Jocko Podcast 256: An Hour Lost Today is an Hour Lost Forever. Time is Running Out. W/ Dave Berke.

this is jocko podcast number 256 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening and joining us once again is dave burke good evening dave good evening and tonight we are going to wrap the final installment on guidelines for the leader and commander by general bruce clark this is the subject of podcasts plural 251 252 253 254 255 and now finally 256 so much to learn taking the lessons that were passed on to colonel david hackworth who served degree in vietnam wrote the book about face taught me many leadership lessons well he learned those lessons from this book written by general bruce clark who served in korea world war ii world war one who led many soldiers trained even more including one that he didn’t even know about me and we are trying to pass those lessons on so for the final installment let’s get back to the book guidelines for the leader and commander chapter 11 physical conditioning there you go echo charles i’m sure your interest just got peaked here we go i would like to pass on to you for such implementation as may be practicable within your several commands and within your various types of headquarters and units some thoughts on the problem of physical exercise physical condition and physical training this is a complex subject its success depends on the program each commander works out to fit his needs and facilities and then enthusiastically and energetically pushes while many of our units and individuals are in fine physical shape this is not universally true in many commands i believe it can be made more nearly universally true by a more general concept as to its importance and to a consideration of the implementation of practical steps that can be taken in this field without materially interfering with our other activities what grade are you giving general clark for simplicity on that whole opening i’m not giving him a good grade luckily he redeemed you’re going to see he redeems himself from the end of this book with some real simple clear concise so he thinks that you know the simple statement is people should be working out i believe strongly that good physical condition is one of the evidences of a spree in a unit as well as of morale in an individual so it helps both your team and you as a person now here’s where we have a serious beef serious beef probably one of the most serious beefs ever for me with general clark this topic is called calisthenics at end of day echo you’re probably going to want to throw down with this one you’re going to throw in with him on one occasion i visited a unit and observed calisthenics being conducted during the first period of the morning this was being done in the normal way by a junior sergeant conducting the exercises with the senior non-commissioned officers and officers standing around to supervise and monitor possibly the ones who needed the exercise the most were the ones observing that’s a good one right you don’t want to be that guy you don’t want to be that guy that’s standing there with uh small arms telling people they need to do more pull-ups right you don’t want to find yourself in that situation no sir i did not but then he says this i do not think calisthenics or other physical training exercise in the first hour of the day is good of course as we know i definitely think that working out the first hour of the day is good if they are done strenuously enough to be of any value so that the men work up perspiration the men then wear the same wet clothes throughout the day or until such clothing dries on them similarly if men perform exercises requiring them to sit on the ground or lie on the ground they start off the day with dirty and maybe wet clothing now for me general clark all due respect i think we can just take a shower and change clothes when we’re done working out yeah i think we can overcome that in the modern era yeah i gotta admit that kind of surprised me as being the first reason that he’s talking about yeah why not to work out first thing in the morning yeah because we we could just we could just shower seems easy to solve that problem i will say this though i think he’s coming from a time period where they didn’t have this full like this was only an idea that was just coming to fruition right so it wasn’t a thing yet yeah it wasn’t a thing to work out so people didn’t have workout clothes people didn’t have workout shoes people didn’t have workout bag you know these people didn’t have a workout bag they didn’t have your the little freaking reebok bag or whatever that echo charles takes the 24-hour fitness get your curls on yes so they didn’t have that back then so he’s thinking hey you show up to work and the first thing we’re gonna do is build up a sweat now we’re gonna wet the clothes all day all right we’ll give you we’ll cut you some slack and then he says i believe it is far more reasonable to devote the last hour in the afternoon to physical exercising and physical training so that the men can go from it to the showers and get into other clothing for supper and the evening this is the time when the mind is tired and training requiring mental attention is least effective okay so that’s okay so all right so we we’re just gonna jump past like all the whole thing about when you’re working out because i think it’s just i think we’re beyond that now in the modern era yeah i don’t think we’re i think we can work out whenever it makes the most sense not based on our sweat and clothing can we put that can we set that one aside i agree yes we can so now this is interesting this is the time when the mind is tired and training requiring mental attention is least effective doesn’t it take a certain level of mental effort to do a hard workout yeah don’t don’t you think yes dave yes i wonder if he’s thinking like intellectual effort right i get that and i get that too like for instance this might sound stupid uh when i’m going to when i’m going to let’s say it’s late at night and i’m like tired and i’ve got some more reading to do i’ll read until i’m just gonna fall asleep and then i’ll get up brush my teeth whatever take my supplements as echo likes to say so i’ll do my little evening routine floss every day and then and then i’ll have like you know i stood up so now i’m i can read a little bit longer i can go a little bit longer and then i go to sleep so when you do something i guess that what i’m saying is you get bored so maybe this is a good plan hey it’s the end of the day you’re kind of tired you don’t feel like focusing on this what you call it dave intellectual work effort yeah yeah you don’t you don’t you you’ve spent your intellectual energy but you can still just go jack some steel possibly okay i don’t know i don’t agree think that that’s the case for some of us that like no man when you’re mentally exhausted i mean sure there are some circumstances but as a general sort of way an approach to working out i don’t know man i don’t know if i can get there quite yet okay but we’ll see so you want to have you want to be mentally fresh for your workout yes okay all right back to the book in two divisions and in a brigade in which i served everyone stopped activities at four o’clock on two days a week with the exception of the necessary duty officers guards and everyone at the from the commanding general everyone from the commanding general on down took physical exercises this physical exercising consisted of activities that provided a real workout none of this echo charles real workout certain well-organized selected games were allowed provided that everyone played organized calisthenics were allowed but the bulk of the units engaged in a four mile trot and fast walk to to be completed in 50 minutes yeah so bro we’re talking 12 minute miles or whatever we’re not this is not this is not a challenge and here’s what here as i thought through this it started to make a little bit more sense combat boots with proper socks worn by all personnel in order to get the men used to and prevent damage to their feet right above the top of the boots everyone’s permitted to prescribe their own uniform within the realm of decency this gave men a feeling of freedom which added to the relaxation and benefit of exercise okay so that’s cool i do not think this lack of uniformity hurt the discipline of the unit it was not a show men tr men traveled the previously laid out four mile courses as individuals being checked at the start and finish to record their times in order to motivate the slow ones by falling so this is just we you know he just kind of prescribes this weird like four mile walk that everyone’s gonna go on which tells me earlier when i said they weren’t that working out wasn’t really like a thing yet yeah it wasn’t yeah because if they’re thinking 50 minutes and four miles but the only thing i can say about that also is if you’re talking about a whole division or a whole brigade of people like these are not all frontline soldiers obviously these are administrative people and whatever the general himself so yeah i don’t know um by following the course as individuals instead of for formation no one exercised so strenuously as to do himself damage regardless of his physical condition or age care should be taken in starting such a program to work into it reasonably so as not to increase the sick call rate i you i think if you look if you imagine like a corporation like a giant corporation a division size corporation with whatever 10 or 15 000 people and they were gonna start a physical training program this might be an okay program you got 50 minutes you got to go out you got to move four miles go for a walk whatever i think that’s i think that’s almost the perspective that he’s coming from okay i don’t know though because didn’t he just say a real workout and there should be sweating i mean i’m not sweating after a after 12-minute miles for four miles and i sweat a lot as you know well let’s just be thankful that we are where we are where where we’ve learned so much about physical training and which has changed a lot i mean did you see that picture i post and the other day of i was like yelling at one of my friends back in the day and he’s doing cable crossovers i couldn’t tell what he was doing crazy but he was doing just cable crossovers yeah oh yeah hard core building sculpting the chest building the what the lower packs leave it to you to try to yell at him while he’s doing that exercise too it’s not like he was doing deadlifts i think we were just messing around actually uh physical exercise program the secretary of the army has written to commanders about the tendency to to move troops from barracks to work and from barracks to training areas by vehicle instead of marching them when it is practicable to march he pointed out that it’s very important that the troops retain the ability to march and especially was and this was especially important in mechanized and motorized armor units so that’s a great point when you have the opportunity to march instead of riding a vehicle you should march instead of riding a vehicle that’s one thing that’s cool about buds in buds you run to dan you run to breakfast and back you’re on the lunch and back you run the dinner and back it’s a mile there it’s a mile back so you’re doing six miles a day before anything like before the day before you get credit for anything you ran six miles yeah as a pilot do you because i was watching some videos of some pilots you know that i came across um and do you guys like kind of have to stay in physical condition just to endure like flying a plane essentially i mean the physical fitness standards are universal across the marine corps all the same there is a there’s a unique level of fitness that is associated with flying and it kind of comes and goes with how much flying you’re doing but there’s not like a separate type of aviation fitness other than there are things about aviation that will fatigue you that you you won’t get fatigued doing other things and and that’s true for other things as well but like the pt in the marine corps doesn’t they don’t care what your your job is okay can you train for the like let’s say you did a disassociated tour and you weren’t flying for 18 months and now you knew you were going back to a squadron you’re gonna be fine is there any exercises that you could do to get ready for flying you can’t train for g tolerance which is like the big thing so that’s like it’s a perishable thing you know there’s there’s uh you know aerobic and anaerobic there’s certain muscles that are good to be strengthened um but if you haven’t flown it’s the g’s that will that you cannot train for you can’t replicate those g’s and you can’t train for those g’s at all i mean okay let me challenge you now you can train for the technique and you can strengthen the muscles to do that but you can’t replicate the actual feeling of the jeez but that being said if you take someone that’s in really good shape versus someone that’s not really good shape the person that’s in really good shape is gonna do better maybe i mean okay i mean you have to use your muscles yeah you you do but like larger muscles don’t don’t mean better g tolerance but what about just conditioning yeah no absolutely yes a better conditioned person is going to be able to endure all things being equal be able to endure the rigors of flying more than the other person but that doesn’t mean he’s going to have a higher g tolerance did i ever tell you about my my buddy when my platoons all went backseat in the f-18s so we went through the whatever training you go through so you can get called to go the back seat so we all go through well he showed up late and so he missed the whole briefing on how to what is it called how to push the blood to your brain he missed all that and then he missed whatever and then he showed up i think he was out i think he was drinking the night before and so there’s a little covered move and like we snuck him back into the class and put his name on the roster and it’s all good well then he showed he go we get up to fallon and he didn’t know what to do he just got in the plane he’s like cool i know you know whatever and he passed out the entire time you know he would just like wake up and then just pass out again because he didn’t know to to put the blood to his head he didn’t know to do that so he’s just passing out and they had video of it does that make sense that they had video of it totally he was just he was just flopping around in the cockpit and we were laughing and he’s like i had no idea he didn’t remember anything he was just passing out yep bro can’t you get like hurt like that like if you’re passed out all limp and catch your neck because you know those that video that you play at the muster of that guy in the what do you call those centrifuges yeah yeah and he he passes out and it’s like probably still getting smashed from the force yeah i don’t think there’s any real risk of permanent injury from doing that it’s more just being humiliated but yeah all right yeah that actually that’s what i was that’s what i meant like do you guys train do you guys have a specific like training routine for that because man it you don’t really realize that i mean maybe you do maybe don’t you know but when you see guys flying planes and doing all that stuff you don’t really understand like what you’re going through physically in there you know right is there an ideal physical build for fighter pilot i don’t think so man i mean just like with every marine they’re just all shapes and sizes i mean my my body type is drastically different than others and if you were going to be an f-18 pilot or let’s say an f-35 pilot yeah you were going to design an f-35 pilot human yeah how tall would that human be six foot how much how much would they weigh 190 pounds so that’s it just like so there is an ideal that’s because if he’s six four he’s cramped in the cockpit if he’s six if he’s five five he can’t reach the pedals or whatever right i mean there’s issues there are there are legitimate anthropometric issues that is achieved like you get measured all these odd measurements like ankle or like elbow to wrist like ankle to knee there’s all sorts of physical measurements the the window is pretty broad and even you know for me to say six foot 190 i’m just talking about like a lean strong guy does that mean a five foot six 125 pound person can’t be a good pilot no they totally absolutely can absolutely can would that person maybe struggle a little bit with like looking over their shoulder yeah they would their body type is if you’re 6’4 and you’re banging your head against the canopy which guys in my squadron guys whose call signs were stretched because they were so tall at the end of the day i don’t think anyone would come back and say i’m better because of my build or my height so even that answer is like the window is broad enough to say that anybody and there’s pilots out there plenty of good pilots out there that aren’t six foot 190 is there is there a cutoff height or minimum technically yeah i think it’s pretty small i think it’s it’s very short like five one five two you know you can accommodate someone that short and i think i i’ve known guys that are six five six six flying fighters so damn they get it there’s a big window in there do they call them pedals they do they call them pedals they’re adjustable so the image of not being able to reach the pedals is more funny than anything but i’ll tell you what as a as a taller guy you know a taller dude and you know when you get into an airplane that somebody else has flown and they’re on the the shorter side you get in your your knee you know it’s like being in the backseat of a car and you immediately have to push those pedals all the way back because the dude in front of you is way shorter than you so it’s adjustable like a cadillac it is it’s the adjustment is not too far away from the the cockpit temperature adjuster oh that’s right so you know you can adjust that little temperature jack all right going on i do not wish to discourage anyone who gets exercise from golf tennis bowling hunting fishing gardening walking skiing etc in fact i encourage such activities during off time when spring arrives and long daylight hours of the year are with us it’s good time to start physical training program he goes on a commander should have no objection to cl to the closing of any headquarters at four o’clock two days a week in order to devote this time to physical exercising nor should he object to the stopping of other activities in most toe units at four o’clock two afternoons a week for this purpose so he’s talking about you should always train two days a week which once again i mean yeah in the marine corps you guys do pt every single day right well not aviation units all the time yeah i mean when i was with the ground units that was every single day and there was a time allocated to that um the squadrons that i would in i was in didn’t do five days a week five day week pt huh i thought that was pretty standard in the whole military well that’s what he’s saying he’s saying only two days a week yeah i mean i think what he’s saying it’s interesting because you mentioned the comment this guy was you know steeped in world war one this is a guy saying you need to prioritize time for pt now i mean two days a week now looking back as you know reflecting on that but he was probably a pioneer saying hey commanders shut your unit down to go work out yeah and you should do that like that’s okay as opposed to hey we got to get this paperwork done or this whatever other thing going on is so he might have been out in front of the curve for all i know for the for the era that he was in saying it’s okay from the general down to the private does it shut down normal ops to go to unit no absolutely i you’re 100 i believe you’re 100 right he was the guy that was spearheading working out look you got to get out there two days a week he doesn’t even say minimum right because that would be sort of like hey minimum two days a week he’s just saying two days a week like you gotta get out there um in connection with this physical exercise program i think we might well give thought to delaying the evening meal on monday through friday in order to give the men more time to get cleaned up showered and dressed so they will not feel the urge to rush right to work well right from work to supper this was this the reason i wanted to read the sections this would have advantages other than physical conditioning by serving the evening meal in the enlisted messes as early as we do we leave the soldier with over six hours of time after supper before he is scheduled to be in bed to do things that sometimes lead to trouble more exercise in a later meal hour in the afternoon would tend to reduce free time in the evening and would absorb energies and would encourage the men to go to bed earlier it has been found to be an overall advantage to serve the heavy meal at night instead of at noon on duty days i believe we give enough time off to our food service people so they can live with these changes in the feeding program oh it’s so classic alcohol i’ve written before chapter three about the intemperate use of alcohol and the and of the desirability of cutting down on the quantity of consumption of alcohol one of the reasons for this is to help improve the physical condition of our officers and men obesity i would like to say a word about personnel being overweight while there are not very many such personnel in most commands there are some who are eating more than their physical activity burns up the commander should bring this to the attention of such individuals with a view to more exercising or less eating or both other pro problems and this is the last section other problems this is just a broad statement this is this this is actually something that echo that you used to say all the time on this podcast other problems i believe that such a program as i suggested will automatically help to solve the problem in those units which have one of men and garrison changing out of fatigues for evening social activities it should help reduce other unfavorable statistics as well you used to say on this podcast all the time echo that the most universally helpful thing that a person can do is exercise it will help you in all aspects of whatever you’re doing which is a good point and what he’s saying is hey if you exercise you every problem that you have is going to be improved there you go so echo was the pioneer on that one there’s something you said i was thinking about in my my contrast between aviation my my time in a fighter squadron versus my time at anglica which is kind of the biggest contract uh contrast is and i don’t know how it is elsewhere but the infantry or the ground units when i was with them have a kind of pre-regiment like their day is a it’s kind of a typical work day whereas a fighter squadron operates 24 hours a day so they’re they are running in shifts the whole time so standard work week is there’s always a third or a half of the unit there from sunday night to friday afternoon so that cycle is a little it’s i was kind of thinking in my head just the the the you getting the whole unit together in a squadron almost never happens you’re at best you’re going to have like even when you’re doing your work up you running that workup is a workup is probably even worse because workups you know your the flying schedule shifts around a bunch to get all these different calls but you i would say routinely the best you’re ever going to get is half your squadron there at any given time most of the time now it’s not always like that but i would say 90 of a typical fighter squadron cycle is you have two or three shifts and you’ll never have more than half your squadron there at any given time well before the war in the 90s at the team we used to pt as a team five days a week yeah as a team maybe one day would be what they call the individual pt which guys would legitimately individual pt they’d go do whatever would you know do jiu jitsu or whatever they were gonna do but the other days it was like oh monday is a run tuesday’s a swim wednesday’s individual pt thursday’s of course friday’s monster mash that was kind of a typical st schedule at the in the it’s back in the what’s the monster match monster mash is just of course boat paddle just come up with some crazy sort of various what would you call it i don’t know what you it’d be like one of those um you ever see those tv uh physical competitions where they’re doing all these up like you’d run the obstacle course then you would do berm runs but you would be in a little team so it’d just be some kind i don’t know we called it a monster match like american ninja warrior yeah like american ninja warrior but as teams gotcha and is the platoon back in the this is obviously pre-war but back in was the platoon kind of together all the time yeah so the platoon was together but the team wasn’t so there’d be two platoons out in the desert there’d be a though there’d be one platoon out of the desert there’d be one platoon up a foul and there’d be another platoon in the jungle somewhere but there’d still be three platoons back at the team and all the support people from the team so the platoon is like that was the element that at the lowest level like they were together you didn’t really break up platoons very often not very often that’s cool you’re going through your work up together but you got to remember a seal platoon is small right a seal platoon is only 16 guys sometimes in the past we bumped them up to 18 sometimes we’ve even bumped them up to 21 depending on manning and personnel and mission but the general seal platoon 16 people and post post war did that become the task unit was together for the most part almost like elevate up at the yes then they all of a sudden they they made the task unit which is two platoons together with a headquarters unit over it and they and they had the idea it took them a while to like actually make it happen so there was some good vision on the on behalf of naval special warfare commanders to say actually you know what we should probably put a bigger unit together because 16 guys is is very limiting right what can you do with 16 guys i mean if you man up vehicles with 16 guys you man up whatever you man up three vehicles now you now there’s six people in those vehicles driver gunner driver gunner driver gunner you put the rest of the guys in that gives you ten assaulters what can you take down with tennis holders the answer is not very many so went into a task unit mode with now you had two platoons plus you had headquarters and then you get attachments of eod and maybe you get a some kind of a radio man to help you out so all of a sudden you know you got um 35 or 40 guys going out the door so it turns into a a better situation was a really good call i remember one of the one of the first things uh i was in a platoon i was in an arg platoon which meant we were going out on a ship and we had to do hydrographic reconnaissance which is old school lead line and slate lead line of sight meaning you had a lead line you had a piece of rope with a piece of lead on the bottom and you you tied little knots every six feet for fathoms and you would go and swim in a line and dip that lead line and see how deep the water was and then you’d dive for obstacles before the marines came in this is world war ii straight up udt underwater demolition team stuff well when you’re in the arc platoon you actually did that a lot because you were supporting marine corps landings so so we were we had a 16-man platoon and i didn’t argue like that with 16 guys and it was really hard because you have a you have a boat party of guys and then you have like a radio men so there’s two or three guys that aren’t in the water and somebody’s staying with the boat so there’s another two guys that are not in the water so all of a sudden you’ve got you’ve only got seven guys to do the recon or nine guys to do the recon or whatever so that’s that’s not good so i remember writing a point paper i was like an e4 and i wrote a point paper to my commanding officer that the arg platoons should have four more personnel in the platoon and i think we actually got like they gave us like two more guys pretty cool young i mean who did i think i was such a it’s pretty funny i look back at that standard naval letter format when i send it to you i know i tried yeah i know i tried but the cool thing was you know my commanding officer at the time was like yeah you know that makes sense hey we can’t give you four but we can give you two make it an 18-man platoon we had an 18-man platoon i’m pretty sure i can’t even remember you know what’s weird is i can’t even remember what yeah i can’t remember if he gave us two more people maybe gave us one more i think he gave us at least one more person because i think i know exactly who it was but anyways all right so there’s the physical conditioning thing um the next section is called chapter 12 the creating of superior units four basic principles i have found that there are four basic principles which apply to the problem of creating army units which are considered superior first the superior unit must be created from the ordinary run of personnel how awesome is that you’re gonna make a superior unit but anybody that’s ever served in the military knows that you’re gonna get what you get and yet we all know that there’s units that are freaking awesome and there’s units that are horrible and both the awesome units and the horrible units have run-of-the-mill people in them they came from the they come from the same pool of soldiers in this case it’s all the same people you don’t get to pick your little team of your superstar athletes in this case uh and it’s the same thing in business right it’s the same thing in business you get businesses that are in the same market and one of them is crushing and the other one’s not well why is that why is that you’re both getting to hire from the same group of human beings and in the country whatever country you’re in so the superior unit must be created from the ordinary run of personnel second classified according to ability the men in a unit fall naturally into three groupings upper middle and lower the excellence of a unit depends upon the ability of the commander to bring the men of the lower group to a degree of proficiency which makes them an asset to his unit team so this is we’re going to get into some stuff where i’m i’m not sure about i’m not sure about this is one of them and he talks about a little bit more i mean he talks about your focus being making the people that are he’s basically saying you got good really good people middle people and bad people he’s saying the focus is like make the bad people better make the bad people a a a plus for the unit i don’t necessarily agree with that i i agree with that should be ah focus a singular focus i don’t think it should be the full i would rather take my people that are at the top and make them totally awesome and make my people that are in the middle like really really good i’m not going to focus my efforts on the turds the reason i didn’t say anything when you when you read that because i had that little like is i’m going to listen what general clark has to say before i but but at on its face that when you said that my first thinking was was okay i don’t think that’s right but um obviously he’s gonna say something about it but we we get this question in business all the time leaders will devote all their attention to their bottom performers like almost all of their attention it’s like why would you invest all of your time in your least productive people why wouldn’t you invest most of your most of your time in your most productive people again you don’t you don’t ignore those people but if you’re devoting and again he’s going to say something i’m sure yeah yeah but when you said that i had that reaction of well it’s like if you let’s say on a on a level of one to five you’re a five and echo’s a one one being the worst five being the best of course so if i take my efforts and i’m able to i’m able to double your power i can turn you into a ten i can only turn echo into a two exponentially positive returns on dave burke yeah kinda not honest all right next third all men to des this is such this is such an interesting one third all men desire to do what is wanted of them all men desire to do what is wanted of them okay so that’s that’s the first part so let’s let’s absorb that and then he goes on to just take some ownership here when they do not it is because they have not been adequately motivated and instructed so have you ever had anybody in your squadron that straight up just didn’t want to do what was what was wanted of them you know i would say yes in the sense that yeah there are people that i’ve had in my units that fit that bill and we did something about that his point i understand his point though and the idea that that i’m going to write that person off is unwilling to do it to me it’s it was more like how how much of my ti how much energy am i gonna devote to try to find the way that gets you to where i need to be so while i don’t disagree with that comment yeah i’ve had people in my in my spirit multiple times throughout my career that simply didn’t get where they needed to be and could you say hey that’s for the fault of the leader yes 100 but the leader also still has to make a little measurement of am i going to devote 100 of my time to getting that guy from a one to a two i’m gonna go hey man this investment in you right now is going to take away from all this other stuff and i’m going to cut you loose yeah and by the way what’s what’s what’s ten times zero yeah if the person’s a zero well now you so so listen i think all men is an overstatement i think you could throw a percentage on there that’s upwards of 97 yeah 97 that want to do what they want to do a good job they want to do a good job and to his point as a leader your default should be is they’re not the problem your default is the percentage is so high that you might as well just go in the assumption that the problem isn’t with them so that 97 is i think actually correct not all but i think his point too is like hey if you’re in charge of people and they’re not they’re not up to standards you need to spend most of your time figuring out what you’re doing wrong yeah most people don’t need to be fired they need to be led i think we wrote that in extreme ownership or in dichotomy of leadership i think it’s an economy leadership most people don’t need to be fired they need to be led most people yeah all people no you’re going to get and you know what i you know when you see this and i don’t well you didn’t get to see this because you were an officer and you went through ocs when you go through like navy boot camp you see some people that don’t want to be there they do not want to be there they’re there for 15 minutes like this ain’t for me and they’re going to do whatever they got to do to get they don’t want to do what is wanted of them they don’t yeah they want out uh fourth the best unit in an organization is always the one which is excellent or better in all things if you agree with these precepts let us analyze and apply them to the basic problem of the commander who is striving for a superior unit application to the units the applications of the principles to the unit the problems of polishing ordinary units until they emerge as superior are primarily the problems of raising individual performance and capabilities to a superior level the many truly outstanding units which have been produced in our army given give ample evidence that these problems can be solved based on the fact that their percentile scores on the afqt which is like the asvab which is the it’s the basic intelligence test that you take when you’re coming in the military as an enlisted did you take it to become an officer yeah yeah yeah no i took it took the asvab yes absolutely okay so you take like a basic test it’s sort of uh an sat and a ct type test totally how smart are you is basically what it is and then he ranks it out into three groups and it’s the upper third the middle third the lower third but he’s got this little thing in here and he’s got the scores listed and i’m not gonna uh go into those but the upper third is 11 and 34 so the upper the top two groups combined make up 45 so 45 of people are in the are in the 65 percentile and higher of that testing 43 are in the middle so you’re almost done and then the last 12 is people that are in not the lowest group but the second the lowest group so if you get between zero and nine on the on the asvab and these aren’t this is this is actually the afqt which is the old asvab so the scores won’t correlate to what we know about since we didn’t take the asvab in 19th or we can take the asqt in 1958 so what he’s saying is you’re going to get mostly people that are either in the middle group or in the higher group which is great now i’m sure that there’s some people that are thinking well that’s the difference you know you know i’m in the civilian world and we get these people they’re they’re not no when you start talking about people that are in the lowest scoring brackets of the of the asvab like they they can’t get in the military but they’re also not gonna be applying for a job with that’s gonna take some some high level cognitive abilities they’re just not going to be there so i’ve got a very interesting book that i’m going to cover on the podcast and and it’s it’s really it’s i’ve been reading it for a while i’ve actually actually showed it to you several months ago because i’ve been stewing on it but it’s during the vietnam war they they needed people yeah they needed people to be in the military they needed people to be in the military to go to vietnam and so they started to lower the standards and the the main standard that they lowered was the the iq level or i don’t know if you want to call it the iq level but that’s basically what’s the intellectual level the the the intelligence level and they started getting these these people in the military that were just they just didn’t have the mental capacity to to do really any job um even and you know you know you think about in the military there’s some pretty there’s some pretty there’s some jobs that don’t take a lot of intellectual horsepower right i mean you need people that are going to clean the the toilets you know you got you got some you know you got a people that are gonna and look these are what we this is what i did when i got the military right when i got the seal teams i was cleaning toilets but then you you’re gonna move up and you’re gonna move on but at some place you need some people that are going to have some pretty fundamentally non-high cognitive skill requirement jobs well they started letting people in that this didn’t have the capability it’s a really sad and these guys a lot of these guys went to vietnam they had obviously they had a higher casualty rate they had a higher more of them got killed uh because they just didn’t they just didn’t understand things and the guy that wrote this book that i’m reading he went he’s talking about going through boot camp and he basically gets paired up with one of these guys and all the drill instructors knew it they they called them like mcnamara’s morons that’s what they’d call these guys when they come in and he got assigned one of these guys basically to to to help get him through boot camp and one of the most like one of the opening scenes is they’re telling him hey you know write write your address on this postcard and write a message to your family and not only did he not know how to write but he didn’t even know what his address was he didn’t even know what his what street he lived on it didn’t he didn’t know they had to teach him how to tie his shoes and they had to teach him how to tie his shoes not just hey this is how you do it no like they had to teach him for extended periods of time how to tie his shoes so these are people that are really in a car really you know in a low intellectual level and we we brought i think it was about a hundred thousand of them into the military which is just uns just just horrible just horrible um so my point in saying all that is we’re talking about you know you in in the civilian sector you’re not getting that person either to apply for your job in accounting right so don’t think to yourself well you know my accounting department that my guys my people are there they don’t they’re not smart either no we’re not talking about that we’re not talking about that um so he goes on to say that those in the upper groupings are the best educated and quickest to learn can be well motivated but need to be challenged to develop their full potential the middle groupings are average run of american use they are easily controlled take well to discipline learn easily respond to good leadership but are usually capable of more and they must be pushed the lower groupings are the ones that need special attention and again this is where you and i are kind of like the lower groupings are the ones who need special attention the disciplinary problem in this group is higher than average i agree with that the individuals require special motivation instruction agree with that their attitude constitutes a special barometer of the esprit de corps of the unit this group contains also many of the misfits who if they cannot be assimilated assimilated must be eliminated so it’s interesting that that he’s calling for like special attention on this lower group uh and then he says in a single squad crew go well just i’m thinking in my mind as i’m hearing you talk about this just things that i’ve heard you say on this podcast things we’ve talked about on your podcast and and i’m i’m trying to kind of consider what’s in general clark’s head as i’m hearing this obviously i’m trying to put myself in this position you know we’ve talked about this before and i think the way you said it was anybody on your team has the potential to undo your entire plan you know and so i’m trying to make this connection my head of the things he’s talking about why you devote so much effort to these people and i’m i’m just trying to place in my head why he’s saying it the way he’s saying it which there is if they’re on your team and you keep them on your team these aren’t people you get rid of but they’re on your team and they are underperformers or low performance they still have the potential of undoing your plan and so i’m trying to piece the things that he’s thinking almost i don’t know what he’s going to say but i do understand that you know the flip side to that the other thing i’ve been thinking about we work with companies that some of the companies we work with have this philosophy is hey we’re going to pay more and we’re going to attract a higher higher higher bar a higher average level because we are a higher paying organization and you know there’s a bunch of economic theory behind that and their belief is that they’re going to attract better talent and you know what they end up with the exact same problems as all other organizations they still have a bell curve they still have underperformers and this is something you said too is even in the sealed teams and people create this image on their mind of what a seal is and they’re you know they’re superhuman and how many times have you said no they’re people the exact same thing at top gun where people place these guys on a pedestal as if they’re somehow all of them uniquely capable and we had a bottom 12 at top gun too we had underperformers at top gun just like everywhere else so for me to think about it if you’re in a leadership role the takeaway from this is that what is required for all this is your leadership more than anything now i’ll i do want to hear his thoughts on that but your underperformance can still undo your plan and there’s no like free pass of hey we just have a better screening process so we don’t we weed out those people well we know that that’s not true those problems exist in the same bell curve in any every organization yeah and the other thing that affects the bell curve is the bar that everyone has to be staying above so the bottom 12 percent at top gun they’re the bottom 12 top gun they may be the top tier of some other organization somewhere but at top gun they’re the bottom 12 and and they’re making the same kind of mistakes relative to their job it’s the same thing the seal team’s like oh yeah the the seal teams they have a we have a bottom part of the bell curve now those people might be really good if they had some other job somewhere you know in task unit bruiser we we had to get rid of one guy he was a great guy he was a hard worker he just didn’t quite have the capacity to get the job done i guarantee he went to his next unit in the navy and was the best sailor they had i i can i can i can guarantee that because he was a hard worker he wanted to do a good job he just didn’t quite have that decision-making process and maybe i shouldn’t have said the best sailor but he’s going to be a really good guy a really good guy and and so but the bar yeah is is is higher for what you’re being required to do right this is what you’re like a top gun you’re being required to fly this jet at these at these g’s and make these decisions and maneuver and remember what’s happening and debrief and communicate and and pay attention to nine different things at the same time you’re required to do all that stuff and the the people that are barely able to do it they’re the bottom of the bell curve you put them you know driving an uber and they’re going to be the best freaking uber driver you know in well at least in the top let’s say the top five percent of uber driver because i’ve had some damn good uber drivers before so so yes that that bell curve exists everywhere you’re not going to get away from it and you do have to lead and i and i agree with your point why general clark might be saying hey you got to pay attention to that bottom 12 because no one in the top 88 is gonna well there’s a much less there’s much less chance of them torpedoing your whole mission right those knuckleheads they they’re holding the freaking trigger to the torpedo and they could fire that thing off at any moment so you got to pay attention to them that might be the the the genesis of his of his focus on these individuals is that probably where the what’s the saying you’re only as strong as your weakest link kind of a philosophy right yep yeah maybe that’s where it came from it’s it’s from that definitely from that concept that broad concept he goes on here single squad crew or section will probably contain men of all three groupings certainly they will appear in any platoon or company this presents a practical problem in the handling and instructing of men in perfecting the teamwork of the squad crew secondary platoon the leader can afford to adopt only one approach to handling his men he must assume that they all want to do what he wants done when any number do not respond to this assumption the fault is more probably his than theirs so his assumption is everyone’s that’s a great assumption to make the assumption and that’s what i like about this assumption that all men want to do what what has wanted them to do what we want them to do that’s a great assumption to make because that means when they don’t it’s our fault and that’s exactly what he’s saying he’s taking full ownership and then he says this is like almost word for word for something that i brief almost on a daily basis companies if they don’t respond he should check his procedures instructions and subordinate leaders to determine where in lies the trouble when only one or two individuals are involved punitive action or elimination may be indicated so if you’ve got a platoon or a company got a company of 150 people and everyone gets it except for two guys okay well maybe i need to check those two guys and maybe i need to get rid of them but if you’ve got whatever 20 people that don’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing guess what it’s on you we arrive now at the fourth precept the best unit in the organization is always the one which is excellent or better in all things which is based upon the premise that no unit commander has enough time to make his unit superior in all things at all times how therefore should he spread his efforts it’s obvious that his unit must be proficient in marksmanship communication supply administration tactics physical fitness techniques maintenance etc etc etc if his unit is not proficient in any one of these things his team is not sound and will fail him when the test comes how then must he manage so he got all these things and you obviously can’t be and he’s he’s making a difference or or making a um a break between superior which means you’re awesome at this thing and being good at it first he should avoid putting too much stress on any one thing so as to over emphasize it in order to make a show of it if he practices this method he will do do so at the expense of other important things this is a common error so you’re not you shouldn’t be the master of anything you should be the jack of all trades second he must stress adequately all of the many facets of the training job even though he is not an expert in each he must direct a subordinate to be an expert and the commander must then supervise and check his subordinates work the latter is important so you’re not going to be an expert as the leader knocking the expert you got some you got some nugs under you that are gonna be the expert in that thing next section’s called motivation woven into the entire pattern are the threads of motivation this motivation is manifestly important because it comes from a spree enthusiasm morale effort competition and accomplishment the people in each of the top middle and lower groupings need to be motivated in different ways and in varying degrees which is a little different than when he said earlier says the leader can only afford to adopt one approach when handling his men little little dichotomy you got different people they’re gonna get motivated in different ways in encouraging students to learn we motivate them by one or more of the following one show a need to develop an interest both those are explaining why right this is why this is important that’s what the need is here’s how you get someone to develop an interest in something you explain to them how it’s going to help them maintain the interest that’s also explaining why and then he’s got some other things encouraging early success giving recognition and credit using competition giving rewards awarding punishments these same things may be used to incite a body of men or military unit into action undoubtedly every commander sometime during his career after being assigned a difficult task has soon soon thereafter considered how he would present this task to his subordinates how he would appeal them to get the job done in short on what he would base his efforts to motivate them to tackle the job with the will necessary to attain the goal sought he will probably use many factors to motivate his unit some of them may be specifically mentioned and some may be implied for instance except as a last resort he would not mention punishment in this case of failure his men would know him well enough to know that he would not stand for failure the real art in motivating a group of men to accomplish a common mission is to reach each man in such a way that all men in the unit are incited to the extent of their several capabilities of course the kind of mission to be performed by the men will be will determine the motivating factors used but there is one element that must be kept in mind and that is that no amount of motivation will incite a man to undertake zealously that which he knows is manifestly beyond his capabilities so big chunk about motivation there and you know i i was talking i can’t remember as a client or if it was ef online the other day um but you know when you get told the the the proverbial you know you get tasked with something that doesn’t make any sense and the boss just says yo shut up and have your team do it and then what do you do how do you how do you handle that what do you say to the troops and and i’m like i will find a reason why all day long that is awesome you know i will go and i’m not gonna lie to him i’m gonna say hey listen boss just told us this is how we’re doing it and you know what we’re gonna do we’re gonna knock this thing out of the park that way i’m gonna build some trust with a boss he’s gonna realize that we can get the job done when he realized that we can get the job done he’s gonna start to listen to me once he starts listening to me i’m gonna get this changed so right now we’re gonna crush this thing and the guys go yes or i’m gonna say hey look no one else is able to do this we’re the only people that can get this done the boss knows it we know it so we’re gonna knock this thing out of the park like i’m gonna figure out a reason there’s got to be a reason why that makes sense to do this thing and believe me if i can’t find a reason we’re getting told to do something that makes no sense whatsoever is gonna get people unnecessarily wounded or killed or it’s unethical or it’s immoral or it’s illegal that’s what’s going on otherwise i can figure out a reason and i’m talking about a good i’m not talking about making something up to trick people i’m talking about i will figure out a good freaking reason to go forward and make this happen and that’s what you need to do as a boss that’s that’s why the why is so important talks about awards in the army we use freely a system of awards and prizes in order to motivate men too often these go to the men in the top of the upper group they provide no incentive for improvement to those in the lower group and little for those in the middle group because the men know that the award is beyond their ability to achieve these prizes make good articles for the unit papers but their overall effect on the unit is negligible it is well to recognize the outstanding men and we do this through proficiency pay and promotion however our system awards must go beyond this recognition of individuals this is a great point you know so often we’re sitting there rewarding the people that are kind of doing well who actually probably don’t need any additional motivation look should we recognize them absolutely but what are we doing for the the middle group and even the lower group to make sure that they’re feeling like they’re moving forward in a positive way yeah you know when you’re like in elementary school and you have like the award for most improved that’s like kind of alleviates that issue right a little bit because usually it’s like someone in the middle maybe even the bottom a lot of the times when you still get that cool like trophy or yeah whatever because you improved so much is that a little backhanded smack though i guess you can rack up the most improved i’ve gotten it before yes no i don’t think it is though i don’t think it is a backhanded thing because it’s true like you know when you get like um uh you know mvp of the football game it’s always the same guy the quarterback whatever the guy you know obviously depends on the team but it’s that guy that’s he’s already training by the way and he’s already talented and gifted and he’s working hard and he’s focused yeah and the ward the guys in the middle you do run that risk big time where it’s like guys in the middle i was like oh yeah well i i don’t even have an expectation of the award you know but if you get if you get most improved bro you can get most improved that’s good you know especially if everyone respects it because everyone typically does respect that if you’re improving i had uh there’s something called the navy achievement medal did you ever get navy achievement metal so navy achievement metal is like you know it’s it’s sort of like it’s a it’s a strong pat on the back we’ll say and you know you might get one when something happens you know you’re a young enlisted guy i think i had six navy achievement medals which is totally ridiculous i would get those things all the time for like what’s it for though like oh i would run a communications course when i these are all from the 90s it’d be like you know petty officer willing ran an outstanding you know communications course he organized lead and developed the blah blah blah stoner used to like laugh every time i put my my dress uniform on because i had five navy achievement medals like the big rack of stars across my navy across my names get some yeah but i feel like i know but i feel like i was kind of that guy like i was working hard and they were just giving me awards and i was like cool whatever i don’t care i didn’t care at all yeah i wasn’t like hey check out my names well then okay then i guess if you kind of go into it i mean in all kinds of environments right there’s all kinds of different awards like that that are that are you can get without being the top like producer or whatever like you got okay you got most improved then you got like hardest worker or something like that you know you know do you ever get that one no okay that’s not to say as far as like expectations of metal that was that was one i never really expected but the but you get those how many nams do you have dave one what did you get a damn thing i got an end of tournament damn so was this when you were like an ensign or uh first first tour in a squadron so as you’re thinking i was uh i’m laughing because you know when you’re talking about even the way you’re saying ma’am like anybody in the navy in the marine corps knows like the namm is like this thing this navy achievement medal is like and i racked up five of those bro but you know something that’s something that’s actually cool that you said is there’s a couple different ways to view like the award system in the military it can be a little questionable there’s people who can kind of peel that back and go man is that is that legit or not we had two different categories of the same award we had what we called an endotour award which went okay you know petty officer willing has been with us for three years he’s leaving the squad or the unit or whatever and he’s going we want to recognize his body of work it’s kind of like a participation award it doesn’t have a ton of meaning other than you survived your three years we want to thank you on your way out there was something else we called was an impact name or we had a term called a strive by nam oh we call them a spot thing it’s called now spot just the same it’s the same thing i was racking up which means like i was going out of style there’s no way to make this this make this serious there’s five names but the point behind that is like you can take a middle of the road dude middle road guy who’s who’s not your all-star quarterback not your top tier guy and he’s over there doing some good work yes so maybe that was me dude yeah maybe i don’t know they were trying to five is a bit ridiculous um i don’t have five of anything but there is a way to when you when you recognize somebody for their work it’s a heck of a lot better to recognize them for something they’re doing when we call the impact or the spot as opposed to well you’ve been with us for five years you get a watch like that’s our thing so here’s your here’s your you’ve been here for five years as opposed to hey that thing you did that specific thing if you could recognize people for that in this leadership little system you’re trying to create is it’s really good to recognize people for the work that they do when they do it as opposed to well we just sort of have this process that by these wickets or these little checkpoints you get recognition which over time sort of undermines the value of it and and again five’s a well that’s a lot dude but the nam is not a i mean you’re talking about straight up essentially a participation trophy like you oh you’ve been here five years my anticipated was a participation award i was leaving captain’s got nams i don’t care if you were the number one captain or the number 12 captain when you left you got an am and and the number one guy didn’t go well i actually earned this one and the number 12 guy didn’t think well this is garbage it had no real meaning the the impact would you call it a spot the spot it was called the spot that’s a that’s there’s a lot more legitimacy to that than hey thanks for being here dude yeah you gotta look on your face bro like you’re all fired up from my name here’s the thing but that’s a perfect point right there because if they’re if a spot nam and a regular participation trophy nam is the same sort of thing then it’s like oh wait you got to differentiate those two because if you’re over you’re saying you got five there is a differentiation on the nam that is you can get a v which is when it becomes a combat award so a namm with a combat v or a uh combat distinguishing device is what they call it so it has a v on it and that’s that’s a legit award and i a lot of guys in task and a bruiser got nams with these and those names with these that the guys got into asking a bruiser were hard-earned they weren’t like oh you’re just gonna you you there was some gunfire near but no like these guys were in 18 firefights and they got a nam with a v yeah and and you know the some of the guys in in task unit bruiser some of stoners guys they got the r com which the army combination metal with a v that was a huge deal because those things are tough to get the marine corps does not give out those things and that came from the uh from the army recognizing what you were doing which which added that which added to that as well yeah there’s a couple things in the military have a little bit of sanctity the v yeah whether it’s a nam a com whatever it is the v that has there there’s me you can’t just get a v you got to earn that combat distinguishing device the other one in the marine corps that shouldn’t say the marine corps navy and the marine corps is what we call the car the combat action ribbon they don’t like to just you don’t just that’s not a participation award you you got to earn that car yeah and the cib in the army which is the exact combat influence which means you you’ve been in combat yeah and that’s that’s what that’s what hackworth called out uh the admiral for admiral borda for wearing a combat v on his nam it was actually an i think it was it was a nam with a v on it and he and hackworth said this guy was in vietnam but he wasn’t he was on a ship he wasn’t in direct combat with the and admiral border killed himself yeah over this drama over a it’s crazy now that i’m you know we’re sitting here laughing you’re like oh this we can’t ever get serious again all we have to do is talk about admiral borda and and and colonel hackworth calling him out for wearing a combat v and he kills himself in the navy yard to your five nams no if some of those were like for some solid work you did on this little thing that you thought maybe wasn’t that huge of a deal but you did some good work and people saw what you did and you’re like hey hey look you didn’t save the world but you did really good with that little whatever you did that’s different than a participation trophy type situation all fired up i was stoked you know i was trying to work hard trying to do a good job and people were giving me cool recognition and i appreciated it i’m just saying when you fast forward it from 1995 to like 2009 and we’re back from ramadi and i’m putting my dress uniform on and stoner sees me and he’s and we’re laughing because i have five nams which is really really it’s also especially ridiculous i was an officer and it’s like an officer’s if you’re an officer he got fi i mean dave burke you know who is in the marine corps for 24 years had one nam and there i was walking around with five that’s kind of it just there’s something funny about it yeah it is so to the officers and chiefs that gave me recognition as a young enlisted guy i appreciate it uh it meant a lot to me but over time it did become a little bit funny and a little bit ridiculous that i was walking around with five nams i’m gonna have to now post a picture i don’t think i have any of this stuff anymore but i realize that i’m probably coming off as nam obsessed at this point you are a little bit but or should i say end i’m going to write you up for once i just so you ever got employee of the month at you know you i was in the military my whole life brad never no you worked at wendy’s oh yeah i was never employed okay but isn’t that the same thing employee of the month i would rather get a name than employee of the month at wendy’s but it’s the same thing it’s just not in the military i’m saying it’s a similar thing namms were harder to get than employee of the month there was no guarantee that name was being issued right it’s going to be a guy they got to choose somebody but still same deal as far as like the structure you seem saying where it’s like you’re getting awarded for something you did even though in your mind it might not be that big of a deal but as an individual like process it’s kind of a thing it’s something it’s just not nothing you see we’ll go with it we’ll go with it all right back to the book summary and conclusion the job of those of us who are privileged to command to create superior units from the run of the r from the ordinary run of manpower made available to us this manpower falls into upper middle and lower groups about equal in strength that have different capabilities present different problems and need to be handled differently all of the men in a unit must be assumed to desire to do what is wanted and when they do not they have not been properly handled and instructed and i would add the word lead there the best and most reliable unit is usually the one that is excellent in all things even though it might not be superior in any way so that’s the difference he he breaks out the hierarchy of adjectives the highest adjective being superior and then below that is excellent and excellent is better to be excellent at everything than superior one thing throughout the whole job runs the problem of motivation this problem is not solved unless steps are made to motivate the unit carefully thought out and applied in such a way that their effect is felt by all men in the unit finally excellence of the unit is measured by the extent to which those of the lower third of the unit are developed to play their part of the unit team you know still not 100 on board with that one as far as i’m concerned motivation is about understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing and giving people ownership you want to motivate people tell them why they’re doing what they’re doing and let them take ownership of it and run with it i feel like motivation um is like kind of oh there’s like short term and long term and you know like um i was thinking of something very specific at the time where you know people get mad when they get angry at something it motivates them like super hardcore but only short term and then if somebody someone’s the opposite if someone’s really happy or i don’t know thankful or whatever that like keeps them sort of motivated long term that’s good i i would agree with that unless they have like some sort of weird underlying fear of something that might you know sustain them long term i don’t know yeah you could get into some details but i think a broad statement that like some kind of an anger would be a short more of a short-term motivation and a uh uh happiness a satisfaction a gratification would be more of a long term i would i would agree with that i would tend to agree with that all right now we’re going to get into um man i thought those were kind of like hey we’ll just burn through some of those chapters i’m sorry because i wanted to get to this chapter which is called chapter 13 mission type orders the problem of control in world war ii those who served in armored divisions and probably in other units as well learned that mission type orders were a requirement if the most was to be obtained from a command since then we have hat and mission type so what mission types orders are just in a nutshell is you tell somebody what needs to happen you let them go figure out how to do it it’s very it’s these it’s the it’s the basis of decentralized command since then we’ve had to con consider the control of operations in the fluidity and unpredictability of nuclear battle as battle becomes more complex and unpredictable responsibilities must be more and more decentralized thus mission type orders often will be used at all echelons of command and probably will be the rule at the division and higher levels this will require all commanders to exercise initiative resourcefulness and imagination operating with relative freedom of action and this is what’s weird you know he he oscillates between these sort of like everyone should be you know how do we control the men and he literally says in that earlier chapter the the middle group is easier to control and now he’s saying hey you need to let them go and operate and it’s really scary i thought he was going to start talking about nuclear war what do you when you think about nuclear war i think centralized control i want 17 people to make sure that that is the right move before that freaking fire button gets hit and those two keys get simultaneously turned but he’s like no decentralized command that’s pretty scary to me um in our tactical in our tactical forces we have built-in organizational flexibility we must recognize this and capitalize it in our orders to get maximum combat power we must have plans flexible enough to meet rapidly changing situations but careful planning is not enough this must be coupled with the readiness to change and adapt to situations as they are not as they are expected to be awesome what’s interesting about that is he says we need to make uh plans flexible enough to meet rapidly changing situations and he says but careful planning is not enough when i think of careful planning i think oh this guy’s gonna sit there and plan every detail i don’t think of somebody that’s thinking hey we’re going to come up with a very flexible plan a flexible plan to me is not careful planning i i guess i might be reading too much into that but i always felt like i cheated all the time because i came up with flexible plans for things yeah yeah it seems like a carefully plan or a plan plan carefully is like you care you carefully plan for like contingencies yeah i guess carefully plan doesn’t necessarily mean to be doesn’t need to be overly detailed in fact carefully planned could be like hey we want to be careful that we don’t put too much detail in here and then yes being able to adapt to situations as they are not as they were expected to be that’s a critical way to operate to train commanders and staff officers for operations in war where mission type orders will be widely used it is necessary that tactical courses in our schools teach the use of such orders and that we widely employ mission type orders in our peacetime operations i love that so when you’re going to give people assignments to clean up the building you don’t say you mop and you scrub and you clean and you go no you say hell with building clean this is what time it needs to be done by and you let them go execute it boom decentralized command mission type order and and think about that i just kind of blew that off but that’s a real thing like if you don’t train people and you don’t live like this then you won’t get good at it you have to actually live like this this has to be your way of life if the way that you run your day-to-day operations is micromanagement how can you expect anybody to do anything other than be micromanaged when you get into a bad situation and get in a combat situation you said something really solid on ef online that i was exposed to when you’re like hey when you’re in a meeting or you’re having a meeting or something and everyone’s there with their pen and paper waiting for you to say something to write stuff down and then when you start talking then they start writing stuff down or whatever it’s a bad sign yeah it’s a bad time but it even but it feels good it feels good no one can do anything unless big jump rolls in yeah man with the big ego and the plan you’re really a horrible leader if they’re all sitting there waiting yeah we got two or three questions we already know what we’re doing we know where we’re going yeah we’re good oh this is beautiful scope of a mission type order basically a mission type order needs to cover only three important things one it should clearly state what the commandee what the commander issuing the order wants to have accomplished that’s number one this is what this is what you need to accomplish number two it should point out the limiting or control factors that must be observed for coordinating factors so okay you can’t go across this area you can’t fly over this region you you can’t enter into this zone here’s the limitations and then finally it should delineate the resources made available to the subordinate commander and the support which he can expect or count on from sources outside of his command that’s all you need to know tell me what to do tell me what the limitations are and tell me what resources i have other than that leave me alone i’m gonna go make it happen that’s that’s that might be the clearest definition of a mission type order i’ve ever read in my life that’s all you need i got asked one time i was in my first deployment to iraq and my boss is like what information do you need and how much time do you need to launch on a mission and i was like i need to know what where the location of the target the frequencies of the friendly forces and i need 15 minutes and we’ll go yes um confidence in subordinate commanders there is a strong reluctance at every headquarters to relinquish the authority to direct the details of an operation this reluctance is clearly seen in the embellishments added to an order as it threads its way down the company level careful judgment must be made at every echelon of command in stating the limiting and controlling factors of a mission type order confidence must be placed in judgment and ability of the subordinate commander too often what starts off as a broad mission type order at the high echelon ends up with of my new detailed and restricting instructions specifying how to get the job done when it finally gets down to company level many officers hearing this may think they would like to have a command functioning under such a system meaning i would love it if people would just do exactly what i told them to do but you don’t want that others who may say they would like to work under such a system really are disturbed by thoughts of it there are some officers who require something in writing before they will take significant action a mission type order requires the subordinate commander and his staff to make basic decisions and plans based upon a careful analysis of the situation if the basic decisions or plans are not successful there is no paper foxhole into which they can crawl mission type orders require initiative promptness and resourcefulness which are not always forthcoming problems in service schools based upon such orders bring forth a variety of solutions which are difficult for the faculty to grade sometimes looms as a very important problem what do you got dude that there is so much there you even gave this example of just cleaning the building just that little example of cleaning the building the worst thing i can do as a leader is to tell you how to do that because the minute i tell you how you know what you’re going to do exactly what i told you and i’m going to say this this this and this what are the chances i get it all as a leader yeah zero right so what you’re actually going to do is what i told you to do but i’m going to miss couple things and actually the outcome is not gonna be what i want and then i usually don’t go and inspect him like hey you can do this need to do that and what happens is i trust you less someone might remind you even more which means you have even less initiative the next time and the connection from how to initiative and what i wrote down was how by me telling you how to do what i want you to do and i’m not saying like teaching you how to do something i’m telling you how i want it done that’s the how you’re talking about of course i want to teach you how to do a task or a job i need to train you he’s talking about i want this is how i want you to do this task which is totally different that is the exact opposite of initiative because if i tell you how to do it you’re going to do exactly how i told you to do it and then the things that i’ve missed the things that as a commander don’t know because i’m farther away from the problem than you are i’m gonna trust you less because the outcome is gonna be the wrong one i’m gonna micromanage more i’m gonna undermine your initiative even more and then when you’re out there doing it on your own and i actually can’t get to you which is the connection from the training to the real world which is why i have to live this all the time that’s when teams and organizations fail because i’m not going to be there to solve all these problems for you but i’ve bred this in you the entire time because i’m always telling you how i want you to do it and you’re like cool i’ll do exactly how you told me to do it and i’m not going to do this i’m not going to do that you don’t even know about this over here i’m just not even touching that because you didn’t tell me about that at all but if you go the exact opposite which was hey however you want to get this done that’s all good what we need to get it done is by 1600 on wednesday because what happens at 1700 on wednesday is this this and this it impacts all that go make it happen all of that is your initiative to go make that happen just the connection between me telling you how i want it done versus your initiative and the and the inner the inverse relationship between those two and how often we see that done wrong bra that’s so true like every your drive with a micro manager like direction giver you know like you know driving with you you’re just like whatever takes us here whatever kind of thing and that’s a good move even if i make wrong turns whatever you know you’ll help occasionally you know and you’ll help whatever but you get in you ever drive with somebody who’s like hey don’t be in this lane this lane is like too slow or whatever and it’s like okay make this turn it’s got you know like a micro manager what do you call them well front seat drive backseat driver or whatever that kind of person yeah let’s say it’s your significant other i’m not saying it’s my significant other i’m not sure for a friend but it’s not hypothetically hypothetically yes someone who you drive with a lot is what i’m saying so and every time it’s like hey you know we’re going to go this route hey get out of this lane go in this lane okay take this turn you know okay it’s coming right you know like really kind of micromanaging your driving uh situation after a while you start you kind of get used to that yeah and now and now all of a sudden you’re not paying attention they go wait a second you’re supposed to take that turn you’re like why didn’t you tell me yeah it’s a weird subconscious why don’t you tell me sarah charles it’s a subconscious almost dependence for sure totally that’s exactly 100 what it is yeah 100 that’s the initiative comment that i’m that connected to is like i got i’m going to take no initiative because i’m you’ve been trained to just wait to be told what to do exactly right so just like how you’re saying where now if let’s say i’m dependent on you to give me directions you don’t you know the leader whatever he doesn’t always get it right or whatever i make the wrong call or you don’t give me direction we’ll say you don’t give me direction i take no action and then of course it’s done wrong now you trust me less and now and around and around we go you know so yeah and i micromanage you more and i stifle even more of your initiative even more exactly right you know what’s crazy about this and davey and i were talking about this before we pressed record he’s like i basically think in commander’s intent like i i think the way my mind works i think in end states and i and everything else to me is just sort of this almost like an annoyance of reality and i’m so far like when i want to do something i’m so there that everything else is just sort of going to fall into place and i’m not even thinking about it you know whether it’s like when i’m starting to write a book like i know what i know what that book is i know the insight and what it looks like and now i just have to get those words out of my system when we’re gonna launch something it’s like i already know what’s gonna happen even if you think about something as stupid as this podcast of me being like echo can you make a podcast and you’re like well let me go figure it out you figured out i’m like i don’t even care nothing i’d care zero you show up with what you could have shown up with with a freaking a tape recorder and i would have been like okay is that what we’re doing sounds good all right we’re good because i know what i know where this is going to go i know where we’re going and so where however we’re going to get there it’s like an annoyance to me and it’s an it’s the annoyance of reality yeah because of where my mind is what i’m thinking about where we’re going and that’s that’s a positive thing for a couple reasons number one if you’re working for me if you’re making stuff happen you’re good to go i mean you you can just you make stuff happen but we’re good we’re good we’re totally good i’m never gonna bother you never gonna bother you so that’s rad and then also the the i’m not getting caught up in these details which means that step that i take is going to be a big one it’s going to be a big step it’s not going to be a little i’m not going to take half measures yeah we’re going the distance so i’m thinking and acting and kind of living in like a commander’s intent kind of way yeah it’s not kinda for those of us that are inside that sphere the byproduct of you is a leader thinking in outcomes and end states if that’s how you’re thinking and and leading your people the natural reaction of the people around you is to fill in all those things to make sure that happens and if you can take it a step further if you can take it a step further as a leader and also be comfortable with the other side of it which is a phrase that you use all the time which i love which is you gotta expect those things to happen then it’s no factor if exactly how you had this picture in your mind you got a little detour a little roadblock little problem here yeah those things are going to happen and we and we can solve those things too using the exact same approach which is if you have that attitude as a leader when your people run into problems they’re not going to be panic stricken about what is the boss going to think because he’s gonna say hey look i expect those things happen those things are gonna happen and i’m gonna end up solving that as well and so if you can connect the idea of thinking in end states around your people and also letting your people know you’re not gonna fly off the handle and jump right in there start to micromanage them when get these little hiccups these little deviations because you actually in your mind jocko haven’t thought about all the things that happen between here and here you don’t really care what’s going on in here cool you go off that cool i expect those things to happen but the minute you lay that all out like all these 30 steps to get there and one doesn’t go right and then you’re involved in that what that does to stifle your people makes it so much harder for them to get to your end state so just combine the two of thinking in those end states and then letting your people solve those things along the way and not overreacting to the problems that occur as you’re getting there because things are messy those little things are messy but by the way if you’re thinking about all those things in between you don’t even you you’re not even going to think about a bigger picture you’re going to be thinking like hey we need to move to this next ridgeline you’re not thinking about where you’re going to end up in two days on this operation or we’re going to end up strategically in three months you’re like you’re not even thinking about that you’re thinking about wait a second there’s an obstacle right in front of us what are we gonna do totally and meanwhile i’m like i don’t care i literally don’t care there’s 19 different ways to solve that problem pick one of them and roll with it and oh you owe you oh it didn’t work and you got to try again cool whatever i’m still over here and guess where i’m looking off in the distance so we’re good that’s a good point and and maybe i don’t know maybe in my experience which is nothing but in my experience is um like under appreciated or whatever like not flying off the handle when things go wrong like if you like you know you’re like hey but it’s true though like yeah you know you people have this misconception that you like oh what if dracula gets mad at you for making this or doing that the reality is you don’t really get mad at mistakes you know like you might tease me a little bit of whatever but yeah like you don’t get mad that but what that does is and when i was listening to you dave say that and stuff it it made me remember yeah that’s true like i don’t have a fear of making the wrong move if we both know where we’re sort of going you know and guess what that means you can move exactly that means you can you can make two three four seven moves you can make seven moves and you never had to talk to me and six of them were right nine of them were right 11 out of 12 were right there was one wrong one it set you back a half a move and then you pressed forward and it was no factor if if i was concerned that jacob was going to get mad at me for i don’t know what if i make the wrong decision on this like should we do this or should i do this or should i not do this or whatever but i’d be like you wouldn’t be making decisions it would work way worse yeah somebody quoted you on twitter it was like a great way to not waste your people’s time is to not make the every not make sure that you’re the one that’s making all the decisions for not make them reliant on you to make those decisions that’s a great way to not waste their time yes and the beauty of that is that they’re gonna get you to where you want to go faster for sure i think you’re right about that for sure all right so this is how they close out the section this is once again this is such a there’s a dichotomy with general clark and this is part of that dichotomy right now and he’s talked about it before the channel of suggestion i have said many times that a commander has two channels within which to operate he has the channel of command barking orders and the channel of suggestion i believe that a good commander who has subordinates who are trained and have the confidence to use mission type orders can operate almost exclusively using the channel of suggestion reserving the channel of command for for use only when he wants to give special emphasis to an order to relieve someone or to take disciplinary action that’s the only time he’s talking other than that it’s like well how do you want to do it what do you think we should do the only time he’s going to bark orders is when he’s going to fire someone which is what relieve means by the way in in the military relieve someone means you’re firing them or to give disciplinary actions every other time almost exclusively it’s channel of suggestion you just made the leap by saying it it was in my head as when when i’m hearing suggestion i’m not even hearing suggestion i’m hearing questions hey what do you think how do you think which isn’t even what is that and saying in word because suggested means like hey what maybe we should do this you’re taking it a step further which is how do you think we should do this and then the flip side too is that the hammer of real you know as a commander you have that hammer you can drop that hammer i can fire somebody i can relieve somebody i could reduce their rank i could take their pay there was a lot of authority in command how often do you want to pull out that hammer man the more you know well you just pulled out the big the big hammer right what about the little hammer eve the little hammer is even worse the little hammer of like actually dave we need to do it this way smack a little you know actually dave i don’t like your idea smack and meanwhile you’re getting all dinged up and now you don’t want to make any moves anymore the suggest suggestion is is actually question how should we do this yeah channel of suggestion uh here’s the final little section and this is i i briefed you earlier dave i said there’s gonna be something i’m gonna read that you’re gonna say yes so this is that section further the mission of the higher headquarters i went to leavenworth and people think leavenworth they think of going to prison because there is a military prison there but there’s also the war college i went to leavenworth over 20 years ago so it was difficult for me to remember all the things which i must have learned then at the command and general staff college the one thing that i have never forgotten and which has stood me in good stead was the teaching of general mcnair then commandant when he stated quote when you receive an order or a directive from your next higher commander do everything you can and in the best way you can to further the mission which he wants to accomplish end quote an officer who follows his advice and uses it to interpret his instructions we’ll find that he can act wisely promptly and aggressively with confidence he will have no problem in operating in in an environment with mission type orders so when your boss tells you to do something freaking do it and do it to the best of your ability uh leadership strategy and tactics i always have to go to this page but uh it’s it’s it’s the the things that says how to succeed is a new leader page 157 and then on page 158 it says lastly get the job done get the job done that’s what you’re supposed to do and that’s what he’s talking about when you get told to do something do it people talk to me how do i build a good relationship with my boss do the job and do it well kick ass give your boss credit you’ll start building a good relationship with them chapter 14 organization for performing tasks on the company at small unit level the purpose of this chapter set forth the concept of which i’ve found from experience improves training uses time devoted to training more efficiently and increases responsibility prestige and morale of the non-commissioned officer leader and platoon leader organizational user organizational units or teams even for work details and i’m not going to read this section but what he says we’re using this example today of cleaning the building what he’s saying is when you killing the building do it as a platoon yeah so use mission type orders and then do it as a platoon and and that just helps them get used to how operating together what people are like what it’s like for that leader when that leader what what how that leader relates to the to the troops how the troops relate back to the leader you train how you operate you work how you train and then there’s the last section in this part is let the leader lead his men which is the same thing under the detailed procedure of performing necessary unit tasks all training teams are represented at all scheduled training this may make a good showing in their training accomplish records but does not necessarily mean that they have actually received as teams the training that is shown on record however maintaining unit integrity while performing daily tasks will also enhance real benefits which we derive from our team training so every day you should live you should operate the way you are going to live and operate chapter 15 wasting soldiers time the value of time we americans have always been conscious of the value of time benjamin franklin expressed this by saying that time is money in our country the efficiency expert who comes in to examine ways of doing things to eliminate wasted motion is highly paid for his services he commands that high price because he is a saver of time in the army we speak of resources in terms of the three m’s men money and materials to these three we must add time however there is a distinct difference between time and the other three resources if we do not use our money or materials today they are available tomorrow to a lesser degree this is also true of men it is not at all true of time for the time for time is a highly perishable commodity and our loss today is lost forever echo charles it’s true i feel like he’s training a lot of soldiers today it cost several thousand dollars a year to maintain each soldier in the army i consider that is probably a cost of five dollars per hour per man for the soldier’s training time that is available to the company commander thus when the commander wastes an hour of his company’s time he may be wasting as much as a thousand dollars we would not want to be embarrassed if some agency became interested in investigating this in the field that’s an interesting way to think about think about you know companies 150 men but think about your company think about your business think about your team you got people sitting and you weren’t prepared for the meeting or the meeting starts late or whatever whatever it is you think about what you’re throwing away you’re wasting people’s time we are engaged in a contest with the communists in which there is no civil matter in which no silver medal will be awarded for second place i’m certain that it is unnecessary for me to dwell on the importance of the role the us army in this contest our mission is to be combat ready to my way of thinking combat readiness has no upper limit a unit is never 100 combat ready because there is always room for improvement in the development of military skills reaction time marksmanship and the like combat readiness is a goal toward which we are constantly moving but which we should never feel we have wholly achieved our progress will depend on our use of the resources which i mentioned previously i want to stress the importance of using time wisely and then he goes through a bunch of you know how we waste time time is wasted in administration and paperwork and red tape and he says this you should consider it unforgivable you should consider it unforgivable to remove a man from a scheduled formal period of instruction or practical work to take care of administrative matters you cannot requisition a replacement for a lost hour of training he also says here we waste time when we over commit our units or perhaps i should say we do not make the best use of our time that’s something we got to pay attention to on an individual level you over schedule yourself and you actually end up wasting time the same wastage is presented on the individual level when the strength of a unit is filtered away to participate in contests of non-military skills to paint rocks or plant flower beds in a likeness of the unit’s insignia that’s a shot right there you go around military paces in america there’s some painted rocks out there people there’s some white painted rocks that are lined in some roads and i’m gonna tell you some privates painted those rocks they probably got in trouble it’s a little bit of a punitive measure oh like punishment yeah it is training activities themselves which have the greatest potential for wasting a soldier’s time this comes about mainly because of inadequate planning lack of foresight and lack of preparedness soldiers expect to be well trained they feel shortchanged if they’re not if you’re in charge of training people which if you’re in a leadership you are positioned you are in charge of training people and you’re wasting your time you are completely wrong here’s another section i gotta read were the instructions clear there is no end of time wasted when one who is to perform a mission or job is not fully and clearly instructed the instructions are misunderstood the end result is not what was desired it must be done over in fact if things go wrong the leader in fact when things go wrong the leader should check first to see if his instructions were not the cause it is said that general grant assigned his adjutant the mentally slowest officer he could find grant read his orders to his adjutant and if the adjutant could not understand grant rewarded his orders until he could ask yourself are your instructions and orders so clear that every man underlined every he doesn’t underline much near every man in your unit can understand them when you issue orders you are instructing someone remember that as an instructor you only teach when someone learns that’s the i always tell that story about the lowest common denominator right it’s a matter of fact it’s it’s in i think it’s in dichotomy well hey leif and seth i’m telling them hey i want you to brief to the lowest common denominator in the platoon who whoever you think is going to have the hardest time brief to your machine gunners your new guy machine gunners i want them to fully understand the plan i mean that is the entire second law of combat brief almost verbatim that he just described about the plan that’s understandable the way you communicate it and then to the lowest common denominator and then to me in my mind that actually comes back to the comment he made earlier which was the effort you got to expend from your lowest you know people in the you know the the the bottom of your folks for them to understand that that comedy made before by devoting time to that that’s the time he’s talking about so he takes this adjutant who he considers to be of the lowest intellectual level you know his bottom third guy and i’ll spend as much time as i need until that guy gets it yeah and if he gets it we should we are good to go and so even pulling that together that comment made i mean that is that is simple right there so good do you fully this is the last section here do you fully utilize your soldiers time i am not optimistic as to believe that we can eliminate wasting of time as we have yellow fever but we can improve our performance in this regard we can control this problem by the exercise of sound leadership techniques among which are planning good job management issuance of clear instructions and thorough follow-up the most valuable resource available to a commander in the army is the soldier’s time as leaders we must use this resource to the best advantage i know of no better reputation for an officer or non-commissioned officer to have with his men than that he is a good manager and does not waste his soldiers time if he has that reputation he will probably not waste his men’s lives in battle either that that’s powerful uh i’ve been doing a lot of talking about leadership capital on ef online in fact i’ve been going kind of berserk talking about leadership capital on the f online and i’ve been talking about how to build leadership capital how to lose leadership capital and this is one that i haven’t mentioned yet and it’s probably one it’s probably a little bit of a blind spot to me because i am a freak when it comes to time and wasting time and so it’s one of those things where i wouldn’t it’s so important to me that i’ve never i’ve never you know walked into a meeting two hours late to have a bunch of people waiting around for me to show up like that that hasn’t that’s not happening but if you want to expend leadership capital unnecessarily and lots of it make people wait around for you make them waste time the phrase being late is unacceptable the reason it’s unacceptable is it because it wastes people’s time you could be the best pilot in the squadron and if you waste people’s time you’re going to lose leadership capital you could be an average pilot and if your reputation is that you don’t waste people’s time they don’t care if you’re an average pilot you actually your leadership capital is is directly correlated to how you treat them and how you respect them and how you respect their time time wasted was always the it was always the most frustrating and the most obvious thing that would happen i think i’ve said this on the podcast before everybody who’s had their time wasted by someone else knows exactly what that feels like you can think about it right now sitting around in the auditorium sitting around whatever it is that time of yours that’s being wasted because of somebody else i don’t care how good that somebody else is at their job their task or anything else if they are a time waster you are losing leadership capital let me ask you this about being late oh man here we go i need your opinion what if it’s let’s say a halloween party and they’re like hey halloween party you know there’s going to be i don’t know 100 people here there’s a lot of people this is a fashionably late scenario you’re getting to or what have you you know so there’s 100 people invited or whatever 100 plus because bring who you want if you know it’s not like a guest list you’re not invited it’s not that it’s just we’re having a party whatever okay and it starts at i don’t know wasting time how long is this going to take it starts at five okay i don’t know 5 p m okay it goes all night i don’t know whatever and you’re like all right and you get there it’s 6 30 other people are there but you get there at 6 30 is that wasting people saying is that bad as far as being late if i send you an invitation to my halloween party and i say the party starts at five and goes till midnight i don’t care when you show up if i say echo be there by seven and you show up at 7 30 is there a difference between those two i think so yes yeah but yeah so my question was more about that first scenario whatever like if it’s like hey it’s the party starts at five yeah i was going to say the party starts with or without you yes yes super concerned about you yeah nobody’s not nobody’s sitting around waiting for you to get but exactly contrarily the podcast starts when you’re here so when you’re not here the podcast doesn’t start you’re the ones with the sd memory cards that go in the little machines over there so when you’re not here at three o’clock the pa the party’s not starting we’re waiting i understand you’re talking like it’s for real i was here at 2 58 what up you made it in yeah it was legit today as much hassle i give you about hawaiian time and being late you’re not late very often no sir do you do you play with fire yes sir yeah every day i think and technically a lot of times there’s a minute maybe maybe a few you’re one of those people if you set your watch like five minutes fast you’d probably be on time all the time yeah if i if i believe it or if i didn’t know i said the what yeah i’ve done that before too well you know i used to tell you like oh i come from a long line of late people i remember brought my dad somebody cracked up because i said like you got your dna you said you got your 23andme and i said it came back you got little jesus yes sir but and you know you kind of look into it i’m like why am i late or whatever so because i would i would go to work late when i used to work at the club i would be there late i was there late one minute two minutes five minutes sometimes probably more time than i was on time probably for real i’m not finding this hard to believe this doesn’t seem like a stress the thing is technically you are right like i’m wasting people’s time especially if i if people depend on me to get there at that time you know um i’m not getting paid you know it’s the kind you got to clock in so you’re not getting paid um if you’re not there so it’s not that it’s like if people were depending on you to be there but is there like a briefing to start the night no negative it’s all independent like you clock in and you’re there i mean it would piss me off you know i i’d view you as an unreliable person yeah that i put no i put no value in as a human damn i mean yeah and i dig it but so i analyzed like why am i like that because even if i’m like i need to be late less you know it just wouldn’t change why am i like and you should change the statement i need to be late less i’m not going to be late yeah you need to draw a little bit of a harder line in the sand i the thing is you’re you’re right but when i when i really be truthful it’s because i don’t care about what’s going on there you know like why am i gonna prepare like take 30 minutes to prepare this and prepare that for something then i don’t have to be there at that i have to be there at a certain time so of course i’m running the risk in fact if i were to have my way i would never be late at all but i would never be early at all either for things i don’t care about you know like like that i had one time in my life uh when i was going to college at and it was really hard to get parking and eventually i figured out a system but i had a seal buddy that he was going to college too and we would study together and we are but we were both on time all the time for everything and eventually we made a deal where we gave ourselves like a waiver to be five minutes or eight minutes late because if you were gonna be there at two o’clock in order to be there at two o’clock you had to show up at one and drive around and so we were just like you know what hey if you’re five minutes late ten minutes late doesn’t matter like i don’t care i don’t want you being here an hour early so that you’re not one minute late yeah so we made a little pact and just said hey bro i’ll be there between 1 and 1 15 boom all good and i’d try and get there in one and maybe i get there at 108 maybe he’d get there at 112 or whatever eventually i figured out i would just put my bike in the back of the car and just park at the top of the hill and just bike no factory yeah see now you’re figuring out how to solve these problems so on the flip side and this is all in spirit of getting down to the whole late thing because i agree with you at the end of the day and if you think if you really be honest like i’m not late really you know anymore back in my day yeah yeah i was late yep what oh are you trying to think of when i was late no i you were late a little bit in the beginning but then but then like it didn’t i probably remember you being late three times total yeah and this is not not including a four-minute grace period which sometimes i think you do just to just to you know what do you mean grace period you know like sometimes if you’re supposed to be here at one you’re here at 104 four minutes late it’s possible yeah the late times i’ll tell you hey i’m late because of this specific reason or whatever but that’s already but nonetheless like that is i agree with you where you’re wasting other people’s time people are waiting for you like that’s it’s it’s kind of inexcusable in a way but if you show up 15 minutes early aren’t you wasting your own time a little bit no because what are you gonna do when you get there you’re gonna prep yeah well that depends i guess it depends on who you are sun tzu told us 2500 years ago that the one that shows up the battlefield first wins yeah you know as far as battlefields go for sure um but certain circumstances if you’re there let’s say okay hey i’m gonna meet you for brunch you know what’s in my bag right now oh i could probably uh the next book i’m reading on the podcast when i show up here early if there’s no one here cool i get to read i get to get ahead oh yeah okay so that’s a good point okay yes question answered because yeah if you show up fit and you got to be thinking i guess at the end of the day so if you show up 15 minutes early you’re not wasting your time because you can still choose what to do you’re not forced to wait around for not waiting yeah you should be proactively making something happen yeah and you have that option i mean technically i guess if you’re waiting for someone you have that option but like they’re putting you in that position rather than you making the decision putting yourself in that position potentially i understand i understand back to the book chapter 16 so i was super fired up when i read this chapter title and then be honest with you i got a little less fired up when i got into it but because the chapter is will you wait for it or will you go get it i was like oh damn this is the chapter i’ve been waiting for but what he’s talking about is information i’m still fired up for gathering information and are you gonna wait for information to come to you are you gonna go get it i’m still i’m so fired up about it but i’m not as fired up as i was it’s just like you’re just gonna make things happen but uh he goes in here there’s more than one school of thought concerning how a commander can acquire reliable information one school contends that the commander should analyze reports that come to him from his subordinate units and staff the other advocates that the commander should go see here for himself yet another endorses a combination of these methods as a commander from company to army group and an observer of others holding such positions in three wars that’s got to feel a little bit cool to write i have come to certain conclusions myself moreover since my retirement from the army i have worked as a consultant to research organizations making studies of command control and communication problems for the army the result of this active and retired experience might be helpful to students and practitioners who should who would like to excel in the art and techniques of commandership in generalship and then he goes here looking back it seems to me more than ever that my best information on both our own forces and the enemies was obtained by visiting or observing subordinate commanders so there you go i guess he’s saying go get it this is done either by jeep or fixed-wing airplane borrowed from the artillery small radios he goes on he says this as a core commander in korea with five divisions on the line i often left my headquarters by chapter by chopper after morning staff briefing and i visited the five division headquarters in turn from left to right the divisions knew when i was coming the division commanders were told that they need not wait for me and that i would talk to the chiefs of staff over a cup of coffee we discussed the latest situations then we discussed the problems which had been presented by them on a previous day then i noted what they wanted my core headquarters to do to help them so that’s all good he’s gathering information and then he says i told them the situation of the eighth army and of the i-corps as i knew it so not only is he out there receiving information he is telling them what is going on so and he ends up saying that he that he did that and it’s funny i was i was i was reading this and he says uh generally the next day i repeated this as a result i was not only the core commander but the core commander liaison officer and to a large extent the core communicator with the lower units and i put in parentheses when i was reading this it was a static war because at this point korea you know it was it was almost trench warfare like they weren’t moving and then what’s interesting fast forward a little bit says this was in a static situation but such command techniques are not unusable in mobile warfare so get out there get that information um he’s got this section in here history is full of instances where the commander being at the critical point at the critical time turned the tide of battle to victory or conversely the commander not being on scene his force was defeated few such examples have been related so dramatically as in the poem sheridan’s ride by thomas buchanan and reed so we’re talking civil war we’re talking general philip sheridan union general who was five foot five we were talking about height a little bit earlier well he was known as little phil also known as fighting phil and the battle of cedar creek october 19 1864 is when this went down one will recall that early in the morning sheraton was at winchester virginia 20 miles away from his command when news of a new battle arrived he mounted his horse and took off at full speed for the field of combat reed’s stirring verse traces sheridan’s progress through five stanzas stanzas giving equal credit to both him and his horse the sixth stanza shows what happens when the commander arrives at the critical point of battle and at a critical time quote the first the general saw were the groups of stragglers and then the retreating troops what was done what to do a glance told him both then striking his spurs with a terrible oath he dashed down the line made a storm of huzzas which i had to look up that’s an old form of hooray so the people started and the wave of retreat checked its course there because the sight of the master compelled it to pause so there you go the commander shows up on the battlefield and he turns this retreat into an advance and they ended up kind of smashing the confederates in that battle it’s it is inconceivable that the same result could have been attained on an automated battlefield nor could sheridan have been brought could have nor could sheridan have brought order out of chaos while seated before a display panel 20 miles away you need to get there need to get there and then he talks about why commanders should be forward he talks about the the like computer stuff and and again he’s writing this this originally came out i think in 1963 and then this version was 1973 so he’s talking about computers so god only knows what that consisted of a 1973 of like a mobile command computer oh we need to get a we i need to do some research on that one and he says these are fine until disorderly and confusing conditions uh that occur so often in battle materialize they do not realize the roles of judgment so he’s talking about all these computations and these things that they set up and he’s saying once those are those are cool when everything’s cool but then once the mayhem happens they do not realize the roles of the judgment and experience factors which must be used in handling tactical battle reports inevitably these lead to a working principle such as and so here here’s here’s what the commanders are using to judge their information when they’re using computer-based data discount by 50 all very favorable or unfavorable operational reports which come into your headquarters from your subordinate units and then question the remainder so it’s basically like this just junk it’s just junk and then he talks about the helicopter and using that to stay forward which is effective as well he’s got this whole this whole chapter adp in war will it work it’s automatic data processing so we’re not going to cover much of this and he sets up this sort of hypothetical situation where he starts asking a bunch of questions about how well this 80 how well it’s going to work to use adp during war and a lot of this you know he’s he’s literally talking about like are there going to be power sources available so it’s really kind of nitty nitty-gritty stuff but then he says i wouldn’t i would not be honest with you if i did not point out that commanders at all echelons are apprehensive of the tendency to use adp to facilitate centralization of command and control i can foresee disastrous effects from indiscriminate from indiscriminate centralization or over centralization and loss of flexibility in modern fluid war why is that because now all of a sudden the leader can track everything that everyone’s doing hey like dave’s in his aircraft and he’s like wait a second go a little bit further to the right go a little bit further to the left we know exactly where you are wait don’t drop the bomb yet okay drop it now and we’re trying to micromanage will adp cause the commander to be more command post bound and thus reduce his ability to be at critical points at critical times until that ended up being a yes with its increased speed and capacity for information will adp in the hands of staff officers or of higher headquarters tend to encourage them to put increased burden of reporting on lower echelons who are often busily engaged in the vital conduct of battle how crazy is that dave it’s nuts picturing what i saw you know from the talk and the in the command center you know picturing this being 19 what was 76 where you said yes the answer that question is yes it will yeah so that’s what happened in the military all of a sudden we have the ability to get information so we’re going to require the information we’re going to want more of it and you’re going to demand it at a time that is totally incompatible with when they should be giving you the information they want to know what’s going on yeah right well the reason you don’t know what’s going on is i’m in the middle of doing something right now yeah i got a little situation i’m trying to handle yeah yeah so that’s that’s how he uh explains the whole adp thing um chapter 18 making progress and improving a military organization it is the aim of anyone who is privileged to command a company battalion brigade or division to leave in it is to leave it in much better shape than he found it and to be sure his superiors recognize that fact and he goes through this little pluses mess method which he’s gone through before one of the earlier podcasts which you’re gonna make little little incremental changes to get better he goes over this section about protecting your image as a commander a word about headlines most commanders who have sought headlines to establish their image and i’m using those uh those he’s putting those in quotes in the minds of their men and their superiors have soon or later have been plagued by unfavorable headlines produce a superior well-rounded and solid unit and your image as a commander will be secure as will your military future and then this is the this is the last thing that we are going to cover i think oh no it’s not not yet not quite there though yeah it is all right so chapter 19 techniques of troop orientation and informed education one of the most important duties of a commander is to keep his troops informed and oriented this is done in many different ways with varying degrees of effectiveness a technique i found very effective was to inform an orient by posters and personal visits so he’s talking about posters literally posters that you hang on the wall and this is why when you were talking about simplicity earlier dave this is this is kind of knocking out of the park and when i said earlier on this podcast when i was giving him a grade of a d minus for his simplicity of language and his opening he makes up for it here with these posters in 1956 i took command of the seventh u s army in europe at a time when the relationship of the troops with their german neighbors was at a low ebb due to a number of things i think this is also when hackworth was working for him after studying the situation i concluded that the transition from an army of occupation to the status of a guest army in a host nation had not been accomplished so there’s the wrong culture there’s the wrong culture from from occupation status to like host to to a guest to a host nation this is in germany so we went in there we’re occupying force these were our enemies and now all of a sudden we’re saying all right that’s not the deal anymore now they’re the host nation and we’re the guests so he’s can you imagine trying to shift that culture that’s a tough culture shift i set out to bring about this transition not only for the soldiers but for the dependents and u s civilian employees in germany and so he comes up with this poster that the poster is called soldier and the soul the poster just has this picture of a soldier who looks badass and it says soldier this is why you’re in germany and it’s got bullet points to play your part on the nato team to help maintain peace by being constantly combat ready to be a good neighbor to our german neighbors to fight if necessary for the rights of free men in the world simplicity score dave what are you giving him that’s a significant improvement over the years award big time most improved award so so very obvious so that’s what he did he made this poster and and then he did these visits he did these visits where he would take the troops and and send them to check out what was happening at the berlin wall so it’s another way to make people understand why and not only would he send the troops but he would if he could send the dependents there as well so they understood why you go see the berlin wall and then he made and this is the last thing we’re going to cover again he’s making this so simple and so clear so along with that campaign to get people to see the wall to understand what the purpose of being there was to understand why we were there he made this poster there’s a couple pictures of the wall and it says why and it says have you ever wondered why must the communists build walls and fences to keep people from fleeing the land where they were born why must they charge their fences with electricity which can kill people who try to escape why armed guards along these walls and fences shoot and kill their own people who try to escape from their homes why despite these walls and fences and guns have over 4 million people left their homes property and friends and risked their lives to escape in the past 15 years why the communists surround themselves with walls and fences when history shows that this has often been the first step in the self-destruction of an empire and then he says why why were these effectives these posters and operation look-see which was actually traveling to the berlin wall were effective because they used the most efficient techniques of of informing and orienting the soldier and of having his commander tell him in basic and simple terms about situations which are close to him and affect or could affect him personally he gets it across as simply as possible so there you go that is the that wraps up our review of guidelines for the leader and commander i have initiated the publication through jockle publishing of this book we are reaching out to try and figure out what what needs to happen there uh but it’s underway bozak has it for action so we’ll get it out we’ll get it published um i’m sure that we will continue to refer to it there’s so many good lessons here even that last lesson the these posters were effective because they used the most simple terms to explain to the soldiers why they were doing what they’re doing something that i’ve been talking about for 20 years explaining people why they’re doing what they’re doing and that is such an awf that’s such an such a it’s a response we use all the time at salonfront all the time my people aren’t doing this my people ca my people don’t want to get on board with that tell them why they’re doing what they’re doing explain it to them in terms that they can understand that’s what he did that’s what he’s telling us to do telling us to be more effective telling us to be more efficient telling us to not waste time telling us to be in good physical condition and to strive always remember what he said you’re never a hundred percent combat effective you never get there you always have to strive to be better so thank you general clark for that echo charles yes sir uh speaking of getting better mm-hmm or at least always trying to get better striving to get better too yes do we have any recommendations on you know making that happen yes we do dave we do i just saw dave look at his watch yep he’s just looking at his watch thinking all right i know i have work to do you know what’s you know what’s funny you know what i know dave has work to do i know i have one yeah i know there’s one person i’m not saying they don’t have work to do but they might have less work to do they might have a less of a stringent timeline to follow well you did say might because you know you never do know okay all right all right okay good job getting better all the work i have to do i’ll tell you part of the work i have to do is inform my people our people all right let’s do it on how to get through or should i say move forward on this path we’re all on boom we’re working out we’re taking jiu jitsu if we can we’re reading we’re surrounding ourselves with good people it’s a sliding scale i understand nonetheless these are things we’re trying to do on this path we need supplementation don’t worry jocko has fuel it’s called jocko fuel supplementation for your whole body all the way up to your brain the last cell in your brain anyway what we got joint warfare we got your morphine i told you my wife has an injury not anymore feeding her joint warfare she’s on her feet that’s what i’m talking about oh yeah every day so joint warfare super krill oil these are for your joints free bones keep yourself in the game don’t even have to worry about them anymore you take this stuff also we have discipline which is for your brain ish it’s not just for your brain that’s what i’m saying true for your body too so discipline discipline go and then discipline go in the can it’s all the same family we’ll say is that accurate way to put it accurate it’s true yeah a little note on discipline go in the cans so look are we at war yes i would say yes i mean from a business sense we’re at war we’ve had we’ve been attacked we had an act let’s just say this at a minimum we’ve had an act of war against us a another very large energy drink company has spotted an insurgency happening they didn’t like it they’re trying to maneuver to shut down some of our manufacturing but guess who had contingency planning yes us but where war so right now hey we are in wawa in florida we want to be all over the east coast in wawa and then we want to hit the rest of the stores across the country if you’re in florida go to wawa get some go try some go what flavors do you recommend dave yeah all of them let me ask you this are you how how many are you have you drank one flavor enough where you shifted to another flavor like i’ve done that with milk where i’ll go on mulk i’ll go on mint milk for three weeks then all of a sudden i’m like oh that’s strawberry but right now i’m on that pumpkin i’m on that smashing pumpkin pumpkin spice that stuff is crazy good so have you have you gone you go do you rotate daily are you doing random out of the box what are you doing i i try to go random out of the box or out of the fridge i try to go random out of the fridge i have not done that the last seven days because you’re just straight dude i am straight afterburner orange that’s what i’m right now so my my older two daughters kind of speak their own language and one of the words that they’ve been using a lot lately is if something is very good then it’s a fantasy and they say it in various funny ways but then they’ve shortened it to say fant oh that’s a fant and so the other day my middle daughter took a drink of afterburner orange and she said oh that’s a fant like a fanta so there you go there’s a little yeah like orange fanta right literally orange fan i’m gonna have to agree with that one the orange the after burner orange yeah that’s the kind of the number one right now it’s good factually i’m still just just jocko palmer all day yeah and i understand i i’ve i will have probably for every four jocko palmer i will have one orange or one sour apple sniper maybe a dax savage even though jack savage people like my wife’s dax savage all day yeah i could see that sometimes i just want to get a little like dakota meyer mindset sure just go get something that can just that that can is legit yeah sure yeah yes sir but yes so yes discipline energy drink essentially i said it yeah i said what i said energy drinkish health and it’s a health energy drink it’s real energy is what it is it’s real energy yeah so nonetheless yes these are the supplementation elements that we can call upon on this path also jack you mentioned milk so you got all these different flavors of malt protein in the form of a dessert you just made it a smashing pumpkin i’m with it i’m with the smashing pumpkin oh it’s good what about kid approved too oh yeah kids kids are all over that it was declared a uh full fantasy in my house fantasy is that my daughter’s declared smashing pumpkin a full fantasy full fantasy okay i’m gonna kind of remember that see if it sticks well actually i don’t know if i won’t do that nonetheless it does sound cool when you say that your daughters say it but you can’t start bringing no i i can tell you that i won’t start calling things like oh that move in ufc was a full fantasy yes thank you it’s not really gonna flow no probably not so speaking of full fantasy oh that was cool yeah stick with cool speaking of cool and full fantasy choco yt is also out there another light refreshing element that we haven’t spent that much time talking about but that’s fine it’s still out there and it’s still going strong of course um you can get that in a can as well right you can get all this stuff at origenmaine com you can get it at the vitamin shop nationwide you can get it at wawa florida this is what what is it right now it’s uh november hopefully we’ll get that whole east coast ticket now look when i posted that we were in wawa the other day everyone’s all fired up and like okay what about 7-eleven what about amp and what local that’s the goal like i said florida’s a little bit of a battleground state yeah so we hope yeah you know when you you’re hoping but people in florida will get after it yeah fully wait is jacqueline t in wawa or just the discipline yep yeah okay well there you go boom also at origin main com you can get this stuff also at urgemaine com you can get other stuff jujitsu stuff geez rash guards uh some various you know whether it be workout clothes clothing shirts but on top of that american-made denim jeans also did you get new deltas no not yet okay did you get new deltas yeah so the new deltas they’re freaking legit and yeah they’re just the old deltas i thought were the best thing that you could put on your legs but now the the new deltas which if you’re ordering deltas now they’re the new deltas and they’re freaking the best thing ever and they’re what they’re kind of um like stretchy-ish i mean obviously they’re not they do have stretch to them that way when you throw that full fantasy roundhouse kick you’re good okay you’re not ripping your pants yeah that’s good for sure okay well there you have it full fantasy stuff um yeah jeans boots all american-made stuff this is a big deal and and i think we all know that and we all know why also we have our own store yeah i said it i said what i said all right it’s still jocko’s store so that thing what you just said i said what i said yeah you know that’s kind of a thing too right from i yeah i don’t know okay that’s another thing that my daughters are saying okay older dogs i like that one i think it’s very funny they’ll be like i said what i said there was this joke like you know the neither the memes online there’s this joke that it was like i forget even the joke but it was it was really funny and since since then i started i appreciate memes oh yeah i appreciate memes and i even appreciate people that have you know like a hat that says veteran of the meme wars and they have they’ve awarded they’ve been awarded whatever awards you get for the maybe they got a nam with five five names so yeah i the memes are good yes i agree but somehow i don’t the memes don’t flow to me it’s always my son that shows me memes yeah i don’t know what the hell he subscribes to graham as you call it but he shows me some memes that are funny yeah they’re really funny yeah whoever’s making it they’re smart people like you know how you can you know some jokes are like bro that’s like not even it’s like a cheap joke that’s not funny and then some are like you got to be whoever thought of that made that joke up he’s like a smart funny person right you know like there’s some impressive stuff on there for real like i i inadvertently well or advertently whatever subscribe to like a bunch of them it’s really good that’s really good and yeah full grown man fully memes all day um but yes i said what i said it’s our store okay it’s still called jocko store so anyway yes jacqueline store this is where you can represent with clothing t-shirts hoodies discipline equals freedom good all this stuff here’s the thing i said this last week and say it again it’s a big deal we have a t-shirt club okay so this is what the t-shirt club kinda is it’s like okay look the t-shirt club is echo coming up with a lot of different t-shirts and me saying dude we can’t make a million different t-shirts because how we gonna keep a million different t-shirts in stock yeah and how many and all that stuff yeah and then you come up with a big creative idea yes that well you know i guess good credit it depends you had the end state in mind yeah right you figured a way to solve that problem well i think it’s good because also on top of that which um yes that’s true but on top of it it’s like sometimes like even you’ll be like hey put this on a t-shirt or i’ll be like oh you know like suggesting like a t-shirt and it’s a good it’s fun it’s a fun good idea or cool or cool because let’s face it you come up with ideas for t-shirts that are fun and i come up with ideas for t-shirts that are cool oh yeah super cool extra okay are you denying about that no no no no no all good it’s true it’s 100 true actually but we can’t just start like you said just throwing these shirts on like or whatever but the idea of you know so these ideas for shirts that they they’re they’re doable also people the people always say can you make this t-shirt can you make that t-shirt that’d be a cool t-shirt yeah and there’s some that i’m like that are shirts so we talk about and then someone hey you should do this shirt be like yeah we just talked about that kind of thing you know so it’s like all these ideas hey we’ll throw it in one month we’ll have it you know you can have it and it just goes on and on it’s good a little subscription situation anyway it’s a good t-shirt club real fun okay so because you’re kind of kind of just giving me a look when i said i come up with cool t-shirt ideas i’m gonna say one that will be available through the t-shirt what is it subscription sure yeah so here’s one uh podcast number 53 there’s one part this is the chosen reservoir we’re talking about the book colder than hell and there’s one point where the marines are fighting for their lives and they’re assaulting down a hill and there’s a guy the guy that’s writing the book is writing what he’s seeing and he sees these guys getting up and charging and one of the marines is not holding a gun he’s holding a freaking axe and he’s charging at the chinese communists and assaults their position and so that’s what i want to put it on a t-shirt a silhouette somehow of a crazy picture where you can tell that there is a marine with an axe running down assaulting a communist position and all it’s gonna say is on that is like colder than hell podcast 53 that’s it you know i want that t-shirt yeah i agree that is actually dave impressively awesome that’s a cool shirt boom because she’ll be approved i agree so anyway yes so you know stuff like that anyway check it out if you want it’s that’s on dracostore com as well also subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already you don’t i mean i don’t know don’t subscribe subscribe right that’s the thing it’d be cool if you subscribe yeah that way you’re listening to it yeah so yourself we’re making them yeah we’re probably making them faster and you can listen to them which is interesting possible yeah yes you are because you have we have taco podcast yep the unraveling podcast well that’s that’s on a different thread now by the way someone just contacted a different thread yeah they’re like hey you you haven’t unloaded unraveling whatever you know you said you did here’s the thing it’s a different thread so you gotta look for it or whatever so it’s called the unraveling it’s actually called the jocko unraveling podcast so search for jocko unraveling and you’ll find it it’s daryl cooper and me talking about me i’ve been listening to him they’re freaking legit it’s it’s it’s awesome so check that one out we also have the grounded podcast which we haven’t recorded one in months you know because we’ve been on quarantine so we haven’t had oh wait we haven’t recorded ground grounded podcasts so we’ll we’ll knock on those and i know i owe warrior kid and i got warrior kid 4 coming out so we’ll get some warrior kid ones done as well we got a youtube channel if you want to see echo’s videos that he’s super proud of where he makes a bunch of stuff blow up and whatever sometimes or with airplanes whichever yeah it’s good also the video version podcast by the way if you want to see what good deal dave burke looks like yeah yeah nonetheless yes youtube channel good you can see good outlet yeah subscribe to that one did you say we’re like official or whatever on there official yeah we’re oh yeah yeah yeah so yeah that’s how you can tell that that’s the real one so it’s just jockle podcast yeah youtube channel all good boom also psychological debrief podcast did we say it oh yeah no we didn’t okay yes debrief podcast jocko and dave burke chaco’s reading my notes yeah i can see you know i see you write something i’m like oh wait a second we got another podcast but it comes out on this thread we haven’t broken it out yet onto another thread i don’t know if we will maybe maybe not we’ll see what happens but anyways it’s really it’s us talking about what we do at echelon front working with clients and it’s just all it’s like 100 leadership right it’s a leadership injection in directly into your veins there’s no there’s no books to be read they’re shorter they’re like half an hour 45 minutes yeah would you call it like a case analysis kind of situation some of them are cases now some are just lessons learned oh yeah feel you know what it’s like uh it’s like some of those books that that i’ve covered actually i’ve been covering them recently those direct reports from combat from world war ii they’re like this is an interview we want to get this information to the troops as quickly as possible that’s what the debrief it’s a freaking debrief it’s dave and i debriefing what we do on a daily basis to help companies and help leaders lead their companies so that’s what the debrief podcast is yep also psychological warfare it’s an album with tracks jacquard getting helping you pass your moments of weakness straight up in whatever capacity that you might run into moments of weakness uh flipside canvas dakota myers company making cool stuff to hang on your walls that will keep you on the path written a bunch of books and got a bunch of books uh we got a book called about face i wrote the forward for that it’s by hackworth this whole series of whatever we just did six podcasts about guidelines for the leader commander i found that through about face which is my favorite book which i wrote the forward too so you can check that out leadership strategy and tactics field manual we got the code the evaluation the protocols we got the new edition of the discipline equals freedom field manual this is the christmas new year’s gift book this is what your people want wrong am i right you’re correct i’m correct uh a bunch of new material in there it’s like something like 40 new pages in there and if someone you know wants to get on the path back on the path needs to get on the path if you want to stay on the path get him that new version of the discipline equals freedom field manual got way of the warrior kid four field manual coming out how the kids liking it dave my kids are so stoked on that that’s one section that they really like oh right on right on uh that’s good there’s let’s just say there’s layers in the book layers we’ll say that there’s layers so weigh the warrior kid four field manual um young mark meets a kid like last day of school the kid wants to be a warrior kid but he’s leaving he hasn’t said anything because he’s shy he comes up and says oh mark i really wanted to hang out with you and your friends and be a warrior kid like you but i’m leaving i’m moving and so mark goes home last day of school now uncle jake’s there and he says ah you know i met this kid he wanted to be a warrior kid but i can’t help him and uncle jake of course says yes you can you’re going to write them a field manual what’s that it’s instructions on how to be a warrior kid so that’s what the book is weigh the warrior kid for field manual don’t forget about where your kid weigh the work at one two and three don’t forget about miking the dragons and of course don’t forget about extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership don’t forget that i have a consulting company leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership whatever problems you have in your organization it’s a leadership problem and what we do is we solve those problems through leadership go to ashlandfront com for details go to ef online if you want to ask me a question if you want to ask dave a question live we will be sitting there answering your questions if you want to go deeper on the materials that we talk about we have video courses on there so check out efonline com we only have one muster in 2020 it’s in dallas texas december 3rd and 4th go to extremeownership com for details this is our leadership conference where we get granular where we interact where we explain these principles so you can take them and make your business and your life better we have efoverwatch com if you need executive leadership inside your company you need middle management inside your company you want people that understand the principles that we talk about here go to eforewatch com and if you want to help service members if you want to help active duty people you want to help retired people you want to help their families you want to help gold star families around the world then check out mark lee’s mom’s charity organization mama lee she has an organization called america’s mightywarriors org you can check that out if you want to donate or if you want to get involved and if you let’s say you want more pain you just want more pain we can deliver you can get more of my distressing diatribes you can get more of echo’s misplaced monologues and obviously you can get some more of dave’s concentrated confabulations you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on instagram which echo will only refer to as the gram and on that face dave is at david r burke echoes that echo charles and i am at jacqueline and thanks to general bruce clark and colonel david hackworth for passing these lessons on to us and for your service to this great nation and to everyone out there in uniform thank you for standing the watch and for keeping us safe and also to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and emts and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service thanks to all of you for standing the watch here at home and everyone else out there remember this one thing from general bruce c clark an hour lost today is an hour lost forever don’t waste time it is running out and with that until next time this is dave and echo and jocko out