can stretch it out even more but we need to be able to cover and move for each other we need to be able to support each other and if we get too far apart you’re alone man we had a term that we got to coin it was called fluid mutual support which is wait when you said we got to coin this expand bro so this is freaking good deal dave over here making stuff up listen i’m listening when we at top guns figured out like we used to have just superior equipment superior technology better machines more of them they worked better and we were fighting and i think i talked about this a while ago we were firing in fighting an inferior opponent to be totally honest with you our tactics were kind of straightforward it just wasn’t that complicated now we didn’t just like barge right in there and fight him but you know our tactics relied on the fact that in the end our stuff was better than your stuff and if it’s flown correctly well over time we couldn’t rely on that anymore their equipment got better than ours they were able to do things we couldn’t do and what we had to start doing is taking that same equipment and start to utilize them differently and one of the things we had to get away from was cover and move for airplanes used to be a thousand feet away two thousand feet away and you stay together i turn you turn you i go you go and your job as a wingman and how i graded your performance as a wingman is how well you stayed inside that what we called visual visual mutual sport it was like and if you lost sight of me believe me we you were gonna hear about in the debrief yeah and what we evolved to was because of inferior equipment we had to actually get farther away from each other so in simplest terms we could figure out who was the person who was the aircraft in the formation that was fundamentally the most at risk or the most likely to be engaged and the other aircraft could then flank or maneuver or come in from a different three-dimensional direction to support that person and it was fluid because it changed it wasn’t exactly on the 35 degree bearing line at five miles it it evolved based on weather based on weapons based on the formation and just like you described as and i had to know and if i got too far away i couldn’t support you and if i was too close to you i couldn’t maneuver in a way that allowed me to have an advantageous entry to the problem a flank because i was too too close to you and and while you were talking about that i was just thinking of the french approach to world war one this culminating thing versus just the standard combined arms effect oh cool i don’t need a million tanks i got a couple tanks here you don’t want to rocket the tanks cool they’re going to run you over you want to react to the tanks cool come out here holes we’re going to get you with artillery you don’t want to deal that artillery you’re going to dig in cool i’ll roll in with an aircraft and i don’t need an overwhelming force of any of those three but i i need them together in support of one another and i don’t know in the end who’s going to get the kill or who’s going to be the reason why i’m successful but you’re going to have to react to something and if you don’t one of those different arms those different supporting elements will eventually be the thing that causes you to lose supporting distance cover and move and and now fluid mutual support we better i’m gonna dude i should have known that i was gonna totally submarine your goals of getting through this by talking way too much i i i planned for this so we’ll we’ll wrap it up with another paragraph and then we’ll we’ll we’ll do the next on the next podcast here’s where he’s gonna break down uh fox’s statement a little bit he says because fox said uh the art of pouring all one’s resources so so liedell hart says the concentrate all is an unrealizable ideal and dangerous even as a hyperbole moreover in practice the minimum necessary may be a far larger portion of the total than maximum possible it would even be true to say that the larger the force that is effectively used for distraction of the enemy the greater the chance of the concentration succeeding in its aim for otherwise it may strike an object too solid to be shattered this is like um in jiu jitsu if you if i try and sweep you but it’s i’m not really trying to sweep you you don’t even have to react to it i have to really try and sweep you then if i really try and sweep you then you expose your neck boom cool you stick your neck out to you you know you push into me and boom there’s your neck i can get the guillotine if i don’t actually put enough force to get but if i put too much force into that it and you defend it well well now i’ve used a bunch of energy and it didn’t work and how often am i going to do that so we have to be careful and what he’s saying is you want to use this from what we talk a lot about a lot about at echelon front which is minimum force required like how much force do i need to use to get you to react and if if i only have to use you know ten percent of my force over here to get you to react that means i have ninety percent of my force to finish your finish the job on the flank closing this out superior weight at the intended decisive point does not suffice unless that point cannot be reinforced in time by the opponent yeah you can you can put a bunch i can go for your arm but if you’re going to grab with your other arm and defend it well it doesn’t matter that i singled out your arm it rarely suffices unless that point is not merely weaker numerically but has been weakened morally napoleon suffered some of his worst checks because he neglected this guarantee and the need for distraction has grown with the delaying power of weapons so there you go that’s a warm up we’re almost two and a half hours deep right now we’re talking it’s it’s only gonna get deeper from here um let’s let’s call it for right now let’s get into some i don’t know echo charles maybe the uh anything any closing statements dave all right let’s let’s roll into a little little quick uh activity with you know maybe a little bit of support sure uh you know i know we’re trying to be indirect but maybe there’s some direct ways we can kind of help ourselves out sure what do you got or some help in our on our path which includes being indirect as far as effectiveness goes concur yeah so i was talking with our friend carrie and you and i just kind of come to realize that this path is not that hard anymore it’s hard but it’s not as hard are you talking about the path the path okay that we’re all on and is why i didn’t know that this is when the path just got easier a little bit easier okay more light yeah easier it’s not easy okay oh it’s hard still but it’s easier in this way chocolate fuel boom this is why you drink energy drinks that’s no longer a problem if you’re on the path and you’re like into energy drink spray you got to get rid of those and sometimes it’ll take willpower i understand you know at the very least an adjustment period that might not be very comfortable yeah but it’s not like that anymore drink all the energy drinks you want anymore discipline go energy drinks good for you boom path easier yeah right then adjustment yeah i have to concur the pattern it just got easier controls with the correct it’s true also we want to have dessert right yeah well if you’re on the path well you gotta you gotta start excluding dessert from time to time in fact pretty much all the time on the path yeah the occasional dessert can happen i mean yeah my daughter’s birthday yesterday yes sir i understand um i was at raglan which is kind of like one of my go-to might be my favorite restaurant that’s your jam yeah and they have that that cast iron pan with the chocolate chip it’s yeah they call it the illegal yeah it’s good they’re like it’s so good it should be illegal good name so we had to order some illegals from my daughter’s birthday that’s her birthday right get that illegal girl right so when it showed up the ice cream just melts in the pan dude it’s a whole nother situation yeah i understand let’s face it to your point we can’t be doing that you know every day every day exactly we would love to probably not even more than once per month what if you could though because you don’t do it for the illegal necessarily most of us we do it because hey that that thing tastes good yeah you know let’s face it after dinner raglan’s i’m assuming you got some steak or something like this it’s not like you’re like starving and hungry after the steak you just want something sweet yeah that’s it’s it’s this is sad so you get that so you get it you get the illegal you got your thing sweet cool but you pay a price yep now on this new path we don’t got to pay the price look at that easier do it every day we’re talking about multiple i am talking about i’m talking about the monk train all day man all day so anyway yeah so and you get additional protein in the form of this dessert so boom right there path a little bit easier you see what i’m saying easier yeah um good news is also we got some other supporting elements uh for your joints joint warfare super cool oil we got stuff for you immunity well you know what you’re saying right now is actually a pretty big deal like if you think about if you think about the the fact that someone right now was like well they’re drinking three energy drinks a day yeah and it’s not good for them and it is gonna have long-term negative health effects legitimate well they’re doing it for a reason right they need the benefit of the energy drink whatever that is but but it’s like that’s not it’s a problem it’s a problem and and all of a sudden like that like with a snap of the fingers you can actually you can actually still get the benefits with no downside no that’s freaking crazy no problem yeah yeah same thing with dessert all the benefits sweetness goodness filling uh uh let’s face it there’s a certain texture too like that you kind of you know you want that mole oh yeah i’m getting crazy no but but it’s all true so you know does that go against the whole hey man the path is hard embrace the hardness okay but here’s here’s the dichotomy you turned me onto this okay it’s a big deal this is a big deal too okay oh geez i think i thought bh ladell hart had some info for us today but apparently echo charles are coming in with the facts the truth i’m doing the best i can talk through here to benefit the group um look our the goal isn’t to drink milk that’s not the goal it’s a means to an end i’m learning too okay check so the milk is the protein to help us recover from our workouts right you see insane yeah right getting jacked so it’s more efficient why should we fight that battle well we don’t have to the same scene cool take them all no battle no factor yeah easy money boom win without a fight we’re not choking down some crap yeah some chalky how much do you look forward to mulk very much so i look for i’m i get super amped oh yeah and it’s the kind and this is good enough i had a milk before we changed it actually normally i don’t do that but i don’t know before we train today because i got done with ef online at like what 12 30 and we weren’t going to train until 2 30 like you know because normally i don’t eat until after the train but today again it was calling you you know how certain desserts call your name that’s what was happening to you yeah yeah i understand i understand fully but guess what no problem this path that we’re on just got a little bit easier so you don’t have to worry about that anymore so yes like i said immediately i got you got immunity stuff as well cold war uh vitamin d3 boom take that i’ll guarantee you your path would be a little bit easier versus if you don’t take now we’re not getting sick all of a sudden negative which we like we don’t like to worry about you can get this you can get the drinks at wawa by the way on the east coast if you’re on the east coast you go to wawa get yourself you can clear out shelves whatever that’s kind of like what we’re doing sanctioned really sanctioned authorized yeah authorized cory my boy cory my cousin corey rolled in with an actual cooler to a wawa and just started clearing shelves straight up like what yeah that’s what we’re doing the worker’s just looking at him like he’s a cycle yeah uh you get a huawei you can get this stuff at vitamin shop vitamin shop has the whole line of uh the supplements yeah so you can go to vitamin shop or you go to jackalfield com and get some if you want some yep and if you’re interested in a little discount little free shipping a little not having to worry about remembering to make sure you’re always stocked mm-hmm get the subscription path just got a little easier easier even because the path just got even easier more efficient we’re not remembering we’re not worried about it we’re more efficient we can focus on something else no distraction technically bh ladel heart would be like oh you got a distraction going are you going to write down remember to order no we’ll just eliminate that we can focus our efforts exactly right 100 in a way it’s decentralized command 2 because pete guy’s over there they’re over they’re taking over that’s their jam now yeah and their country for you so you can go move elsewhere exactly all kinds of music you can subscribe is what we’re saying yes sir get free shipping check yep it’s true also originusa com this is where you can get your american-made goods durable goods as it were but what that means is you can get american-made denim jeans a few models there we’ve got delta 68 in the factory factory yeah boom and you say factory like they don’t i was at the ud udtc museum in fort pierce florida yeah hell yeah and yeah it’s awesome and they had a guy they had uh was like a statue no it’s not a statue it’s a mannequin is there a word for that mannequin okay there’s a mannequin but he’s dressed up like a like a nom seal and straight up just wearing jeans just straight up that’s what he’s in the case you know the glass case right right like uh like a like an action figure yeah a big one like a life yeah yeah you can get so we made those delta 68s because i know look i’m probably gonna be living multiple lives you know i’ll be back here as another fighter another war and when i come back it’s probably going to be back in nam again could be possibly i don’t know if the jungle i’m going to wear jeans and i’m going to wear delta 68 jeans and i just want the world to know that it makes sense and like i said they all are made in america from the even the raw materials the dirt to the shirt they’re to the shirt or the jeans as the case may be also there’s belts on there there’s some cool wallets on there hoodies athletic wear anyway there’s a lot of stuff on there you get what it’s all made in america all made in america originusa com also good news we have our own store we’ve been had our own store since day one which is again good news just in case you didn’t know was it day one day eight okay i think okay maybe i don’t know one of the early days we’ll say that it’s called jocko store so you go to jackostore com and this is where you can get your shirts hats hoodies rash guards this kind of stuff discipline equals freedom represent while we’re on the path so boom not only did the path get a little bit easier got a little bit cooler dude that’s my opinion johnstore com um oh also we have a subscription situation as well it’s called the shirt locker this is all the shirts that you may or may not see me sometimes dave burke now carrie wearing where you’re like oh i didn’t see that shirt on the store and you’re like oh where do i get that one where do i get that one i know i’m saying this because people are literally saying that to me or whatever you go to the shirt locker and you and you subscribe that’s where you get those shirts so yeah the designs are more um how should i say a little bit off off straight and narrow and more creative especially i can say it right now unless it’s called the shirt locker so subscribe for that one if you want okay yeah and by the way you can scrub to this podcast you can also check out jocko unraveling which i’m doing with daryl cooper we’re going hard in the paint with that one we got the grounded podcast we got the warrior kid podcast which i know i owe you also got the jocko underground the underground podcast where we’re we’re doing amplifying information we’re doing a lot of q a on that one because we have a little direct methodology you can ask questions so we’re doing a lot of q a bro yo you’ve been giving some good advice on that one and speaking from my position personally that one about the um 13 year old kids right the teachers trying to control the class and like sometimes they’re kind of they get kind of crazy sometimes but it’s like man they kind of get crazy some like what do i do how do i deal with that man that was a good one it was really good and a lot of that is yeah it’s just good questions coming in so hey if you want to get to if you want to listen to that we set this up because we need to have some kind of an alternative platform in case in case in case what well contingencies happen what if what if some of these platforms decide to start charging you money what if some of these platforms decide to start interjecting their own advertisements into them what if they just straight up censor us because they don’t like what we’re talking about any of these things could happen if those things happen we wanted to have our own backup plan so we have one jockowunderground com it costs 8 dollars and 18 cents a month to support the cause and if you can’t afford it no factor we’re the reason this isn’t like oh we don’t want you in the game we want you in the game if you can’t afford it email assistance jockowunderground com and we’ll take care we also have a youtube channel that you can also subscribe to if you want to see my assistant director skills which are in action in action on that origin usa also has a youtube channel if you want to see main ties skills doing some good work up there main tie yep let’s talk them today about some stuff i won’t go into it anytime all day yeah also psychological warfare if you don’t know what that is it’s an album jocko album with tracks jocko tracks telling you us how to get past and through our moments of weakness make them be less of a factor on this path boom got a little bit easier again now you got jocko there supplements that taste good no factor and boom you can just keep rolling on that path a little bit easier a little bit more luxurious you can also get flipsidecanvas com dakota myers company he’s putting stuff to hang on your wall stuff that’s cool made check it out we got a bunch of books final spin got a novel coming about novel stuff no stuff have you read the late have you read the final dave i don’t know i i’ve read i think you might have made a couple of small edits since then what’s your assessment you know what my assessment is the better assessment was my wife i was gonna say what about your wife’s assessment that was the real assessment yeah because she has no uh zero skin and or not skin in the game no loyalty yeah in fact she’s sick of hearing about me she’s probably looking to drop the hammer what was her assessment well the best assessment was uh she finished it in two sittings wow and that’s like going to bed i’m gonna crack the book open i’m like hey just hey read this tell me what you think kind of scenario not like a big pressure move and um she kind of got through two two thirds of it and then the next night finished and she’s like that was really good like that the the finished book in a day in two readings like two sittings uh speaks volumes that’s a good deal it’s good uh so that’s coming out actually the date change on when it comes out it’s coming out now no it’s coming out a little bit earlier okay yeah seems like the demand is kind of kicking good looks like we’re moving that right i think it’s november 6 now no so if you want that you know the deal if you want that first edition leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluation the protocols discipline was freedom field field manual way the warrior kid one two three and four about face we talked about it today mikey and the dragons liking the dragons it’s incredible how often i have to talk about mikey on the mikey and the dragons i’m gonna explain that story to adults because people like i’m afraid to do this i’m afraid to do that it’s like oh it’s a common question and even from leaders like i’m afraid to address this it’s like all the time how about face hackers we talked about it today and then extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership we have a leadership consultant consultancy we solve problems through leadership if you want to check that out go to echelonfront com we have online training as well it’s like a leadership gym right with trainers yeah with trainers what do you just think you’re going to just stay in shape by sitting at home no you got to go to the gym how’s your leadership going to get better how’s your leadership just going to even stay at a good level got to go to the leadership gym that’s what we’ve got efonline com yeah efonline com extreme ownership academy so if you want to learn about leadership code we got courses on there we’re doing live stuff all the time we’re doing live stuff all the time you want to ask me a question go there i’ll answer your question and i’ll actually dig down and dave will come in off the top ropes life will be flanking the whole situation like we’re there and we have the muster we just got done with orlando next muster is phoenix in august august 17th and 18th las vegas october 28th and 29th go to extremeownership com everything we’ve done is sold out so if you want to come go and register we also have ef battlefield we also hate if battlefield we don’t have one on the calendar right now the next thing we do have on the calendar is ftx where you’re gonna put on gear laser tag gear we have this high speed laser tag system and you’re going to run operations and learn these leadership lessons the next one we’re doing is in san diego day go right here in sd yes sir july 12th and 13th so if you want to come there’s only 32 seats for that we haven’t really talked about it yet so we kind of we kind of turned it on when they started filling up we filled up another one so here we go july 12th and 13th ftx in san diego you’re going to run operations you’re going to put these principles to use give it check it out and then if you want to help service members you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families check out mark lee’s mom mama lee heard she’s got a charity organization doing all kinds of great work for veterans one of the main things she’s doing is getting medical treatments for our vets that maybe aren’t being covered by the va if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to americasmightywarriors org and if you want more of my protracted pontifications or you need more of echo’s misplaced meanderings or perhaps even more of dave’s animated editions you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram and on facebook echo is adequate charles dave is at david r burke and i am at jocko willink and to the military service men and women out there thank you for putting the strategy of freedom into tactics and keeping the world from darkness same goes to our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thanks for keeping the world safe from evil here at home and everyone else out there the direct approach is not as direct as you think so think again and maybe maybe just try taking the long way around because the long way around you might find out ends up being the shortest distance between two points until next time this is dave and echo and jocko