Jocko Podcast - 188: USMC TACTICS PT.2: Every Moment is of Utmost Importance and Other Lessons from War

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:00:43 - MCDP 1-3: Tactics 2:59:32 - Support: How to Stay on THE PATH 3:23:03 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 188 with David Burke and me, Jocker Willink. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. And on the last podcast, number 187, Dave and I dug into the first two chapters. We tried to make it to three. We only made it to two of the Marine Corps Docturnal Publication, MCDP One, TAC, Three Tactics. So if you haven't listened to that podcast, that's 187, then go there and start because now we're going back to the book, starting with Chapter 3. Here we go.

Chapter 3 is called Gaining Advantage. And like the other chapters, it starts with a couple quotes. The first quote, in war, the power to use two fists is an incredible asset to faint with one fist and strike with the other yields an advantage. But a still greater advantage lies in being able to interchange them, to convert the faint into the real blow if the opponent uncovers himself. And that's B.H. Liddell Hart. It was kind of a controversial figure a little bit.

But he was British officer wounded in World War I. Wounded in World War I You know last podcast we were talking about How you made it through World War I And then you and then you Involved in World War II right? Crazy B.H. Liddell Hart's one of those guys who was wounded in World War I

Took a couple years to recover And then went back into World War I Battled Assam, Wounded again, gassed Wounded gas taken off the line And his entire battalion was wiped out So he ended up being a writer a military theorist and I'm sure I'll cover some of his books on here at some point they're really interesting books and he had a very interesting perspective a very very I

would say contrarian perspective on warfare especially contrarian in regards to World War I hey this doesn't seem like it was a great idea when your battalion gets wiped out the battle the song I think that's might be a thing to walk away with it with and the other quote that this starts with is the challenge is to identify and adopt a concept of war fighting consistent with our understanding of the nature and theory of war and the realities of the modern battlefield. What exactly does this require? It requires a concept of war fighting that will function effectively in an uncertain, chaotic,

and fluid environment. In fact, one that will exploit these conditions to advantage. So you hear, they mentioned the uncertain chaotic. They keep saying that over and over again. I think they're trying to tell us something. But isn't it interesting to look at those uncertain chaotic things and say to yourself, good, we will exploit these things that are happening. Yeah, that's our opportunity.

Yes. The chaos is our opportunity to overwhelm our important. That's what we want to take advantage of. And there are those of us that when we see that, I'm actually super excited. I'm saying those of us and I'm actually talking about myself. When I see chaos, I actually get excited and love it for some reason. So, here we go. Getting started, gaining advantage.

A basic principle of martial arts is to use the opponent's strength and momentum against him to gain more leverage than one's own muscles alone can generate, thereby gaining an advantage. The same concept applies to tactics. We strive to gain advantage over our adversary by exploiting every aspect of a situation to help us achieve victory, not by overpowering him with our own strength. This chapter will discuss several different ways of generating leverage to gain advantage over the enemy. This is one of those things that when I saw it,

when I read this, and when I read this for the first time, I wasn't training Jiu-Jitsu. When I read it for the second time, I was. This had a whole other meaning. This had a whole other meaning when I read this and actually understood it. I was talking with one of the guys I trained with. I'm trying to think of who it was.

It might have been Greg trained. When you learn a move. So if I show you a move, Dave, and you've been training jih jih Tzu for a year and a half, you're going to pick up 12% of it, 20% of it maybe the first time. I show it to Dean one time and he captures 90% of it.

Because he has that. Like you try to explain some maneuver. Yeah. We could do this drill. Like you could explain to me the way that you would do a maneuver in a jet plane, and I would understand 10% of it, maybe 4% of it, I don't know.

Whereas you explain it to one of your old teammates from Top Gun, and they're going to understand 90% of that. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, I understand all that other stuff, and now you're just telling me this little tiny detail that I didn't know. Cool, got it. That's what it was like reading, that's what it's like reading this book for me, when I read it later when I did Jiu-Jitsu.

everything when you when you when you when you know the way broadly you see it in all things we just had that conversation the other day I did I went back to to look at this in my mind I'm like I'm gonna review I want to review this because I want to kind of have it fresh in my mind because I've read it I've read it actually read it a few times I can't remember exactly the last time I read it but it was well before any of any of this and when I read it it wasn't a review. It was, it was, it was like a whole new book the way I was reading it, because I was just seeing things in there that I couldn't make any connections to before, that I could make the connections now, partially because it's so simple and straightforward, but because

the things they're saying, they apply everywhere. And you can see what this is saying everywhere. And it's true throughout from the beginning to end. You, you see these things in there. It's awesome to see it that way. Back to the book. Consider the American Indian ambush technique. A small number of warriors could would draw superior force of pursuing cavalry into a canyon or similar closed terrain. There a larger force of warriors lying in a weight would quickly surround and ambush the soldiers who thought they had been pursuing a retreating enemy. By exploiting the cavalry's initial advantages of strength and momentum, the American Indians were able to seize the initiative and gain advantage through the use of this classic ambush method. Fire sack. Are you familiar with that

doctrinal term? Yes. That's basically what they're describing. Hey, we're going to surround you completely and shoot you. Yep. I used to set that up where I would capture the friendly seals that were going through my training, capture them in a fire sack. It would be a bloodbath.

Combined arms, the use of combined arms is a key means of gaining advantage. It is based on the idea of presenting the enemy not merely with a problem, but with a dilemma. and they've got that italicized. Yes. It is based on the idea of presenting the enemy, not merely with a problem, but with a dilemma, a no-win situation.

We combine supporting arms, organic fires, and maneuver in such a way that any action the enemy takes to avoid one threat makes him more vulnerable to another. This is what we do in Jiu-Jitsu. We got the triangle,

arm-lock, sweep combination happening no matter which way they're caught in that dilemma, which way are they going to get tapped out or swept or end up in a worse position. For example, an entrenched enemy should discover that if he stays hunkered down in fighting holes, Marine artillery and air will blast him out. If he comes out to attack, Marine infantry will cut him down. If he tries to retreat, Marine armor and air power will pursue him to his destruction. That is combined arms.

The combined arms dilemma. A good example. of the use of combined arms at the squad level would be the squad leader positioning, squad automatic weapons, and grenade launchers to provide support by fire while infantrymen with rifles assault the position. The firepower from the automatic weapons keeps the enemy in their fighting holes while grenades make those holes untenable. These supporting fires keep the enemy from reacting effectively to our maneuvering infantry

force. The enemy forces are placed in a no-win situation. You know what I think of when I think of, one of the best examples that I can think of when I think of combined arms effectiveness being used effectively was when we were in Ramadi and the enemy would utilize combined arms attacks. So, for example, U.S. and Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi friendly forces had outposts. We had checkpoints. and what the enemy would do

is they would start off from a very covered position this is a low threat for them way to attack is you get into a you get a couple of buildings away you can either start with mortars or you start with machine gunfire so there's a let's say there's an Iraqi checkpoint and there's a couple Americans there but it's mostly Iraqi checkpoint

first thing the enemy does is start lobbing mortars in what does everyone do when mortars start they all take everyone takes cover because you have to take cover if there's mortars going off you have to take cover once you take cover now the enemy gets up with their machine guns and gets good position when you start to reveal yourself they're there with machine guns now that they've got the machine guns rocking and rolling and you've got your head down even deeper out come the RPGs and the RPGs are coming in and

slamming direct fire into your position and while that all is happening in comes a vehicle born IED that rolls all the way through the gates and detonates and blows up so that is what that is a classic use of combined arms dilemma. It doesn't matter what way you go, you're going to be in trouble. Yeah, for sure. And having lived through that scenario repeatedly and how often they would do that, I think that distinction of a problem versus a dilemma is the critical thing,

because with a dilemma, you actually have to react. One of your choices can't just be, hey, we're going to ride this thing out and let it play itself out. You actually have to react because if you do nothing, that initial move that they're making, that by itself, if you don't react to indirect fire, you just stand there, that could be the problem that ends up being effective for them. So you actually have to respond in a way that then allows them to move down the road. And when the Marine Corps talks about doing this, they don't know if it's going to be the aircraft or the indirect fire or the machine, because they don't know which one

it's going to be. But the key is creating a situation that the enemy has to do something. And if they choose to do nothing, good. Then the first move is going to kill them. That isn't typically what happens but it forces them to do something which is what you're looking that's the advantage you look and exploit and being on the receiving end of that it sucks it's it's awful feeling of what that feels like of hey we have to do something and then you start to play it out and in your mind like if I do this then this happen and it could be actually paralyzing if you're not careful about it it will paralyze you and doing nothing which is every bit is bad yeah there's a couple things number one obviously we see this in jiu jitsu and you get stuck where the person's coming at with you

multiple attacks now to your point if I do a if I attempt to sweep you but I don't actually attempt to sweep you I just faint at sweeping you you don't have to really defend it because I didn't really do it so therefore if I try and sweep you if if I want to get a reaction from you I actually have to try and do it and like you just said if you don't defend it you're getting swept yeah so you have to actually do it it can't just be not that you can't faint not that we don't, you know, do little feints and false moves to set people up because you do that all the time.

You do it in combat. But if you really want to get a reaction from them, you've got to commit to that movement. It's got to be real. And it's the same thing when you're dealing with human beings. Yeah. You know, when I say, if I deliver an ultimatum to you because the project wasn't done and I go, Dave, if you don't finish this project on time, you're fired. If I say that, I have to actually do it.

Right. Otherwise, I lose all this respect. I can't just make these idle threats. They need to be real. And on the receiving it, I mean, that for me, and I talked about, I think, the last podcast about that, reckon, hey, I'm so junior, I'm so novice at this.

And I remember talking to you about it early on. I would claim like, man, why am I so tired? Why do I get so? And one of the things I was doing is sort of overreacting to every single thing and exerting myself 100% all the time. And I remember, one of the, the thinking about, okay, I'm not gonna overreact

to these things that were happening. And remember one of the first times, I'm consciously thinking about that on the mat, and somebody was setting up an arm bar and I was aware, like he's setting up an arm bar and I'm thinking, this is gonna be awesome because I'm not gonna overreact to this arm bar, I'm gonna, and guess what happened? I got submitted in the arm bar.

Yeah, and it was like, and it's like you said, it has to be, the faint has to be real. And that was me and a complete novice move of, Oh, I'm totally out maneuvering this guy. He's going for that faint arm bar because what he really wants me to do is over commit to that so he can set up a choke.

And I ignored the arm bar and he tapped me about five seconds in an arm bar because I did no reaction to it. And that's really, that's what the dilemma is. And on the receiving end is recognizing that faint could be the death blow if you actually don't respond to it correctly. If he's not doing it just as a faint,

he's actually doing it to reveal your weakness, which is the key to that. And the Marine Corps operates expecting they don't have some massive numeric advantage. And Rinkler doesn't go to war thinking they've got five to one manpower advantage. They go to war with a numerical disadvantage to create these points of friction so that limited resources create a problem that the enemy has to respond to. And if they don't respond, they kill them anyway.

Yeah. And that's the important thing. So the other part that you mentioned was you're in this dilemma. What are you going to do? And you said, you've got to do something. And that is true. because the best case scenario, if I'm attempting to catch you

in the combined arms dilemma or in an arm lock, the best case scenario for me is you don't react and then you just get, you just get crushed by whatever that first initial salvo is. What I would, the worst thing for me is when you attack me. I mean, to be straight up.

I mean, I'm not saying this works every time. Right. But if I'm getting attacked, one of the most unexpected things, things that you can do back to me is you attack me. So, oh, you start shooting machine guns at me. Oh, guess what? You didn't know. I had claymores out in this surrounding area. And as soon as I, the machine gun fires, I'm clacking off claymores. And in one second, like the SAG guys, they would have their claymore set up. And if they get attacked, the first thing they're doing is igniting Claymore.

So that, that immediately there, they get fire superiority from the Claymore going off. So what can we do? And more important, how can we set ourselves? up preemptively so that when these things unfold we have an immediate action drill that puts us from the defensive to the offensive very very quickly right when we learned immediate action drills in the seal teams we were learning from the Vietnam guys when they got contacted in the jungle the very first thing they did was to hit the ground and everyone unloads a magazine into their field of fire period end of story that's what's gonna happen you could the saw guys it was

the same thing oh we get contacted and it was a great story that tilt told was everyone dumps their mag and then there's silence because everyone dumped their mag on both sides the the the the NBA and the saw guys they all dump their mags and then there's silence and then it's who can get reloaded the quickest but what they did in that moment is take away the advantage of the enemy because the enemy is attacking them and their immediate reaction is oh you're gonna shoot at us you're going to try and get us in some kind of a combined armed dilemma. Okay, cool, watch this, because they're waiting for the B40 rockets.

That's what their goal is, and they're going to try and maneuver. But guess what? We're going to immediately fire back at you. We're going to fire back at you hard, and then we're going to see who wins that next little race to who can make the next move. And even the idea of anticipating and being prepared for that, expecting that to happen, which actually in Ramadi we were. We weren't shocked that the enemy was attacking us.

We actually did some preparation and some things. thought went into that. And some of the things in the combined arm side, and I know this as an aviator, look, the enemy doesn't have an unlimited number of directions to attack us from all the time. They're actually places where they can attack areas we control, areas that we have dominance over. And so if you think about, they actually had a limited number of things they could do. And if we prepared enough, we could actually have pre-planned responses into the most likely areas that immediately we could respond with as we're ducking, getting our heads down, as opposed to no preparation, no expectation of this happening.

And actually, then we can't respond well. But the idea of being attacked in combat, it's absolutely an eventuality we should prepare for. And there's things you can do to respond just like you said. And we would do that. I mean, that's why we didn't get overwhelmed when they attacked us because we had a plan for how to respond to that. Yes.

Back to the book. Modern tactics is combined armed tactics. That is, it combines the effects of various arms, infantry, armor, artillery, and aviation to achieve the greatest possible effect against the enemy. Artillery and infantry, for example, are normally employed together because of their mutually reinforcing capabilities. The infantry provides close support to the artillery, protecting them from dismounted threats, while the artillery provides the infantry with timely, close, accurate, and continuous fire support. The strength of the arms complement and reinforce each other.

At the same time, the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of each arm are protected or offset by the capabilities. of the other while the division commander in 1941 general Patton had the following comments regarding combined arms there is a tendency in each separate unit to be a one-handed puncher by that I mean that the rifleman wants to shoot the tanker to charge the artillery man to fire that is not the way to win battles if the band played a piece first with the piccolo then with the brass horn then with the clarinet and then with the trumpet there would be a hell of a lot of noise but no

music to get harmony in music each instrument must support the others to get harmony in battle each weapon must support the other team play wins cover move yes it's so huge it's so important to think about that and look that's one of the beautiful things about the ethos of the Marine Corps and why TBS is so important is when we say every Marines a rifleman that's not just words. Now, does that mean every Marine is as competent as an infantry man in the Marine Corps?

No, it doesn't. If you're an infantryman, you're going to be more competent in those things. But at the basic school for a Marine officer, I had exposure to virtually every single arms profession in the Marine Corps. And in business, we see this when we talk about, hey, if I'm on the sales team,

do I need to be an expert in marketing? No. Do I need to have 100% understanding of what's going on with IT? No. But actually what you need is a good understanding of that and a relationship strong enough

to leverage what they're doing not just because it's helped but because actually that can be the difference maker in you being successful. And the ones where we see them wall themselves off in their silo and don't have any basic understanding

they can't leverage that capability when they needed the most. And in the Marine Corps, I was not an expert in artillery. I was not an expert, but I understood it enough to be able to communicate with them to understand what they, A, could contribute, and be more importantly, how I could help them,

which in turn let them do the exact same thing for me. And in business, too, they wall themselves off. This is what I do. You do that. And they're on the opposite side of a fence inside the same company. It doesn't mean you have to be 100% of everything they do, but you have to understand it and how it contributes to what you're doing. Cover and move.

You got to cover and move. Do it. First law of combat cover and movement. Why is it the first call it law of combat? Because that's what teamwork is. Because you have to work. If you're not working together, if you don't have a team that's working together,

none of the other. None of the other. They don't matter. I could give you this great simple plan. And if you and I don't have a good relationship and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What about prioritized next year?

Oh, but we're not working together. It doesn't matter. Maneuver. Maneuver provides us a means to gain advantage over the enemy. In too many battles, one or both sides have sought to gain advantage in combat through firepower and attrition. In World War one, one side would rush across no man's land under murderous fire and attempt to push an opponent off desired terrain.

If the attack succeeded and few did, the evicted forces counterattacked in the same manner, usually reoccupying the same terrain they had before. These battles were firepower and attrition contests, and the advantage lay with the side that had the most personnel and equipment to expend to the tune of 60,000 casualties in one. Day. The cost and casualties and equipment was high and often produced no decisive results. We want to avoid this type of engagement. We want to avoid this type of engagement. This type of engagement, okay, from a combat situation, obviously we understand what that is we don't want it. From an individual dealing with another individual from a leadership perspective, if what I get out of my confrontation with you is that I've expended. a bunch of leadership capital. I've damaged our relationship. I've made you feel insecure or

like untrusted, but I got my way in the end. I gained like a, I gained a little bit of authority over you. You got your 10 yards of authority. Got my 10 yards of authority. It's a, it's a type of engagement that I see people do and they don't understand how negative it is. All their do, they win, and this is the sad thing. Like, when you charge that German line and you take 4,000 casualties and you move 50 yards forward, and you raise your hands and you say, I won. And you're actually standing up and saying, I won. You're standing on the backs of 4,000 dead men.

And you're holding up your arm saying, I won. So when you get in an argument with one of your subordinates or with one of your bosses or one of your peers, and you inflict damage, and you expend ammunition, and you expend leadership capital, and then you stand up and you come through the victory, and you stand up and you raise your arms, and you say, I won, look underneath your feet

and see what you're standing on, because you're standing upon your reputation, you're standing on your dying reputation, you're standing on your expended leadership capital, you're standing on top of a wounded relationship. So don't do that. Look, traditionally, maneuver has meant moving in a way that gains positional advantage. For example, we may maneuver by enveloping an exposed enemy flank or by denying enemy terrain critical to his goals.

We may maneuver by threatening the enemy's lines of communication and forcing him to withdraw. We may maneuver by seizing a position which allows us to bring effective fire to bear against the enemy, but which protests protects us against enemy fires. We may maneuver in other dimensions as well. For instance, we may also maneuver in time by increasing relative speed and operating in a faster tempo than the enemy. Normally, we maneuver both in time and space to gain advantage and ultimately victory at the least possible cost. There are so many other ways to move forward towards your strategic goal.

And people are just absolutely blind to these ways. And the only way that they feel, it's like they're going to. can't recognize anything other than I'm going to attack you. If I'm not attacking you, then how can I win? They don't understand that there's so many other different ways to win. And again, I'm talking about a leadership, leadership up or down the chain of command, peer relationship, whatever. The only way I feel like I can beat Dave is by imposing my will upon him and that's how I'm going to win. When the reality is, that's actually the worst way to win.

If there is a tactic that is disconnected from the strategy, it's virtually guaranteed to lose. And that's why there's a difference between being tactical and what the tactic is. The tactic might be, you come in from the north and I bring my forces up the middle and I use, that might be the tactic to do that. But if there is not a connection to what the strategic outcome is, it's guaranteed to not have the impact that you want. And what we see is all too often is there's no understanding of why we're doing the thing that we're doing other than for the reason to do it. I was with the

company a couple weeks ago and we were looking at personnel. The number of people had, and I'd gotten some feedback in a survey that a couple folks at the company weren't real happy. They didn't really feel that they were well used and that their contribution was marginal and they didn't feel like they were a big part of the team. And one of those feedbacks was to figure out what that is. And I'd ask the, it was a CEO and I asked him, hey, there's a guy in this department and this is some of the feedback. And his answer was he go, well, he was

actually a defensive hire. We hired this guy in because I was afraid of our competition. He's a competent guy, but I was afraid my competition would get him first. So we brought him in. I'm like, okay, there's a, there's a reason to do that. And so what are you doing with him? Like, not much. We really just didn't want our competition to get him.

I'm thinking, this person has met the threshold by which if he goes to your competition, he could be damaging. That's how competent and capable of this person is. So you've made the mindset, like, I need to bring this guy to my team because he's too good if the other person gets him. And then your answer was to do nothing with him.

And just that idea of, and he was so stoked that they had gotten this guy before their competitor had gotten him. And so, you know what? Tactical big way. They won. They won. They won. I got this guy.

I got jaco on to my team before my competition does. What are you doing with them now? Nothing. That was the move. That was the plan. And just kind of that missing of just you've done nothing for the big picture. And actually this person is going to be more motivated over time when he leaves your company to bulldoze you because of what you did to him in doing that. And you see that.

And it's not a hard problem to solve. You can when you see it from the outside, but from the inside it was we won. We got the win. We pulled this guy over. The reason I took a note while you were talking. And it's a little, it's a disconnected subject, but I'm going to bring it up anyways just to make sure it doesn't slip away. One of the things of dealing with another company, we pay people money, right? And people talk about, well, how do you make someone happy, right?

And what levers can you pull, right? You can pay them more, you can give them less work, you can give them more rewarding, you can give ownership of things, right? Like that's, so there's like the money and then there's everything else, right? Everything else give people ownership of things. And I wrote down the word fate. because one of the best possible ways you can compensate a human being is by giving them more control over their own fate. And so often this is not used as a lever.

And it's a powerful lever. And it's not like, okay, you know what? I'm going to manipulate Dave into wanting to do good work by giving him this false sense that I'm going to give him some control over his own fate. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually giving the person control over their own fate. and all of a sudden Dave looks up and goes, well, you know, I don't have to do this today, or I can. And if I do, I'll be rewarded, and things will go better for me.

And I control my destiny. I control my future. Just a good way to, again, I guess the reason I thought of this is it's a maneuver that you can use as a leader. It's instead of me barking and crippling my relationship and wounding my subordinate, why not lift them up, improve the relationship, and get them to do what I want them to do by giving them more control over their own fate. What is really helpful as a leader to be able to understand

to do those things is not just the strategically, is to what we talked about in the last podcast, which is actually care about them, actually believe and care about them is one of the things that guys you to recognize that that would be so critical for them. And the return on that would be that the loyalty and all the things that that person,

that you really, what you really want is for them to do it anyway. And it's not a trick. It's actually believing in that person's livelihood and happiness. The things that make that person's life better is to believe it. That's how you allow them to have that thing, which is, I know you want more control over your fate. We all do. And I'm not doing it as a play.

I'm doing it because I care about you that much. And the irony is the return of that is I get what I want. Yeah, yeah. I get this incredibly loyal in person that will do anything for me. It's one of the hardest things to explain about all this stuff is that it works when you make a maneuver like that. When I say, Dave, you know, you take more control of your own fate. It works and the person will do step up and do better.

But the, and it will be much, much, much better for Dave. But what you, the complete bonus is that it'll be much, much, much better for me. And I'm going to win because Dave is happy. And when Dave's happy, Dave does better work. And when Dave does better work, we do better as a team and we do better as a team. I win. Meanwhile, the converse of that is me thinking, nope, this is me. I'm going to take care of me.

And Dave, therefore, needs to do what I say. And now, guess what? Dave doesn't do as good a work. He doesn't put out as much effort. And Dave and the team doesn't do it as well. And now I look bad. Next section, exploiting the environment. The use of the efficient, the use of the environment offers tremendous opportunities to

gain advantage over the enemy. We must understand the characteristics of any environment where we may have to operate, jungle, desert, mountain, Arctic, riverine, urban. More importantly, we must understand how the effects of terrain, weather, and periods of darkness or reduced visibility impact our own and our adversary's ability to fight. So this is another one of those statements like we heard on the last podcast where you wouldn't think that somebody needs to tell you, you must understand the characteristics of the environment where you're going to operate. Seems like that's super real obvious. And yet, there it is, in plain English, broken down for all of us idiots.

Because so often we overlook the fact that we're in a different environment or a new environment or an environment that's shifting or an environment that we never even took a good look at in the first place. Next, terrain. Our objective is to employ tactics that make terrain. advantage to us and a disadvantage to our opponent. Terrain impacts on our maneuver and influences our tactical dispositions. We must understand terrain and comprehend its effects as it may limit our movement, reduce our visibility, or restrict our fires.

We must understand what effects it has on the enemy and on his abilities to detect or engage us. We must be aware that the enemy also seeks advantage from terrain. We must understand that terrain shapes the enemy's maneuver. and dispositions as well as our own. This is for, you know how I'm always saying, hey, for the business world, this is not for the business world I'm about to say.

When you're a young leader and you're going to be on the ground fighting, Army, special operations, Marine Corps, whatever unit you're with, the terrain is like the thing that brings you from sort of, it brings you to the next level. Understanding terrain brings you to the next level.

If you don't understand terrain and how to use it and how the enemy is going to use it, you are a baby. This is like this brings you into your teenage years. But without, and I believe me, I met, I've met commanders or leaders at every level that were babies when it came to terrain. They didn't understand these incredible.

You know, I'm saying it's like teenage, but at the same time, it's also like masters. If you are good at terrain, if you're good at understanding terrain, it's night and day. Yeah, and it actually helps solve so many other problems. If you're deficient in resources and all the, in combat or anywhere, if you don't have all the things that you think you need, enough guns, enough people, whatever, if you occupy the most critical terrain, it actually is a huge hedge against not having all the things you wish you had. more guns and bombs. Okay, we don't have those. But you can have all the resources in the world, and if you're not in the right place to utilize them,

it isn't going to work. That's true in combat. That's true anywhere. And it isn't just, oh, the high ground, the biggest hill is the, not always. It's actually being able to just see what the terrain looks like and recognizing that is the best place to be, to recognize where the culminating event is going to occur

to bring my forces to bear. It's here, and I see that, and I've got to get control of that terrain. And now when it comes down, when we do translate it back to the business side, there's a couple big key points here. Okay. And it's like what they say about counterinsurgency, right? The decisive terrain and a counterinsurgency is not an airfield and it's not a mountain and it's not a beachhead. It's the people.

Well, guess what the decisive terrain is in an organization or in a business. It's the people all day long. That's the decisive terrain. So what you have to do is you have to get those people on board with the program. So in a counterinsurgency, what you have to do is you have to get the local populace to support what you're doing. What do you have to do in a business? You have to get the local populace, the people that work for you on board with what you're doing. That's the decisive terrain.

So you've got to know what that terrain consists of. And it is equally important as the terrain, the high ground that you might see on the battlefield. The other part of this is the moral terrain. Where are you at morally? And I had this conversation with the CEO that was complaining to me that there was bad. actually this was two CEOs in a row, they were both complaining about competitors

that were very good at lying about them and their products. So there's, you know, this other company which is slightly bigger than ours and every time we do something, they're putting out bad propaganda, they're lying about us,

but it gets traction. And then I saw the same, another company's same thing. And, you know, it gets brutal. It gets brutal. And you know, you can watch the news and you can watch politicians on the news and you, you listen to what the two sides of, of the two different parties are saying. And they're completely like there's no possible way that they, that they're even close to any middle ground, right?

They're saying completely opposite things. And so that's what these companies deal with. Companies do the same things. They will straight up lie about what another company is. doing and what's the defense against that well the defense is that you have the truth and if you have the truth and you don't weaponize it you need to weaponize it just right ended up telling both these CEOs you need to weaponize the truth you need to get the truth out there you need to go on the offense with the truth you have the

high ground but you're sitting there with letting someone drop yeah drop lie bombs on you that you're gonna sit there and you're gonna be in the combined armed dilemma because you're gonna come out looking looking bad because you're now backpedaling trying to explain things that shouldn't need to be explained in the first place. And if you actually occupy that moral, if you actually do occupy the high ground there and you actually do have the truth, you can be transparent and honest about it. You don't have anything to hide because those things are, those are lies. And if you actually have that, then you actually have the weapon and you occupy that high ground because you're doing it the

right way. You're not lying. You're not, you're not doing those things. And if you're actually covering some of those things up if you actually are hiding some of that and you've advocated that moral piece of this then you're gonna lose again this different you're gonna lose so you you not only have to have oh oh wait a second you might not lose you might not lose immediately right you might win the big you might win the tactical battle yeah you might win that with some lies and some cover up for sure you can win that way that long term long game that strategy you're you're gonna lose strategically for sure gives a little example here lieutenant harrell kaiy

of 1st Battalion 7th Marine Regiment knew how to use terrain to gain an advantage in November 1950 his company was ordered to seize a key piece of terrain at tock Tong Pass during the march out of the chosen reservoir area. Lieutenant Kaiser had only 20 Marines left in his platoon and the pass was heavily defended by the Chinese using a flanking ridgeline to conceal his approach. Lieutenant Kaiser skillfully enveloped the enemy from the rear and quickly routed the Chinese out of their well-intransposition. Today, as in Korea, the intelligent use of terrain has become a standard practice for Marines. Weather, adverse weather, heat, cold, rain

impedes combat operations. Actually, I'll say this. You know what we used to say when it was raining? We'd say good operating weather. Because it is. Because guess what? When it's cold and it's raining, guess what your centuries are doing? The century that you're trying to sneak by, they're inside their little guard hut. They got their hood pulled over their head. So impedes combat operation. Sometimes you can use it to your advantage.

The military unit that is best prepared to operate in these conditions will gain advantage over its opponent. During the breakout from Trojan Reservoir in November 1950, Marines demonstrated time and time again the ability to use harsh weather to their advantage over a determined enemy.

The assault of ABLE Company, First Battalion, First Marine Regiment on Hill 1081 in a blinding snowstorm is such an example. Despite visibility of only 25 yards, the company was able to coordinate a combined arms attack and envelop this key piece of terrain that blocked the breakout of the first Marine regiment. Using a snowstorm to mask its movement, Able company surprised and annihilated the Chinese defenders thereby opening a route for the rest of the division. If we already use weather to our advantage, we must train and prepare rigorously to operate in all climatic conditions. We must be able to operate our equipment and employ our weapons effectively in hot, cold, and wet environments, literally in every climb and place. You know what I like about weather when it comes to comparing these leadership principles is that it's just unpredictable, unpredictable and you can't control it and it's this random thing that you know which which which

hits every you know every company every business every leadership situation there's things that you just you can't control so what do you do you figure out how to mitigate you plan you you you have contingencies for these situations and as you can see here you train to be prepared for this idea of control you talked about I've heard you talk about weather in the past I use it as an example a lot because in aviation, weather makes a massive impact in what you do in an airplane. The reality is, is that when it comes to something like weather's idea of a snowstorm, we're in 100% of control of how we react to it. We're 100% of control of what we choose to do based on this blinding snowstorm. And the reality is, you know what most people do in a blinding snowstorm?

They button up. Cover up. That's what most people do. And so, and I think it was really the point you were making at the very beginning is, you know, the best, you know, I am praying for a snowstorm. I want the, I want the worst possible environment because I know more than likely that other guy, that other company, they're going to wither in that and we're going to go on the attack. And the idea of most, it's in, I'm a human being. I know what it feels like to be cold. I don't like being cold. It sucks.

But to take that, to use that to your advantage and actually welcome this inclement, weather, this giant blinding snowstorm, that's what good leaders do, is they get people around them to do those things. You know, the guy who puts on an orange, guy who puts on an orange vest in a snowstorm. Kurt Lee. That's right. That's an amazing situation to think about giving the environment where most people like, I'm just going to hole up here.

I can't deal with this. It's too cold. It's too biting. It's too hard. And that's the vehicle used to actually, when I want the weather to be bad, to be able to Recognize you are 100% control of how you react to that is a huge differentiator that most people just completely overlook. I can't deal with the weather. It's not my, I can't do anything about this.

Actually, you can. Oh, yes, you can. Periods of darkness or reduced visibility. Units that can operate effectively during hours of darkness or periods of reduced visibility often gain significant advantage over their opponent. Reduce visibility can make the simplest of tasks difficult to accomplish. This obvious disadvantage can be turned on its head and used to our advantage by a commander whose forces are trained, equipped, able and willing to operate. at night night operations can produce great gains against a force that cannot or will not operate at night operating during periods of reduced visibility creates tempo by adding another 10 to 12 hours to the day for fighting

the psychological impact of night fighting is also great and can produce significant rewards so what does that translate to that translate to look at what is hard for your competitor and what's hard for you and competitor and then get good at it just get good at it suck it up and get good at it yeah a good example of tactical impact of night attacks was found in the battle for okinawa during world war two marine forces were essentially stalemated by the presence of a strong japanese defensive line in the coral ridges of southern okinawa after days of ineffective attacks by the seventh marine regiment the regimental commander elected to attack under cover of darkness at zero three 30 on 12 June 1945, the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 7th Marines advanced using a road that intersected

the ridge as a guide. Colonel Edward W. Snedeker, commanding officer of the 7th Marines at the time, noted two companies, one from each of the 1st and 2nd battalions, got across the valley during the night into position on the ridge. During the early morning when the Japanese came out to cook breakfast, they found themselves a little bit of a surprise. The Japanese defenders were not used to U.S. forces attacking at night. The use of darkness allowed the Marines to occupy positions along the crest of Kunishi Ridge, literally without firing a shot. From these positions, the Marines dislodged the enemy from their entrenched positions

and moved onward until the Japanese defenders were annihilated. So you train to get good at something that the competitor is not good at, and then you execute on it. Or you just sack up and execute on something that you, you know, they're not going to expect this one. So let's bring it. Yeah.

And the feeling of the discomfort and the pain and all the negative things that you might associate with operating in those type of environments, which is the reason people aren't doing it, the feeling of winning, the satisfaction that comes from all that work and all that pain going into that when you are annihilating the enemy

and they're not even aware of it vastly outweighs whatever discomfort you might be feeling when they're, hey, we're going to suck it up and operate in bad weather or we're going to do things that our competition doesn't want to do because it sort of sucks.

It does suck. It's extra time. It's extra whatever it is. Winning makes all that go away. All those, all that, it just goes away. And that feeling of being victorious in that environment makes all that worth it and just the willingness

to just do. Do, like you said, we're just going to do the work that they're not willing to do. And that's going to be the difference. Complementary forces. Complementary forces, the idea of fix and flank are an important way of gaining an advantage. The idea behind complementary forces is to use our forces as a nutcracker. We seek to crush the enemy between two or more actions. Consider the case of an enemy rifleman firing from behind a tree.

If one Marine fires from the front, the enemy rifleman is protected by the tree. if the Marine maneuvers and attempts to fire from behind, the enemy rifleman merely moves to the other side of the tree to maintain his protection. However, two Marines can place our opponent in a dilemma. One can fire from the front while the other sneaks around and fires at the enemy from the flank or rear. The opponent is now vulnerable to one or the other of the two Marines.

He cannot use the tree for protection against both. Flank, flank, flank, flank, flank, cover and move. Cover and flank. The idea, the same idea applies to air-to-air tactics. Did you just get like a little chill up your spine? The same idea applies to air-to-air tactics. Upon detecting enemy aircraft, a flight of fighter,

a flight of fighters splits into two or more elements beyond air-to-air missile range. They approach the enemy aircraft from multiple directions and varying altitudes. No matter how the enemy aircraft moves, dives, climbs, turns, or twists, it is exposed. How often I always, whenever I think of you and top gun, I always think of you one on one

against one other person. That's not the way the game is played? Occasionally, is it played that way? It is. It's a small part of it. It's definitely a part of it. And those skills are important. But the preponderance of the time is multiple forces, large forces against large forces.

Okay. Large being how many aircraft on one side? The smallest would be four. The biggest would be maybe 25. Jesus. Would you guys do drills with 25? The culminating events up at Fallon, you know, the final exercises at both Top Gunn and the airwing training, which is carrier training for war, would be 20, 25 airplanes. Would you guys be sitting up there?

So you guys, every time the carrier air wing came through to do a deployment, they'd come through and fly against you guys? Every time. They'd come up through Fallon for three weeks. And how? What cycle were they on? Were you getting one a quarter? One air wing a quarter? Yeah, that's about right.

Yeah, every three to four months. sometimes a little more and a little less, but about every three months, an airwing, every two to three months an airwing would come through, the entire airwing. Did you guys psychologically let them start to do better at the end, or would you just destroy them the whole time? They would get better. They absolutely would, and not the game of them. They would get better.

Now, we would also, we would try to represent traditional enemy tactics, and so they were working through problem sets. But it got to the point that on arrowing against arrowing, they would get to a point that if they'd executed the tactics correctly, they would be successful on the airwing side, for sure. Wait, you say air wing against air wing. Yeah, so. Would they go against themselves?

No, they would go against the trainers that would be representing an enemy air force. So that's you guys. That's the top gun instructors. It's the top gun. It's actually called air wing training. That's the name up at Fallon. So there's Top Gun and Air Wing Training. Two separate entities.

We would fly together to, to in the same airplanes at the same sort of the same squadron against the actual American airwing that would come in from whatever carrier coming through and they'd bring their jets from their squadrons getting ready to deploy against enemy that was called airwing training so we would represent an enemy air wing got it and so this is this is like the exact same thing that I ran right it's hey I've got some seals and we have some other role players that aren't quite in trade at but they're just whatever and they're going to come and help out and it's it's are and we simulate enemy tactics.

And exactly as you just said, if the seals that were going through the training, if they did what they were supposed to do and they executed the tactics, they would win. They'd be successful. They would take casualties. It would be hard, but they would win. And a matter of fact, if they were really good, they would dominate. Yeah. Like if you had guys at decentralized command and prioritized and execute in simple plans and people

covering a movement, they would actually dominate. For sure. And we wouldn't just roll over to let them win because we wanted them to go home with a victory. That's not how it worked. And actually what would happen by the end of their training, they understood the fundamental principles they needed to utilize. And if Airwain came through and at the end, they weren't doing those things. Not only would they not win, they sometimes wouldn't be qualified to go out to deploy. Now, that's a rare event.

But there are times you said, I'm like, you did not actually complete. Did you guys reload them? Yeah, they would. So we would do that too. We would reload them. You got to do that block of training again. Sorry. Yeah, they're actually getting ready to go to war.

Yeah. This isn't just a, hey, how do you feel? This is, you actually have to demonstrate the things. But if they did, which usually they did, these are smart guys. They started applying the tactics and understand what they're doing correctly and implement the principles we taught, they would be successful. It would work. And it worked most of the time.

And you know, you know which units, which airwings came through that didn't. do that, those that had the commanders that said, I've got this figured out. Yeah. I don't need, those are the ones that would, that would struggle the most. What a shocker. What a surprise. So most of the air to air combat that you trained in was you were at least with the wingman, right?

Yeah. And it's interesting you said that because we would do these big culminating exercise with this whole bunch of airplanes. But actually being able to maneuver 20 airplanes, that, actually led to flexibility where I could break off, you and I could just break away from the entire air wing if it required and you and I would, being solo was a bad idea. It's almost never a good idea to be by yourself. But if you had just one other airplane, just like that story with the guy with the tree, if you had just one other machine out there with you, you could maneuver in relationship to each other to put the enemy in a position that if they are active one, they get killed by the other and vice versa. This is, I'm actually a little bit disappointed that this is the first time I'm hearing from this for you because this is like full on the cover and move. As I say when I talk about cover move and I say, well, once the enemies killed my partner, what are they going to do to me? Like it's bad for me.

Like if it's you and me, once they kill you like it, that really sucks for you. But guess what? It's going to be just as bad for me because they're coming from me. Yes. And so that's cover and move in the air is 100%. how you have to roll. 100%. If you were out there,

you know, we called it a raging single. There's Dave. We'd have these giant screens and you could watch all these computer screens, a little icon, and there's Dave by himself down and you'd see it. And what you could watch from the TV screen is all the enemy forces maneuvering on Dave.

And there's Dave down there running by himself and you just set your watch because Dave's, but if he had one other guy, and it's not always just one, sometimes it's more than one, but if you had just one other guy, you actually could maneuver with that other person and create real problems for the enemy

and as soon as you were alone, as soon as you were a raging single, people are setting their stopwatches because you're just, you're going to die. You're not going to survive. Are you voluntarily? Is that a guy that goes, oh, you know what I can take this guy over here?

Is that what creates the raging single? No, typically what it is, is a guy who's lost awareness. It's pretty uncommon, especially at that stage in your career to think. To voluntarily say, I got this. I've got this. It's actually not really realizing

what's happening. And what that person would do, he'd have his face buried in the radar screen. He'd get locked into this one guy he thinks he's fighting against, thinking it's one against one, and he loses sight of the big picture. He goes down the wrong path, and he doesn't recognize that he's actually getting maneuvered on. And that one guy that he's looking to target is actually baiting him into moving into this place. It wasn't always another airplane. Sometimes it was a sandbush.

We called it where pull himself over train where there's surface air missiles. There's a whole bunch of things going on there. But it was typically someone who lost situational awareness. Did you hear Jim Kunkle talking about being his P-38? And he calls break break, which means, hey, we got to break off and go attack. And there was loss of comms or whatever, so he just breaks by himself. And sure enough, I mean, he took out some bad guys, but then he got taken out because he was, you know, got maneuvered on. Yep, for sure.

Whole new, whole new, like, category I can talk about now. Back to the book. Sun Tsu described this concept. as Cheng and Chi. Cheng is the more direct, obvious action. It fixes the enemy. The chi is the unexpected or extraordinary action. It is the bid for a decision, or, as we call it today, the main effort.

These two actions work together against the enemy. The two actions are inseparable and can be interchangeable in battle. The Cheng may become the chi. The concept is basic, but it can be implemented in a variety of combinations, limited only by our imagination. Creativity, yeah, totally. You know, it's like limited only by our doctrine, limited only by our standard operating procedures,

limited only by what you were taught in school. No, limited by your actual imagination. Surprise. Achieving surprise can greatly increase leverage. In fact, surprise can often prove decisive. We try to achieve surprise through deception, stealth, and ambiguity. I like that one. Never really thought too much about that. The fact that ambiguity can create surprise.

You're not really sure what I'm going to do. Kind of ambiguous. War is based on deception, stated Sun Tsu. We use deception to mislead our opponents with regard to our real intentions and capabilities. By employing deception, we try to cause our opponents to act in ways that will eventually prove prejudicial for them. We may use... You know what's awesome about these books? And this is very interesting.

This is like the ultimate The ultimate in lack of ego So you know who wrote this book? The United States Marine Corps A Marine yeah But you know what? There was probably Four, seven, I don't know, there was something like that There was a guy

And there was one of those guys that was really on it There was one of those guys that He was the old dog and he was like, hey listen You can write the chapter But let me tell you what you need to hit. There was a guy that was like that. For sure. And we'll never know who

he is because the Marine Corps he was a Marine we know that and that's all we need to know so he wrote that line right there this eminently qualified Marine wrote that's right eventually that by employing deception we try to cause our opponents to act in ways that will eventually prove prejudicial for them we may use deception to mislead the enemy as to the time and location of our pending attack we may use deception to create the impression that our forces are larger than they really are. We may. We hope the enemy will realize this deception only when it is too late for them to react. Marines have often relied on deception to mislead an enemy in regard to the location of amphibious landings. Marine used this deception

to create the illusion of force where there was none in Operation Desert Storm. Lieutenant General Boomer stated that, stated the situation which necessitated an extensive deception operation. We're taking on 11 Iraqi devices. divisions with two Marine divisions. Our force to ratio are our force to ratios are our force ratios are horrible. We don't want him to know that. The Marines created task force Troy. 460 Marines imitated the activities of a 16,000 man division using loudspeakers, dummy tanks, and artillery and helicopters conducting simulated resupply. Surprise can be generated through stealth. Stealth is used to the advantage when

maneuvering against the enemy. It provides. less chance of detection by the enemy, leaving him vulnerable to surprise action for which he may be unprepared. Marines may also employ stealth by lying in wait for an approaching enemy and ambush. The ambush is perhaps the most effective means of surprising opponents, especially at the lower tactical level where surprise through stealth is easiest to achieve. We can also achieve surprise through ambiguity. It is usually difficult to conceal all our movements from the enemy. But we can sometimes confuse him as to the meaning of what he sees. Sun Su said,

The enemy must not know where I intend to give battle. For if he does not know where I intend to give battle, he must prepare in a great many places. When he prepares in a great many places, those I have to fight in any one place will be few. Ambiguity was central to the tactics of World War II, German Blitzkrag. An attack in Blitzkrague involved multiple thrusts with reinforcements following whichever thrust were most successful.

The multitude of thrust created paralyzing uncertainty because the opponent could not determine which constituted the real attack. There was nothing secret about the German attack, but it was ambiguous on a massive scale. That's like it starts off with the opposite of the concentration of effort, which is sort of one of the fundamental principles of war, concentration of effort. Yeah.

Yeah, we're going to mass. our efforts, we're going to concentrate our efforts, we're going to focus our efforts. Well, what we're doing with blitzkraine is we're actually going to spread that out initially, and then once we see a gap. Yeah, to see where the gap is. And then you're, yeah, absolutely. Then we're coming in hot. And this idea, you were talking about stealth, you're talking about ambiguity.

I got to live this in an airplane where I went from a regular airplane like an F-18 and an F-16. I flew those for years. And then I got to fly a stealth airplane. I started flying the F-22 and it has all these attributes that the other airplanes didn't have. But you know what we never did in the F-22, no matter how it's powerful and invisible, all those things? We still didn't do the frontal assault. We still created maneuvers that created even more ambiguity and leverage this thing. People think, like, if you get the advantage, that means you go straight at them and run them over.

It's actually not what it means. It just allows you to create even more confusion, more ambiguity, and what that means is the place and the opportunity to recognize where the weakness is, there's more of that. It gives you more opportunity to see where those gaps appear, but then you still look for those gaps, and you take even more advantage of what you're doing. And that's how an incredibly small number of stealth airplanes can wipe out a much bigger... So the force ratios are even less in an airplane,

in a stealth airplane. So I only need four raptors, well, I might need 16 Hornets because I can create even more ambiguity and the opportunity for those maybe used to be one or two gaps. Now there's going to be four, five, or six that I create based on that. that exact same principle.

And once that happens, we all do into that hole. And we fill that and we exploit them and wipe them out with a force ratio and a missile ratio that's even less than it was in an older machine. And when you see the reaction of an enemy who simply doesn't understand what's happening, man, that's a good feeling. Because in a Hornet, in a legacy machine,

it was still you against me. I always saw you, you always saw me, if I outmaneuvered you, I would still win, but rarely were you surprised by it. You might have had a hard time reacting to it. There was things I had that you couldn't do, but you saw it coming. You were aware that when you were having to react to something

you don't understand and you don't night attacks, ambushes, when you just simply don't know what's happening, the force multiplier of that is significantly higher than when they see you and you're just out-maneuver them, which is actually fairly rare in combat when they see what's going on. It's usually kind of a stalemate. Delta platoon task unit bruiser

Seth Stone, JP, the crew They was like one of the early times That they did like a deception And then an overwatch And then a flanking overwatch It was literally called like the flank overwatch So they had a main overwatch And they had like a little flanker position

But I remember Seth calling me up And he was so happy Because it What happened was as they started killing bad guys, the other bad guys didn't know what was happening. They didn't understand. And they literally, like, put down their weapons and, like, just walked away. And they just left.

Because normally, as you know, when the guys would set up an Overwatch position and started killing people, then the bad guys would bring it. And eventually you'd get not really a clandestine Overwatch position, but a reinforced fighting position is what most of the... the Overwatch's in the Battle of Ramadi turned into. But this, on this one, I remember the first time that they did this and it was, you know, Seth was all excited. He was like, they gave up.

They didn't know what was happy. They didn't know where they were getting shot at from. It was just, they just left the dead and let them bleed out and just got away because they were totally overwhelmed. Yeah. As you just described, the, they did not know what was happening. And same thing with Charlie did it too. the first time, well, it wasn't, I don't know it was the first time, but when they started using boats

where we're all of a sudden in areas, you know, Charlie Patoon showing up in areas where the enemy had no freaking idea that Americans would be in these spots and be able to engage them. Yeah, when they ruled out this location as a possible enemy advanced, meaning for us, when that was ruled out and then it happened, that psychological, impact of that is this cannot be happening. I simply do not understand what's happening. What can be happening? Yeah. Why are my friends getting killed right now? Yes. How is this possible? Right. It's possible through the creative minds of T.U. Bruiser. That's right. Coming at your life. Come at those boats, man. That was, I remember that. Yeah. That first one we did was awesome. Trapping the enemy. Modern tactics is

based not on pushing the enemy, but on trapping him. Another excellent way of gaining advantage. and a trapping is the desired result of the application of combined arms, fire maneuver, or complementary force tactics. Why do we want to trap the enemy instead of just push him? A pushing contest is seldom decisive. The side that is pushed out comes back the next day, still full in the fight. We have to fight him again and again. Unfortunately in Vietnam, many of our battles were pushing battles.

We were always able to push the enemy off the ground he held and to inflict casualties on it. He just withdrewed Regrouped placed his losses Replaced his losses and came back to fight us again The result was a series of indecisive actions and a seemingly endless war However, if we can trap our enemy We have a better opportunity to win decisively. You know this is you know from a leadership perspective What we're doing here is we're winning the tactical battle like I made Dave do it like you're doing it

Like you're damn right, Dave, you better do what I told you do. And you're like, fine. Tactical win. And you go back, but you haven't, you don't still understand why you're doing what you're doing. And I don't do it very well. And you don't do it very well. Many of history's decisive battles have been trapping actions. Recall how Roman legions were trapped at Kanae or the German divisions at Stalingrad.

Trapping gains advantage by disrupting the enemy's mental process while he attempts to think through the dilemma we have placed him in. Trapping allows us to gain and maintain our initiative as the enemy is forced to react to our actions. It can also temporarily undermine the enemy's will to resist when he is at his weakest while we continue to press the attack and our initiative. So I would say this when it comes to, because obviously trapping and destroying it from a leadership perspective has a bad connotation. So what am I trying to do by by trapping someone in a conversation? This is a very, very simple, very simple tactic that I use all the time. By trapping someone, if you and I are having a conversation about something and I trap you, when I trap you,

my purpose isn't to prove that I'm right. The way I trap you and the way that I win in a leadership situation is when I trap you, what happens is I force you to come to the conclusion yourself and you see it. And that's when I win. So you end up walking away from me saying, you don't talk on this is the way we should do it. And what you're telling me is what I wanted you to say. I got you to come up with the idea that I wanted you to come up with. And I, and if it's done correctly, I figure that out. I, okay, I had this wrong. I I recognize that. Yes.

And where that actually comes from is you not wanting to win. It's you wanting me to win. It comes from you not wanting to beat me as like, because you could beat me and I won. And that's, it can make, but actually what you want is you want me to figure that out. Not that I walked away and go, Jocko beat me. It's that I figure like, oh, I see this differently.

So next time I do it the right way. And it comes from you actually wanting to be successful. So when we're going at our folks and we, if we have these conversations and really what we're trying to get them to do is recognize. it themselves, it's not for the satisfaction of being right. It's for them to get better and learn and evolve and feel like they can go do it better, which is what I really want. It's for them to go do it the right way. And by the way, the way that you approach that most effectively is to

go in with that attitude yourself. I don't go in thinking, well, Dave's got a bad plan, so I'm going to get him to believe in my plan. Actually, I go in there thinking maybe I have a bad plan, maybe Dave's plan is better. Let's find out. Yeah. And as we explore that, guess what? If we can have a civilized, ego removed conversation, that plan will percol, the good plan, the correct plan will percolate to the surface. Yeah. And that is what we're looking for. And think of the times where if you were in the leadership position where you actually have that conversation and then, you know what? Their plan is actually better than mine. Because what you don't have is, another conversation with Jocko.

I don't know what's going to happen, but eventually he's going to win, and I'm going to be proved that he's smarter than me. And sooner or later, it's actually not effective anymore either because I've just come to realize this guy, he's always got some answer. He's always got some final thing that makes him right. And I almost kind of resign myself to that. But if every, not by design, but because you actually are humble enough to see and go, you know what, dude, I didn't, I didn't see that.

That's a really interesting. Let's do that. Go, go down that road, go down that road, and I'll back you up. And if that happens often enough that I feel like these conversations aren't a contest over right. The conversation is actually how we both get to the right place. And look, if you're more experienced, you've done it more, you probably are going to be right more often. But not all the time. And you're not trying to break their will of, here comes another comment, guess what's going to happen if I'm going to lose again.

And all that, that idea of breaking someone's will, when I try and break your will, that, that, My, my, I'm being driven by my own insecurities. I want to prove to you that I'm right, that you're wrong, that my plan is better than your plan. I am completely being driven by my own insecurities. The person that is secure and is actually confident and understands that they're in a good spot and understands that it's okay, like if, if I make

a mistake that I'm not it's not the end of the world and I'm a human and I'm not trying to portray the fact that I'm not a human it's like oh okay if we can get there if I can get there then guess what if you come up with the better plan that's awesome I think their plan is better let's go with it yeah the the for the leaders out there listening to this the humility that it requires to do that is actually your your that's your biggest tool because more often than not these situations are a superior and a subordinate and you know who knows who's the superior, everybody in the conversation. I write your performance review.

I write your paycheck. I do all, I have all this organizational influence that I can exert over you. And I know that and the subordinate knows that. And if I'm leveraging that to be right in the conversation, eventually, unless the subordinate just wants to get fired, he's going to give in. But if I have all those positional advantages and I still come in with the humility and reckon, that's a really good idea. I didn't see that. And I push that down to you and we go run with plan, the leadership capital, the deposit into the bank of leadership that you have, it's Yeah, and if you think, if you think in the back of your head that you can effectively cover up your insecurities to your subordinates through punitive measures and through

exulting your authority over other human beings, if that's, if that's, you know, That's a fantasy in your head. You're so wrong. Your insecurities stand out in fluorescent colors. They stand out like Kurt Lee's vest in the chosen reservoir battle. Florescent orange. And you might as well put a label on your forehead that says, I'm super insecure. That's why I'm trying to force my will upon you.

because I'm scared and I'm insecure. Yeah. If you think that you can cover that up, you are so wrong. So don't. A good example of trapping from the Vietnam conflict occurred during Operation Dewey Canyon. North Vietnamese activity along the Loisian South Vietnamese border

increased dramatically in early January 1969. Large enemy convoys, including armored vehicles regularly traveled from Laos into South Vietnam, threatening friendly units. And the Sog Boys were up there tracking it. Colonel Robert H. Barrow and his 9th Marines responded with Operation Dewey Canyon. Three battalions of 9th Regiment crossed the Da Crohn River on February 11th and 12th. The 3rd and 1st battalions moved south-southeast through the mountainous terrain towards Laos.

Second battalion to the west swung south-southwest, turning east astride the Vietnam-Louse border. The North Vietnamese forces moving along Route 922 from Laos into the A-Shaw Valley. We've heard that before. We're trapped between the three battalions. The North Vietnamese were mauled as a result. Their equipment losses were staggering. More importantly, Operation Dewey Canyon destroyed a North Vietnamese base area and so disrupted their logistics that it forced them to abend. abandon their planned spring offensive in I-Corps area.

Developing an ambush mentality. Perhaps the most common tactical tool for gaining advantage is the ambush. All Marines are familiar with an ambush as the type of combat patrol. In maneuver warfare, ambush takes on a much broader meaning, and the development of ambush mentality is integral to maneuver warfare tactics. The ambush mentality is not new to most of us. We may have employed the ambush mentality in sports. In football, the trap block is an ambush.

A player pulls an offensive lineman offline, leaving a hole. When a defender comes through the hole, another lineman suddenly blocks him from the side, usually knocking him down. The players have blindsided him. That is the ambush mentality. And in basketball, setting a pick is an ambush. As one team member drives to the basket, another steps into the defender's path from behind, blocks the path, stops the defense, and momentarily clears the lane to the basket for the other team member.

Again, that is the ambush mentality. In combat, we moved our reinforced squad into position along a well-traveled trail. We position flank security to protect ourselves and give identification and warning of the enemy movements down the trail. We position our weapons so as to concentrate our fires into a kill zone and to seal off exits, forcing the enemy to remain subject to our fires. The squad waits in position until signaled when they immediately respond with concentrated, sustained fires on enemy forces trapped in the kill zone.

The enemy surprised into inaction, unsure of what to do or where to move is annihilated. Are maintained until all the enemy are killed or until signal to stop the that is the ambush mentality Pretty straightforward unless you're a sog guy and then you set your claimors up in such a method and you put a A block of C4 that will stun the person right in the ambush Because was it Lynn Black I think it was Lynn Black that blew himself up over and over again until he found out How much C4 it took to knock him out right? Do you get any more legit than that? Yeah, no you don't The ambush mentality tries to turn every situation into an ambush. I like that.

The ambush mentality tries to turn every situation into an ambush. In this broader context, an ambush has several distinct features. First, in an ambush, we try to surprise the enemy. Think of a patrol that we ambush. Our enemies are walking through the woods when suddenly out of nowhere, they are under fire from multiple directions. They are taking heavy casualties. The psychological impact of a surprise may paralyze their thoughts and actions,

leaving them incapable of reacting effectively. To have an ambush mentality means we always try to surprise the enemy to do the unexpected surprise is the rule rather than an exception rather than the exception Second, we want to draw our enemy unknowingly into a trap This will often involve deceiving him We make one course of action appear inviting when he takes that course of action We are waiting for him Third an ambush is invisible if the ambush is not invisible it ceases to be an ambush instead becomes a target for the end enemy. Whether we are defending or attacking, the enemy must not detect us until it is too late

for him to react. Surprise often depends upon invisibility. That invisibility may be provided through stealth and movement or in focusing the enemy's attention elsewhere to allow our forces to maneuver without detection. You know, the big coming home from Ramadi, what I, I broke this down into offensive versus defensive mentality. Hey, we want to be an offensive. I would ask these young junior officers that would be coming through the officer training course that Lave was running at the time. I'd say, hey, is a direct action mission, an offensive mission? Of course, they'd all say, yeah. And I'd say, okay, it takes us, and this was a direct action mission, it takes us an hour to get to the target.

And then we spend 20 minutes on the target. We blast the door open, we clear the target, and then it takes an hour to get back, you know, patrol, and then Humvees, and then we're back. How much of that time was offensive? And then the guys would think about it. The sharp ones would say, three minutes, and they'd be right. Because while you're patrolling, guess what? You're waiting to get ambushed. And believe me, this is when we got to Ramadi, I did not like the idea of us waiting to get ambushed.

And, of course, you can't avoid him. You have to go on patrol. You have to get out. You have to move through the city. But I couldn't, what I didn't like was the ratio of, hey, you know, two hours of patrolling, three minutes. of offense. I didn't like that ratio. I like the ratio of an hour patrolling, 24 hours on offense, and then another hour of patroling. That's what I liked. And that's kind of what we shifted to. Yeah, because the hour of patrolling is, you have to get there. So you have to do that.

That amount of time to get where you're going, whatever that amount of time is, you have to do that. And you are undeniably, especially in Ramadi, you're exposed. No matter how much firepower you're bringing or how much you're bringing to that. And it requires very, very much, you're bringing to that. and it requires very little of the enemy to disrupt and do very little. It was easiest for them when we were doing that. And if you're going to make that investment in that time and that commitment to doing that, spend as much time as you possibly can taking advantage of whatever it is you've created by going through that work in doing that.

And all this stuff I'm hearing, you know, stealth. There's all these things that I'm hearing. The ambush should be the goal every time. Your goal should be to keep the enemy. from not understanding what's happening all the time. It would just get, why would you ever do the frontal assault? They see it's coming.

Now, you still may win on the frontal assault, but it gives the enemy every possible thing it could have to defend itself against it. They see it's coming. They know it's coming. They're massing their firepower. The frontal assault, nine times out of ten, is a loser, even if you actually win the engagement.

It's just a loser. And it's like the mindset should always be, out maneuver them. Yes. And when you hear it, it sounds so simple. And when you hear it in a business context, in a leadership context, it sounds, it sounds, and people, Echo brings up this example of, well, that's just the way I am. You know, and what I hear from leaders, you know, I got to have a direct conversation with this person to tell them what's going on.

Look, I get it that sometimes there's an occasional point. But most of the time, there's a way to maneuver that's going to make that whole situation infinitely better than you're a direct assault on their brain. Totally. And probably the biggest thing that I talk about and I try to explain and dispel the myth, look, when we're talking about flanking your enemies in combat, you are actually talking about maneuvering to destroy them, to get into a position to wipe them out. And if you're taking the analogy of, I have someone I work with. This is a peer. This is my boss. This is someone on my team.

The flanking and the outmaneuvering isn't to destroy them. It's to get to a place for them to recognize there's a better way for me to do it. That actually helps him, helps me, helps a team. And so my life gets better. And that frontal assault, even if it's well intended, prevents that from happening because the recipient can't actually hear what you're trying to get across, which is the better way because he's defensive. And you're putting him to, so even if the frontal assault makes sense in your mind

because you have this totally outsized, all your information is right and it seems so clear, you're still dealing with another human being who most of the time simply doesn't want to hear it. And it's going to get defensive and is going to attack you back. Yes. Or dig in harder and expend ammunition. And we get a worse relationship. There's two things I kind of have to say because I just, I've said this before, but because I just got asked this. I was kind of talking through the exact scenario that we're talking through with the company.

And, you know, isn't that, you know, the hand went up in the back of the room. Isn't that just manipulation? And it's like, well, let me tell you what I think, the difference between leadership and manipulation is because they both use the same tools. manipulation is when I'm doing what I'm doing to benefit me. Leadership is when I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm trying to get you to do what you're doing. I'm trying to get you to do what I want you to do because it's going to benefit you and it's going to benefit the team.

And you threw this out there, you said it's going to make my life better. But what you really mean is it's going to make our life better, the team's life better. And most important, I've actually want, when I'm more, manipulate you, Dave Burke, I'm manipulating you and everything that I'm doing, every maneuver that I'm making happen to you, I'm doing it and it's going to benefit your life way over me. For sure. Way over me. That's exactly right.

And when you look up, in my best manipulation that I can do, you don't even realize that it happened. And you're looking up going, well, I did a good job on that last, you know, project that I had to do. I did a super job. And, oh, and I got a fat, you know, paycheck and a bonus. And oh, that's great. I did great.

And that's exactly what I want you to be saying. I want you to be saying, I did great. Yeah. And you know what? Subconsciously, in the back of that little freaking nugget of a brain you got in there, you're going to go on that guy kind of helped me out. That boss man did. 100%.

And that's what we want. Because then they realize, our team realizes that we care about the team or that we care about ourselves. And then when we have that, that's the trust and the relationship. and that's what makes a team strong. That is the glue that makes a team strong. If you don't trust me and I don't trust you, we don't have a team.

Period. There's no glue. As soon as that thing, as soon as that pressure comes along, we're going to fracture, we're going to fall apart. When we have a strong bond, we know what that pressure does to us. It makes it even stronger.

Get some. Back to the book. The reverse slope defense is an example of using invisibility to spring and ambush. The enemy does not know where you are until he comes over the crest of a hill and is hit by our fires. His vehicles are hit on their soft underbellies.

His troops are exposed to our weapons because he could not see us into the last moment. He could not call in artillery fire on our position. The reverse slope not only protects us from his direct fire, it protects us from his observation and thus his indirect fire. That is part of the ambush mentality. Do not let yourself be seen. Fourth, in an ambush, we want to shock the enemy. Instead of taking him under fire,

gradually with a few weapons at long range, we wait until he is within easy range of us with every weapon. We then open up suddenly all at once with everything we have. He is paralyzed by the shock. He cannot react. Everything was going fine, and suddenly he's in a firestorm with people falling all around him. Often he will panic,

making his problem worse as he reacts rather than axe. Combined arms may be used to ambush the enemy. Artillery raids. that reach deeper into his vital areas that expected can produce the same desired shock effect as ground-based ambush. We place him in a dilemma as he attempts to move from the effects of artillery and goes right into attack by the air. Finally, in the ambush mentality, we always focus on the enemy. The purpose of an ambush is not to hold a piece of terrain, it is to destroy the enemy. We used terrain to effect for the ambush, but the terrain itself is not what we're fighting for.

All right, next section, asymmetry. Fighting asymmetrically means gaining advantage through imbalance, applying strength against enemy weakness. Fighting asymmetrically means using dissimilar techniques and capabilities to maximize our own strengths while exploiting enemy weaknesses. Fighting asymmetrically means fighting the enemy on your own terms rather than on his. By fighting asymmetrically, we do not have to be. numerically superior to defeat the enemy.

We only have to be able to exploit his vulnerabilities. For example, using tanks to fight enemy tanks, infantry to fight enemy infantry, and air to fight enemy air is symmetrical. Using attack helicopters to fight tanks and close air support against enemy infantry are examples of fighting asymmetrically. In these examples, we gain advantage of the greater speed and mobility of the aircraft relative to the enemy. ambushing tanks with attack helicopters and terrain,

which hampers, tank maneuvers, provides an even more effective, even more effective and generates even more advantage. This is so important for people to think about. Okay, Jiu-Jitsu, if we're going against a, or fighting, I should say. If you're going against a boxer, do you box them? No, you take them down.

If you're going against a wrestler, what do you do? You strike with them. They're not used to striking if you're going against a jiu jitzu person what do you do you punch him you stay standing You don't go into persons what the person's good at you don't want to fight them in their own game if you watch the early ufcs. That's why everyone lost to jiu jihitsu Because you take down you didn't see hoist gracey standing in there and trading blows no he went asymmetrical That's what you do obviously it's what you do on the battlefield when we get into leadership when we get into relationships, if I've got someone that's got a strong, passionate idea about something,

I am not going to attack that idea with my passion and my strong feeling. Because now all we're doing is creating conflict between us. This is not improving my position. It's actually strengthening their position because they're digging in deeper. So what do I do? I look for another thing that I can start to maneuver on. Get them thinking. So often, so, so many of my solutions for leadership is all I'm trying to do initially

is, is like some, and you've heard me say this, Dave, I say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now you've started a conversation. Because that's what I want, right? Because if I'm not in a conversation with someone, then there's no possible way I can convince of anything, right? If all I'm doing is attacking them, they're not convinced of anything. So I do this, that, and the other thing,

and I make a couple maneuvers, and now I'm in a conversation, and the conversation probably has nothing to do with the subject that I'm eventually going to change their mind on. You're just trying to build trust. Yes. Just trying to build a relationship and build some trust.

And you could be 100% right, and they could be 100% wrong. And if you attack them to prove that point, you get nothing. You get nothing. You get no trust. And if I- You actually do get something.

You go backwards in your relationship. You go backwards. That's what's happening. But if you completely out-movem in a different direction and I just come to find that I can talk to you, I can have a relationship with you, I can communicate with you, when you do eventually circle back to the thing that was sort of the initiation of the conflict, I'm actually going to listen to you. And that's what you, I'm going to, okay, I'll hear you out and hear what you have to say.

And, you know, people like, oh, conflict avoidance. Like the idea of conflict avoidance is what you're really trying to do is, are you actually going to be able to convince the person of what's the best thing in their world and the best outcome that you're trying to get to? It's the idea of conflict avoidance. It's more the idea of, is this person going to listen to me? And if the person won't listen to me and I move backwards, not only do I lose, they lose too. They lose.

And we talked about what a leader really wants us. They care about their people. They want their people. Just what we said, you want their lives to be better. So do I need to take, maybe it's going to take longer than I'd like it to take. I'm not going to solve this today because I have nothing, no foundation to build on. I have to start with a conversation and go from there. Yeah.

Where do we end up tactically when we engage in conflict? Sure. We're beating this dead horse. Sure. We might win that conflict. But where do we end up strategically? Because we dove into that conflict head on. We've heard a trust relationship.

Don't do it. Part of the reason we're beating the dead horse, though, is it happens all the time. Indeed. Indeed. Here's the conclusion to that chapter. Combat is a test of wills where the object is to win. One way to win is to gain and exploit every possible advantage. This means using maneuver and surprise whenever possible.

It means employing complementary forces and combined arms. It means exploiting the terrain, weather, and times of darkness to our advantage. It means trapping our enemy by ambush or by some other means. It means fighting asymmetrically to gain added advantage. This is what Sun Su meant when he wrote. Therefore, a skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates. Yes. And I know you've heard me talk about dictating the situation.

as opposed to letting the situation dictate. But what kind of ownership are you taking as a leader? If you say, you know what, I'm going to set this situation up in such a way that victory will come not from my troops and what they do, but just by the situation I put them in, they are going to win.

That's how much ownership I'm taking of this situation. We are going to win. We are going to win because of the situation I put you in will be guaranteed victory. That's a skilled commander. Chapter 4, we're moving right along, almost two hours deep. Chapter 4 is called being faster. Hit quickly, hit hard, and keep right on hitting. Give the enemy no rest, no opportunity to consolidate his forces, and hit back at you.

That's Holland M. Smith. howlin mad four star general he's the guy that's called the father of amphibious warfare fought in World War I and led

task force 56 in the battle of a little battle called Ewo Jima and again what's scary about reading quotes like this hit quickly hit hard and keep right on hitting give the enemy no rest no opportunity consolidate his forces and hit back at you

What does that say to someone that's predisposed to go on the attack? This is the quote they've been waiting to hear. You were just talking about conflict avoidance and the person that thinks, hey, you know what? You're just trying to avoid conflict, Dave. I'm going to roll with Holland Smith, General Smith's outlook, which is I'm going to hit hard and hit quickly. And I'm going to keep right on hitting. You've got to not be predisposed for that. Yeah.

It doesn't say the front it's not the frontal assault. That's not what he's saying. For the infantrymen to be truly effective, he will have to be as light of foot as he is quick of thought. Mobility is needed most in all class of arms. So there you go. There's the counter. There's the dichotomy to Holland Smith's. Mobility is needed most of all in a clash of arms.

Swift and agile movement plus rapidity and intelligent tactical flexibility are its. true essentials coming from John A. English, who is a Canadian, actually a Canadian Army vet, known for his military writings, studies. So here we go. Into the chapter, usually to think of weapons means to think of a personal rifle or pistol, the units, machine guns, and mortars, or the aircraft, missiles, bombs, or guns. A logistician may realize that weapons include trucks. bulldozers and excavators. Some marines overlook one of their most powerful weapons, one that

creates advantage for infantrymen, aviators, and logisticians equally. That weapon is speed. Speed in combat. How is speed a weapon? Think of sports again. The breakaway in hockey uses speed as a weapon. By rapidly passing the puck down the ice, one team denies the other the chance to get set up on defense. Speed circumvents their opponent's ability to respond in an organized manner. The fast break in basketball seeks the same result. In two or three passes, the ball is down the court and the basket is scored, all before the opposition can react.

The results of speed often reach beyond the immediate goal. How many times have we seen a team score on a fast break, steal a ball as it comes in bounds, immediately score again, and even a third time. Unable to regain their composure, the victims of the fast break become the victims of a The victims lose confidence. Passes go astray. Signals become crossed. Tempers flare, arguments ensue, the rally becomes a route.

The beleaguered players see certain defeat. They virtually give up while still on the court. And as I was thinking about that section, if you watch basketball and like a fast break and then another fast break, what does the coach do? Calls the timeout. We can't, yeah. Hey, we're slow this thing down right now. We're going to slow this thing down. thing down the same thing can happen in combat the battalion or fighter aircraft or

load the logistics train can consistently move and act faster than its enemy has a powerful advantage the in June of 1943 during the battle of Saipan the aggressive hard-hitting tactics of General Holland Smith proved to be singularly successful in defeating the Japanese defenders General Smith's tactical plan for Saipan called for applying unremitting pressure on the enemy and bypassing strong points of by mopping up by reserve elements in order to press the attack to better ground. So there we have it. There we have it.

General Smith, who we just quoted. General Smith, who we just quoted. And what's he doing those hard points of resistance? He's bypassing it. Get it. He's bypassing him. Long indoctrinated with the value of speed in amphibious operations. General Smith's bypassing tactics placed the Japanese remaining, the Japanese

remaining in their fixed defenses at an extreme tactical disadvantage. These tactics proved very effective in isolating and reducing the Japanese defense. General Smith's use of speed served as a force multiplier, and it also reduced marine casualties. The British Royal Air Force bested the Germans during the Battle of Britain in World War II, in part because they were able to speedily recover their downpilets, return them to base, place them in a new aircraft, and have them fighting again in the afternoon. Down German pilots were less easily recovered, and the Luftwaffe had fewer of the long-range aircraft required for replacement. Eventually, pilot and aircraft losses forced the Germans to end daylight bombing and resort strictly to relatively ineffective night attacks.

Yeah, the Brits were getting shot down overwritten, or at least close to Britain. Yeah, and speed doesn't just mean my plane is faster than yours. In this case, it's that operational tempo speed of how quickly can I get my guys back into an airplane. And that was a huge advantage that they had because every time an airplane got shot down, they literally just got in a truck and drove back to base. That's kind of crazy, right? Like you get shot down and then they're just bringing you back to base, putting you in another aircraft. You're going to go get some more.

Yep. The Brits are hard race of people. Resilient, man. Yeah. Being out there on an island. Yeah. attacked by the Nazi war machine. Whatever.

Bring it. Bring it. Great leaders have repeatedly stated the value of speed in combat. Napoleon said, I may lose in battle, but I shall never lose a minute. I may lose in battle, but I shall never lose a minute. Nathan Bedford Forrest told his secret of many victories. Get there first with the most men. General Patton said in 1943, when the great day of battle comes,

remember your training and remember above all else that speed and violence of attack are the sure road to success history's great commander commanders differed in many ways but one thing they shared was a sense of the importance of speed in Operation urgent fury 1983 the Marines of Battalion Landing Team 28 moved fast as their commander lieutenant colonel ray Smith had trained them to do when they captured the operations officer of the Grenadian army he said to them you appeared so swiftly in so many places where we didn't expect you that it was clear that resistance was hopeless so I recommended to my superiors that we lay down our arms and go into hiding that is what

speed used as a weapon can do for you what is speed what is speed would seem to have a simple answer speed is going fast this is speed we think of when driving a car more miles per hour that's part of the answer that is part of the to the answer in tactics as well. We use speed to gain initiative and advantage over the enemy. Like you just talked about, your plane is faster. For example, when a tank battalion attacks, it goes over ground as fast as it can. General Balk asked whether the Russian tanks ever used terrain in their attacks against him during World War II.

He replied that they had used terrain on occasion, but more often, they used speed. The question followed up, which was harder to defend against? Bulk answered, speed. physical speed moving more miles per hour is a powerful weapon in itself on our approach to the enemy speed and movement reduces a reaction time when we are going through him and around him it changes the situation faster than he can react once we are past him it makes his reaction irrelevant in all three cases speed impacts on the enemy especially his mind causing fear indecision and helplessness remember attacking the enemy's mind is a central tenant of maneuver warfare I might even call it the primary time right yeah speed and time in a military sense there is more to speed than simply going fast and there's a vital difference between acting rapidly and acting recklessly there's your dichotomy coming at you live from Marine Corps one tack three with time we must always consider the closely related factor of timing speed and time are closely related in fact in fact speed is

defined in terms of time, miles or kilometers per hour. In tactics, what this means is always of the utmost importance. Time cannot be spent in action must be spent thinking about how to act effectively. Time that cannot be spent in action. So if you can't go, what you need to do is spend that time thinking about how you're going to act effectively. I wonder how much modern life has chewed up that idea. Because when we're not thinking, when we can't do something, I see people all the time.

They're not being proactive at time. They're not doing anything. They're not doing anything productive. They're not thinking about how to act. When they can't act, they're not thinking about how to act effectively. No, for sure. I see that all the time.

I was on a flight coming home. I fight six hour flight from McLean of New Jersey back to San Diego. Yeah. And look, six hours in a plane for me is a godsend. because I got basically no distraction. I got my laptop and I'm, I'm hammer.

I'm working. I'm cranking out. I don't know who it was because I didn't see him, but the seat over and up one. Guy watched a movie on the plane and I kind of saw the movie. I don't know what the movie was. When the movie ended,

he replayed the same movie again. Yeah. And I'm thinking, man, I don't know what he's doing. And look, take a nap or something to kind of refresh and then get back in the game, but I see it in my kids. I mean, their natural state is. to do nothing productive and you actually have to write like that if you're not doing if you're not

physically doing something you need to be mentally doing something right then to think about what is my next move what am I going to do right after this yeah and like you just said um because I'm sure that we push back on that comment sometimes you do have to and I've talked about this before I've gone on a plane and been like I'm done I'm done my brain is fried I need to watch the dumbest movie I can watch and rack out. And in fact, I sleep on planes beautifully. I can sleep on planes beautifully. If you see me on a plane, guess what? I probably got up at two o'clock in the morning to get a workout in before I got on that plane. I'm going to go to sleep. Come talk to me when we land. But yes, how much time. So yeah, you might need a little break here and there. For sure.

And by the way, how long does it take to mentally recover? Is this a five-hour evolution? No, it's not. It's like reset and intentionally take a little bit of a breather and then get back in the game. Back to the book. Even when we are engaged with the enemy, we are not always moving fast. Some of the time, we are not moving at all. Nonetheless, every moment, nonetheless, every moment is still of the utmost importance, even when we're sitting still.

A battalion staff that takes a day to plan and action is obviously slower than one that takes an hour. A tank battalion that takes three hours to refuel is slower than one that takes two hours. Just as one that must refuel every hundred miles is slower than one that must refuel every 200. A company that sits down to eat once it is taken the objective is slower than the company that presses on deeper into the enemy. A fighter squadron that can fly only three sorties per aircraft per day is slower in terms of effect on the enemy than one that flies six. A maintenance repair team that can take two days to fix a damage vehicle and get it back into action is slower in terms of effect on the enemy. than one that can do it overnight. Every moment is still of utmost important.

Making maximum use of every hour and every minute is as important to speed in combat as simply going fast when we are moving. It is important to every member of a military force, whether serving on staffs in units, aviation, combat, service support, ground, everyone. A good tactician has a constant sense of urgency. We feel guilty if we feel guilty,

we are idle. We never waste time and we are never content with the pace at which things are happening. We are always saying to ourselves and others faster, faster, we know that if speed is a weapon, so is time. That is so legit. Think about a leader who can cultivate that mindset in all of his people. Think about how productive your people are if they all feel like every single thing And they do whether they're the most, the person that seems like, okay, we're a sales-based business. So I'm in sale. The people that are on the back end that get no publicity that are working the logistics

or the administration, think about the leader that gets everybody in his organization to feel that same thing, that if I'm wasting time, the guilt of hurting the team, if you can cultivate that from everyone, not just your point of attack people, but everybody, think about what those organizations are able to do you and I were with a client and we were talking about this and one of the problems that this particular client had was they felt like they couldn't create a sense of urgency in their organization so so like you're saying some people had it at the point they said how do we create a sense of urgency so for those of you that are wondering how to create a sense of urgency see with your people. The way that you do it is by making sure they understand why they're doing

what they're doing and why is important. And the example that I gave was if you have a seal platoon and I would see this situation unfold in training exercise, you've got a seal platoon and they've got a perimeter set up, meaning they're stagnant, maybe they're doing a reorganization of ammunition, maybe they're getting a head count, maybe they are working on a wounded guy or something like that. So they're in a stagnant position. They've got their 360 a degree security set up and all of a sudden someone sees enemy maneuvering on them. And now the leader wants to create a sense of her. He wants to leave.

So he says, all right, everyone, hey, we're moving. We're leaving in one minute. Pack up your stuff. We're leaving in one minute. And guys, you know, one guy's like, hey, man, we just got here. I'm tired. I'm just trying to sort out my ammunition. Someone else saying, hey, we got this wounded guy.

He's unstable. I need to get him stabilized. And someone else is saying, well, hey, we're trying to still get a full head count over here. You know, let me, let me just get a handle my fire team. That's what they're all thinking. And maybe some of those priorities are actually really, really important. Certainly, we have a wounded guy. Certainly we want to know where our people are.

And those people, so they don't really do anything. They don't react. His one-minute call gets blown off and you don't think this happens in the military? Oh, it happens. I see it happen over and over and over and over again. That seal platoon commander can't understand why no one will move. And so he says it again, hey, everyone, we're leaving. We're leaving in 30 seconds.

And what happens? Say everyone thinks the same thing. They just thought 30 seconds ago. Which is I'm not going anywhere. I got my gear out. I'm sorting ammunition. Get calmed down. The lieutenant's freaking out again.

Why can't he create a sense of urgency? The reason he's not effectively creating a sense of urgency is because he's not explaining to his people why they need to move. So when he says, when a good leader says, hey everyone, guess what? I know we're jumbled up right now. We have enemy maneuvering to the high ground on our flank. They're 200 meters away. We need to move.

right now or we're gonna get slaughtered and you'll see people move so when you want to create that sense of urgency see when you want to get people to understand the importance of time and that we never waste time and that we feel guilty if there were if we're idle and that we have a constant sense of urgency if you want to make that happen explain to your people why they're doing what they're doing and why urgency and speed is important in that particular situation timing we employ speed and use time to create tempo tempo is not merely a matter of acting fastest or acting at the earliest opportunity it is also a matter of

timing acting at the right time timing requires an appreciation for the rhythm of combat so we can exploit that rhythm to our advantage it is physically impossible to always operate at peak tempo like we just talked about sometimes you got to take a breather sometimes you got to watch the big Lobowski for the 100 174th time. Even though we can extend operating cycles through the economical use of resources, we cannot operate at top speed indefinitely. We must rest our people and replenish our supplies.

The test of skill is to be able to generate and maintain a fast pace when the situation calls for it and to recover when it will not hurt us. Timing means knowing when to act and equally important when not. to act, you gotta know when you can take a little breather. Although speed is an important tactical weapon, there are situations in which it is better to bide our time. So here we go. Here's the dichotomy. Here's the dichotomy. Speed is an important tactical weapon. There are a situation in which it is better to bide our time. If our concept of operation involves a diversion, we need to allow time for the diversion to take effect.

if we have laid an ambush for the enemy we need to give the enemy time to fall fully into the trap if the situation is still forming we may not we may want to develop it further before we commit to a course of action so this is a big one and I'd see this happen with young seals where they would immediately make a decision before and we would actually say it to him say hey you got to let the situation develop those are the words that we would use let the situation develop And sometimes you have to do that. And there's a dichotomy that you go too far in one direction. You're going to get overrun.

For example, an error commonly made by defenders is counter attacking too soon so that the enemy is merely pushed back rather than cut off and circled and destroyed. Decisive action is our goal and it must be time to occur at the proper moment. There are times to act and there are times to set the stage and wait. So. Strategic vision. We talk about that. Yeah, we talk about all the time.

and that strategic patience of, hey, you have to let the situation develops. You actually get more understanding of what's happening, so the move that you do make is the right move. And when you're talking about your folks, you're not being able to run at the highest uptempo all the time, you know, especially if we work with these younger companies, startups that are growing, and your folks aren't always going to tell you either. They're not going to say, hey, I think we need to take a knee or I think we need to reeval. Sometimes they're going to put their heads down and go, and they're going to go and go and go.

And actually your job as a leader is to recognize when that is, when they're not telling you that we need. Yeah, I mean, I always had that problem, but I personally always had that problem because no one wanted to tell me, hey, we need a break. Yeah. Like, you know how many times Laif Babin came up to me and said, hey, man, I could really use a breather?

Or JP, D.N.L. came up to me and said, hey, hey, boss, can I get some downtime? Zero. The amount of times J.P. said that to me is zero. It's zero. And are there times when he absolutely needs downtime? Oh, yeah. Because he would burn the candle at both end.

He would do it now. He doesn't care. He's going to go get some. So, yes, as a leader, you need to be able to recognize those things because they're not always going to say it to you. A benefit from a decision not to act is that it saves precious resources and energy for later commitment. Some leaders dissipate their units.

on constant unprioritized activity. Not all activities support the mission. A unit's energy is not easily replenished and should be treated as a precious resource to be expended only toward decisive goals. Relative speed. Going fast and making efficient use of time are both parts of the answer to the question,

what is speed? However, something else must be considered. The enemy, as with all things in war, speed is relative. Speed is meaningful militarily, only if, We are acting faster than the enemy. We can do that either by slowing the enemy or by increasing our own speed. In the battle for the Falkland Islands in 1982,

the British Army moved slowly. The terrain was difficult. The weather was abominable. And much of the material had to be moved on the men's backs, all of which slowed down the British. Nevertheless, the British still had the advantage in speed because they moved faster than the Argentines, who, once they had made their initial dispositions,

essentially did not move. That superiority in relative speed allowed the British to maintain the initiative throughout the campaign. Covered that one on the podcast. Brutal. Continuing speed. To be consistent, superiority in relative speed,

must continue over time. It is not enough to move faster than the enemy only now and then because when we're not moving faster, the advantage of the initiative passes to hit, passes to him. Most forces can manage an intermittent burst of speed but must then halt for a considerable period to recover between bursts. During that halt, they are likely to lose their advantage. We realize that we cannot operate at full speed indefinitely and the challenge is to be

consistently faster than the enemy. One way to sustain speed is to use the effects of combined arms when the infantry or mounted troops must break contact temporarily to maneuver, resupply, or recover air and artillery can keep the pressure on. Maneuver cannot be sustained indefinitely, but the momentum can be maintained through skillful planning, combined armed effects, keeping the enemy always at a disadvantage. Here the speed of logistics become critical,

although physical exhaustion is a factor, halts often are driven by logistics. Ground or aviation units must stop for equipment, repair, maintenance, and resupply. Supporting forces can minimize loss of speed if they deliver the supplies and perform maintenance quickly. Thus, they enable combat units to move before the enemy gains the initiative.

I get paranoid about the enemy. Like, I'm always thinking that if I'm not moving, they're maneuvering. For sure. And every company should think like that. Yes. And when we're talking about sort of the differences between combat and the differences between the private sector and business, we've worked with companies. that are one of the challenges they're facing is they have competitors.

You know, they have strong competitors and they're trying to carve out more market share or they're trying to enter a geographic region that maybe they don't have a foothold in and they want to move into there and to expand their business. We talk about what they want in regards to the competition and the things that they say are things like, we want to annihilate them. I mean, they're working, the competition in the private sector is, it is fierce. When they're talking about they want to run you out of business. I mean, it is legitimate competition that are talking about here.

Not that we're going to find a natural way to share. They want to run you down. And I think the private sector, they recognize that. And if you're not maneuvering into that space, your competition is. And their goal is to bury you. That's really what their goal is. And in the private sector, when we see companies that are slow on that and they want to wait and kind of see how this.

and their enemies maneuvering into that space, even if their first maneuver into that space isn't ideal, they're in there and they have the foothold, and your ability to get that back is almost zero if they get out in front of you there. And make no mistake, combat, they're trying to kill you, they're trying to run you over. And that is hardcore to recognize that.

If you're not doing it, they are. Yeah, and we work with companies. What's interesting and what's cool is, you know, as American military people, we always were the biggest and the strongest and the most powerful, right? But what's cool about Echelon Front is that we work with, like, I'll be working with one company that's the insurgent, you know, and then the next day I'll be working with a company that is the absolute powerhouse.

Yes. And guess what? There's advantages and disadvantage. Totally. That insurgent can maneuver quickly and make changes and disrupt. The big person can overpower and destroy. So we get to see that all the time. Yeah, on both sides. But on both those sides, the one that is paranoid, the one that is thinking, you know what, I'm an insurgent. If I don't attack that big

company, they're going to put me under. I'm not going to let it happen. Those are ones that step up. The big companies that say, oh, you know what, those insurgents right there, they could take a part of our business and that could turn into a total. route for us and I will not allow that to happen. We will destroy them. We get to work with both those sides and the ones that have that attitude are the ones that end up winning. A really big, really historically successful company that has done great work and had year after year of good work that is paranoid of that. Those companies are hard to take down because they've got all those tangible things and they had that mindset of what got us here doesn't guarantee that we get it tomorrow.

And when you see a good company that wants to get better and they are paranoid of the insurgency that they used to be five years, those are, and the ones that fight off the complacency that fight off the ego of, hey, we've arrived, we've accomplished our objective. And when you got a big company that doesn't, that is paranoid to losing, man, it's, it's awesome to see. And that requires humble leadership. I'm saying, hey, there are no guarantee. These guys are out to get us.

Yeah. Yeah, that's legit. Yeah, that's a tough feeling. It's a tough feeling to live with. And I say that speaking from personal experience. Like, you know, and I've told you and the team that's like, hey, you guys want to know why I don't sleep because I'm paranoid of what's going to happen. We need to bring our A game every day.

Every day that we take a step back, the day that we're not putting forth absolute best is the day someone else out there is going to get a little foothold. I will not allow that to happen. It will not happen because we're on the war path over here. Amen. And for every leader that has that feeling about their team, those leaders, you want that for someone like me to come into echelon front, how about Dave Burke's the reason this company failed? How about we brought in this guy? He didn't, he didn't stay on the path to hold. How about Dave got complacent? And I, I start that feeling of paranoia of there is no way I'm going to contribute to this company not being successful.

And if you get those leaders who have created something and built something and they have that same feeling of ownership all the way down to the bottom where the most junior person, the newest hires is paranoid and they are in the game. That force is so powerful. And it's to cultivate. And the way they do that if you're at least is to give them that same amount of, that same ownership you have of this is yours. And oh, by the way, that means we are, we can all lose here.

You have to feel that same feeling of I, I could be the reason we fail. And I am not going to let that happen. And that's a, that's a burden. That, that, that, that's a burden. That's a feeling that stays with you. And it stays. And if you don't have that feeling, there's something wrong. You get it.

You're in the wrong. Yeah, you're in the wrong. You're doing something wrong if you don't have that feeling. You know? Speed and change. In order to act consistently faster than the enemy, it is necessary to do more than move quickly. It is also necessary to make rapid transitions from one action to another. While there are many types of transitions in combat, it's important to remember that the transition transitions produce friction.

Reduction of friction minimizes the loss of tempo that the friction generates at the point of transition. A unit that can make transitions faster and more smoothly than another can be said to have greater relative speed. In Jiu-Jitsu, I know that I learned one of the really powerful lessons that I learned. I learned from watching my old coach Fabio Santos. I was watching him train. This was when I was probably a white belt or a blue belt, but I was watching him train with one of the, you know, one of his purple belts, It's one of our purple belts that we had at the time. And I was watching him and like, for instance, as the guy mounted him, as the guy mounted him, he was escaping.

As the guy put him in the guard, he was passing the guard. So he did not allow, he was just a head on tempo. He was just slightly ahead. Like, I'm not waiting for you to settle in position. No, it's not happening. I'm actually going right now. So that is a good attitude to have in everything. In the 18th century, the importance of fast transitions, sometimes called agility, was displayed when shifting from column formation into line.

If an army could not rapidly deploy into line and consequently was engaged while still in column, it was often beaten. Much drill is devoted to practicing this difficult transition so it could be accomplished. rapidly in combat. Today we develop proficiencies in battle drills and immediate action drills that allow units to rapidly transition from one formation to another without pausing. It is important to be, it is important to be able to affect rapid changes in organization as well. Being quick to affect required changes in task organization based on a rapidly changing battle situation increases agility and decreases reaction times. Battle drills and rehearsals can be conducted to smooth out procedures for changing organization rapidly.

The faster these transitions can be made, the more effective the force becomes. The place in time and space where transitions occur can be called a friction point. Friction points commonly encountered in tactics include movement from an assembly area to attack, from patrol movement formation to ambush posture, from defensive posture to attack, from one maneuver to another, and so forth. The transition involves simply positional changes. and drills, but also changes of attitude in the minds of Marines. We must shift our mental focus from one movement to another.

So here's one of the things that I did with my platoons, with my task units, that was super effective. When it came time to do an assault, and some guys would really set up a specialized assault Formation okay since we're doing a soul okay we're gonna put the we're gonna they would make these changes to their formation And I would minimize really minimize if not completely eliminate This whole change in the way we're gonna form so we're gonna do an assault okay cool Charlie Patoon you're on assault and you got one squad from Delta everyone's in the same same Same patrol formation everything's the same but you but you're gonna do the assault

Okay cool I'm not saying okay we're gonna take these breaches and we're put these with us we're to set up these special overall no no no no everything's the same and by the way what happens when we get hit and you know things start falling apart everyone's with the unit the little element that they're used to working with and we're we got unit integrity all the time that being said because you can't guarantee that i would always rehearse and train like we would go out on the beach and do rattle battle drills where i'd call all these different maneuvers rapidly in succession on top of one another everyone be all confused and all jumbled up and you had to just figure it out and make it happen. So we got on the battlefield.

We would never get as jumbled up on the battlefield as we would when I was running blender drills, what we call them, blender drills on my platoons. Like we'd run blunder drills. No one, it'd be just every person would be in a different position. So everyone got used to, okay, what do you do? What's the protocol that you do when you're all jumbled up? Here's the protocol. You look around.

If you look around and there's no one making a call, grab four guys. You're a fire team leader. Make something happen. Go. Yeah. So between those two things, between being ready for the chaos and the disorganization, because we train that way, and always to the best that I could possibly pull it off, hey, we're going to keep our normal formations.

Like when this talks about patrol formation, ambush posture, defensive posture, all those postures for me, in my task unit, in my seal platoon, they were the same. There's no confusion. Like this is what's happening. Occasionally would you have to, would you have to take a little sniper element and pull out? Or you'd have to do something? Occasionally, yes.

Yeah. But I would do that as little as possible. And I would train to the point that they could handle it if it happened. But the thing is, it just wouldn't happen when you're that, when you're that used to being in that position. So the weird thing about this is you might, is this gave us total freedom. Because we could assault from a totally different direction. I could say, oh yeah, by the way, that looks like it's a secure, it looks like there's a guard up there.

So we're going to go in from the other, we're going to go in from the south. And nothing changes. Everyone's fine. We're still in platoon integrity. This is just no changes. So that's a little trick that I used. It was, and I'm trying to think, imagine in my mind right now, what the driving force that makes people want to specialize for a particular part of an operation. The reason that I think we want to do it is because it seems from a broad perspective, no, no, from the opposite of a broad, from a granular perspective, if we've set up like this, that part of the operation will go smoother.

And there's a chance that they're right in that particular smooth operation where nothing goes wrong. But in any other thing, when anything goes sideways, it's not the right answer. And if you actually take the mindset that nothing is ever going to happen. the way that you plan it to happen. If you just accept that, which I think was verbatim out of the beginning of this, is your plan is not going to go the way that you think. You immediately recognize that that's not a good plan.

And it doesn't mean everybody needs to be an expert in every single thing. That's not what it means. But it means everybody, and you talked about the transitions, everybody has to have flexibility and then recognize, you talk about a protocol.

Okay, I can't answer what we're going to do, but I know there's a protocol. This is what we're going to do. The four of us, we're going to go, and we're going to go attack that problem. That problem will reveal itself as we move down it. But the, hey, I'm a, I don't, I don't do that mission.

I'm a this guy mission. Well, I'm really sorry that we haven't chosen to do this mission because the enemy is now doing something totally different. So the alternative is to sit here and do nothing or that we can get up and actually transition out of this mindset, you know, the defense to offense, all those things. That's all mindset. People actually can get good at that.

But through doing it over and over again, And they can actually get good at that. You remember what you were saying earlier about the stealth fighter, about how you used, even though you had the stealth fighter and you had all this advantage, you still like did the fundamental things correctly. And that's exactly what I did. So I would have my guys trained up where it didn't matter what person from T you, you take four guys from T.U.

Bruiser, five guys from T.U. Brouser, one of them was going to step up as a fire team leader and start making something happen. That's the way it was going to be. So I had the capability really to mix and match people and set up at a target assault however I wanted to. But even though I had that step, you know, that capability, that advanced capability that I could scramble everyone up and we could be effective, it didn't matter.

I still used the fundamental principle to be as simple as possible because simplicity is paramount. Yes. Back to the book, a modern example of the importance of fast transitions comes from aerial combat. Good deal, Dave Burke is in the house. in the Korean War, American Aviators achieved, this is the part of the book where you just am waiting to get here,

American Aviators achieved a high kill ratio of about 10 to 1 over their North Korean and Chinese opponents. At first glance, this is somewhat surprising. The main enemy fighter, the Meg 15, was superior to the American F-86 in a number of key respects. It could climb and accelerate faster, and it had better sustained turn rate. The F-86, however, was superior to the MiG in two critical, though less obvious respects.

First, because it had high-powered hydraulic controls, the F-86 could shift from one maneuver to another faster than the MiG. Second, because of its bubble canopy, the F-86 had better visibility. The F-86 better field of view provided better situational awareness and also contributed to the fast transitions because it allowed its pilot to understand changing situations more quickly. So the beauty of this example is it's a literal example of those transitions we were just talking about. And I brief this, and I actually use this Korean War example of the F-86 and the MiG-15.

I had totally forgotten it was in this book. Completely forgotten this example was used in the 103. And it says almost the exact same thing. the connection I've made from this story of my machine and your machine, what your machine does well and what my machine, my advantages and disadvantages, all too often we see what people want to do with their disadvantages is, hey, we need another machine. This machine doesn't do this as well, so I want more resources and I want more equipment. And the answer is, hey, we can't do that.

If we could, it's going to take us years to develop this. And they spend all this time thinking about, well, if I only had a machine that turned better. and if only had a thing that Klein, and they spent all this time thinking about what it is that they can't do, instead of recognizing, hey, what are our strengths? What are our advantages here?

And what do we need to do to build a plan that leverages those strengths? You can actually outperform people in a way that doesn't seem to be evident to them. If they aren't the one, I got a better machine, why do I need to worry about my transitions? I do this better than you.

That's a huge disadvantage for them that they don't even realize. And if you spent less time worrying about, Hey, what's wrong with the things that I have? And think, where are my advantages? Small companies, but I don't have the revenue. We don't have the market. We don't, but you know what you have?

You've got 25 people. You know how quickly you can communicate. You know how fast you can get back. And they've got 1,500 people. They can't get their communication. The strength of the story is a recognition of there were things at that airplane that you would not pay attention to that were vastly better than the enemy. And instead of spending all this time,

thinking about what we don't do well is build a plan around your strengths and then out maneuver them meaning maneuver more quickly maybe you're not doing it maybe your turn isn't as fast your climate as fast and watch them react they're reacting to your first move when you're on move number three when they're reacting to your second move you're on move number seven and all of a sudden and 10 to one by the way just 10 to 1 is staggering I mean that is crazy it's crazy to think about what For every 100 airplanes, the enemy lost, we lost 10. Think about that. With an inferior machine, that story is my favorite story to tell.

Because we're used to having right now in the American military, our stuff is better. Our equipment's better. That's why we win. That is not why we win. As a matter of fact, if your plan is to just leverage the better equipment, you're going to lose because you know what your enemy is doing right now? Figuring out what your weaknesses are, figuring out how they're going to maneuver on you. That's right.

That's exactly what they're doing. Another important part of this, okay? Because of its bubble canopy, the F-86 pilot had better visibility. The better field of view provided better situational awareness and contributed to the fast transition because it allowed the pilot to understand changing situations more quickly. The way that translates when you're not in a cockpit is it translates into detaching from the situation,

taking a look at what's going on. and actually being able to see what's happening. What do you see? What do you actually see? And if you see what's happening, then you can react faster. You can make those transitions happen quicker. That's this massive advantage that you can have.

And the amount of people that I know that do a good job of detaching and taking a step back is a very small number. It's a very small number. And everyone that I know that can do it and do it well, they dominate. Yeah. They dominate.

that dominant. When you are not detached, the only thing that is in focus is the one thing you're looking at. And everything else is blurry. It literally is, you don't see those other things. And those are all the other things happening around you that you actually need to be reacting to. Another thing. So the other thing that you had is these high-powered hydraulic controls, which allowed you to transition quicker. You know what stops people from transitioning mentally from one thing to something else, it's, what it is,

is it's their ego. It's their ego thinking, hey, I actually know what's happening and I'm not looking, I'm not seeing anything else because what I think is happening is what's happening.

I have so much confidence in myself and I think I'm right. So this is what, hey, I think the enemy's coming in from over there. Okay, cool. And I'm not thinking that I could be wrong.

I'm not assessing what anyone else's input is. I'm not listening to what my subordinates telling me what my peers are telling me what my boss is telling me I think I'm right so I'm not going to change anything that I'm doing right now so those are the two kind of advantages that we can have in the F-86 in our you know you might not be as smart as your other someone else you might not you might not have the cognitive capacity you might not have the charisma that someone else has but if you can detach and you can actually be humble enough to assess honestly what's going on

void of your own ego clouding your vision, you can do these two things. You can, you can see better and you can maneuver more quickly. That idea of seeing better, and I spent a lot of my time thinking about what this means in the private sector now is even how you measure success. You talked about being paranoid just a minute ago about what a good leader in a good organization, what they're paranoid about. The way we measure success is revenue. There's a whole bunch of ways we have this objective measurement. We're making more money than we did. We're growing. What a really good leader is actually doing is what's happening? Where are we going to be in three years? My vision isn't just the next quarter. My vision is the things that I'm doing

and you have to actually pay attention to what your competition. Now, you don't spend all your 100% of your time in your competition, but you're paying attention to and your vision is actually the farthest downrange as it can possibly be. Because if we think quarter to quarter and sometimes we even sometimes think year to year. And these big companies we work with, this long game, this long plan is recognizing what we're doing now. This, it isn't going to work forever.

We're going to have to change. We have to see where we were going. And that is going to change all the time. And that requires as a leader to be looking up and out all the time. You ask that question to the muster. When should we be thinking strategically? People like, well, maybe. Actually, I got asked that question.

And the answer is all the time. All the time. And it's that vision of looking of, if you don't have an idea of where you're going to be down the road, you're never going to get to where you need to be. And it's the same story of, hey, the win was we took this hill. Okay. What did taking this hill allow us to do?

And if you didn't have a vision of where we needed to go and why that hill is important, you should have just bypassed the hill altogether because it's not getting where you need to be. And a leader, a good leader has to be able to do that. And that vision isn't always just literal vision. It's actually where is this organization going to go? Because when you're inside and you're a tactical guy, like most of your employees are doing tactical things, they don't see that.

They don't see the vision. And if you can't impart that on them and let them understand what the vision is, they're going to drive you in the wrong direction. Not because they're careless, not because they simply don't see it. And for a leader to be able to see it and articulate, that's really, very few leaders are able to do that really well and guide their organizations in that

direction. Yes, that's a tough combo to come up with, the person that can, has the vision and then that can, can impart that division, that vision, but, and that means implicitly that you have to translate that vision to various types of people that are inside your organization. And it's definitely a challenge. And, of course, the dichotomy to all of this is if, you know, strategically in Jiu-Jitsu, we want to get the top position and we want to dominate that position that we want to submit the person. If we don't defend the choke, we're getting choked.

If you don't make it through this quarter, you're right. That's good. You had a good strategic vision and can you lose tactically and lose strategically in doing so? Yes, you absolutely can. You absolutely can. You can not pay attention to what's going on right in front of you and you can end up getting destroyed. Yes. There was a 10 to 1 ratio. It wasn't a 10 to zero ratio. No, that's right.

Back to the book, American pilot developed new tactics based on these two advantages. When they engaged the MIGs, they sought to put them through a series of maneuvers. The F-86 faster transitions between maneuvers gave it time advantage. The pilot transformed into a position advantage. Often when the MIG pilots realized what was happening, they panicked and thereby made the American's job even easier. These tactics illustrate the fast, the way fast transitions contribute to overall speed and to a time advantage. The importance of the time and speed in a broader sense has been brought out in the work of John Boyd, a formal, former colonel, and the U.S. Air Force.

Boyd studied a wide variety of historic battles, campaigns, and wars. He noted that where numerically inferior forces had defeated their opponents, they often did so by presenting the other side with a sudden, unexpected change or series of changes. changes. The superior forces fell victim because they could not adjust to the changes in a timely manner. Generally, defeat came in a relatively small cost to the victor. This research led to the Boyd theory, which states that conflict may be viewed as a time, as time competitive cycles of observation, orientation, decision, action, the Oudaloup. First, each party to a conflict enters the fray by observing himself, his surroundings, and his enemy. In tactics, this equates the adoption, the adoption of a hunting instinct,

searching, actively looking, hunting for the enemy and seeing what he is doing or about to do. It also includes anticipating the enemy's next move, getting inside of his mind. Second, based upon these observations, the combatant orientes to the situation, that is, produces a mental image of the situation and gains situational awareness.

This awareness becomes the foundation of which to erect a plan, generally better the orientation, the better plan. Next, based on this orientation, the combatant decides upon a course of action. The decision is developed into a plan that can be disseminated among subordinates for their planning and execution. Last, the combatant acts or puts the decision into effect. In tactics, this is the execution phase where the decision or plan is implemented. Since this action has changed the situation, the combatant again observes beginning the cycle anew. This is called the Utloup. Get some.

There it is. The Oudalup gets some. And, you know, this thing came out of airplane against airplane. It's that MIG F-86 story. The Marine Corps saw this, and the entire maneuver warfare concept for the Marine Corps came from this guy, which is incredible to think about, but it's that same. We're a numerically inferior force with relatively limited loss can outperform and overwhelm a massively inferior. or a massively superior size enemy, which is amazing, just based on speed of maneuver.

The Boyd theory helps to define the word maneuver. It means being consistently faster than our opponent. As our enemy observes and orientes on our initial action, we must be observing, orienting, deciding, and acting upon our second action. As we enact our third, fourth, and fifth mood by the time gap between our actions and our enemy actions increasingly widens, our enemy falls. behind in a panicked game of ketchup. He tries to respond to our penetration. We attack his reserves and his command and control. He counterattacks with his mobile reserve. We bypass with helicopter

born forces. Everything he does is too late. That sounds like a lot like rolling with Jiu-Jitsu with someone that's better than you. That's exactly what it feels like. It's the same thing, man. Thus, the military answer to this question, what is speed is not simple. Nonetheless, it is central to every aspect of tactics. As General George Patton said, in small operations as in large speed is the essential element of success. We should also exercise caution so as to not confuse, here comes the dichotomy, we should also exercise caution so as to not confuse speed with haste. General Patton made this observation. Haste and speed, there is a great difference between these two words. Haste exists when troops are committed without proper

reconnaissance without the arrangement for proper supporting fire and before every available man has been brought up. The result of such an attack will be to get the troops into early action, but to complete the action very slowly. Speed is acquired by making the necessary reconnaissance, providing the proper artillery support, bringing up every available man, and then launching the attack with a predetermined plan so that the time under fire will be reduced to a minimum. So there's a dichotomy. Always there's a dichotomy. Wow, with everything.

I have to write a book about that. Check. Becoming faster. Now we see clearly the importance of speed. We want to be fast. How do we do it? We start by recognizing the importance of time. As leaders of Marines, we have a responsibility to make things.

happen fast our sense of the importance of time of urgency must direct our actions we must work to create and build that sense within ourselves this is the kind of thing you read to yourself before you go to bed at night and when you wake up in the morning we have a responsibility to make things happen fast once we have it there are a number of things we can do to increase speed first we can keep everything simple. Simplicity promotes speed. Complexity slows things down.

Simplicity should be central to our plans. Our staffs, large staffs may be one of wars greatest consumers of time, our command and control and our own actions. So this is why, if you saw my task unit going to assault something, they were in the same formation, they were always in. or damn close to it. Second speed is increased through decentralization. Decentralization is an important concept in the execution of maneuver warfare.

How do we achieve decentralization while still maintaining control? We use two main tools to provide the required control of the effort and the decentralization of its execution. These tools are mission tactics and commander's intent. Mission tactics is the assignment of a mission to a subordinate without specifying how the mission must be accomplished. It is a key tenet of maneuver warfare. In mission tactics, the higher commander describes the mission and explains its purpose. The subordinate commander determines the tactics needed to accomplish the task based on the way the mission and the higher commander's intent.

In this way, each leader can act quickly as the situation changes without passing information up the chain of command and waiting for orders to come back down. Speed is greatly increased by this decentralization process. According to John A. English and his work on infantry, decentralization has been one of the most significant features of modern war. English wrote, in the confused and often chaotic battlefield environment of today, only the smallest groups are likely to keep together, particularly. during critical moments.

In such circumstances, individuals rally around their leader who, armed with the knowledge of the purpose or intent behind their task, can lead them toward success. And this is what we talk about all the time. Decentralized command, the fourth law of combat. And I often describe it, even though it's last, it's certainly not least. You need to have the others in place to effectively execute decentralized command. There has to be a simple plan. You have to have a team that's going to cover and move.

for each other you have to know what the priorities are but then you have to have decentralized command and the way you get decentralized command is not by explicitly giving you know there's a there's a there's a there's a book and the Germans as we were as we were implementing decentralized command and maneuver warfare in America what we started doing was we started adding adding the commander's intent to like the last slide of a brief And so commander's intent, and going back to the book and then I'll wrap back to that, the commander's intent provides an overall purpose for accomplishing the task assigned

through mission tactics. Although the situation may change, subordinates who clearly understand the purpose, that means why, an act to accomplish that purpose can adapt to a changing circumstance on their own without risking diffusion or effort of effort or loss of tempo. Subordinate commanders will be able to carry on this mission on their own initiative and through lateral coordination with other subunits rather than running every decision through the higher command for approval. So in this, this German was looking at the way that we're planning,

and the Germans, you know, they're the ones that kind of pushed forward with this idea of mission tactics and commanders intent and really decentralized command. But he would see the commander's intent at the end of a brief. There'd be a hundred slides, 100 PowerPoint slides in a brief. And then the last slide would say, hey, the commander's intent of this operation is to blah, blah, blah.

And this German said, that last slide can actually replace this entire brief. What is it that you want me to do? You just spent a hundred, you just spent an hour telling me all the different ways you want me to do something. All I need to know is what is it you want me to do? Why do you want me to do it?

And I'll go make it happen. When we're working, the idea of decentralized command comes up all the time, as you might guess. And I know you know that because you've seen it over and over again. And initially when we're talking about some of the frustration of junior leaders in the organization, mid-level managers, maybe supervisors, they get really frustrated that their senior leadership doesn't understand what's going on and they can't, they don't, they don't have what they need to solve the problems. And I say, hey, who here wants their leaders

solving their problems for them? And they all put their hand up initially. They're like, and that's their initial reaction because you can, they're frustrated and they're, And I'm like, let's, let's think about that for a second. Do you want your bosses coming down here to your world and actually applying solutions to your problems? And they stop and they're like, no, no, I don't want that. Like, why don't you want them doing that? And inevitably, what they come down to is that because they don't understand what I'm dealing

with day to day. I'm like, that's exactly right. Because if they did come down to your world, they don't have every single, minute of every single day of all the context you have of the problem you're dealing with and no matter what they do it's going to be wrong because they don't understand it as well as you do and What and on both sides what people are are thriving for in that thing is just just tell me what you want me to accomplish and then leave me alone because I can actually do that better And then if you reverse that with the senior leaders like the same thing is they don't want to be down there because it takes them away from all these other things and really all is required is for the leader to have the vision and the subordinate leader to understand what are we trying to get done. Yeah. You know, it's a good converse to that question when you ask the subordinates,

hey, do you want your subordinate, do you want your boss to fix your problems for you? And of course, they all say yes. Another way you could broach that question with an equally, probably predictable answer is if you say to the leaders, hey, do you want your folks just to do what you tell them to do and of course they're all going to say oh yes absolutely and then it doesn't take very long into that conversation before you realize that they have no idea how to actually accomplish what it is that they envision they have no idea how to operate that piece of equipment they have no idea how to program that piece of software they have no idea of any of those things and so same answer it's like yeah that seems like what i want but that's not what you want what you want is subordinates

You want decentralized command where everybody leads. Everyone solves problems. Everyone's moving towards the unified vision that has been clearly stated by the boss of what the commander's intent is. That's what you want. That's how you run an organization. You would think that that would be what everyone would be striving for. And you would think that in striving for it, it would come to be clear how you actually do it and how you actually give people decentralized. command is by actually letting go letting go let people let Leif Babin go and run the

operation let Seth Stone go and make it happen and yes do I train them to get ready for that absolutely do I build a relationship so I trust them yes do they understand where I stand what the parameters are what do they know how much they're allowed to maneuver do they know what line they should never cross yes they do. And that allows me to say, yeah, go get some. You know what you need to get done. Go make it happen.

And by the way, it's not just Laif and Seth. There's other element. It's Andrew Paul. Andrew Paul, go run operations. The other assistant platoon commanders, Mike Sorelli, go run, go make it happen. I can't run. How am I going to run five operations at the same time? I can't.

So that's what you do. That's decentralized command. Back to the book. A third way to become faster is through experience. Experience breeds speed. Experience gives units advantages over less experienced units. This is why veteran units are usually much faster than green untried units. If we are familiar with a situation or at least know generally what to expect, we can think, act, and move faster.

Little overlay. In peacetime, our Marines are not likely to be combat veterans. Still, we can give them experience through tactical decision games and sandtable exercises, war games, field exercises. and rehearsals. These and other forms of training help reduce the stress and confusion of combat. Another way in which experience helps us become faster is through the use of implicit communications. Implicit communications are mutual understandings that require little or no actual talking or writing.

For example, two company commanders know each other well. They think alike because their battalion commanders established standard operating procedures and has schooled subordinate commanders in approach to war. This is exactly what I was talking about. Seth and Leif. Those guys know there's implicit communication. They don't need to ask me. They know.

Thus the company commander of company B, company Bravo does not need to talk with the company commander of company Charlie very often in action because each knows from common past experiences and from daily. observations how the other is likely to react in many different situations if Bravo Company's commander creates an opportunity Charlie Company's commander will take advantage of it that is implicit communication it is faster and more reliable it is more reliable than in than explicit communication trying to pass words or messages back and forth over telephone radios there are so many things that I had that my guys knew the implicit they implicit it was implied

they understood exactly where I was coming from, from the way that they behaved on the battlefield, the way they behaved on liberty, everything. It was like, okay, there's a lot. Like when I just said there's a line that they knew what that line was. Yeah. They knew what that line was. What also goes to show and prove why you can't do decentralize,

you can't do this thing, this fourth law of combat, if you don't have the beginning. If you, it's, that implied communication, that's the strength of your relationship with these people. It's how well they know you. It's how much they trust you. It's how much you understand them. And it's how strong that first rule is is what allows you to do this thing that actually,

if you kind of think about in some terms, decentralized command, you could actually make an argument that it's the most important thing in combat in this particular case because it's so required because you as a leader can't be in 15 different places. But no matter what you do, if you don't have the beginning, if you don't have the foundation, if you don't have a good relationship, you can never do this. You can never have implied communication

because I'll never really understand what it means if I haven't, and you can't skip this. You can't accelerate this again. I'm a decentralized command guy. I'm like, well, that's great. But if you don't have a good enough relationship with your people, it won't work.

We were at one of the musters. We were done. I think it was the San Francisco muster. maybe but anyways we were having our debrief and it was people had to go so it was a smaller debrief not everyone was there Jamie who is our director of operations who is the logistician behind the muster who handles everything that's happening and it's completely decentralized but we get done with the muster and of course everything was just impeccably run from you know if someone has to wait in line for 15 seconds to register.

We get, like that's a failure, right? Right. So when we got done, we're in this room and I could see and, you know, people were coming up to me saying this, I've never been an event that was run this smoothly. They're not even talking about what they learned. They're just saying how is this thing run so smoothly and how is everything so professional? And how is every little thing that occurs? You know, so I'd more so we get in this debrief room and and you know, and what I said was I said

To Jamie and Jen who and Lynn the kind of the powerhouse of Trio who run all these logistics I said you know I should have said this Before any of these musters But everything that happens at the muster is a complete reflection of our company of echelon front and If we can't run a smooth check-in, then who are we to be advising people as to how to run an organization? And the fact of the matter is,

so I never said that to them, and yet the team, the Eschelon front team, the volunteers as well, everyone that shows up, they go to the nth degree to make sure that everything is smooth, to make sure that everyone. And that, this is clear, Jamie never had to ever hear those words come from my mouth

because Jamie knows me. And Jamie knows that how I roll is like, oh, this will be the best thing that anyone, anyone ever goes to. That is the standard. Now, I never said that to her. She knew 100% in her soul. That's how we roll. If there was a question between, hey, you know what? We can save, we can make this a little easier on the volunteers or on the employees or we can, we can adjust this a little bit of money here.

or hey, it doesn't matter if the people that are attending might not be able to see the whole, like whatever the case may be. Whatever it was, the thing that she knows, that the team knows that the rest of her, which she implied that right down to her whole team. Because she's got 20 people there that are working for. And they all have the same mindset, which is,

we will do everything to the end. Okay, will we make mistakes? Absolutely. Will we drop the ball sometimes? Yes, we will. But when we drop that ball, We will pick it up. We will recover it and we will run that thing for a touchdown and make it up to the person that whoever was affected.

So that's like a classic example of implied communication. I don't need to tell you, hey, we're going to show up early for the people that we're working with tomorrow. You don't need to hear that, right? Like this is just a known thing. That's the way it is. Like you said earlier, you're not showing up saying, you know what? I don't really have time to prepare. So I'm just kind of kind of wing it today.

Like that's not happening. That's not what we're doing. And so those kind of implied things. And Leif has great examples where he was making decisions and making calls. And I never said to. But you know, he'd come back and say, hey, this was happening. This is what I did. I'd be like, yeah.

And he'd say, yeah. I didn't need to call you and say, hey, what do you think we should do here? You know, and this is because the trust, the relationship. Then you're right. That does take time to build. And what's really scary is when people, when the trust isn't there, when the relationship isn't there,

and people start trying to guess what the implied communication was, I thought you would've wanted me to do that. And that's something that I did. So I would have guys that would come, let's say roll through, when I was a platoon commander or was a tasking commander, someone might roll through and go out

on an operation here or there. And they thought they knew me, or they thought they knew Leif, and all of a sudden they'd make them, move out there on the battlefield and you go, man, that was not a good move. And clearly I did a fail to let them know that this was not what we're doing.

And because my guys knew me and they knew what the implied communication was, they didn't, they did it. And I didn't have to make it, I didn't have to be verbal with it. But someone that just shows up for a week and all of a sudden they're out in operation, they do something that's dumb. My fault

Our fault as leaders Because we didn't make it explicitly clear Hey here's what's going on Here's how we here's why we don't do that Here's why we don't Fire warning shots from from a sniper overwatch This seems like a this seems like a obvious thing Yeah you know and Leif sitting in a platoon brief

Wouldn't say hey guys we're not taking warning shots It's implied that it's a clandestine situation as long as we can keep it that way And when we have to, when we have to go, we're going to start killing people, not finding warning shots. You're warning people that don't know where there. This doesn't make sense. But you know what happens. And that particular thing happened. And again, we as leaders needed to understand, hey, we don't have that full relationship.

We don't, people don't understand things as well. So you have to watch out when people start trying to guess what the implied communication is. I don't want you to guess. So I don't want you to guess at what I'm thinking. I want you, if you don't, if you're not sure, I want you to actually raise your hand and say, hey, Jocko. My guess is that you're doing this, but I don't want to guess. I want to actually know. So, hey, if you're thinking something, that's my responsibility as a leader to say, hey, if you don't, if you're not sure, hit me up.

Hit me up. Yeah. Back to the book. Another way speed gains from experience is the development of lateral communications or coordination. If all communication is up and down the chain of command, action will move. slowly if commanders and leaders in every level communicate laterally if we as leaders talk directly to other leaders action moves much faster lateral communication is not a natural consequence of mission orders it must be practiced in training it results from the

confidence of the higher commander who has through past experiences found that subordinates can exercise initiative based on the assigned mission and commanders stated intent as you just said. Yeah. A good example of lateral communications comes from aviation. Dave Burke. In the air, the pilots of a flight of aircraft communicate laterally as a matter of course. A pilot who needs to talk to another does so.

A message need not go through the mission commander and then be relayed to the other pilot. Events would quickly outpace communication if pilots tried to talk that way. The same procedures may be employed by ground combat and logistics as units as well. What parameters are you given where it's like, okay, you do need to run it through the chain of command? Is that like, hey, I'm going out of the AO? Man, yeah. Like I'm leaving. I got to depart the area, something like that.

It's such a small list. It would really, it would really boil down to a deviation of what our main practices are, are overarching SOPs that, hey, these are just some big foundational things that we do, it would have to be something like, I'm leaving a location that everybody probably thinks I shouldn't because I think something else is happening. And if I don't have the big picture, maybe, hey, look, this is what's happening. This is a critical decision maybe then. But the reality is, is the question you're asking me, I'm thinking, I don't even know

if I have a good example where I would have to defer to the chain of command given how limited my time and how, you know, you're on minutes. And so if I spend 10 minutes trying to work this answer out, that's probably all the time I actually really had to go execute anyway. So the answer to the question is I could barely think of an example that I would have to stop what we're doing, ask the boss who's somewhere else, can I go do this? Yeah. And on the ground, it's really easy. Hey, we're going to go across this line to this limit of advance. Do we have? Can we do that?

There's something else going on that would create risk if I did that. Hey, can you tell someone else that I'm moving into their A.O? I want to hit a building that wasn't on the target list. Can I do it? And you know what's interesting is, again, Leif and Seth, they like, they just knew what, I don't think ever Leif did something where I came back and said, you should have asked or Seth where I said, hey, you should have told me what was going on, or you should ask me what was going on.

Those guys knew, again, implicit communications. Hey, I'm leaving. I'm going across his limit of advance. I'm going to call him Joccoe and just let him know. Or, hey, I want to hit this building. I'm going to go. Or hey, I'm doing this different for the first time on an operation. I'm going to check with Jocco and see, like, that's,

never did I say to myself, you should have told me. And there was not a lot of times where they were telling me something where I was like, dude, come on. Of course, go do it. Like both those guys has such a good feel for, and they might err towards letting me know, of course, which I think is the good way to air.

You know, hey, occasionally maybe I'd be like, yeah, man, no problem, of course. But I would never say, dude, just do it. What's wrong with you? No, I'd rather you lean towards letting me know what's going on. And I think that's a huge distinction. The difference between asking for permission

and informing your leadership, those are very different things. So in that same question, I would let them know whoever they, all the time. Hey, I'm moving here, I'm doing this. And as an informative, I'm going to let my leadership know

almost as much as I can, but in terms of like, I don't know if I should do this. I'm going to, I think I should, and stopping the flow, this tempo, to get permission because my leadership had created this level of friction that I couldn't make real-time decisions,

the deference to the chain of command that up and down that they talked about, we even went so far to, if you were my squadron commander, and I was a captain, And you were a colonel and on this particular mission, I was the flight lead and you were number two. You were my wingman. Your rank did not go with you into the cockpit.

It didn't matter that you were the squadron commander. I wouldn't treat you like a squadron commander in the airplane. I'd treat you like a wingman. And the expectation was that you would treat me like a flight lead and whatever the natural relationship is there. And that's a good one because we often get asked, well, you know, your chain of command is so hierarchy in the military. And the example that I always bring up is a breacher, a breach team. So you have a breach team leader that's running the breach.

And when that breach team leader looks at me, even though I'm nine ranks above him in the military or whatever, four ranks above them, five rank, actually more than that, a lot of ranks above it. Yeah. If he looks at me and says, back up. You know what I do? I back up. He tells me to get down. You know what I do? Get down.

Yeah. That's the way it works. Yeah. So he's got the tactical control over that situation and he's the guy in charge. And also, I'd say this, when you talk about asking me quite, like ask, like how often did. or Seth or one of the other junior officers say, hey, what should I do? They almost never did that because I beat that one out of them early on.

Like that wasn't happening. We're not doing this here. We're not doing this. You come up with a solution. You tell me what you're going to do. So it was almost always they were telling me for giving me the opportunity to negate. If, you know, if they said, hey, I want to go to move across the limit of advance, gives me the opportunity to say, do it or negative.

There's already friendly forces in that building, hold what you got or whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, there was, there was not a lot of asking me what to do. And was there early on? Sure. The further along we got, the less and less those guys asked me anything.

I was just going to conclude with that same thing. Is that how I was as a squadron commander in day one? No. No. On day one, I wasn't like that. And that took a little bit of time to get to that evolution. That idea of decentralized command is built on those relationships. And on day one, you got to figure out those things.

And it does take a little bit of time. So if you got a brand new team and you just got brought into an organization, and run your team, that doesn't mean you just cut them loose on day one. It doesn't mean that you actually need to spend some time with a little more closer control than you might like. The sooner you get to that, the better. But yeah, absolutely. You've got to build those relationships out of the gate so you can get to that point.

And if you cut them loose too soon, it's every bit as bad as micromanaging them when they don't need to be micromanaged. Back to the book. A fourth way to become faster is by the commander's positioning himself at the point of friction. This position may be with the main effort, a supporting effort, or in the rear. A commander who is forward can instantly influence the battle as a situation develops. For the same reason, a commander may choose a position at a crucial crossroad during a night movement or where the unit is pushing supplies forward or where a counterattack force is in the defense may be cited.

The key is to be where we can best influence the actions of our units. As Marines, we believe in leading from the front since that is where most friction points occur. But they may occur elsewhere. We must choose our positions accordingly throughout World War II and his career, Lieutenant General Louis B. Chesty Puller believed that Marines had to lead from where the fighting was. This command, quote, post business will ruin the American army and Marines if it isn't watched. He said while he was the commanding officer of 1st Battalion 7th Marines at Guadalcanal. As a battalion commander, Puller usually positioned himself directly behind the

point element of his battalion and his headquarters element directly behind the lead company so that he could best influence the actions of his unit from this location he was able to impose his will and personally affect the outcome of the engagement depending on the situation he could also be found at other points on the march or in his perimeter his idea was to be where he could best influence the action notice even though it's leading from the front he put himself behind Yeah. The point element of his battalion. That's beyond, not in the point element, because then he's the guy shooting his freaking rifle,

not making decisions. It's the same thing in aviation. And so there's a little bit of inherent inflexibility in aviation because you can't take your aircraft and go 75 miles. You can't just leave yourself as the mission commander. So actually, when you have a mission of 24 airplanes, you've got guys that are dedicated as fighters to shoot down enemy aircraft. And you know what?

That's the sexy mission. everybody wants a mid-kill. I want to shoot my missile and shoot down an airplane because that sounds cool and that sounds like the most fun and that's what people want. The real reason we're out there,

the mission we're almost always doing, is to blow something up on the ground, to affect some air to ground influence, to kill some target on the ground. So you know where the mission commander is? The guy in charge of the whole thing on every mission? He's with the strike element.

He's with the element that's actually a full wave behind the leading element, which is the fighter element which clears everything out and he's actually in the striker element because he, A, can see everything that's out in front of him, and he's actually with the element that will have the most of an amount of impact to the mission,

or at least that's the plan. Is he dropping bombs too? Oh, he is. I mean, every airplane eventually, I mean, from resources. We're up there. Yeah, we're up there. We're dropping bombs. And he's going to be, at some point, he's going to roll in and go, he'll get tactical for a few minutes.

He will. He'll go right through the soda straw. In the pop. Yeah, that's exactly right. In the pop. But the, just like, the amount of time that he's going to be doing that, is 90 seconds on an hour and a half mission. And he will actually put himself behind that initial wave

and be with what is most likely the point of friction. The bottom line is this tactical principle that could apply to a Marine Lance Corporal, a platoon commander, a battalion. It's the same thing in aviation. It's the same responsibility. And the mission commander, oh, by the way, doesn't have to be the senior ranking guy.

It doesn't have to be who is the squad. It's not always the squashing commander. He's not. It's, it's, you guys. You guys are going here, we're going here, and this is, and once I cut you loose and go to your thing. And I was, you know, first, when we did OEF, you know, and we were in Afghanistan, this operan nationa kind of was this big mission. I was on night zero of anaconda as a captain.

I was leading a captain. I was leading. I was leading was my operations officer. He outranked me by two ranks. He was way more experienced than me, but on that mission, the squadron commander gave me the lead. And he flew off my wing. Is it a workload? Is it a workload issue?

Why? Why do they do it that way? In other words, if I plan every single mission, eventually I just can't, don't have the capacity to plan them all. So instead, you plan the next one. And that way, I can get some rest or I can, you know, be ready. Yeah, so he can actually go be an operations officer. Because what he was doing for most of that day, rather than planning that mission, he was forecasting the next 96 hours of sustained combat operations. I can't, the opposite.

He's got to fly. We only have a certain number of pilots, certain number of airplanes. But the rank, it wasn't a matter, is who's going to be able to get that job done in the Opso and the squadron commander. We're doing long-range strategic stuff. I spent the entire day planning, and he jumped on my wing,

and never once did he try to take control of that situation for me, you know, from beginning to end. Got to stay humble. Back to the book. Finally, it is important not only to be faster, but to maintain that speed through time. This endurance is made possible through physical and mental fitness.

Physical fitness develops not only speed, energy, and agility to move faster, but it also develops the endurance to maintain that speed for longer durations. With endurance, we not only outpace the enemy, but maintain a higher tempo longer than he can. Mental fitness builds the ability to concentrate for longer periods of time and to penetrate below the surface of a problem. For this reason, fitness plays an important part in the life of every Marine.

Patton once said, high physical condition is vital to victory. And here's the conclusion of this chapter. We must be faster than our opponent. This means we must move fast, but more importantly, we must act faster than our enemy.

The aim is to tailor our tactics so that we can act faster than the enemy force can react. Our ability to plan, decide, and execute faster than our enemy creates advantage that we can exploit. We have just discussed ways to improve our speed. Readers of this publication may think of additional ways to be fast. When you find one that works, tell your fellow Marines about it so they can use it too.

Anything that works to make you faster is good even if it is not yet in the books. Well, speed-wise, we're not doing real good on this podcast right now because we are now, I don't know, something like three hours deep, and we only made it through another two chapters. So probably not exactly the fastest thing.

But we are going deep and we're getting into it. the fact that you know we we were just talking about the fact that we need to keep our mental and physical fitness up in the game there's ways that we can there's ways that we can do that one of the ways that we can do that is a little thing that we like to call jiu jih Tzu how many times do we talk about jih Tudu today I don't think it's an overwhelming number of times but it's Definitely there. Ask me how many times I thought about it. So, Jiu-Jitsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, if you're not training in it. There's no real good reason not to train in it.

I get asked a lot, hi. Well, you know, I'm 52 years old. Should I start Jiu-Jitsu? Yes. I'm a 130-pound female. That's 48 years old. Should I start Jiu-Zitsu? Yes.

I'm, my son is only nine years old. Should he start J-Jitsu? Yes. Well, it's my daughter and she gets uncomfortable around people. Should she do jih Tzu? Yes. You get where I'm going here. Yes.

So you're going to change some jih Tzu. If you're going to train some jiu-jitsu, you're going to want to get a ghee. Because you're going to want to do ghee and no-gee jihitsu. OriginMane.com. This is our jihitsu company. And we're not just making geese. We're also making rash cards. We're making t-shirts.

Do you wear joggers? We have no one here to talk about joggers since Echoes on vacation. Apparently, Echo likes the joggers. I tried them on one time. It was hilarious. They are not for me. But you know what are for me? Genes.

Origin jeans made in America. Flexibility. When you see them, you have to kind of break. Actually, watch the video that Pete made. He turns the jeans inside out and shows you. you what quality looks like that's something that's that's important to see otherwise you don't understand it and then we got supplements to at origin main.com joint warfare krill oil discipline and discipline go of which dave partook again like clockwork we're about to i'm about

to say good evening and he's taking a discipline go yep getting it in the gullet yeah you're talking about sample events too just real quick in the joint warfare the best way to know if joint warfare is working stop taking it for a couple days go on the road and don't bring it with you oh that's it and then I don't make that mistake yeah that you won't make it more than once but if you want to know if it's working stop taking it for a couple days that stuff is working we talked about discipline last time but the joint warfare knee up whatever it is that stuff is working if you get off that you're going to feel it right away you know that's we have you can get subscriptions To our gear at origin main.com and that's one that's a I think that's the highest

subscription rate the auto refill the auto refill for sure you're gonna get this and why you wonder Hmm why why why do people want to auto refill that that's why yeah because people They forget to reorder and all of a sudden they're off the off the joint warfare for a few days They feel like crap and so they're gonna never making that mistake again you should see the stockpile of Joint Warfare I have it's ridiculous I will never run out of Joint Warfare Good. So joint warfare, krill oil.

Kralan is another like a universal, just universal goodness. And I haven't not taken krill oil and joint warfare in so long. I can't even tell you like what it feels like to not take them. I'm not going there.

And milk. Which apparently, according to our last podcast, you're just, you're on the strawberry milk chain. So the thing with strawberry is, It's the one, so of all, and look, I have a good supply of all of them.

What strawberry did to me is the first one I'm taking, where there's no reason to have it. Like every other time was, hey, I want to replace a meal or I need a little extra protein, or I'm on the go. I'll take strawberry for no reason. It's that good. That's the one little difference between strawberry and the rest is I was like, no reason for this other than I just love it. So I can blame, I guess I can blame strawberry, but that's what my relationship with strawberries. I'll take it when I don't need to,

because it's just so good. The thing that I love about all the flavors of milk is when I get done eating, even if I'm like happy, I had a good meal, I had a big giant, let's face it, I'm having a big ribeye. Maybe it's a bone in ribeye. Maybe it's a tomahawk ribeye, which I will not hesitate to order at all. Even then I'll get home.

I mean, I'll eat a, you know, a 22-ounce tomahawk ribeye. bless that thing beautiful I'll destroy that thing I'll get home and I'll be like you know what I need just a little hitter you need to get that bulk hitter to to I mean why would you you know they have dessert on the menu right you have to they have there's a reason that they have dessert on the menu in a steak house right it's because people even though they got to eat the steak even though they put down the tomahawk rabbi even though they did that they still want something like that little dichotomy.

They want a little, little palette dichotomy is what's going on. And the mulk header, the Yvonne style, the mulk hitter can definitely get you that dichotomy of flavor that you need. It can, and I know we're not being disciplined with time, but here's the thing with the milk too is it used to be that if you wanted to get

that little sweetness, the thing, there wasn't any real substitute for what was on the dessert menu. Everything was going to be kind of not quite right and a little chocolatey, but, and so you had to get the dessert. And actually, with the milk, you don't go, you know what, it was good,

but it wasn't quite, it's now just as good. So you don't need that dessert menu anymore because it used to be the only way to get that hitter was the milk. It's that good. It's that good. All right.

And there's Warrior Kid Mulk too. Because if, Because most of us are not trying to literally give our children poison in the form of sugar. So get your kids those strawberry or chocolate warrior kid milk hitters. So they get stronger and faster and become better human beings. And don't forget about that white tea. Because there's not too many people out there that just don't want an 8,000 pound deadlift, which is guaranteed 100% double I'm trying to think of echo you normally covers this part

because he's more got the science down triple plat placebo triple blind study has been done and then we have a store it's called jaco store where you can get you can get t-shirts rash guards truckers hats uh beanies you can get flex fits hats I don't think Did you wear a baseball hat ever? Yeah, I got the trucker hat. Oh, okay. So here's the thing with the Jocco store is, so I actually have access to the Jocco store directly.

I don't have to go to JoccoStore.com. I'm one of the lucky ones that has access to this. But here's the thing. I don't get stuff from the Jocco store because it's accessible to me. I get it because those are the. best t-shirts that I got. I'm serious. I get that stuff and when Echo has a hair's a rash guard I don't wear it just because he gave it to me because I actually could if I if I didn't I go buy a rash guard I would I'd spend the money to get the rash card that I

wanted I actually use this wear this stuff because it's the stuff that I like the most and it isn't just because I can call Echo like hey bro hook me up which I can't and that you know what that's good to go does he hook you up he hooks me up echo just went on report And not only is he hooked him up, Coa, his cousin Coa, he hooks me up. It's good stuff. And if you don't know this, if you support origin or you support the store,

that's actually what supports this podcast. If you ever listen to this podcast and you say to yourself, that was pretty good. I got something out of that. Then we appreciate because that's how we make this podcast is through your support to this podcast. Which if you want to subscribe to it, You can do so because, well, if you listen to it,

you subscribe to it. And Echo thinks that people don't subscribe to it. Is he paranoid? Should I be more paranoid? Should I be freaking out? People aren't subscribing. No, they're subscribing. If you haven't subscribed, subscribe,

and also check out the Warrior Kid podcast. How often do you listen to the Warrior Kid podcast with your children? Dave Burke, go. Only when they're with me in the car, which is, Every time I'm with them, I'm driving them somewhere. Right.

Yeah. And are they, you feel like the lessons are, are sinking in? They are. Two things. One, I learn from the podcast that my kids will learn things at the ages they are when I didn't think they could. I always, they're too young, they're not going to get it. They do because they reference it.

They will tell me things that they heard, They'll, Jocko said this. And actually, they don't even say, they actually say Uncle Jake said this. They say that. And then the other piece, and if you're not, if you're a, if you're a Jocka podcast listener that doesn't have kids and you're not listening to the Warrior Kid podcast, I have learned things on the Warrior Kid podcast as a parent, a ton of things. So it isn't just for them.

As much as it is for them, I am the beneficiary of that as well. And it is good for them and it is good for me too. Do you like my Warrior Kid podcast? voice. So I have been a guest on the Warrior Kid podcast and I know how to change my voice just a little bit to make it more appropriate for the kids. No doubt. I didn't consciously do that. I didn't consciously say you know what I got to that's just like I was just like

okay I'm talking to kids. Yeah. Hey kids this is the war. It's like that just what came out of me. I didn't say okay need to think about need to get into Warrior Kid podcast character. No. That's just when I'm talking to trying to engage a bunch of of kids you got to give it a little bit of that thing absolutely a little bit of that little bit of that so yeah warrior kid podcast if you want to check that out and don't forget to check out irish oaks ranch dot com for young aden that's making soap on his farm aden's in the game yeah so you can stay clean youtube channel the the youtube channel is called the jaco podcast

and there's videos on it of this podcast if you want to see what Dave Burke looks like. You can see. If you want to see what any of the guests, or if you want to see what I look like, then you can go to there. And if you want to get small excerpts that Echo Charles made that he thinks are legit,

you can check out, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel. And we've got psychological warfare. A couple tracks so that you can overcome moments of weakness. And we also have flipside canvass.com. That's Dakota Meyer. Listen to podcast 115.

Yes. Listen to podcast 115 Just listen to podcast 15 Dakota Meyer Hear his story Hear what he Has done what he's been through his life And I talked to Dakota

On a fairly regular basis And just check out flipsidecanvas.com That's that's all you really need to say Onet.com slash jaco If you need some Workout gear Have the word fitness there. If you need some workout gear so you can jack some steel,

check out on it.com slash jaco and get some gear for yourself. And we got some books, Dave. What do you think of the books? Same thing with the podcast. You got the Warrior Kid podcast. You have The Warrior Kid books. Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission.

I've got the third book now, Way of the Warrior Kid, where there's a will. and we are talking a lot about Danny Reinhart in my house right now. And how much Mark can't stand Danny Reinhart. That book, the stories in all three of those books, just like with the podcast, my kids are learning things that I didn't think they were able to learn at their age,

and they are, and there are lessons that are applying to their... My daughter's going into fifth grade. It's applying to her world and the people and the things that she's doing. And as a parent, I am stealing so much from those books. to be able to better parent my kids because of what I know is working for them in these books. So the Warrior Kids series, you got to get that series. And Mikey and the Dragons too,

just because it's sort of geared towards a younger kid, same exact thing. The story in that, my kids get it. They understand that. It is so legit. And then there's Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which is a book that I wrote. And it answers a lot of questions

that I got asked a lot of. about my own personal kind of operating system, I guess for lack of a better word, what to eat, how to rest, workouts, and I guess the more impactful part is what I'm thinking about. Discipline equals freedom field manual, how to get after it. The audio is on Amazon, it's on MP3.

It's not on it, it's not on audible. So you can check that out. And then there's extreme ownership and the economy leadership, which were written by me and my brother, Laif Babin. When did you read Extreme Ownership for the first time, Dave? I was at the first book release. Laif gave it to me.

I met him in D.C. And I had never, didn't even know you guys were writing a book. He said, hey, come out and join us. He was in D.C. for that release in that probably late 2015, I'm guessing. October of 15, something like that. Handed me a copy of the book. Was that when we were all together at an event? No, it was just Laf.

He was in D.C. on his own. Was it before that? I'm trying to think when you, Okay. Okay. It was before you and I actually met again, which was probably the following month. It was probably a month before that. Check.

And because I was going to school in D.C. And he was out there. And he was like, hey, jump. And I didn't see him in a while. He handed me a copy of the book. And it was all new to me. And for all the other books on that, you got to start with, you have to start with extreme ownership. Because that's really the thing that makes all of it makes sense, is you have to understand that of what that mindset really means.

and you have to read, everything we're talking about today was a dichotomy. This entire one-tack three manual is a dichotomy, and that's why you sort of have to have both of those together, and you need to read those for the rest of them, even for the field manual, to really make sense, that mindset of really what extreme ownership means, it underpins all of it.

You have to have both those books. You got to read them. And then we got Aschelon Front, where Dave Burke goes in with the rest of the team, and what we do is we talk. about things that we talked about today but more important we give the actual pragmatic hands-on instruction and assessment to make sure that leadership inside of an organization is actually moving in the right direction from a strategic

perspective and that everyone is on board and aligned and got that if you need if you have a problem in your organization of any kind it's a leadership problem and we can help you with your problem All of them. Eschonfront.com for details on that we have EF online Which is a it's a tool it's an interactive leadership training tool where you will not just Get some repetition on the information but more important you'll start to absorb it in a different way in a more comprehensive way you'll be put into leadership scenarios that you have to unfold and unwind and make decisions. By the way, this is interactive online leadership training.

You have to make decisions. And as for good as the face-to-face training is, as critical as that face-to-face training is with us, it's simply not an unaculation. It is not a one-time thing in this EF online resource because it actually is dynamic. Even though it's dynamic, that's what allows you to get the additional reputations

that isn't just the same thing over and over again. It allows you to think about what it means to be a leader and how to actually problem solve in real time. and a recognition that you gotta think about that stuff every single day. Yeah, and the way technology is now, I mean, there's so many advantages to it. For instance, you're in a classroom with 170 people at your event, and you're taking notes on something that Dave Burke just said, and then all of a sudden you look up and you missed his next little topic.

That's not happening with EF online. You're pressing pause. You're rewinding it. You're watching it again. You're submitting a question. You know, you've got that going on. You're going to the Q&A. you're watching, you're trying to make decisions based on what you just learned.

When you don't make the right decision, you're having it explained to you why that decision wasn't the best decision for you to make at that time. So yeah, it's, it's a great training tool. It is. And one last thing, there's a lot of people that are on Eiff online right now, a lot of people. And about once a month, Flynn, J.P. Laf, we actually get on to a live Q&A session. And so what folks will do is they'll go through this training and they'll, hey, I need a little more fidelity on a little more detail on this one.

And they'll write that down. They'll submit it. And I'm on a live Skype session. And I'm like, hey, Jaka, what's your question? He'll ask me that question. There'll be 100 people listening to that. And we'll dig deep into that one question to really drive that home. And that's for the folks that are on EF online.

Not only as to help the person ask the question, there's 100 people listening. They're taking notes too because it's all the same stuff. So I love one of my favorite things about EF online is those live Skype sessions that we're doing with the people. that are run through that training. Yeah, and one thing that's nice from my perspective is, you know, doing the live stuff for me on social media, for instance. It got, it got, I still do it.

I need to do it a little bit more often, but it gets a little crazy because there's people that are, what they, they might not want to ask, talk about leadership, which is fine, which is great, you know, I get that. That's, there's a broad audience out there. But if you are on EF online,

you can ask me a question about your particular, situation yep and you know how many questions I get when I go online and do a do a Facebook live or a or a Instagram live or a Twitter what's it called the Periscope live I mean there's literally there be a thousand questions in in 20 minutes when I did it with I was with Pete and and Brian and we were in New York and you got to do do an Instagram live you know Q and A I said okay who's got questions and they break it down how old the question is so like This question came three minutes ago.

This question came four minutes ago. My questions, it would say there would be between five and ten questions. No, I think it was between like three and six questions every second. So it would say there'd be six questions. This question came four seconds ago. And so it just wasn't feasible. And then I got to sort through all those. So with EF Online, you're getting that narrower.

You're getting a group of people. What are they interested in? They're interested in learning about leadership. It's a closed group. So, yeah, check out EF online. That's a good point. The muster. Chicago's done.

Next up is September 19th and 20th, Denver. It's going to sell out. They've all sold out. If you want to come, register now. Go to Extreme Ownership.com for those details. And then, of course, we have EF Overwatch, which... What do you think about EF Overwatch, Dave? I just came back from a client last.

week where we had, I spent a day with their executive leadership team and it's the first time I've been with a client where one of their executive leaders was placed from EF Overwatch, a guy who long service in the military, an amazing career looked at transition to continue to make big impact in a company. They get screened and through our organization, what Mike Sorrelli has done with Overwatch is make sure they understand these principles. He went off to this company and the dude is crushing it. He's crushing it. He's making massive impact. in that organization and they're benefiting hugely this idea of taking the lessons that they learn in the military and then centering around the extreme ownership concepts that we teach and putting

them into an organization and how much reach they have. It's Overwatch is awesome. It gives a place for a veterans to go, but it also gives for the private sector to get those lessons in there. And man, to see what that guy's doing is, it's so legit. And the idea that we've talked about on the last podcast, and we brought up a little bit today, but you're overlaying what you know, right? We're not taking and imposing hey, well, this is how we did in the military No, no, no, no, no. And this we talk about this with our with our candidates that we place. It's like, hey, you don't impose you take what you know and what you understand You overlay it on to what this company's trying to do the leadership principles are going to be the same But we take your knowledge and your experience and you have so like these these guys that we're getting to fill these sants

They have so much they have so many overlays to place that they've seen seen this before. They've done this before. Maybe it's not, hey, it's not the exact same thing. It wasn't in a manufacturing plant. It was in a squadron. It was as a troop commander. It was as a battalion commander. It was like one of these situations where they're going, okay, oh yeah, I've dealt with this situation before. Here's how we can fix it. Here's where I see a lack of decentralized command. Here's where I see priorities not being set. So that is eFoverwatch.com. and if you are not sick of Dave and I yet talking, which you can see we can talk,

especially when it comes to these subjects. But if you want to talk to us a little bit more about it, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, Instagram, and on the face book. Dave is at David R. Burke, B-E-R-K-E. And I am at Jocko Willink. Dave, any closing thoughts? Marine Corps manual one tag three is about Marine Corps tactics

and what it is is actually about leadership and it applies everywhere. And this has been a blast. This is awesome. And we're only four chapters deep. And to all the service members out there in the Army, in the Navy, in the Air Force, in the Coast Guard, and yes, in the Marine Corps.

And that includes reservists and guard units. Everyone that's out there that have worn the cloth of this nation, thank you for making the podcast possible by upholding freedom and democracy in the world. And of course, to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all the first responders out there, you also make this podcast possible by providing the safety. that we cherish in our great homeland and to everyone else that is out there remember some of those things that we talked about today remember to make maximum use of every hour and every minute remember that a good tactician has a constant sense of urgency we should feel guilty when we're idle guilty when we're idle never waste time and never be content, never be content with the pace at which things are happening. You should always try

and drive it faster. Time is important and we have a absolute responsibility to make things in order to do that. What you have to do is get up every day and go get after it. And until next time. This is Jocko and Dave. Out.