this is jonco podcast number 265 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening and also joining us tonight is dave burke good evening dave good evening so last podcast we introduced marine corps doctrinal publication one tac four which is called competing and of course we only made it one chapter deep because well there’s a lot to go into and so we’re gonna continue on but first we’re gonna take a little tangential trip into my head a little bit so in reading that manual and as i talked and i talked about this i started correlating competing with influencing and you take that one step further which isn’t very a very big step what is influencing influencing is leading that’s what you’re doing so one of the main things that i liked about this marine corps concept of competing was this idea of this continuum of competition that they present in this book that goes from pure peace on one side just pure peace and then it starts to move to the right it goes to economic competition and then classic diplomacy and then political warfare and then there’s this gray zone and you get into hybrid hybrid war and then you get into the threat of violence and then you finally cross the what they call the violence threshold and then so you’re now you’re using violence and then even violence has a place that that expands on this continuum it goes to from conventional war and then it keeps going further and further to the right to get to total war where one side is using any and all means necessary to completely destroy their enemy and and so with that i started thinking about the continuum of influence or the continuum of leadership that we have to use every day to lead and influence people and and it draws some very interesting parallels to the continuum of competition that the marine corps talks about and there’s one specific mark in there that really showed a lot of similarities to me so if we look at this continuum from the beginning like on the far side you have someone that you don’t care about you don’t care what they’re doing you’re not trying to influence them you don’t want them to do anything at all you just don’t care that’s they’re off they’re like off the spectrum i guess they’re touching it but they’re not on it yet so we don’t have to worry about them we don’t care what they’re doing at all now as soon as you cross that first little threshold well now you’ve got someone that you want to influence you want them to follow a plan or you want them to execute an action or you want them to execute a behavior so now we’re on to the continuum of influence or the continuum of leadership so what does it start with well it starts we’re trying to build a relationship with that person that’s that’s where we’re going to begin and what’s interesting what’s the best way to start building a relationship with someone oh you let them start to influence you so as soon as you’re saying oh hey that’s a good i like that i like what you’re doing and you know there’s that you’ve heard of this thing mirroring have you heard this yeah so mirroring is the physical oh if dave’s sitting with his hand on his on his cheek then i do the same thing and it’s a little indicator i’m allowing you to see that you’re kind of influencing me and it’s a positive thing so that’s that’s the base thing right there a physical actual mimicry of what you’re doing mirroring what you’re doing and that’s my first way of showing you that i’m allowing a little influence so now let’s start to build a good a good uh rapport between us so that’s that’s you know like the lowest level and then what i’m gonna do i’m gonna listen to what you have to say and so i’m starting to build this relationship and people don’t think this way people people miss this right people don’t understand that when i mirror you and when i listen to you i’m actually starting to gain influence people totally miss that all the time they completely missed that but that’s level one right it’s it’s a it’s an incredibly important level but it’s level whatever point zero eight or whatever that number is so so we’re just listening we’re letting them model where we’re mirroring their behavior a little bit eventually as we start to escalate we start to model our behavior for them a little bit we start acting a certain way we’re not asking you to do it we’re just doing it and we’re hoping that that influence rubs off on the other person and now they start to they start to do the same thing and and this is another thing that you can do you do it subconsciously maybe do it consciously but you know people are in a line at a grocery store and a new line opens up and if no one sees it if you just if no one sees it you can just walk over to that line and then people see it and they kind of model your behavior and you’re kind of influencing a bunch of people that you don’t even know but it’s just a way of of of modeling behavior and setting this what we hear all the time right set the example set a good example that’s a good way to lead for sure that’s that’s that’s outstanding eventually though maybe that’s not enough right maybe we’re trying to maybe we’re trying to influence someone to do something either follow a plan adjust their behavior um take a certain action if we’re trying to get someone to do that and we haven’t they haven’t really followed our modeling now we got to start escalating and going a little bit harder so what’s a little bit harder well asking good questions asking ernest questions oh hey hey dave why do you do this like that and it’s just a way and then listen so that as dave explains to me why he’s doing something a certain way maybe it reveals to him because now he’s looking at it from a detached perspective that’s an amazing thing about asking someone a question when you ask someone a question it detaches them from what they’re doing that’s what makes it such a powerful tool because when dave is just sitting there with his pen and he’s fiddling with his pen he’s not even noticing that he’s doing it which he’s literally doing right now but as soon as i say hey if i didn’t want him to do that if it was blurring the camera or something hey why are you why do you keep fiddling with that pen he has to detach to actually figure out why he’s doing it which is a great thing because we always want people to detach and see things from the outside so just asking an earnest question is a really good escalation on this continuum that we’re going through now that little question and answer session that we’re having kind of leads to a discussion where we’re actually having a discussion well you know sometimes i just like to fidget it makes me think oh that’s interesting you know so we can have a we can have an actual conversation and that whole discussion that we’re having if i’m if i’m utilizing this correctly i’m guiding you i’m guiding dave in this case i’m guiding dave to discover what i’m trying i want you to discover the fact that hey if you’re fidgeting with that pen people aren’t even paying attention to what you’re saying and it’s making noise on camera so it’s like i won’t but i want you to discover those things and i want you to actually tell me about them because then it comes from you and then that’s infinitely more powerful so but but sometimes it doesn’t work and sometimes even though someone detaches they just don’t they can’t get far enough away from that thing so where does it go from there well now i’m gonna maybe offer an indirect little statement about what’s going on you know just a little you know do you think do you think it’s um distracting when you do that if someone’s watching you i have you know i’ve always found that distracting if someone’s talking to me but they’re fidgeting you know so now i’m just i’m going a little it’s indirect but it still is i’m starting to put a little bit more pressure with that statement and of course now what am i going to listen to what you have to say and so where does it escalate from there now dave’s still not still not paying attention to him he’s still just sitting there fidgeting with the pen and it’s distracting to everyone it’s making noise on the it’s messing up the focus the cameras all kinds of problems but dave doesn’t care or whatever he hasn’t he hasn’t seen it yet so then maybe we escalate a little bit more and now you know it’s my my metaphor is about to lose a little bit of traction because that’s such a minor thing that this next step it well to say hey why don’t we make a pro like a pro and con list about fidgeting your pen right now if we were talking about you know going into a new market area with a business and you were like hey we’re going we’re going and i had tried to influence you and i tried to ask you questions about it and i couldn’t get you there then my next escalation might be hey why don’t we do a pros and cons on on that i’m still not coming at you i’m just asking asking like hey why don’t we do some pros and cons that way once again what am i doing you’re going to have to detach to a pros and cons that’s one of the benefits of doing a pros and cons list is it detaches you takes some of those emotions away and now we’re sitting here saying okay dave is detached to say well these are some positive things it helps me think it gives me something to do with my hands or let’s go to the market area hey here’s the positive things about the market area we don’t have any stores there um there seems to be a decent market here’s the cons it’s gonna that’s high rents in that area whatever so now you can start to reveal you reveal instead of me revealing you hey man the rents over there ridiculous instead of me revealing that to you which offends you in general it offends people to just tell them anything it’s much better when you tell me now all of a sudden it’s your idea and this is a beautiful thing so that’s like sort of the next thing so another little level of escalation that you could do on this continuum where i’m moving in that direction i’m still trying to indirectly influence you and maybe the next thing i do is offer some kind of a bargain some kind of a negotiation where i say hey you know maybe now’s not the right time to go in that market area maybe we look at it next quarter right so it’s a little negotiation to try and see if if if i can get you to think a little bit more about it it’s just a negotiation and look maybe you go yeah yeah because maybe you saw just enough maybe you saw maybe it just revealed just enough of the problems that you’re going yeah you know what maybe we do you know do this maybe maybe we went with the next quarter yeah yeah we can do that and there’s another little technique that’s going on there too which is i’m giving you an out right yeah we’ll wait till next yeah that’s probably a good idea right so you are sort of you start to see some of those issues but you don’t want to concede that your idea was not good so instead you just can see that it will just push it off a little bit but it’s still a good idea so that way your ego remains intact and it’s all good but maybe you didn’t catch that so now we’re gonna start to brush up against we’re starting to brush up against me being just direct with you which is revealing some shortfalls like just saying to you hey you know the rents in that area are really high and by the way two similar businesses went into that market and both of them washed out and that happened in the last 18 months those are real concerns and even when i do that so now i’m showing you like those are no longer things that you revealed those are now things that i’m telling you so this is a this is a transition and and and i’m sure you’re tracking this but this whole thing is interlaced with leadership capital this whole thing is interlaced so the other ones when you when i allow you to reveal something to me my leadership capital goes up when i tell you something my leadership takes a little it takes a little bit of it not nothing crazy but we’re not neutral right some of those in the middle might be neutral so i’m still going to give you an out you know when i say hey you know the other two other companies have gone in their last 18 months and so maybe we should and i give you some timing out you know maybe we wait another year and i give you some kind of an out where you go yeah you know that’s probably a good idea so we’re still we still have a possibility that you kind of see what a good move is and you’re kind of on board with what i’m saying which is what i’m trying to do this whole time i’m trying to influence you right trying to lead you trying to influence you then it’s just straight up i’m just going to tell you what the shortfalls are and if that doesn’t happen you know offer them another option what’s another option to their plan what’s another option to their behavior you know hey maybe putting stores directly in that neighborhood how about this one that’s you know four miles to the north so so yeah you know that’s also a good neighbor so i give you an out i give you an option that still kind of gratifies your ego and your idea but at the same time it moves you in a little bit of a direction where i want to go so we’re still doing all right and then the the kind of the final sort of indirect way is you know hey dave why don’t we put one in this market area over here now and then next time we’ll put one in this marketer that you want to go into so again a lot of these are just kind of bargaining and kind of repetitive but they’re all different levels of bargaining from hey we do this later to hey we will do this or we hold off there’s a bunch of different ways to bargain through it and then eventually so so now you go through these methods these attempts to discuss something or to to influence someone and every one of these attempts is an indirect attempt every one of these attempts is me trying to get you to kind of come on board with what i’m saying without by your own by your own volition right it’s your choice that you say yeah you know what we should do this later or yeah you know what that our market area to the north is good so all those are your choice every one of these i’m giving you to you every one of these attempts but we might fail even with all those attempts and then at some point you know so in the marine corps what they do is they go through this whole continuum and then they get eventually to this point where they cross the threshold of violence so what does that look like in influence what does that look like in leadership it’s the threshold of going from indirect to direct and now i am absolutely it’s going to cost me leadership capital at this time i’m now it’s now going to cost me leadership capital which hey look there’s times we have leadership capital in the bank and if i’ve been working with dave for five years and we’ve done a bunch of stuff and it’s all gone great and he’s risen up through the company and all of a sudden i i gotta call in some chips and say hey man you know what we’re not doing that and he goes got it you know that i’m not saying it doesn’t cost me something but i can afford it but when you cross the threshold of from indirect to direct now sudden it’s definitely going to cost you like i said you might have money in the bank but you might have leadership cap in the bank but it’s gonna cost you so now now is when we’re saying hey you know what we’re gonna have to we cannot go into that market area again this is the most gentle way to do it it’s we you know it’s it’s it’s us it’s our team i’m on your side you know we we can’t go into that market area right now and you know then the response could still be you know if dave’s if dave’s my subordinate and dave start you know he most people get hey we can’t go into most people get the hint and by the way we’ll get to this the the number of times that i make it in across the threshold of direct is so so minuscule i can’t remember times so most people by the same say look we cannot do that we cannot go to that market or they go um jacqueline’s got a pretty good oh yeah and they they feel a little bit of it they feel that direct and they immediately say okay i got it i see where i see where we’re going with this it’s not happening of course sometimes doesn’t work right and sometimes you say no this this is what we are doing we are not going in there and it can even escalate to no dave you cannot open up another store that now this is direct right this is it i’m ordering you because i’m the boss i’m ordering you we will not go into that market area we are not going to build a store there and then you will not do that so this is a direct thing it’s not not even me anymore it’s not even us it’s you and then what so what happens after that what happens after that is now you now you now you have to have a stick right out comes this because we we we had the carrot out for a while and some of those bargainings can be carrots hey dave you know if you can hold off on that marketer i’ll give you this other marketer over here that’s a carrot i use that carrot i didn’t mention it but yeah that’s another indirect way if i can draw you away from this bad area to this other area with a carrot that’s positive we just got a bunch of intel that this other market area is really starting to ramp up why don’t you put something there all of a sudden you go oh yeah okay i didn’t know that cool you jump on that carrot well now when you don’t when you go through this escalation now at some point i have to get out a stick and say if you try and open up something in that market area i’m actually gonna remove you from that position or i’m gonna dock your pay or whatever the whatever the punishment becomes i’ll write you up whatever it’s gonna become and that’s sort of where we get to you know theoretically in the business world of the highest level of escalation is like i’m gonna fire you right hey if you don’t do what i’m telling you to do you are going to get fired i’m going to fire you and of course you go outside the business world you go into the into the streets as they say well there’s the there’s the threat of violence comes next which is hey you either get you either move your car out of my parking space or i’m going to punch you in the head that’s a threat of violence and what happens after that violence i grab you i put you back in your car and i just you know say you better back out of this thing right now and and if you really want to take this to the next level the ultimate is the the the existential threat which is if you don’t do what i’m telling you to do i’m gonna kill you right so so and it’s important to it’s important to understand what that that’s there and i’ll tell you why because a lot of people they want to start they want to start this this continuum at the threat that’s where they begin that’s where they begin with their employees they start with this is what you’re gonna do that’s where they start and once once you once you cross it here’s the thing so once you cross that threshold of direct or overt that’s another good word over leadership meaning i’m telling you exactly this is totally overt there’s no there’s no influence happening there it’s just me telling you what’s gonna happen and when we do that when we when you start out there you just don’t have anywhere to go you don’t have anywhere else to go so the lower you are on the continuum the better off you are as a leader and in fact in fact if you go negative if i go if i’m your boss dave and i go negative and i actually let you influence me and i say you know what dave that looks like a great market here i didn’t even think of going in there let’s let’s do it my i’m gaining more even more leadership capital so it’s even better if i’m in the negative if i’m if i’m in that other chart where you’re actually influencing me so if we can do that then we don’t ever have to get to that threshold and i like i said i i the amount of times i’ve crossed that threshold in my life from a leadership perspective is freaking tiny and i’ll tell you where let’s just throw one one place that happens all times it happens with kids all the time right with kids all the time it’s it’s clean your room why because i said so there you go yep you just went right to the hey direct overt i’m gonna order you what to do horrible thing to do what happens with employees happens up and down the chain of command and here’s what’s interesting when you are you when you cross the threshold of direct and you cross the threshold of overt you there’s a there’s a equal and opposite reaction right so every time you bark at someone they’re they might do what you said but there is an equal and opposite reaction that they are looking for you to fail they’re looking to sabotage they’re looking to cause problems the stronger the orders the more you yell at somebody the stronger that backlash is going to be that’s the reality of the situation and a lot of people a lot of people need to think about this so in the same way that the marine corps put together this manual to let everybody know that there’s that they’re competing all the time you should also know that there’s a continuum that you’re on a continuum of competition all the time and there’s also a continuum of leadership and by the way it’s up and down the chain of command too and i didn’t i’m not going to like dig deep into this right now we’ll do it later but when you talk about up the chain of command there’s a continuum as well it starts off with just compliance right dave tells me to do something he’s my boss cool i do it what’s the next level i question what he’s saying hey dave why are we doing that what’s the next level hey dave i don’t think we should do that we get some resistance going then we get to objection this is a bad idea and then we eventually get to refusal and then we get to mutiny so there’s a continuum there as well and there’s some people that start off you know if they don’t have a if they’re not thinking strategically they go right to this this doesn’t make any sense that’s where that’s where they go right too they’re jumping right there and now all of a sudden what are they going to get back an equal and opposite reaction which says shut up and do what i told you to do so we don’t want to go to war we want to build relationships we want to build relationships with other countries we other nation states we want to have relations we don’t want to go to war war costs us money and lives we don’t want that we don’t want to go to war with our employees we don’t want to go to war with our teammates if you recognize this continuum you can start to say oh i see what’s going on i’m escalating how much am i going to escalate what’s the next lowest minimum step i could take in my escalation so that’s what we need to do we need to pay attention to that i don’t have to do this i can barely think of times when i’ve had to do this and wise because i listen up what other people have to say i dig in i mean i said don’t dig in to my position i don’t think my position is infinitely better than yours i think probably if you and i both wanna kill bad guys and win the war our ideas are gonna be pretty close i think if we both wanna take care of our clients and and make profit our ideas are gonna be pretty close they’re gonna be pretty close close enough that i can be fairly agreeable with whatever it is someone else wants to do but it’s a continuum that we have to pay attention to just like competing what do you got dave you’re over there taking notes i was i was just thinking i mean i’m listening to what you’re saying and i’m making the connection and you’re using you’re using examples that i actually get to live i lived in the military but i get to live that now too because i have relationships with the clients we work with i have relationships inside of on front i have relationships at different in different ways even with you and there are times that you and i are working together there are times that you’re helping me almost in a support role with a client and there’s times that you’re the ceo of the company i’m running one of the departments as you’re talking about that i’m picturing this this continuum and like okay where’s the threat of violence where does physical violence where does war come in the more you make deposits or the more the more you take the indirect approach the more you get to keep doing that and the more you go to the direct thread the more you have to use that and just the idea of the recognition is that and i’m just thinking of those terms of the more indirect you are the more leadership deposits i make the more that’s the technique i get to use because the more i let you influence me the more likely you’re going to be doing the things you want to do that help us get to the inside and i never have to i never have to move down that i almost never have to move down that continuum i’m trying to think of a time where i’m trying to think of a time where you had to escalate in a way that i recognized and i i’ve been working four years now i’m not saying that that hasn’t happened i’m not saying that the escalation hasn’t occurred but it’s i can’t think of a time where i went oh damn i kind of i kind of pushed him up the stair step so it has been subtle enough the times however many times has happened but the reason it works even though subtle escalations the reason they work is because that’s the technique you always use so so the idea of the threat of violence especially if that’s your first move it’s so limiting it gives you so few options after that that it’s such a bad it’s not a bad first move it’s even a bad sixth or seventh month i think there’s this idea that there are so many things and i think the part of that as a leader is that i want to avoid war as well even if i’m the boss even if i’m in charge that’s not what i want and i think the way you close it was because the equal and opposite reaction and the satisfaction of knowing your way you’re going to win is not should not be enough to to make and i as a parent makes the most sense i know i’m going to win that war with my kid if i tell my kid to clean his room because i said so he is going to clean his room yep what a great victory yeah and and yeah for how long until the reaction from him becomes so big and so violent that i lose all influence over him yeah the the other thing is as i brush up against um hey well maybe it’s the time maybe it’s the time to go direct in this situation most of the time i have to weigh that against okay well what does that get me strategically right where does that get me strategically if i’ve got to say you know what dave this you need to you need to do it this way from now on i want you to use this font on the powerpoints right whatever thing you want to come up with where does that get me strategically all you have to do is take one step back and say wait a second where does that get me strategically does that improve my relationship with dave does this make him want to do a better job does this like it you just have to take one step back and you go oh yeah this is dumb this is a dumb move what i should do is is be a better influencer have a better relationship explain myself better do some bargaining talk about it maybe i’m wrong maybe the font that he’s using is actually better for these and and and by the way has he picked a font that’s illegible right has he picked a font that’s illegible is it is it cyrillic is that the right word i don’t know cyrillic is that the right word like the russian russian yeah is it izzy picks a font that is illegible in english right and then then i kind of have to make a stand but if it’s legible if people can read it why am i freaking out the answer is i’m stupid i want to waste my leadership capital on something that doesn’t matter but by the way up and down the chain of command because if i said hey dave what do you think of that font you know what you’d say to me you’re like well i’ve been using it but what does it not look good and i’d say well i don’t know it’s a little bit unclear from a distance you’d say oh i’m going to fall on my sword about this spot no you’d actually say oh well which one have you been using and i’d say oh i’ve been using ariel because it has sharp edges which i like and you say oh click down drop drop the menu there’s ariel you click on it yeah you’re right that does look pretty good jocko and i go gee thank you and you say you know what i’m going to change all my briefs to ariel because just vice versa i’m not sitting here telling you use cyrillic fonts that can’t be read by by english speaking humans so you’re so what do we do i’m i’m offering a little suggestion and you’re going oh yeah that’s a great suggestion my leadership capital went up your leadership capital went up it’s a beautiful thing or we can have world war seven about a font it’s such a tactical loss for you to say it’s first of all to tackle a loss from you say you need to change this font this you need to use arial because that’s what i use yeah okay great oh hey by the way it’s different that font’s different on other systems and now it looks like just a horrible thing if you’re smart you go hey oh you like ariel cool got it we’re moving forward be surprised be surprised all right it’s interesting isn’t it it’s interesting how you kind of use the pen fidgeting example on dave over here but you literally did me like that did i really yeah we have it remember i was clicking the pen long time ago yeah yeah yeah it was on online oh you need to post it there and you would i i did post it i know what i said i said do you think the mic picks up that noise yeah do you think that likes and you know what you said you said no i don’t think so but you didn’t dig in no but then you kind of clicked it a couple times while we were just quiet and you know what you heard click click click click click click click and then i laughed yeah and i did it it was weird it kind of was it was almost like in not slow motion but kind of like i could slowly within the span of i would say maybe six seconds i slowly picked up on what you’re doing there like why you said it like that like you’re saying hey stop doing the clicking just stop clicking that’s what you’re saying and but you said it in this way hey do you think that that that’s going to happen and the way the tone everything like you could tell you knew what you were doing with the way you delivered that question here’s the here’s the no kidding the the no kidding when i asked you that question i was earnestly asking that question like do you think that’s going to show up now it’s an earnest question do you think that clicking is going to show up on this podcast it’s an earnest question i probably had a pretty good suspension because i can freaking hear it through my headphones for 15 minutes but you got to detach from those emotions and you got to ask her in this question because maybe if it’s not going to show up why am i worried about it i’m not going to let it i’m not going to let it bother me if it’s not going to show up it’s not going to be on the audio then who cares i’m not going to care about that if you want to click your pen all day cool it’s not bothering me it’s not going to be on that we’re good so it’s an earnest question but i mean it’s it’s we did know the answer yeah kind of because we can hear it you know it’s kind of interesting we’ll see because you know i did kind of say no i don’t think so or i forget exactly what i said get the replay yeah but i feel like if i remember correctly i was kind of at least at the very least implied that like no no it’s all good almost for just for a split second though the thing is that was a version of me like defensively i was about to say that wasn’t really that was uh instinctual defense instinctual exactly like that instinctual defense yeah yeah and then but i was so it was so not like just natural yeah but it was so not called for like on a like a primal level if you will like it was so not helpful that i felt that it was so not called for and i don’t i don’t have to dig in on this click in the pen let’s face it like i know that it’s like a habit you know i mean clicking pens to have it and then what made it additionally interesting just a little teeny tiny interaction was that i was like oh man i do it like out of habit right there’s the excuses like trying to explain like oh i know how to have it and then instead of you saying there’s no excuse or whatever you were just like oh and then you grabbed like the nearest non-clicking pin and just simply gave you bargaining with options that was the carrot right the carrot like oh maybe deviate your attention from that yeah there you go affect it you know the things that fall into the category of indirect and direct like the techniques you can use can actually i was thinking about that conversation can actually change if early in a relationship or relationship that doesn’t have a lot of mutual respect or you don’t have any of that leadership capital built you can say uh hey dave don’t don’t click your pen and i’d be like okay i’ll probably comply but in my mind like dude what’s the deal and i might i might have that natural that little reaction that little ego hit and then that little resistance or even maybe a little resentment whatever it is and this is a small example but it would fit in the category of direct i don’t naturally like that but over time if you’ve actually done the things you were just talking about and you’ve ex you’ve built enough capital what falls as indirect or influenced that actually can expand you can say to me right now hey don’t click that pen and i’m going to have no reaction to it because i’m going to think oh he’s only telling me that for my own benefit for the benefit like i’m not going to have that rash so that that what appears to be a direct that you’re saying something directly to me i don’t even register that as a director that actually fits in in the category of at a minimum there’s no withdrawal there so even the things that you do as little as they are the options for indirect leadership actually can grow things that would normally be outside there where i would have some sort of problem with you saying that we’re at i think uh muster three and you go hey when you’re doing q a you say i think you said something like you say uh in between don’t do that anymore and the way you said it didn’t bother me at all but it could be that if you have that conversation with somebody and you don’t have any leadership capital buildup they might not like that so you being able to say that to me is a function of the trust that we have the the influence that that we’ve shared and and the amount of leadership capital you have that you can actually kind of be direct and it doesn’t bother me that it would in a way that it would i just comment you know day one like i don’t like the way you talk do it differently and i’m not gonna like that no matter who i am so even what you can do what you can get away with in a sense of what is still a leadership capital deposit that will grow as well yeah that that’s that’s why it’s all interlaced with leadership capital because if you start off day one by saying i don’t like the way you talk that’s you you just went into a deficit immediately yeah and now you’ve got to dig your way out of that that’s why it’s totally interlaced with leadership capital because the more leadership capital you have the more when you need to now if i said hey dave you’re saying uh when you talk and hey dave this answer was bad and hey dave the way you presented this your slides were all they didn’t look good and hey and i just started everything was negative well i’m eventually going to run out of leadership capital and start going in a bad way and your your attitude is all jocho does is just tell me what i do wrong and i guess i can’t do anything right and i guess i just don’t even need to be here and i just go look for another job it just get you know because i i’ve expended all my leadership capital so it’s completely intertwined with leadership capital completely intertwined with leadership capital but just like people you know i said this on ef online the other day i people usually think they have more leadership capital than they do they they usually think they’re just rolling deep in in in leadership capital in their own little heads they think of course so i always kind of treat every situation as if okay you know i i’m i’m lean i’m running lean it’s gonna be lean christmas as my parents used to tell me gonna be lean christmas so i always think i don’t have leadership capital to spare because also what if i really need leadership capital tomorrow what if tomorrow i go hey dave i know it’s your your anniversary your 10-year anniversary your 20-year anniversary or whatever and i know that you’re supposed to go to uh the mountains with your wife for three days and we just had a client call and you now have to go to oklahoma to talk to them and that i might have to do that tomorrow and that’s the way it is so am i really how much how how where do i want that account right i want that account to be as built up as i possibly can so that means i’m not going to waste leadership capital on little things that don’t matter not gonna happen yeah that’s why the default no matter where you are should almost always be almost always be on that side of there the default should be on that side of the spectrum yeah and it’s weird too because you have the you have the threshold of violence we have the the on the continuum on the war continuum on the com on the competing continuum there’s a threshold of violence there’s actual real violence with with influencing people like you have to admit that that you can push people around and you can smack them and you can beat them up like that’s a there’s a there’s a threshold of violence on the on the influence on the influence continuum before that there’s there’s a one between direct and indirect so you cross that one which is a which is a huge one that’s like the big one yeah now of course i guess the threshold of violence is a big one too on influence because now you’re getting charged with assault or murder or murder depending on what level of violence you took it to so it’s important to think about these things and with that we’re going to jump into this this this whole thing man i mean i just like have just been thinking about this non-stop which is pretty normal for me to think about these things non-stop so competing we’re u s marine corps brand new manual one tac four it’s called competing last uh last time we covered chapter one this time we’re covering chapter two this one’s chapter two is called the theory of competition and it says competition as an act of policy as states engage in competition or try to shape the competitions ongoing among the range of state and non-state actors involved in areas of interest to states they develop policies frame to frame order and apply resources to this activity marines need to understand policy how it’s developed and how it relates to ongoing competition my little note here just says what are you doing this is me making notes to myself what are you doing what are you doing where are you at do you know what your what competition are you in you know i had a it was an early pop it was a pretty early podcast i don’t know which one but when i started talking about what game are you playing and and you can be playing the wrong game with your life and if you’re looking up and you’re like man i’m doing everything i can but i just i’m not putting any points on the board well if you’re playing soccer you might not be putting any points on the board because there’s only one goal a game or three maybe you should be playing basketball where you can score 48 points a game sure so with this competition what are you competing in and who are you competing against goes on marines are frequently asked to provide input to policymakers as they deliberate understanding the larger context around policy decisions helps marines determine the broader intent beside behind specific decisions which in turn helps us make sound supporting plans what does that mean everyone should know why they’re doing what they’re doing like war marines should think of competition as serving policy since we acknowledge competition as an enduring condition that’s a great that’s a great phrase want to adopt that one enduring condition it’s just ongoing it’s forever in internal relations then we need to take equally and equally long view when it comes to policy as well u s vital interests have remained relatively stable over time for example since world war ii they’ve been framed in various ways while consistently calling for the maintenance of our constitutional values protection of the american homeland and people promotion of american prosperity and the advancement of the american influence in the world the contemporary environment will affect these specifics of policy but these but the enduring foundation for it consists of stable interest such as these so what what the reason i and again sometimes i look like oh we can kind of breeze over this part and then i say no you can’t because if you if you think about your life okay you can think about your business for sure what is it that your business is trying to do like do you think a marine wakes up in the morning and says okay today i’m going to maintain or maintain our constitutional values is he saying all right i’ve got to protect the american homeless people we kind of we kind of know that one promotion of american prosperity so there’s these there’s these things that are so big such big strategic goals that they shape every decision that you make they should the advancement of american influence around the world if a marine goes out and does something stupid in name a foreign country goes out and acts like guns gets drunk and act like an idiot has he helped the advancement of american influence in the world no he hasn’t he and and that’s what he’s gonna hear from his commanding officer you just made all marines look bad and you just made america look bad by getting drunk and getting in a fight or whatever you did that was stupid and that marine can’t deny that he says roger sir it was a bad move if that marine would have been thinking a little bit more strategic maybe he would have maintained a little bit more level head on the beers you know i had a marine one time i was on a ship i was on a ship and look we know we we know that i love the marine corps i was on a ship and when you’d pull in to port you have to get in line to get off the ship and sometimes it take an hour or two hours so what we would do is we’d work out as soon as we got as soon as we hit the pier we would work out this is like 1990 whatever we’d we’d hit the pier work out and by the time we got done working out took a shower then you could just walk right off the ship because all the marines were already gone so one time i did that like me and my buddies we got we hit the pier we start working out we get done working out take a shower it’s been an hour and a half we come walking up to leave so these guys have been off the ship for an hour and a half they are carrying a young marine back onto the ship just completely brain dead from alcohol so got to be careful out there um but so so so when you look at if you look at the marine corps has these kind of broad things that they’re saying this is what we’re doing what do you have in your life what do you have in your business what do you have in your business okay just like that young marine if he’s led well he’s gonna say you know what i the whole marine corps is relying on me to make america look good got it that’s what a good marine is gonna say if you’re running a a business and you’ve got a cashier i’ve been using cashiers a lot because you know why because they’re front line and they’re interacting with people if you’ve got a cashier that treats a customer bad he’s making the whole company look bad if he doesn’t know that okay and then what about your life what are you trying to do in your life what are you trying to where are you trying to go with your life what’s the broad what’s the broad strategic mark that you’re trying to make do you have one do you have one and if you don’t have one how are you making decisions you’re making decisions for with no with no steering whatsoever without a compass um so these these are enduring interests enduring interests provide marines a potential source of competitive advantage adhering to our values when done as part of a comprehensive strategy can serve to attract others and work in harmony harmony with marines with what marines learned from an early age values such as freedom of expression and press freedom can help frustrate the plans of some competitors positive some interests such as increasing american prosperity also help attract allies and partners this is especially true when we can when we can show how our interests align with theirs in that interesting if we can work together we’re going to be better off we’re stronger together we’re stronger together than we are fighting each other domestic policy politics affects the policy decisions of almost all competitors and the resulting character of all nearly all competitions everything you do everything you do impacts the competitors and the competition itself as mentioned in chapter one there are often multiple centers of power in each nation and the struggle amongst them often creates ambiguity in the minds of outside observers these struggles affect internal politics and often drive or limit current policy choices this is true in the united states for example when we see the deliberations on national policy among three co-equal branches the government in other less open societies domestic considerations have major impact on policy even though these considerations are often harder for outsiders to understand this happens in businesses a lot you got some people with different ideas of how we’re going to get where we’re going sometimes unfortunately even disagree on where they’re going which is bad and that’s something with all the political mayhem that we’re facing in america right now i guess maybe mayhem’s well with what we’re facing right now we’ll just call it we won’t we won’t we won’t put a we won’t put we want to sign a a word to it because different people assign it different words we’ll say that there’s disagreements in america right now but this is what this is this is a democracy is going to be messy but you’re going to get a better result in the end so if you if you have a platoon where hey i’m going to take input from the troops and they’re going to let me know and sometimes they’re going to argue with me about some stuff or not argue but we’re going to disagree about some things now if it turns into an argument we start fighting that’s bad but for for my point man to say hey jocko i don’t think that’s a good route to get into the target and me to say well why not and for us to have a discussion about that’s a totally positive thing and we’re gonna come to a better conclusion that’s what’s supposed to happen in democracy we have a discussion but we’re both trying to get to the target my point man wants to get there i want to get there in america we got what are we trying to do we’ve got to hope that we are aligned enough that we say oh we want our economy to get better okay can anyone does anyone disagree with that all right maybe we disagree on how we get there but at least we have this one thing that we know we’re moving towards and you can say that a bunch do we want there to be poverty in the country is there anyone that says yeah what i really think we need in america is more poverty no no one’s saying that there’s not one person that’s saying we need more poverty in america so no matter who you are you’re saying yep you know what we don’t want poverty we want less poverty great now you might think we get there one way someone else thinks you get there another way okay let’s figure out what those things are and then we can discuss how we get there but it’s okay if we disagree because we’re just trying to find the best solution and when dave’s solution is different to me than me than how we to how we get to the target and he’s the point man and i say shut up we’re going my way and he goes no we’re not that stupid and all of a sudden we’re in a fist fight our platoon is falling apart so what we do is we listen to each other and we look for the best possible solution and maybe you know as i always try and just agree with the other person what does that mean does that mean i just always bow down and say oh you know what dave yeah yep i can’t make any decisions so we’re going with the dave says no because dave wants to go one way that i think is gonna gonna take an extra 15 minutes the route that dave chooses as the point man is going to take an extra 15 minutes so you know what we’re not doing it that way we have a seven hour patrol uh my way is gonna take seven hours dave’s way is gonna take seven hours and fifteen minutes we’re doing it my way no actually dave you know what your way sounds great why because i already i just i just in that moment i saved 30 minutes of you and i arguing about it and now we can focus on something more important and by the way we’re still getting to the target and by the way there’s so many unknowns on that route that i don’t know and you don’t know and no one can know and so i’m actually arguing about something that i have no idea where are the land mines where is the what is the actual terrain like what how tall is that little cliff that i see is that something we can get up or do we need to bring ropes and also it takes 45 minutes just to get up that little thing we got to carry extra gear i don’t know any of that so guess what am i going to argue with you for 15 minutes of difference no sounds good dave so why don’t i have to why can i let dave do whatever why can i almost always say i’m gonna go with someone else’s plan because i worked with dave for long enough and by the way i actually taught dave land navigation so when dave comes to me and he says hey here’s how i think we should go there’s a 98 chance that it’s pretty freaking close to what i would do in the first place and by the way either way we still get to the target which is where we’re going back to the book for united states marines understanding current current policy relies in part on understanding the interplay between domestic domestic politics and our enduring vital national interests shouldn’t everyone just kind of have enduring vital interests for their family for their business for their life should we all have those things yes we should as a nation yes we should aspects of domestic politics like the election cycle and contemporary societal issues affect current policy these aspects are typically felt by marines through such things resourcing decisions guidance on the composition of the force and specific direction to focus particular national interests or particular competitors you should know the story about what’s going on that whole thing right there hey corporal smith that just heard me read that that said hey bro i i’m not i’m not i’m not tracking what this means is you need to uh know let’s just just understand what’s happening in the world and understand that what’s happening in the world is gonna sort of guide what the marine corps is doing international competition particularly among nations plays out over a long timeline oh what timeline is that life pursuing the goals put forth by the constitution and its amendments has been an enduring vital interest to the united states since the day became effective in 1789 this contrasts with our desire to bring war to a conclusion as quickly as possible marines need to understand this distinction competitive advantage advantages is relative to a competitor when one actor is able to do something better than its rival or rivals check we get that what’s that uh corporal terminal lance that’s so that’s we should be using terminal ants that guy’s legit uh terminal lance is a he’s a cartoon and he’s oh it’s actually a whole book too terminal ants props a business enjoys it’s interesting here we go back to business a business enjoys competitive advantage when it can sell a product at a lower price than other businesses assuming other factors like quality stay the same nations also have relative competitive advantages also referred to as comparative advantages historically the innovative culture in the united states helped bring it new goods and services to the international marketplace faster than others the cost of labor in some countries is lower than others which makes them more attractive for labor-intensive manufacturing businesses it follows then that we must understand our potential rivals if we are to develop and maintain a competitive advantage against them gee we must understand our potential rivals sun tzu art of war know who you’re fighting the united states has many competitive advantage oh by the way obviously this is something that we are doing all the time at origin right where there’s we’re competing against nations that make the same basic product that we make but they’re doing it with slave labor or they’re doing it with someone that’s getting paid you know in in horrible working conditions and so we’ve had to find ways and we continue to find ways that we can compete with them and not only are we competitive we’re better because our product ends up better and because we’re here now now you get into shipping and what does it cost to ship things from overseas what does that do to the what does that do to the whole picture so we’re we’re figuring out and we have figured out how we have a competitive advantage even though we take care of our workers which we actually also feel is a competitive advantage taking care of your people is a competitive advantage because now your people care about the product that they’re making they want to do a good job not not slaving in a sweatshop instead of looking instead of looking at slave labor as an advantage i look at it as a disadvantage we’ve got the advantage because we have a better workforce who who care about the company the united states has many competitive advantages in international competition the world’s largest economy and an international financial system that uses the dollar to make transactions are strong economic advantages yes the enduring u s interest in freedom of navigation on the seas attracts many partners because free navigation reduces the overall cost of trading between nations the u s higher education system attracts students from all over the world the list goes on and on but these illustrations show that we should look for a nation’s competitive advantages among its enduring qualities such as values interest and culture and this is what you need to do so how does this tie into everybody what about your business what about your business how how do you have the culture and do you have the values inside your business that are actually competitive advantages do you have that if you don’t have that if you don’t have values if you don’t have a culture that’s a competitive advantage you’re wrong the competitive advantages in the military component dime are naturally of great interest to marines since world war ii the united states made the use of several military advantages such as the joint forces of ability to project and sustain power globally its skill at operating across domains and its expertise and precision targeting and strike the us military’s principled professionalism can also present distinct advantages for example when is properly contrasted with competitors seeking to extend authoritarian government without regard for rule of law or protection of civilians so that’s a huge advantage that we have is that we have military professionals and that’s what they do and it’s also an advantage as far as i’m concerned that we have reservists that come and serve in iraq come and serve in afghanistan that go for the weekend and see how the military is doing and take their civilian expertise into the into the reserve unit or the national guard unit for the weekend we have both those and there’s advantages to both of those talking about that i i think it was the guadalcanal recent podcast we’re talking about how some of the reservists were the people that said hey that’s a dumb idea we don’t want to do that some of them because they hadn’t been indoctrinated as fully as somebody that had been you know uh an infantry officer for 18 years and he’s looking at the problem going hey i know how to solve this problem in the book i know what to do and some reservist is like hey bro i hunt in tennessee and that doesn’t make any sense so we like we use this as a competitive advantage i’m just thinking this this whole time about the connection between these these military examples and i’m going through my head things that i remember as a marine and how closely connected they are to just everybody’s everybody’s life in both business and in life just the connections to your family has you have long-range plans for your family you have these strategic long-range plans for family this is really no different than i think they call the the the enduring values of the country that you need to keep in mind that might actually change or influence the smaller things that you do yeah and and that’s something i’ve been hitting on a lot the fact that culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command where now we have a cashier that knows how to treat a client and knows how to treat a customer because understand the culture of the company now we have a marine that can be out in town can see a situation unfolding and knows what decision to make just based on the culture of the marine corps of the seal teams of the army of the 82nd airborne of the 101st airborne division if you have that culture correct that soldier that marine that cashier that frontline sales person they know what decision to make just based on the culture that you have inside the organization totally and that’s a two-way street too because i if i’m running uh you know a grocery store and i’ve got a cashier i’m not going to spend all day every day just talking to that cashier about long-range strategic things for the company i actually need that person up there ringing up customers as they’re coming through but if i don’t if i as as the ceo of that grocery chain or the ceo or of that company don’t think that that cashier can’t make a strategic a tactical decision has massive strategic implications and i lose sight of the fact that they actually do at certain intervals need to understand how what they do affects the big picture then i’m actually set myself up for failure any marine that’s ever been to okana okinawa knows that when the marine goes out in town steals a car and runs into a fire hydrant that marine doesn’t just get in trouble for stealing a car that is an international incident that undermines the relationship between two countries and it happens all the time and if you don’t think your young folks that are doing these very tactical things don’t have to have some connection to the big picture enough to guide their day-to-day decisions you are setting yourself up for long-term failure and that that works both ways that cashier has to know hey i’ve got to treat this customer with some respect because if i don’t it’s going to go on yelp it’s going to go on youtube it’s going to go on instagram or whatever that might be and i could take down the whole company if i’m not careful you don’t want to create paranoia but they have to understand those those small appearing to be small tactical things can actually influence the entire organization and they have to be able to make that connection if you are in a situation like that and you’re employing front-line troops to carry out these sort of tactical day-to-day things it’s pretty easy to end up in the in the job market the people that you’re hiring the human capital that you have available to you it’s pretty easy for them to be hey actually uh dave ceo dave burke um i actually don’t really care about the company that much and uh if you fire me tomorrow i’ll go get another minimum job minimum wage job somewhere else and i don’t really care and so you sitting here telling me about how we can have a strategic loss at your company because i don’t treat a client right whatever right so what do you do then and what you have to do is you have to you have to then you have to then explain to people that when that they have strategic goals in their life that they need to have some kind of a path that they’re going on that hey listen listen echo charles i know you don’t really care about working here that’s fine i get it listen at a minimum if you do a good job here you work here for six months you work here for 10 12 months i don’t know how long you’re gonna work here for when you leave i can give you a recommendation that’ll get you a better job somewhere that’ll put you on a better path and that that’s all i want look i know you don’t necessarily care about my company here you don’t like flipping burgers i get it but guess what when you get done flipping burgers here you can go get a job doing something that’s a little bit better so i don’t this isn’t just about me and the company here jocko’s burgers look i i’m going to be selling burgers for a long time that’s what i do i love burgers i know this isn’t your life goal guess what what is your life goal where is it where are you at because i can promise you this if you take care of me here some point you’re going to leave i expect that you got a lot of potential when you leave here i want to leave i want you to leave on the best foot possible set up for a long-term better situation i don’t want you flipping burgers forever but if you flip burgers well that’s the path to not flipping burgers which is really interesting one time i said there was a person that talked about uh do i really need to learn jujitsu if i don’t like to fight and i said that you actually should learn jujitsu more than anybody else if you don’t like to fight echo if you don’t like flipping burgers you more than anyone else should say you know what i’m going to do i’m going to be the best burger flipper that i can be because that’s going to allow me to step up into the next round because if you can’t flip burgers bro how can i expect you to do anything else you’re definitely not stepping up the salad bar and if you can’t handle salad bar you know you’re not going to be the day day opener right and if you can’t be the day opener you’re not going to be the general manager if you’re not the well do you knock me the store manager then the general right you see where this goes and by the way if you don’t want to get in the restaurant business that’s fine too when you go to work at a at a at a mechanics shop you want to you want to be an automotive mechanic and that’s where you want to go what do they what do i what do i tell them when they call here to say could echo charles flip burgers effectively and efficiently and reliably and i have to say no he couldn’t he was late on a regular basis or whatever what if i say hey you know what echoes he was totally reliable good to go great attitude yeah if you if you looking to hire somebody that’s going to be able to be a a real bonus inside your organization echo charles the guy that’s what i want to do for you but you got it at least you gotta do a little something for me too so if you’re running if you’re working with that those those kind of entry level positions sure show them the strategic for the company for the business but also show them strategically because look kids don’t get that these days i but never mind these days i didn’t you know what you know why i ended up doing okay in life is because i joined the navy and they were like do this and i said roger i wanted to be a good seal just that that enough that guidance that that goal was enough for me to like keep me out of trouble keep me from being a total idiot i was a partial idiot plenty of times kept me out of being a total idiot so when you have the opportunity to show somebody show a younger person hey what you’re doing right now is connected to the future you might want to think about it here’s what is your future oh okay well you want to be whatever you want to be first step is flipping burgers and that’s okay flip them good don’t burn them keep them keep them together note that these competitive advantages exist across the competition continuum and not only in the time of war we conduct exercises in part to demonstrate that the united states has a military capability it could use if necessary the existence of these capabilities can impose cost on a potential rival because the rival may need to expand resources if they want to overcome or negate a u s competitive advantage as the rival pursues their goals so you’re you’re making other people pay another little little plug for the marine corps hey you gotta have us you gotta have us and you gotta have a swell train and you gotta have us well prepared for battle because that makes everyone else it imposes a cost on everybody else which is a positive thing rate court needs more exercises yes when viewed from this perspective we gain an insight of into how a military competitive advantage can help us compete with a rival also note that it needs to be a conscious decision on when and how to reveal our most sensitive competitive advantages at a minimum we should leverage such revelations for advantage in the information element of power other capabilities might be cloaked in secrecy until they’re actually needed to be used so there you go awesome right don’t just reveal the special move that you have to kick someone’s ass yeah man we’re celebrating i think at least i am just this is the anniversary of of the kickoff of desert storm just i think it was well when recruiting it’s called january 17th 1991 that was the kickoff of desert storm and you know i was kind of a kid wanting to be a pilot and that was the the big reveal for us on that one that people don’t understand was is the stealth fighter and all of a sudden like there’s this big aaa and anti-aircraft system and it’s going to be the robot most robust air defense system ever and night zero you know in iraq and all of a sudden things just start blowing up in baghdad and nobody has any idea why they’re just sitting there watching things blow up there’s nothing on radar there’s nothing out there as far as they know except they can hear airplanes flying overhead because the jet engines are making sound and then things are just blowing up and we’re basically told the world oh by the way we hated to have to do this but if you’re wondering this is what we can do you might wanna and that that’s 30 years ago our competitors are just just now i think the amount of time and money invested in them trying to build stealth technology which has been a huge race and a big competition we showed that to the world on day zero of the war and as a pilot obviously we think about that too is the competitive advantage makes other people go well maybe it’s just not worth going to war with them maybe this just isn’t worth it maybe this investment we’re making is not worth it because the outcome they can do things we didn’t know exist so the revelation of that when carefully placed in time well can can be a huge advantage yeah not to mention they had no time to adapt to it because if we would have told them they would have figured out some methodology or at least attempted to figure out a more accurate radar or some kind of a defense system that could spot these aircraft overhead yeah that’s a great example of how you do it it happens in jiu-jitsu too like if you have that move that you’re pretty good at and you go for it it’s not a surprise anymore i’m not saying you’re not going to get it but it’s not a surprise and now the person’s expecting it to come so you want if you’re going to do it you might want to hang on to it just for you know a little bit deeper into that role let that person be breathing hard let the o2 start to lack all types of competitive advantages can atrophy however they all need appropriate practice exercising and improving if they are to remain advantages in the dynamic environment of international competition this you can’t take you can’t rest on your laurels ever you can’t rest on your loyals ever competitors as systems competitors are complex adaptive systems again so this this competitors are complex adaptive systems i guess we kind of need to say it right we need to make it clear and then but it does make it even more clear meaning they have many parts and these parts interact with each other in non-linear often unpredictable ways consider iran’s national security decision making structure to some outside observers it may appear to function as a strictly hierarchical organization with all important decisions being made by the supreme leader and president at the top of the pyramid however the reason story is much more complex much of the supreme leader’s authority comes from informal relationships he has with talk top commanders in the national security infrastructure and through the presence of his clerical representatives in military organizations even though the president is the chairman of the supreme council for national security his power ebbs and flows because the supreme leader is the commander-in-chief and may bypass the president through his informal relationships so even in that like they said very strict what appears to be a strict hierarchy it’s all over the place guess what’s more important relationships relationships are more important than the chain of command even in an autocratic country like iran the military structure itself can act in unpredictable ways especially the islamic revolutionary guards uh they’ve developed significant and separate political power based on its financial resources because it controls many businesses in almost every sector of the iranian economy each of these power centers among others jockeys for power inside iran working to advance their own internal or domestic interests so it’s complicated it’s complicated and you know what’s crazy when you see like video you ever seen videos of in our pictures in iran and like 19 whatever 1973 it’s totally westernized totally it looks just like everything’s good to go skipping forward a little bit developing a model of how a competitor’s system fits together helps identify their competitive strengths and weaknesses at a basic level each of these systems consists of people ideas and things the people make the system work they also analyze its performance over time because they are also responsible for sustaining or improving the system’s competitive advantages the ideas of the system are found in the goals it pursues and in concepts it processes it and processes it uses to operate in the world mao famously stated politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed this quote suggests a mindset that blurs the lines between peace and war the mindset this idea creates may give a competitor an advantage in operating near the threshold of violence so that’s that statement from mao is sort of uh the same thing that this whole there’s a continuum right you got politics which is just war without blood and then at some point you turn it into war now we got politics with bloodshed but i’m going to dig into this one a little bit ideally there are things then added or created to support the people and the ideas within the system so so we’re talking about people ideas and things with this in mind uh within the system helping it achieve its goals with this in mind we can look at a competitor’s system and create a model of how it fits together where it is strong and where it is vulnerable finally after creating this model marines must remain discipline in its use models are useful but imperfect they are theories about the systemic structure of arrival we need to remain alert for opportunities to improve our models as we learn more about how real how our competitors operate in the real world now this is this is the the thing that i so so they talk about this sim um people ideas and things like that’s sort of what a competitor’s system is and i added some well um this is up for debate but i’ll throw it out there for you people ideas and things that’s sort of what you judge how your competitor is going to operate i i think perhaps there is possibly one more that needs to be added and it may be covered by people and it may be covered by ideas and it not things but a little bit that is that is the idea of execution or taking action so you can have people you can have ideas and you can have things but if you can’t execute then you’re you’re dead in the water now you could say that it’s people that needs to make things execute so okay i get that but i just felt the need to kind of call that out because when i look at a competitor i think about yes they got these people yes they got there they got this team they’ve got these ideas okay i get they’ve got some competitive advantages there or disadvantages and they’ve got things they gotta they’ve got things but all three of those things without execution to me i’m not even worried about you i’m not even worried about you if you can’t execute so i don’t know am i am i reaching to am i not giving enough credit to people possibly yeah i mean i i i guess that you could dig into deeper what they mean by that but when you said it the first thing that went into my mind works in the opposite direction too is that hey they might not have the best well most well-trained people uh and maybe their tools are kind of outdated and their systems aren’t so great because they’re antiquated and maybe they don’t have big budgets but if these people have been executing and what brought me to is how many times you’ve said on this podcast is who we were fighting in iraq who we were fighting against al qaeda they their things their things were garbage on paper compared to ours garbage they were rusty they were all they and and there are people and i don’t mean it like the they’re people like something other people but they didn’t have the training we had they didn’t have the resources they had their people weren’t invested in the way that we invested in our people but you know what they had been doing they’d been executing for a really long time so that piece and maybe somebody could say well that’s what people is and might be missing that but i’m thinking of people like i know what american marines and soldiers i know what those people are and it’s really easy to look across and go those people those people and just dismiss what they are but those people had been executing and they were really good as a result and offset where we thought we had this big advantage look at our gear look at our training on paper it should have been a it should have been a one-sided affair if you measured it with those things and what they weren’t measuring was the the value of the i think what you’re saying is the execution yeah and even what you just said like um if you take a group of marines or you take a group of soldiers and they have training and it’s all good but if look if they don’t execute and and you could say well a marine is going to execute we know that’s actually not true it’s it’s a good ideal we could say a soldier is going to a soldier with a with a platoon leader is gonna execute not necessarily true so to me it’s all it’s almost like a fourth thing that does make sense in there yeah i actually thought that the third one was going to be the execution people things and people people ideas ideas and execution yeah that what so it’s almost like in listening to you guys and you said a good thing you said um dave said on paper because like that’s kind of really what that whole thing kind of seems like it is because okay so you got people um ideas and things but people in ideas is it’s almost like people is what you can do and then execution is what you will do so the so again on paper where you have this capability you have this many people with this capability with these tools and what they can do with these tools and then but then just like i said it doesn’t mean that they’re gonna do yeah it you know like just you guys say default aggressive it’s like that’s that that third kind of thing that you have to implement to create this execution you ever seen an mma fight that was about to happen and on paper yeah that got fighter a should destroy fighter b and what what what is the problem when he loses the problem as he does next execute yeah the the good and not to go too deep into the mma thing so remember certain uh cowboy cerrone and conor mcgregor right so yeah like cerrone is an executor guy he executes he executes but then conor is like a cerebral guy like he’ll play up stuff before the fight as well to kind of create that that third man in the ring and that third man in the ring in this case was to get in the way of execution and there’s like a video on it that theorizes this where conor mcgregor was usually he’s talking trash to the guy telling him basically how much like junker of a fighter then then he is or whatever but it was the opposite this time it was like he was saying oh man i respect him and he was friendly it was really friendly actually so it theoretically created this mindset on donald cerrone’s in his mind that it’s like oh that and it kind of took away from his execution instinct you know so he was like oh it’s like oh it’s not as we’re kind of bros frozen away you know it’s like super respectful fight and then you see conor how he came out in the fight all crazy and it’s almost like he almost in a weird way surprised him with how hard he was executing on a guy who usually executes but that element didn’t seem to be there as much you know so it’s like man that execution part of it bro that’s a huge huge deal yeah and just um props to cowboy props to connor cowboy dude he he’s got some and he does eight million other things yeah um i i wrote something down as you were getting to the you know connecting those two paragraphs and it’s it’s really interesting to hear hear the conversations that you just had and that adding that additional piece i wrote down in my margin here you don’t know and so this model this thing this we create and and the military does this all that we create models for everything and we’re like hey i’m going to run a thousand simulations against my machine and that we do models for everything we create this and it was saying hey don’t rely on that model that’s even more evidence the the the you don’t know we can create a model that can be useful for what competition’s gonna be like what we think the economy is gonna look like and we can look at history we can create a whole bunch of things that help us make decisions but at the end of all that you don’t know you don’t know and so if you don’t know how useful is it getting back to the first things how useful is it to dig in on your way of doing it if you really don’t know and that’s really what this is saying even i could say jocko i’ve run the numbers i’ve done this analysis i’ve compared to these last three a row outside these different i could give you a thousand reasons why this is the answer and at the end i should say but i don’t but i still don’t know because you don’t know and that’s really part of what this is saying too and the piece in there when you talk about the implementation that’s where the execution where it’s all going to happen so not knowing and acknowledging you don’t know is also a really powerful thing as you’re building this framework in your mind how things are going to be yeah it also that introduces the idea of i know what you think is going to happen and i’m not going to allow that to occur which is you know what game you think if i can convince you that all right dave you and i are going to stand up and you just see this is like the the the most lame example but you know someone that’s like oh you know some wrestler that’s like no way i’m gonna i’m gonna knock him out i’m gonna knock him out i’m gonna knock him out and he’s trying to convince the other person that like we’re gonna stand and fight so you don’t have to worry about your ground game or whatever and then he goes out and takes him down and does what he’s gonna do it’s what game are you gonna play like i’m going to get you out of your game uh that’s what i’m going to do take away your competitiveness yeah actually uh jeremy stevens against pettis anthony pettis and you know anthony pettis is a striker primarily and i i was cornering jeremy on that fight and jeremy’s got you know fists of lead and he knocks people out and he he might not be the most technical striker i’m not saying he’s not technical he’s not i would say he’s not as technical as anthony pettis was at that time and so we’re going into the fight jeremy definitely going into the fight thinking hey it’s you know cool i’m gonna stand up i know i can take a punch and i’m gonna connect at some point with pettis’s chin and i’m gonna win what did pettis do came out took him down and it was a surprise surprise to me surprise to jeremy and that’s the way it went but he he changed he did what we didn’t expect him to do which is just a brilliant move right so all the things that you think you know don’t happen had another fighter was like hey aren’t you going to work ground game and he’s like i can’t i’m not going to get taken down by this guy and i said man you better at least you know work to get up off your back i’m not going to get taken down he’s not good enough of a wrestler to take me down he’s a striker okay cool what happened this this is after the lessons learned right the lessons learned from jeremy’s you better be ready for whatever you better train to fight because you can’t predict what the enemy is what you’re saying dave i can’t predict what the enemy is going to do can’t predict it i don’t know what the enemy’s gonna do i might think one thing but i can’t that doesn’t mean i can blow off every other possibility at all what i need to do is be prepared to fight you know the closest thing that they say in this is um uh performance they kind of i’m trying i’ve i like dug through this like where am i missing it maybe they are talking about execution on us don’t see it like the closest i think they have is they say analyze you know the the opponent’s performance over time so you’re sort of talking about execution maybe he doesn’t really do it but i think maybe an additional item to assess your opponent is necessary and that is people ideas things and execution we also look at our own our own system to increase our competitive advantages or create new ones for example do the people in our system have their necessary skills and aptitudes required to sustain our competitive advantages do they have the skills to build new ones at a national level does the target population for our recruiting efforts have the right education in a similar way can we look at our ideas do our operating concepts give us an advantage and things do does any of our equipment provide over match to evaluate our competitiveness of the system again to me we can check those we can check the ideas we can check the things we can check the people i better check the execution because none of this stuff matters without execution it’s not always true that the organization with the newest or most equipment wins the competition quote dave burke sometimes decided is able to combine adequate material with innovative new ideas becomes the winner from this analysis we can then increase our existing advantages or create new ones as deemed necessary means in competition as similarly described in warfighting the highest level of competition involves the use of all the elements of power marines are primarily concerned with the military aspects of competition but we must not consider it an isolation from the other elements of national power war fighting states quote the use of military force may take any number of forms from the mere deployment of forces as a demonstration of resolve to the enforcement of a negotiated truth truce to general warfare with sophisticated weaponry end quote here we see the alignment between our warfighting and competition doctrines start to emerge so the whole point of this thing in war we impose our will on our adversary their cooperation is not required going back into influence and leadership right in competition we make use of military force to attract or coerce when using attraction we use incentives talking earlier about the carrot we use incentives to induce a rival or other political actor to adopt a position favorable to us or otherwise allow us to reach our goals and you know what sometimes when i’m talking about leadership i talk about efficiency and sometimes people think the most efficient thing for me to do is say dave you need to use this route to get to the target and people think that’s the most efficient hey and it’s really hard to see past that because clearly if i have to say you know hey dave well how do you want to do it and we have to have a discussion about it it takes us another seven minutes before i finally comply with actually what you want to do and that seems a lot less efficient yeah but the efficiency comes out tenfold in the field and in the ex in the execution let’s think about the execution it’s because as a leader you have to recognize that what you’re doing is not getting to point a to point b in this patrol that’s not what the actual goal is that might be this little mission a little protected but what you’re trying to do is create a leader that at some point can go fight a war for you independently without you being there in a way that reinforces it so it’s this recognition that’s not that’s not even what you’re trying to do and it’s the it’s that mirage of this is the best way to get it done i get in your face i tell you what to do and look what happened he did it mission accomplished that is only true if the only thing you’re actually doing is getting from point a to point b which simply is not what you’re doing it’s not what you’re doing that’s zero percent of the time zero it’s not what you’re doing uh when using coercion we compel a rival to take an action in our favor or to stop taking action that’s not in our favor or we make use of military force to deter a rival from taking action in the first place for both compellence and deterrence our goal is to use the threat of military force to achieve our desired outcome for this to be the case our competitive advantage must be clear enough to our rival that it affects the decisions they make what’s interesting about this is when i’m your boss dave i have to remember that when i’m talking to you there is the threat of me being able to fire you i might not even say a word about it so i have to kind of consciously mitigate that threat so that you will push back against me so that you will understand that i’m open to your ideas i have to consciously do that and so i’m not just compliant yeah yep cause that threat’s there and sometimes we work with companies where their people are just scarred no one will say anything back to the boss because the last boss would tyrannical idiot yeah that barked at everyone and told him what to do and fired half the organization and everyone was was scared all the time to make a move yeah and that’s why by the way that’s why we show up there because the business is failing because there’s total centralized command and it doesn’t work um so you’ve got to use the threat of military force for this to be the case our competitive advantage must be clear enough for a rival to that it affects their decisions note that a competitive advantage does not necessarily equal military superiority a competitive strength of will along with non-military tools of policy are part of the equation too attraction political actors often use various forms of attraction to achieve their goals to attract someone to to attract someone is to induce entice or persuade someone into doing something in a negotiation it’s a reward or incentive for someone to make a choice that is favorable to us we can say that then that attraction is the counterpoint to coercion instead of using pressure to help our goals we use some type of reward instead okay carrot stick that’s what we’re talking about marines participate in attraction strategies all the time demonstrating our professional commitment to our national values when conducting bilateral training in recent years for example as part of u s larger u s attraction strategy marine provided marines provided training on amphibious operations to an important ally japan check that’s what that’s what the marines are doing all the time that’s what the entire military is doing all the time that’s what we need to continue to do we get into coercion fast forward a little bit political actors often use coercion as a way to achieve their goals to coerce someone is to pressure intimidate or force someone into doing something or to reach one goals through the use of pressure threat or force there’s a big difference in jiu jitsu between attraction and coercion right attraction is like you get someone to defend their neck so that you can take their arm you can also force them to put themselves in a certain position i guess but that one’s a little bit of a bad example because you kind of have to defend your neck so you’re coercing them to get those hands in position it does it does this by influencing an adversary’s will or incentive structure it is a strategy that often combines the threat of force and if necessary the limited controlled use of force with positive inducements coercion has two forms compellence and deterrence compellence is a threat intended to make an adversary do something to take a specific action deterrence is a threat intended to inhibit an adversary adversary from taking a particular action to prevent it from even getting started in both cases the target of coercion must be cooperate must cooperate because the target must decide to comply with the goal of an actor who is applying the coercion this cooperation is not friendly or willing but still must exist for coercion to be effective not friendly not willing so so the just to kind of be clear so the coercion positive and negative or the the so corrosion like oh okay i’m gonna force this guy or intimidate this person to do something versus not versus but on and then additionally the other coercion method is to intimidate them to not do something yes okay yep either compelling them to do something or you’re deterring them from doing something but you kind of have to participate in it right like you gotta like um like you know i don’t know the security guard or something like hey don’t tell on us or don’t whatever because we’re going to go in this back door to rob the bank or whatever you know right like so if i’m a bank robber i want to go rob the bank i know the security guard i’m going to say hey i’m going to we’re going to rob your bank don’t stop us or else we’re going to kill you or whatever okay yes that’s coercion yeah from to force him to not do something right but he but the point here is that he has to he has to be willing to do it right right you’re not just for you could you could tape his head up where he can’t even talk or move now it doesn’t matter whether he’s willing or not he’s not doing it right but i’m saying remove that ability before the bank robbery it’s like in the planning process you know maybe the bank not bankrupt but the the security guard is my neighbor or something and then i’m gonna be like hey we’re gonna rob the bank on your shift mm-hmm if so you can’t call the cops you know or you can’t sound the alarm or whatever we’ll kill you or we’ll kill you or whatever coercion yeah yeah it’s also a bad plan yeah i would think so but now he’s gonna tell on everybody before it happens not if i chores him correctly you see him saying you better have like his child in the trunk of your car okay forever probably it’s not that planned yeah you’re right you’re right the idea of using coercion in a competition can be misleading if we do not identify the assumptions that support its use it’s often assumed that a stronger nation can naturally coerce a weaker one into doing what it wants however this assumption may not be true if the weaker nation is willing to absorb more punishment than the stronger one can or will deliver or stay committed to its goals over a longer period of time this is one of the things that we always have to think about this is in the vietnam war when we tried to say you know what we can kill a hundred and fifty of them for every one of us that they kill and we said that’s a win how do we lose that yeah i’ll tell you how you lose it those 150 mean less to the to the communist government than the one does to the american people in the american government yeah when your model places the same value on people for your enemy as it does for yourself and go we’ve run nobody would tolerate this we would never tolerate this loss i’m like well they will and i was thinking the same thing i was thinking of what when the soviet union invaded afghanistan and again how lopsided that appeared but in terms of the interest on what they were willing to endure and how long they’re willing to endure it sooner or later it’s like hey we’re not we just we can’t do this anymore yeah we’re ordered on here we’re done here uh it says the next we call this asim asymmetry of interests in this case the weaker nation has the more powerful desire to achieve its interest in the stronger nation this is you have to watch out for this so you have to watch out for that from as a leader when you’re working with a subordinate and you start to escalate through the continuum of influence and you don’t recognize that maybe they don’t care if they get fired and all you think you know you want more word out of you and you’re going to get fired and they don’t care the the example as a parent with kids probably resonates with a lot of folks because as you know certainly as your kids get older that threat of violence becomes so much less use like hey if you do this i’m gonna i’m gonna ground you like okay i’ll just sneak out if you sneak out i’m gonna take your car away cool and the the willingness for them to just outlast you on principle alone or the willingness to endure whatever you are going to impose on them you have to calculate in your mind what they’re willing to endure so you want to hear about some miscalculation so my uh my son had gotten a little out of line this is when he was young and he was in a very austere i put him into a very austere environment to get him to course and coerce him to understand what he had done wrong and how we don’t do this kind of thing and it was really strict and it’s not and by the way it’s no fun for you for the parent right we don’t want to be strict we want to like have fun and it’s all good and we want to buy toys and we want to just but you but when you go austere then you’re not doing any of that and it’s not fun so over time as you know he he was straightening out he’s probably like seven and eventually you know he had gotten you know some toys back and then he had gotten you know his uh he could use a pillow again in his bedroom and uh you know those kind of creature comfort started coming back and then you know two three months later i s he’s you know something this little spark of like wait a second and and what i called this because he was young i called this uh you know i i have to be strict with you so then i started being less and less strict he started getting some of these privileges back and then one time he started stepping out of line a little bit and i said hey am i going to have to get strict with you again and he said something along the lines of like i think maybe you should so that i can be tougher i’m always like god i was like i did not i was i didn’t want to be strict with i want to like let’s go back to party time yeah let’s go back to freaking you know playing with toys and having a good he says maybe maybe you should so i can be tougher and i was damn it he just won the test of wills he won like you can take go ahead you should actually you actually went one level deeper like you should it’s in my best yeah it’s in my best interest for you to do that let’s do it immediately oh man so you got to put you got to pay attention the kids will come at you man they’ll come at you psychological warfare information information plays a special role in competition narratives play an important part because they are what gives meaning to a set of facts for example two comp two competitors may both desire to possess a particular island one of them may have a narrative that explains their claim to the island on the basis of historical ownership the other may have a narrative that says some of the people that currently use the island and current possession makes their claim stronger two narratives compete with each other to give facts and meanings i i got a good question on ef online the other day i think it was efon it might have been a client but it was along the lines of hey how do we develop this culture and my answer was you need to tell the story of what’s going on and i and we when we talked about on this podcast yeah the marine corps the marine corps tells the story yeah that’s what i was going off on the last podcast about about the squad leader makes a difference that thing is primed and ready to rock and roll on the podcast so the narrative that you tell the information that you put out there is just so important demonstrating a capability and exercise and then think and then communicating so that it affects a competitor’s thinking is another way marines use information leaders determine what capabilities to reveal and when to reveal them as part of a larger approach however much is specifically revealed publicizing adherence to high standards in realistic training can help sustain the marine corps reputational advantage and affect the thinking of our nation’s competitors once again the marine corps with this manual is increasing their budget it’s it’s attraction for the dod is what it is marines need to understand the impact of culture when they use information as a competitive tool cultural differences affect how narratives are interpreted by various audiences one message might be understood in one country in a way that is significantly different from how it is understood in another marines must account for this and focus the narratives we use so that our target audience understands our message the way that we intend yes know the story know the story going back to the unraveling podcast what is your story know people’s stories the spectrum and styles of competition the next section the usual condition of internal relations is one of competition across the elements of national power below the violence threshold we typically see activities from the non-military aspects of national power for example economic competition is seen as national at the national level in the struggle for market share in particular industry or the effort to negotiate favorable terms in a trade agreement escalation on the spectrum we might see sharper economic acts like industrial espionage the theft of inaction intellectual property use of sanctions what’s interesting about this is how often do we go to war right like if you think about all the interactions that america has globally for the last 240 50 years all these interactions all the time are constantly happening tariffs and sanctions in town all these things are happening all the time and very seldom do we actually pull the trigger and cross into threshold of violence and that’s we should do that as as as infrequently as possible obviously and you should assess your own leadership in the same spectrum how often do i have to use direct leadership it should be extremely infrequently repetitive actions can also move the line up or down over time this is about the this is about how you how you kind of move up and down these continuums all the time gradualism and salami slicing which we talked about in the last one competitors use these activities in an effort to achieve their aims without provoking a state of war or even a strong reaction in addition to competing through attraction coercion and various forms illustrated above marines can also compete by imposing costs we encourage impose costs on arrival when we develop a credible capability and a rival must spend resources in order to try and counter it for example the department of defense has experienced increasing cyber attacks in the past decades this has imposed cost because the department of defense has to spend time and money to develop civilian training counter those attacks we can also fast-forward we can also impose costs during war when we first force the average adversary to divert resources from their preferred actions in order to counter one of our capabilities and then we get into the threshold of violence the threat of violence and violent acts are competitive tools in international relations the goal of posturing is to affect the decision making of the target to make them so fearful of the damage they might receive if the posturing escalates to violence that they submit and let the posture achieve their goals and it places one into a favorable position should violence follow just think about that psychologically if we start to think about the continuum of influence or leadership and you start using direct influence that’s what you’re doing you’re crossing over that threshold where people are forced to submit that’s why you get the equal and opposite reaction in some cases the pondering briefly briefly crosses the threshold and violence occurs to demonstrate the resolve of the actor the brief this brief use of violence still has the same aim which is to affect the target’s decision many actors intentionally try to obscure or confuse exactly where this threshold lies oh man that’s a good one right where is that threshold you ever you ever uh known someone like that just crazy eyes like a crazy eyes person how about how about your bar you’re uh bouncing at a bar there’s some people where you don’t know where the line is they could shank you at any moment right and now you have to contend with them and there’s people that proactively proactively prop up that image right yes they do it’s a good move what where you have to you might think that’s a good move as a leader but what you’re really doing is now what you’re doing is you’re inducing more fear and now people don’t know when you’re going to lash out and so now they’re on eggshells and they’re afraid to speak up and speak out and it’s a problem this has been oh um they do this to cause enough ambiguity and hesitation that they can achieve their aims with little or no interference this has been true historically and will likely increase in the future some rivals use capabilities like certain cyber and space activities that have destructive effects but fall short of some definitions of violence and effort to obscure whether or not they would have crossed the threshold as a push in the envelope in support of u s goals marines performed missions on both sides of the violence threshold in some cases marines were introduced into situations below the violence threshold but then a political group performed a violent act against u s interests the disciplined response of the marines then occurred above the threshold of violence but the violence was limited and did not reach the level of conventional war following these brief periods of violence the competition again fell below the violence threshold in most cases now we get into decision making initiative and response you might just call that whole thing execution i’m not 100 sure but you might marines are taught that decision making is essential since all actions are the result of decisions or of non-decisions it’s so powerful to paint things so clearly this is whoever wrote this opener right here because you know you how many people wrote this book dave six six yeah six the person that wrote this section gets a little bonus credit right marines are taught that decision making is essential since all actions are the result of decisions or of non-decisions if we lack the will required to make a decision then we have willingly surrendered the initiative to our foe if we consciously postpone taking action for some reason this is also a decision so there you go boom that’s the little section you got to highlight terminal lance out there this is what is what we’re talking about initiative is impo is it is as important in competition as it is in war gaining the initiative means our competitor must react to us we can gain it by presenting a dilemma to our competitor and also by setting the tempo of the activity taking place brian stan when he was on his operational tempo like he what you know everyone’s got their move right in jiu jitsu everyone’s got their you know they got that guillotine they got that kimura they got that heel hook when brian stan was on here i i just remember him just talking about that operational temple where it’s gonna you know that’s where he’s that’s what this guy’s talking about setting the tempo of the activity marines must assume that potential competitors understand initiative as well as we do thus they will take actions in order to gain the initiative many competitors also seek to create ambiguity about their actions which leads to a problem of attribution if we are not certain who performed a certain action then we cannot attribute that action to any particular actor this often delays our response and slows our tempo conversely if we improve understanding of how of our competitor we can be primed to attribute their actions in ways that slow their tempo instead it’s to know that and to be able to recognize oh this isn’t just it’s not just that i can’t figure out exactly who did this it’s that i am now my ooda loop is slowing down right now because i think they did it but i can’t be sure while competition essentially always exists its intensity varies over the course of time we must also understand that the long timelines involved in competition mean decisions and actions sometimes play out over months or years even decades in some cases this often results in opportunistic behavior as rivals take advantage of conditions to achieve their strategic goals without crossing the violence threshold or crossing it briefly and then returning below the threshold before triggering a war opportunity is often created when conditions suddenly change or temporarily such as when a pandemic strikes pandemic strikes which is interesting i don’t know if they wrote this before or after i get they probably slid it in there you think they slid it in there yeah i think this was drafted like this last year yeah they slid it in there such as this diverts attention and resources which creates a gap for an alert competitor to exploit having no fixed timeline for achieving goals plus opportunism also leads to incrementalism which is the effort to achieve a goal by adding together a number of small steps taken on a path toward it achieving our goals in compa in competition requires action which comes from making decisions therefore what marines are taught for warfighting serves them well here provided they also apply judgment in recognizing how timelines can differ between war and the rest of the competition continuum so this idea of incrementalism is something we you gotta be on the lookout for you gotta be on the lookout for that slow creeping maneuver that your enemy is making and at some point you’ve got to draw the line what i recommend is instead of drawing a line you what you do is you incrementally respond so when echo makes a little maneuver that’s a little bit offensive to me i just don’t say well he hasn’t really crossed the line i actually give a little bit of a check a little check that’s a little check so from a leadership perspective what does that mean it means when dave when dave decides he’s going to spend a little bit too much money on the gut on the on the company credit card i don’t just go well yes i don’t really really cross the line i might say hey dave i see i see you’ve got some uh expenses here that are what is this what did you buy just just check just checking oh yeah you know i just needed some uh some oil for my car okay but for your car yeah yeah well okay was that was that for a company trip no no no hey i’ll change i’ll talk to you know we’ll get it straight now okay because you’re trying to incrementally see if you can start putting real stuff on the company credit card no you can’t but if i don’t check you if instead i draw a line in the sand well now all of a sudden you’ve developed a pattern and you’ve gotten a habit and you could actually come back to me and say well i’ve been doing this for a while i don’t want any of that so i’m gonna check you am i gonna check you with a with a hockey stick across the face no i’m gonna give you a little just a little i’m here i see what’s happening i don’t draw a line in the sand because a lion in the sand can be offensive and why did you break a rule if you knew the rule was there if you broke a rule i probably did a bad job of explaining that hey man company credit cards we use them for company business and what we can’t do is we can’t have a bunch of little charges adding up over time and then we look up and we we have lost a bunch of money and spend it on things that don’t really benefit the company so anything that you think you’re using for your personal gain or for your for your personal life is not allowed so that’s a little bit of a line but i’m i’m not i’m not smacking you with it i’m showing it to you and you’ve got you have options when you take that approach you can there’s there’s a lot of different things you can do in there and the the problem with the line is that that basically commits you to to to a response to a course of action that you it’s really really hard to maneuver away from that and if you’re using the line like hey if i just draw the line then then jocko’s not going to cross the line and i use it more as a tool to keep you from doing it then it’s actually what i’m really willing to do you have almost no maneuver space there and you talk about this all the time you want to keep as many options as much maneuverability as you can and that line takes all that away from me and if the line is just a tool to get you to comply and that person this is talking about an adversary this is an alert adversary looking for ways to commit you that that limits anything that limits your options and certainly i know this about the marine corps is something we don’t want isn’t it a beautiful thing when um the line is implied with such strength that i never even said it but you knew not to cross it how many how many how many charges have you made on your company credit card for your personal gain the answer is zero right and we’re not doing that here and not out of fear of compliance either or or compliance based on fear but out of a recognition of why that actually is what you should be doing and and you know there are some things inside here that translate perfectly and there are some things you actually kind of have to think about because they’re they’re this this publication of this this manual is is really in a lot of ways talking about competitors and there’s the com there’s a component there that that directly com that aligns well when you’re competing with you’re running a company there’s a competitive company but the connection to the liter uh leadership piece to your people you got to kind of translate that a little bit you don’t want to go to war with your people your goal isn’t to set that line to establish your authority so they comply you want to avoid that at almost all costs but you need your it’s the same thing with my kids do i want my my son to know that there’s a line yes he and he knows he almost well it happens but he doesn’t cross that line very often i’m not forced to respond in a limited way very often but i want him to know that yeah so let’s say there was a street in front of your house really busy would you put the line that your son when he’s four years old would you put the line at the street no hell no you’d put the line a little further back and would you would you then escalate like hey you can’t go past this this is this is 20 yards from the road where you could get killed that’s what we do yeah now even even the actual line where you’re gonna like give significant punishment because you have to because you have to you have to you have to impress upon the kid like my uh my dog kid dog my dog i have this at my house if my dog goes out off my front porch he’s gonna be on a street where there’s cars right i gave him hard corrections when he was a puppy that dog doesn’t leave there he knows what’s up he knows that he can’t do it so that’s where the lie and but the line isn’t it he could go off my porch and go another 15 yards before he’d actually get hit yeah but i don’t give him that extra 15 yards i’m like okay here it is don’t go don’t go across this line and he’s been trained and he understands it so that’s uh what you got to watch out for and your dog might not ever make this connection but the obvious goal with your people is that the recognition is that it’s in their best interest you’re trying to help them and that’s that’s the piece of like hey when you’re talking about your adversaries and you even talked a little bit about coercion in some way we’re actually evil with our adversary is basically trying to say hey don’t do this this is in your best interest please don’t do this or hey i’m going to really need you to do this but from a leadership standpoint all those things even those lines that you draw the ideal situation as you as a leader is actually what’s in their best interest and they’re pushing against it you might want to find out why they’re pushing against that anyway i just think that that connection of what’s in their best interest and that that line i mean we you want to be able to maneuver as much as possible all the time and keep as many options open as as possible and so that line should be just be real cautious about drawing that explicitly and if you do if you can get them to understand why that’s there that’s so much more powerful than it’s just hey i’m gonna i’m gonna hammer you if you hit across this line yeah the why is huge and if they don’t understand why then it’s an arbitrary thing that you throw up there and look i’m not saying that you shouldn’t have that because if people you should absolutely have lines where hey you crossed this line you made an ethical mistake you did something that’s that’s actively freaking criminal you’re done yeah that’s where we’re at just so everybody knows you do something like that you’re done period end of story there’s no there’s not even discussion so don’t do that getting into the conclusion like war competition serves policy but usually does so over longer spans of time these long timelines lead us to look for policies aims in our enduring national interests with aspects of these interests emphasized by current state of domestic policies politics again apply that to your personal life apply that to your business what are you trying to do what are your enduring interests attraction is important concept in our theory of competition it uses incentives and rewards to get another political actor to act differently in ways that are aligned with our interests that’s what we’re doing as a leader we’re using attraction we’re using coercion we’re using the stick we’re using the carrot what do we want to use we want to use we want to use the carrot as much as possible and you know what we want them to think they found that carrot coercion is another important component of our theory it takes two forms compellence to cause a rival to take action favorable to our goals and deterrence to cause a rival to not take action that’s what you were asking earlier i think echo i don’t know if i gave you that clear of an answer in war we impose our will on an enemy with coercion we need our rivals cooperation because they must decide to comply with our wishes even if their cooperation is unwilling the existence of the marine corps is a coercive tool for the nation if its competitive advantages advantage is made clear to a rival competitors act like systems they have many parts that interact with each other in complex often unpredictable ways this also means competitors have strengths and weaknesses as competition unfolds over time the rival systems can sense what their competitor is trying to do and adapt or evolve in an effort to improve their competitive advantage it’s always adapting these will often blend the threat of violence or the use of violence itself with other tools to gain an advantage this constantly shifting mixture can get confusing which is part of the goal competitors often intend for this confusion to help them reach their goals by causing their rivals to hesitate this also helps them gain the initiative so that they can set the pace the tempo for the competition we’re two hours deep right now i’m not even getting that well the chapter three is next um you know something that i i i say and i know i think you and i uh discussed this the other day on the phone dave the best way to win is when the enemy doesn’t even know they’re fighting right the the what sun tzu was the supreme what sun tzu said was the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting that’s what we’re trying to do to win to to influence dave without dave even knowing that i influenced him i want to maneuver my ideas into your head so that you think they’re they’re that you’re they’re your ideas i want to preemptively remove your will to fight before you even think you should be in a fight before before you even think you should be putting up resistance you already are thinking that you don’t want to resist that’s my goal i want to make you a champion of my cause as if it were your own cause that’s what we’re trying to make happen and by the way what what makes this easy er what makes this and actually makes it easy is when my cause is your cause because you’re it helps you if i’m over here trying to convince you to do something that doesn’t help you man it’s freaking hard but when i can align my goals with your goals and i can give you ownership that allows that allows these strategies and tactics for you to get on board with what i want you to do and you don’t even know that i’m trying to make you do it so it’s one of the most important things about this manual is simply making you aware that you’re competing and you have to be aware that you’re also influencing all the time and you’re on that spectrum and you’re you’re on that continuum and you’re either gaining leadership capital or you’re spending it and if you do it right people are on board and the and the deeper part of that is you are actually propelling them towards victory for them if you do it right you’re propelling them towards victory and they are happy to be moving there and if i’m trying to get dave to do something that he’s resistant to and it’s going to help him in the long run it’s going to help us in the long run why is he resistant i need to listen to him to see what what his resistance is why is he resisting that’s what we’re doing we’re on a constant continuum of influence yes we’re competing but we’re influencing as leaders echo we’re also competing obviously sure we want to stay competitive right in a multitude of ways sure we’ll say any um any ways that you can recommend for us to maybe maintain or improve our competitive advantage in the world what do you think what do you got advantage big time first one which i think kind of goes unnoticed and you do good job in reminding us from time to time is what game are you playing so it isn’t that like kind of one of the questions you used to always get like what motivates you right so you just get that one a lot yeah and still kind of a question like um that you kind of got to ask yourself a lot of the time like because it kind of seems like okay so like getting in shape right for example or being in shape staying in shape whatever right like for some for the average person uh whatever that even means because i don’t know what that actually even is but to wake up at 4 30 and do and it’s not like you’re waking up at 4 30 and doing like a you know a stretching routine for 10 minutes like right you’re kind of going hard you know but we’re going hard and that’s every single day not to say you’re going full speed every single day yeah but i’m just saying your routine is like the average person not going to do that you know so you’re over here going going hard but why you know competitive advantage seeking a competitive advantage exactly right so what i’m saying is in your head it’s there you know yeah but i think in like all of a lot of our heads it’s like man it’s not always there like we gotta kind of get reminded everyone you know just to confirm things in the world you know in discipline equals freedom field manual i i talk about like how if you exercise you’ll be sharper right mentally sharper and then hearing that chess player the other day gary kasparov talked about how if you’re in shape it’s going to help you win at chess yeah i was like keep working out people yeah keep working out people that’s what you need to do yeah and actually and you’re kind of always your minds kind of seems to be anyway always kind of in that zone where it’s like you’re kind of looking for some kind of advantage or something to add to you know your deal or whatever but for the average person i think some of us don’t do that all the time because we kind of forget or maybe get distracted or whatever maybe that’s the same thing but where that’s why people they’ll work out less more things going on all this stuff right so they forget yeah yeah you got that let’s face it if you pour all your efforts into your job your family and your physical health are going to fall be pour all your efforts into your family your job and your physical health is gonna fail if you pour all your efforts into your physical health your job and your family are going to fail yeah so we have to be balanced if you let the physical one fall apart that’s going to negatively impact the other i actually they all they all impact each other right they all impact each other but let’s face it as you pointed out on one of the earliest of these podcasts the physical one will help you across the board in all aspects of the game so in a way maybe which game the game the game straight up in a way the best way the best strategy you know instead of pouring everything you have into your xyz whatever one thing you align them all and understand that they’re all this what they call it in business vertically integrated or whatever right it’s called the path the path yeah same thing so look i’m gonna exercise be capable of do jiu-jitsu i’m gonna um improve all my applicable skills so i can be a better whatever those things are whatever you are you seem to i think i’d know where you’re going with this people should get supplements from orgy is that where you’re going with this i think i think i just saw a little a little connection getting made yeah and thank you because because i was thinking starting to think like like hey if we’re going to make that connection in a minute maybe two minutes i’m down yeah i’m down see that kind of artistic maneuver the intellectual sharpness as you bring it in for the big win and all of a sudden you’re talking about how we’re going to get some supplementation hype on that okay and when we start going 12 minutes okay and we’re talking about alignment and vertical integration this is an important thing okay i’m just saying now you did have one person respond on social media that they are listening right now so that person is happy that you’re going down the path of whatever you’re going down hey look which is fine oh all right well hey better to be um over-informed than under-informed okay so hey look dave i don’t know if we can make that necessarily a blanket statement because i think there’s people that are right now questioning at this moment hey thanks for helping it along okay you know you’re getting your little bump a little push you do a great job a little influence a little influencer little influence anyway all right cool we’re here trying to compete stay competitive improve and maintain our competitive advantage okay look we need supplementation see how quickly that worked yeah i said kind of set you up like hey how can we maintain competitiveness you said boom and you were there i know manny seems like my idea too there was no in my head and man that was like man the best idea ever came up seeming seemingly that was a good job yeah anyway so i’m taking discipline and discipline go that’s probably why my brain is so sharp let me let me say something because even as you’re talking about this people are thinking okay what does this all mean here’s what here’s here’s a bonus thing because we repeat a lot of the same stuff right sure we certainly seem to repeat what are you right now nothing no you just continue please with your thoughts you’re making notes not using this indication of something are we editing stuff please continue are we editing things you can edit it out check this out i got good news everything that you’re about to talk about is available with free shipping at origin maine com if you get a subscription so if you want what do you take every day all of them uh joint warfare okay super curl oil vitamin d discipline in some form every single day dave what are you on daily cold water what about what about vitamin d so i guess i have to remember i have such a stash of this that i forget geez so so i’m i am i’m almost ashamed to say that but the only one i don’t have a huge stash of is cold war i think you said vitamin d maybe that’s what you were alluding to wait what did i say you said vitamin d yeah i i say cold war that one is now that one is now on regular shipping okay 30 days so if you go on that if you subscribe yes and of course go then you get free shipping yeah which is pretty awesome yes sure so if you want to get any of these items on a regular basis which we recommend you do get subscription get a subscription and you get free shipping okay done so let me go down the list these are all beneficial things maintain the competitive edge joint warfare for your joints don’t worry about that stuff you don’t have to worry about your joints anymore super crew oil same deal general health other benefits vitamin t3 and is another one also cold war this is for immunity and other health benefits better to have health benefits than health detriments facial expression said i don’t know what to say i mean you pulled it off credit negative credit it was in the you understand anyway back to the supplements discipline and discipline go so just blend the powder for your brain for your body discipline go brain body just on the go quicker delivery system capsules and also the energy drink form it’s a healthy energy drink by the way if we didn’t already know even though we do that is those are the facts also milk for extra protein forming dessert super delicious tasting protein as a dessert yeah you could say extra protein where you just say oh if you want also want a dessert cool you can get some milk get them out while you get the drinks you get the the ready to drink the cans at wawa all the wawas by the way they’re in there and vitamin shop so you can you can get them there or you can get them at origin maine com and if you get a subscription dang you’re in the game there’s a little issue with the wawa scenario what is it i got a lot of videos of people just going in there and cleaning it out so people will go in there with coolers yes go into the shells of wawa and empty every can so be warned yeah they’re getting after people are getting accurate but the great the great thing is uh we started off in florida yeah and it was sort of a test run for wawa and everyone went after those when after those discipline goes in wawa and just almost uh like less than a month into it less than a month into a three-month trial wawa came to us and said we want you in all the stores so thank you for for getting after it and was going to deliver wall was also in the game because they get tagged a lot from people out there shopping walls and they always get a good reply awesome yeah interesting that yeah i saw that with a guy with the cooler it was like a bin and he was like boom and i was like that’s interesting i don’t think i’ve ever been really that compelled to do that with it with a like a drink or whatever i’m saying under what circumstances would i be and then i thought back to like maybe like four days or so before where i texted belittle with the emergency scenario because i was only on my last one this one here’s the thing they’ll send it they’ll send it and because usually i don’t go to my last one but what if i’m on my last one and i’m like wait a second i can go to huawei and restock you see i’m saying then you’re bringing a cooler so it makes sense exactly right that’s another good reason because if you’re on a subscription that day doesn’t come that’s true that day does not come and we don’t want that day to come nope so yes uh you mentioned origenmate com that’s where you can get it as well also on origenmain com you can get jiu jitsu stuff gear keys rash cards that kind of stuff also shirts and sweats and cool clothes as well this is all american-made stuff by the way big deal yeah huge deal competitive advantage yes competitive advantage to have not slave labor but awesome people yeah you you mentioned that like um slave labor like when you kind of you know the front end of the slave labor situation right you just be like oh yeah we’ll just make it super cheap you know you guys don’t make it and we can sell it for hire whatever but if someone cares about what they’re doing on every step you know like manufacturing like okay my job is to do this and do this and to do this and i’m going to just do it but i care about doing it bro that’s way better like quality wise in every capacity and sustainable yeah so yes that is a competitive advantage what if everyone on your team cared about what their job was bro that’s how i’m gonna go ahead and say you just nailed that sir i agree that that is the case unless back to how we can all support ourselves talk about the store it’s called jackal store this is where you can represent your apparel while you’re on the path maintaining your advantage competitively we have shirts and hoodies and hats they all say discipline equals freedom or something along those lines good good same thing in a way kind of part of discipline anyway you understand what i’m saying um some good stuff on there there’s a t-shirt club it’s called the shirt locker shu thank you to whoever made that suggestion yeah that’s a good one it was a lot better than the other name that we had been using here the thing is to be honest like the more i think about it the shirt locker is like it didn’t even matter what the name was before that one would probably be better because it’s like perfect that’s the perfect name the shirt locker yep and that is also a subscription scenario where you can get different types of shirts from us a little not hardcore discipline equals freedom stuff but some fun stuff it’s cool it’s a cool little deal so look into that if that’s for you do that man chocolatestore com uh subscribe to this podcast um you can also join us on the underground go to jocko underground com it’s alternative podcasts some amplifying information some behind the scenes some q a some live stuff and we’re gonna we’re gonna actually record yet another underground podcast right now about going into some other facets of these discussions and and the reason we’re doing that we don’t we we need to have an alternative platform uh we don’t want to take on sponsors where we have to say what they say us say what they tell us to say and then also not say what they tell us not to say we don’t want to do that we definitely don’t want to have anyone critiquing how certain people on this podcast talk about the items that we’re discussing oh dave you like that i don’t know look at dave look at it look at you all right it costs 8 18 cents a month uh or you can if you can’t afford eight dollars and 18 cents a month by the way this is what supports this podcast um too but we we don’t want to have the jocko podcast behind a a paywall i always say firewall and you like correcting me right before i even said it which is good because i saw you right my mouth put in the sink is that that well a firewall is an actual thing yeah in like programming or something like that okay well we just have a we don’t want to put it behind a paywall because we won’t even be able to hear it and so that’s why eight dollars and eighteen cents a month you if you can’t afford that it’s okay email assistance jockonunderground com and we will take care of you we also have jocko unraveling podcast we have the grounded podcast we have the warrior kid podcast we have a a youtube channel where echo puts his legit videos a lot of those most of the good ones are ones that i’m the assistant director on and you’ll notice a trend there yeah hell yeah the good ones uh psychological warfare album on itunes if you need a little help getting over a little whatever moment moment momentary weakness maybe permanent weakness yeah maybe you’ll be listening to that thing a lot if you have like permanent weakness so you get that on any mp3 i also got flipsidecanvas com dakota myers company got a bunch of books leadership strategy and tactics field manual that’s ready for you all the answers are in that book what do you think dave yes the the code the evaluations the protocols we got about face with i wrote the forward honor to be able to write that definitely freedom field manual way the warrior kid one two three and four the way the warrior kid field manual is out mikey and the dragons and extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership we also have a leadership consultancy called echelon front go to echelonfront com for details on that we have ef online where we are have courses that you can take on leadership we have live interactions there go to efonline com we have the muster in 2021 which is our leadership conference go to extreme ownership com for details we’re making some adjustments on that right now on when those are going to take place ef overwatch executive leadership for your company go to efoverwatch com if you want to help service members active service members retired service members if you want to help gold star families and service members families at large then you can check out mark lee’s mom’s charity organization mama lee if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you didn’t get enough of my severe circumlocution or you need more of echoes befuddled bulletins or dave’s exhaustive explanations you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on instagram which obviously echo only refers to as the gram and on facebook dave is that david r burke echo is adequate charles and i am at jocko willing and thanks to all the military personnel out there in all branches of service in uniform around the world keeping us out of harm’s way by going into harm’s way yourself and also thanks to police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all first responders we thank you for the same for going into harm’s way to keep us out of it and everyone else out there you are somewhere on that continuum on the competition continuum on the leadership continuum on the influence continuum it’s happening every moment of every day so don’t lose track of that and don’t get beat without knowing you’re competing you are competing so stay in the game by going out there and getting after it until next time this is dave and echo and jocko
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