it’s so prevalent how generals become untouchables right how could you dare say anything about this general he served his and that’s what’s happening here and and look just because someone served their country just because someone served their country and did a good job as a platoon commander as a company commander as a battalion commander it doesn’t mean they’re gonna be awesome as a general in fact there’s some some things might indicate that those aren’t very different jobs especially when they did good as a company commander or a platoon commander during world war one when doing a good job was not disobeying orders and doing what you were told to do and freaking scurrying to a position where you don’t get killed right because what happened to the brave soldiers most of them got freaking killed we’ve talked about this thinking tactically and thinking strategically are really really different and it’s actually really hard to evolve from a tactician to a strategist that’s not and and in the military there’s kind of a very clear delineation like you’re sort of a tactician as a junior officer and the middle officers you’re sort of like an operational guy which sits between them and then the generals are the strategic thinkers but that evolution is really hard it’s really hard you talked about peter’s principle i think on the last podcast yeah where you get promoted to your level of incompetence that barrier between tactical thinking and strategic thinking is hard to overcome yeah well you run into it with companies as well where you get some dynamic person and a startup and they’re the ceo of the company but there’s only 48 employees and they can make things happen and they kind of impose their will and they can for they can kind of win the market and talk to people in a good salesman it works out awesome and then all of a sudden they got you know 500 employees and they’ve got a board and they’ve got regulatory environment that they don’t know how to handle and they turn into a disaster it doesn’t always happen but what we fail to do is we don’t really do a good job of training people and at least making them aware of the situation that they’re facing yeah and the other thing i wrote down was you’re talking about this is and i saw this as i got a little more senior in the officer ranks and kind of get a little more observation of that that general officer tier or that flag officer tier for the navy is what gets them there is a bunch of success a bunch of success and with that success if you’re not careful what that success can do and it’s not just true in the military it’s true everywhere is that success is this it equals validation and if you got to start to get to this validation like hey what i’m doing is working you know what i should do i should keep doing the same thing and that flies against what you just talked about which is the training and the evolution to think differently from what you did and one of the simplest things we see this is hey if i if i’m a really good at a frontline task go to that particular task i’m going to get promoted i’ll be the foreman of this other team and why i’m the foreman is because i’m really good at the task but my job isn’t to do that task anymore my job is to think strategically and lead this team and i have no skills and no training to do that because the criteria for getting promoted is being good at the task and that success and that validation sometimes not always sometimes leads them to a level that they’re not capable of doing but the system doesn’t allow you to give them any feedback because when you’re a general officer guess what i’m a general officer there’s there’s something that you said that requires a little bit more exploring and that is you said that when someone gets advanced to you know a general officer or a ceo in many cases it’s based on their successes there’s something else it’s based on their lack of failures so who you know dave and i go on deployment dave does four operations they all go okay he gets the job done jocko goes they we’re on the same deployment you’re a task unit commander i’m a task commander my task unit does 170 operations 168 of them go really well and have a huge impact two of them are jacked up who gets promoted who gets promoted this is not like a theoretical question who gets promoted yeah i’m getting promoted dave’s getting promoted because i didn’t make any headlines for this screw up i didn’t cause all this equipment and god forbid somebody got hurt or killed we’re not we’re not having a conversation with dave yeah dave no friction no resistance no problem for me no additional paperwork i don’t have to send an investigation out for what happened so and it’s not even that extreme it’s really not even that extreme like you’re you’re you’re making it really obvious but it’s like hey you know dave did four operations they went well good job jocko did a hundred operations they had a vehicle rollover right um they lost a radio and they had a guy get wounded the guy get wounded it’s like people understand that but oh you know the vehicle rollover what kind of wasn’t this was this really necessary and all of a sudden it’s like well you know dave kind of keeps his nose clean he did a good job who’s getting promoted davis so that’s disturbing the other thing is you look at these these generals who made it who’s getting promoted the ones that freaking lived how did they live they said oh you know sir maybe i could go back to the rear and and help you with your strategic planning you know here’s another cup of tea i really like dave you know he’s i want to bring him back with me makes my ego feel good so you’re a little brown noser and then you end up getting living through world war one and now i put you under my wing and along you go yeah and i’m i’m sticking around the army too after all for a while i can stomach that whole thing as opposed to all the guys that came back and like don’t ever call me again yeah i’m not don’t don’t ever call me again yeah and not to mention i come back and i’m like hey look i did my time cool i’m gonna go out and be an entrepreneur and make money and build a business you’re like hey i’m kind of scared to get out i think i’ll just stay in here i’ll be getting a paycheck three hots in a cot you know i get the uniform people treat me with respect i’m good
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