first they kicked this whole thing off and this was this was actually a big shocker to me they they kicked us off by talking about corporal alvin york united states army right so i expected this to be all marines but the marine corps is awesome and they said hey these are awesome examples of where a squad leader made a difference and we’re going to use them france 1918 the muse argonne offensive was the last important battle of the first world war on the night of 25 september 1918 over one million american soldiers moved up to relieve the french forces on the front lines the american advance that ensued swept easily through the first two lines of german trenches and then progress slowed facing stiff resistance the reserve division was called up corporal alvin york served as an infantry man in the 82nd division york’s company started across a valley at six in the morning as they began to move the company came under heavy fire from behind a hill enemy machine guns mowed down the first wave of advancing americans no one knew where the deadly fire was coming from so york’s platoon sergeant decided to take the platoon on a mission to find it the platoon found a gap in the enemy lines and circled to the rear where they thought the machine guns might be the group of americans stumbled across two german litter-bearers whom they followed back to the headquarters of the machine gun battalion the americans walked right into the german machine gun command post opened fire and the germans immediately surrendered upon hearing the fire behind them the germans that were dug in near the command post swung their weapons around and began firing at the americans caught in the open in a hail of automatic fire the americans instantly took casualties corporal york took aim at the nearest machine gun about 25 yards away and killed the man behind the gun he continued to fire each german who popped his head out of a foxhole after watching his troops being massacred by this lone sharpshooter the german major in command yelled to york if you’ll stop shooting i’ll make them surrender work on your marksmanship people work on your marksmanship within minutes the remaining american troops had captured 90 german prisoners but they were behind enemy lines corporal york took charge and quickly organized his platoon he decided to move back towards friendly positions straight through the german lines york ordered the german prisoners to carry back the american wounded every time the group came upon a german position york told the captured german major to order the troops to surrender the well-disciplined german soldiers never questioned the order and by the time york’s small band reached friendly lines they had acquired 132 german prisoners in their wake york’s platoon left 35 deserted german machine gun positions and a significant gap in the german defenses this gap which york had created was a vital element to the success of the division’s advance this advance gave momentum to the american forces and contributed to the success of the offensive phenomenal here’s the lessons corporal york was quick to exploit the opportunity which had been created he realized that his actions would affect the outcome of the battalion’s advance and made decisions which supported his commander’s intent his strong situational awareness guided him in taking action which had decisive results you know when you think even when i think when i think of world war one soldiers you i definitely envision someone that’s much more obedient than what we have in the modern all-volunteer military today right you’ve got someone that’s hey i mean i would say the whole world was more obedient right you had a much more stringent class structure in america you had the much further separation between the officers and the enlisted and so so for this kid to be like oh i got this it’s it’s incredible it’s incredible to show that kind of initiative and i think the fact that it was in world war one is even more incredible think about what would happen if he was just standing around waiting to be told what to do in that situation though which is what so many leaders we work with think is the right call like you should just wait to be told what to do and then do you know carry on orders without question and uh and he would just be standing there waiting to be told to do and and they would fail and maybe the whole offensive fails as a result instead of someone who actually understands the why understands the commander’s intent and the purpose behind what what they’re trying to do and can take the initiative to go make things happen yeah you know what uh i often say and i wrote about i don’t want yes men right i don’t wanna know someone that’s just like yep hey yeah sounds good jocko sounds great you know you want someone that’s gonna push back and like hey i don’t agree with that wait what about this you take that one step further it’s like i want someone that’s just gonna figure out what to do and go freaking execute it right that’s what we want that’s what we’re trying that’s what we want that’s what we’re trying to grow this we’re trying to develop in our supported leadership is that they are gonna look even look beyond even look beyond what i can see and say oh i bet if i did this it would be a good move and maybe they’re batting 80 percent i’m good with that i’d rather have somebody batting 80 on 80 good moves that took initiative and made things happen and 20 percent of the time i got to go oh hey hold what you got man don’t go over there yet much rather have that initiative but that’s something you’ve you’ve helped me with as well though with because i think it’s a hard thing for a lot of leaders to accept it’s like well you know we got to come up with the right solution we don’t want to make mistakes and we want to move forward and when you’re you’re like listen 80 solutions that go 80 solutions to go where if we’re never going to have a perfect plan so let’s let’s get the plan as close you know in in a good direction and then execute and execute and execute and have the initiative be default aggressive uh i think i think that’s i know it can stifle me uh and i’ve struggled with that and i’m i’m not executing because i’m trying to get it to the 97 solution like listen 80 solutions start moving things forward execute and i think that’s very empowering to think about that you don’t have to have the perfect plan yeah you gotta just go yeah very liberating to be like oh yeah i don’t care about that hey we might not be oh yeah i don’t care you know we well what if you don’t care about that dude that hill over there yeah get there well do you want me to have a logistics no i don’t care about that well do you want me to do it in the daytime i don’t care well do you want no i don’t care once you get that hill okay but let’s do it the the point i’m making here though is is you know even whether it’s echelon front or working together and tasking a bruiser in you know there can be something like in my mind where i’m like hey you know taco’s really good at this and i i got to make sure that jocko under you know has like this is the right plan and it’s going to meet every single thing that you know he wants to do so you start putting these self-imposed restrictions instead of like when you’re like hey man 80 solutions go bro let’s execute and that that’s it’s super liberating to think about it that way and you realize like hey what i thought you know i’ve got to get this thing perfect so you know jack was like yeah that’s good i actually don’t and i’m actually i’m actually failing if i’m not executing and i’m i’m sitting here trying to come up with a perfect plan yeah there’s uh some report you were trying to get and you were like hey you know i haven’t gotten you this report because i can’t quite figure out this little detail at the end to make sure that it’s 100 and i just i i i’m just not getting it to you because i don’t want it to be inaccurate and i don’t want to have you like pissed and i was like bro actually i remember exactly i said have i ever sweated you for the details on anything in the past 15 years and it was funny you you kind of you you tilted your head a little bit and you went nope and i was like why do you think i would start sweating these little like literally in meaningless meaningless uh details and you’re like roger i’m an idiot cool got it so no factor and that’s a that that is a great example though because here i am stewing about trying to put together a multi-page report and you’re like hey bro just send me a just just say hey i don’t have the i don’t have all the information yet here’s what i think we’re doing here’s kind of the general you know direction we should go and as soon as you said that i was like just another reminder uh that it’s self-imposed restrictions and it’s it’s really uh it can cause all kinds of problems so yeah and and obviously that means i’m doing a bad job of you know telling you what the parameters are of success you know if i’m like hey can you tell me what these numbers are you’re like cool yeah but it’s going to take me three weeks to dive into all these details if i was like hey and i you know i was like hey dude i just need a little like ballpark where are we at okay got it because i can give you that in 13 minutes but you know it’s the it goes back to some of that implied implied commander’s intent right because the implied commander’s intent is that when i ask for something i need that thing right hey you know when jacqueline asks for something because he doesn’t ask for much when he asks for something he must want that thing really exact the implied intent is that i want the implied intent with me is basically i want perfection right that’s that’s that’s a complete implied intent and for some reason echo’s never really picked up on that platform no that’s actually not true if i think about it like the the way there’s been some things where i’ve seen i found out after the fact what you did to reach a level of as close as a human can get to perfection on something where i’ve been like i didn’t expect him to do all that but he did it so that implied level of perfection just from my own stupid personality is like enough to make someone say i i better get this right before you know we go forward and that sucks and and and i talked about it at gettysburg i was like you’ve got to think about what your implied what your implied commander’s intent is and if especially if you’re going to ask them to do something that’s outside that normal implied commander’s intent and you know we talked about it with with general lee and some of his some of his subordinate leaders that hey general lee was about kicking ass so we’re moving here what’s general legal want me to do he’s going to want me to kick ass go forward but he said hey you know don’t go forward right now but they get that word they’re like yeah but it’s generally i’m gonna go get some and they messed things up so you got to pay attention to that implied commander’s intent that just your personality has your own personality has a has a culture to it and you got to pay attention scary that was a uh that was some rare praise for echo charles said we gotta note that down take a well-deserved well-deserved obviously thanks both of you guys yeah yeah i mean i’m thinking like the first time we ever went to like travel to do the podcast and you had like a and i expected i was like i had my fingers crossed my toes crossed my ears crossed hoping that you know all this quote all this equipment showed up and we’d be able to you know we have some guests come in and it’s going to be there the time is valuable and all this stuff and i’m like thinking i hope this and yeah you had it all you know in the pelican case yep everything was there i was like right away squared away which is not you know maybe what everyone expects maybe some people have a different implied scenario
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