Jocko Podcast - 197: Time, History, and Knowledge, are All Connected. Truppenfuhrung: With Andrew Paul.

Episode Date: October 2, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:57 - Truppenfuhrung. Leading Troops. 1:52:04 - Closing thoughts and take-aways. 1:53:05 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:06:30 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 197 with Andrew Paul and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Andrew. Good evening. For those of you that don't know Andrew, Andrew, was one of my brothers from Task Unit Bruiser. He's now with us at Echelon Front. And if you haven't heard podcast number 42, that's when Andrew came on and talked about his experiences. But we're not really interviewing Andrew today. He's just filling in for Echo Charles, who's on vacation again.

Vacation? Yeah. So that's why Andrew's here. So I have someone to talk to. Otherwise, it gets lonely in the podcast room. All right. You've heard me say before, if you know the way broadly you see it in all things. That's what a little quote from Musashi.

But beyond that, when you. pull the thread on things when you dig down and you dig in you find that things are are not just similar they're actually connected there's a thread that runs through time and through history and there's a thread that runs through knowledge knowledge itself and when you start connecting things you understand them better so there's some i see them all the time in a Outface, my favorite book, Colonel David Hackworth, talks about one of his mentors, the guy he served with, the guy named Glover Johns, who was a officer in the army, who wrote a book that we covered on this podcast called The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo.

How crazy is that connection? I had John Stryker Meyer on. And when he was on, in one of his books, he was talking about Eldon Bargewell. A SOG operator that actually was a mentor to one of my mentors in the SEAL teams. To connection. How crazy is that? What about the fact that I read about and admired Dick Winners? Commander of the 2nd of the 506, the band of brothers in Europe.

And then in Ramadi we worked with the first of the 506th. So these connections, they're just everywhere. They're just everywhere you look. Things are connected. Now, one of my favorite old field manuals is called FM 100, TAC-5, field service regulations. It was issued by the Department of War on May 22nd, 1941, and it's an awesome manual. All kinds of information. And I'm going to cover it on the podcast.

But the thing is, the FM 100-TAC-5 is not the most original document that I've ever seen. And I've talked about the roots of maneuver warfare. In fact, we covered a book called maneuver warfare. And the influence of the Prussian armies defeated the Battle of Jena. You got General Sharnhorst and his influence on the Prussian military. and thereby the German military. Well, what's interesting is FM 100 TAC-5. Again, this is an American

field service regulations. It's an American field manual. It was so plagiarized. It completely plagiarized from another document. And this document is called Troopenfurung,

which is my attempt at German. Troopenferung, which basically translates to leading troops. And it was first published in 1933. So we're talking about Nazi Germany. And it was prepared by a group of people, a group of military men.

But the leader of that group of military men was a guy named Colonel General Ludwig Beck. Now, Nazis obviously, are a scourge to humanity. But what's interesting is this guy, General Beck, was not a fan of the Nazis. He wasn't really a fan of Hitler. In fact, he was eventually executed by the Nazis because he's one of the guys that coordinated and tried to assassinate Hitler.

He's one of those guys and they figured it out and they assassinated him. So he had some good character and he had an outstanding military sense. He was educated kind of like the traditional Prussian military education served as a staff officer in World War I. He was he he objected staunchly to the offense of Germany starting World War II. He did not want to go and fight. He realized that it was going to be a problem. And again, he resigned in protest, actually.

He resigned in protest and he tried to get a bunch of other people to resign. And, you know, they kind of covered it up and made him walk away. And like I said, eventually he tried to kill Hitler. He tried to plot to kill Hitler. And I think it was Rommel. Rommel was saying, because Rommel also participated in the attempted assassination of Hitler, Which is why he got killed. We'll go into that someday on the podcast.

I'm sure they came to him and said, hey, you can come with us now and you'll die a hero. Well, you have to kill yourself, but we won't say anything. Or we're going to send you to court and make you a, you know, a public scapegoat for everything that's going wrong in Germany. And he chose the former and went out in the woods, said goodbye to his family, went out in the woods and killed himself. that's that's Rommel so Beck was executed but like I said his character obviously was a little bit

you know what he had some some good character traits stood up for what he believed in and the fact that this book troopen fehrung the fact that this book is has been so widely copied the Americans use something based on it the Brits use something based on the Germans still use something based on it really kind of reveals his leadership knowledge. So with that, we'll go to the book. The book, Troop and Therung. Am I getting better at saying that? It sounds good to me.

Troop and furring. All right. Kicks off with the introduction. The introduction starts with, the conduct of war is an art depending upon free creative activity, scientifically grounded. Is that the way you think of it? Love that definition.

Out of the gate. War is art, depending on free creative activity scientifically grounded. It makes the highest demands on the personality. Boom. That makes complete sense to me, actually. It really does. I think the first time I said that was with Tim Ferriss at some point.

And I said, I said war is an exercise in creativity. That's what I said. And here you have where I subconsciously, consciously stole that from or just found that to be true yes or just found that because so many people say oh well you know you get to be a robot to be a soldier it's actually not not true you will you will be destroyed next the conduct of war is based on continuous development oh check new means of warfare call forth ever-changing

employment their use must be anticipated their influence must be correctly estimated and quickly utilized situations in war are of unlimited variety They change often and suddenly and only rarely are from the first discernible Incalculable elements are often of great influence the independent will of the enemy is pitted against ours The independent will of the enemy is pitted against ours Friction and mistakes are of everyday occurrence So this guy is out of the gate you know he's he knows what he's talking about every one of the these things, it just nails it.

But what's always interesting, of course, is that he's talking about war, but guess what? It applies to everything you do in life. Because guess what? Everything in life is going to change. It's unlimited variety. It's a test of wills. There's friction and mistakes that occur every day. No matter what you're doing, your business with your family, no matter what you're doing, you are going to experience this.

The teaching of the conduct of war cannot be. be concentrated exhaustively in regulations. The principles so enunciated must be employed dependent upon the situation. So exhaustively, you cannot, you cannot focus exhaustively on regulations, which again, as you just pointed out, Andrew, though, that's what people think that, oh, you're in the military. You just follow orders. No, you have to be able to think. In fact, if all you do is follow the regulations, you're wrong.

Simplicity of conduct. Simple. Logically carried through will most surely attain the objective. Yes. War is the severest test of spiritual and bodily strength. In war, character outweighs intellect. many stand forth on the field of battle who in peace would remain unnoticed that's an interesting that's yeah i didn't i didn't see that coming yeah in this intro that's just i think what he's saying

is that that person with the strong will that person with a strong character hey man you can be a really smart person and be mentally weak all day long agreed discipline yes so you can be super smart and when things get crazy, you're shriveling up, you're thinking too much, right? You're shriveling up in the corner, scared of what might happen. Where you, if you're just a dude that has strong character, guess what? You can step up and win. And how about when, if you can know all the right things to do, but if you lack the fortitude and discipline to do it, it does, like how many doctors know all the right things about health

and yet maybe are not in great shape. So they know the things to do, but don't do this. The same kind of thing. Maybe you don't see this very often anymore, but like doctors that smoke. Well, now I guess you just get doctors that eat crap. Right.

Right. Horrible. So yes. Same thing. So that strength of character doesn't matter. You can overwhelm the super smart dude over in the corner. Next. armies as well as lesser units demand lead and by the way if you can tell my reading is kind of stilted

you know because it's translation so there's some weird words some weird orders of words that don't quite flow which is why I was going to read the the American manual 100 tack 5 first but no I decided to do this one first because it's more challenging well it's funny though I when as you've been reading this already I've been thinking wow this is so concisely written and the words are carefully chosen. And then I thought, wait, this is, was this, no, it wasn't written in English. It was written in German, yet it's translated so well. Yeah, the American one, I'm going to do that one probably next, but it's, it's even more like to the point. So, but you got to know where, you got to know where the connections come from. I agree. Keep going back. Yeah. Yeah.

So continuing on, armies as well as lesser units, demand of leaders, good judgments. Here's what leaders need. Good judgment, clear thinking and far seeing. Leaders with, independence and decisive resolution, leaders with perseverance and energy, leaders not emotionally moved by the varying fortunes of war, leaders with a high sense of responsibility. I mean, really? Yes. It's not everything I talk about all the time. Decentralized command here.

Yeah, decentralized command. Oh, high sense of responsibility. I think we might call that extreme ownership. Unemotionally moved, not emotionally moved by the very very. Furns of War, detach. So, yeah, this is just epic. It's great. The officer is a leader and a teacher.

Besides his knowledge of men and his sense of justice must be distinguished by his superior knowledge and experience. His earnestness, his earnestness, his self-control and high courage. I mean, it's just so awesome. So legit. And it's funny because. a lot of times people, you know, what's, what's, you know, they ask this question, almost like a rhetorical question, like, but what is a leader?

You know, but what really is a leader? There you go. Yeah, that's it. We just read it. Yeah. So listen to that. Check those things in the mirror when you're trying to be a leader, you know? Check and see if you're emotionally detached.

Check and see if you're earnest. Boom, earnest. Check yourself control. Check your knowledge. Check your experience. All those things. Continuing on. The example and personal conduct of officers and non-commissioned officers are of decisive influence on the troops.

Wow. The officer who in the face of the enemy is cold-blooded, decisive, and courageous inspires his troops onward. The officer must likewise find the way to the hearts of his subordinates and gain their trust through an understanding of their feelings and thoughts and through never-ceasing care of their needs. I mean, relationships, how much do we talk on this, right? And there's this dichotomy between, I mean, detach emotionally, but not unemotional. You have to care and have to know that you care. I mean, yeah. So ridiculous.

So ridiculously incredible that, I guess it's not that ridiculous is incredible. It's like, oh, you put a guy in 2000 and whatever into a combat scenario where he's got to lead troops in a tough situation. If they're successful at it, they're going to come to the same conclusions that someone did in World War I, which is where this guy was coming to these. This is 80, 90 years ago that this was written, right? And, well, here's the thing. People have been fundamentally the same for 5,000 years. These are fundamentally true about human nature.

Yes. But never ceasing to care for their needs. When I had Muk on, General Mukuyama, he's the guy that used that word. I was like, yes. He was one of Hackworth's company commanders in Vietnam. And he was just, you know, I was saying this. And I was saying that. He's like, yeah, you got to care for your men.

And I'm like, check. And that's what he was talking about, Hackworth. Once again, Hackworth known as this, you know, badass, hard ass guy. And he just, Hackworth cared about them more than anything. Yeah. Mutual trust is the surest basis of discipline. in necessity and danger. This is what I've been trying to explain to people for a couple years now,

is that the word accountability, I only have to hold someone accountable if we don't have that mutual trust where they understand where I'm coming from and they just go, oh, you want the weapons clean? Cool, they'll be clean. I don't have to go and inspect the weapons. There's a mutual trust there. And in that trust is discipline.

in all situations every leader must exert without evasion of responsibility his whole personality willing and joyful acceptance of responsibility is the distinguishing characteristic of leadership this speaking of plagiarism yeah i just plagiarize this whole thing i guess right yeah well this does not mean that the subordinate should seek an arbitrary decision without proper consideration of the whole or that he should not obey orders precisely or that he should let his feeling of the greater knowledge take precedence over obedience. Independence of action should never be based upon contrariness. Independence of action properly used is often the basis of great success. So that's why you have to understand what the commander's intent is. It's because you've got to be

support. When you make these decisions that you're making as a subordinate, you got to make sure that they're in line, that they're not contrary to what's going on. But you know, he just touched on something real briefly, we read about this contrarian mindset. There are, there are people who just walk around with a contrarian mindset. And it doesn't matter what gets said, like they are always going to be like, well, yeah, what, but, you know, and sometimes that other, that outside thought is, is a good angle to think about, but you, but he just said it. He goes, but you can't just be independent for the sake of being a contrarian or whatever,

Or we just said that. That contrarian mindset, which, as you know, I mean, I have an open mind and I definitely try and think about things from a different angle. But you're right. People that are just being contrarian because they just enjoy the friction of arguing with people. Yeah, I'm not a big supporter to that. And they end up having no influence because everybody just, oh, you're, if you, they're crying wolf basically, right?

Everything, they just disagree with everything. So guess what? In spite of technique, the worth of men is the decisive factor. It's significant is increased in group combat. So the way they translate it in the American one, I think they say the value, I think they might even call it the combat value, meaning basically are the dudes hard? Like, are the dudes hard?

That's what they're talking about here. The worth, the worth of men is the decisive factor. This is an interesting translation here. The emptiness of the battlefield demands independently thinking and acting fighters, who, considering each situation, are dominated by conviction, boldly and decisively to act and determine to arrive success. So the emptiness of the battlefield in the American translation, they talk about because modern warfare demands that we be separate from each other.

Like, as you and I know, if you and I are on patrol, we're not clear. close to each other. You know, we're dispersed and we're going to spread out so that we're not going to get killed by one machine gun round or one mortar round. So because of that distance, that's what they're talking about when he talks about the emptiness. So because of that emptiness on the battlefield, you have to have independently thinking and acting fighters, right? Because I'm not going to be there to tell you what to do. You're not going to be there to tell your guys what to do. They're going to have to independently act. That's the way it's got to be. That's something that we call decentralized command.

Being accustomed to physical accomplishments, lack of consideration of self, willpower, self-confidence, and courage, qualify a man to master the most difficult situations. There you go. There you go. Let's work on that. Physical accomplishments. What does that mean? Do athletic things.

Right. You have to be in shape. Lack of consideration of self. Boom. You're not important. Willpower. Yes. Discipline.

Self confidence and courage. Qualify. man to master the most difficult situations. The worth of leaders and men determined the battle worth of the troops, which is supplemented by the possession, care, and maintenance of arms and equipment. Superior battle worth can equalize numerical inferiority. So if you're just hardcore fighters, it doesn't matter. Right.

How many people the enemies got? Because we're going to get some. Right. the higher the battle worth the more vigorous and versatile can war be executed superior leadership and superior troop battle readiness are reliable portents of victory the leaders must live with their troops participate in their dangers their wants their joys their sorrows only in this way can they estimate the battle worth and the requirements of the troops sitting around in the Ivy Tower.

That's interesting, though, because we do have a thing in this military about the separation to a certain degree, right? And so there's going to be a balance there too, right? I mean, but you can't be in the ivory tower and totally disassociated. People are like, well, who's that guy? No.

I just get orders from that guy. Battlefield aloofness, you know? You got to actually get out of the Humvee and go see what's going on. That's what you got to do. Yeah. Nope. Yeah. Man is not responsible for himself alone, but also for his comrades. He who can do more, who has greater capacity of accomplishment, must instruct the inexperienced and weaker. From such conduct, the feeling of real comradeship develops, which is just as important between the leaders and the men as between the men themselves. Troops only superficially and not through long training.

and experience, welded together, more easily fail under severe conditions and unexpected crisis. So if you're only superficially and you haven't gone through long training and you haven't been welded together when the hard times come, you ain't going to make it. And that's really when people ask me about, you know, how do you build a team and how do you develop the bonds and a team? You do hard stuff together. That's right.

You do hard stuff. And when we work with companies now, companies that made it through the downturn. of 2007, 2008, because a lot of companies didn't make it, but the companies, they always refer back to those experiences, like, you know, that's what bonded them together. Right. Same thing with the military. You know, you go through boot camp.

What is that? It's a hard experience. You bond with all these people. And you know when you meet someone else in the military, they went through, at a minimum, they went through boot camp or officer candidate school or whatever, some sort of hard kind of indoctrination. Then you go to airborne school.

A little thing where you're all going to overcome your fears. of jumping out of airplanes or whatever. Then you go to some kind of special operations school. Same thing. You're just putting people through harder and harder things to get them tighter and tighter and more and more bonded together so they can overcome these adversities

when they come their way. Therefore, before the outbreak of war, the development and maintenance of steadiness and discipline in the troops as well as their training is of decisive importance. Every commander is in, joined immediately to intervene with all powers at his disposal against any relaxation of discipline against excesses, plundering, panic, and other damaging influence.

You got to get in the game. See that stuff going on. Discipline is fundamental in an army. It's strict maintenance, a benefit to all. No big deal. Just discipline. So it's interesting. is touched on a few things here, which I think, you know, we get that because it's military,

makes total sense and talk about it when you want. But there's, you know, people I think struggle with how do you do that in business today? Oh, you know, HR and how do I involve something? You have to still find a way to do that appropriately because... HR doesn't have anything to do with having discipline, process, procedure, you know. No, no, no. I'm talking about getting in and knowing what's going on with your people and in their life and doing hard things together, you know, because I think what people are like, well, you've got to show up on time, do this part of your job. It's like, well, how do you actually deepen those bonds in a company? Well, you've got to find ways to put people through difficult things together,

through training, find events to do that builds that camaraderie, that gets them through a hard time, that strengthens the bonds of those relationships. I see good companies, good leaders do it in companies where they just set really tough goals that are very hard but achievable, whether it's a production goal, whether it's a sales goal, whether it's a project goal. And people have to really turn and burn to get it done. And when they get it done, they have to, they're forced to work hard together. They're first to go to the extreme a little bit, to work extra hours, to figure things out, to strengthen their relationships. And when they get done to everyone, you know, and it's stressful. And then they get done and everyone's kind of holding their head up a little

bit higher. It's right. They're a little bit tighter. So it's not even it doesn't even necessarily have to be that you have to allocate separate training to do this. You go, hey guys, here's this project. It's due in 30 days. We're going to deliver it in 24 days. I ran the numbers. I looked the schedule. We can do it. Who's in? And everyone goes, yeah, we're in. And then everyone buckles down and they over they achieve something. That's what they do. So that's how you, that's how you bring that, build that bond between people and strengthen teams by doing hard stuff, set goals on normal things. Because think about it. When I come in and go, hey guys, we got this project to it's doing 30 days.

Could take a little bit longer though. I don't know. Everyone, no, who gets fired up to hear that? No one. No one. Who goes, oh, cool. I'm going to take an extra half hour for lunch every day. If that's, no.

People don't even want to do that. Like, people might think they want to do that. People might think they want to do that, but they don't want to do that. That no they don't want to do that they don't want to do that they want to get after it and that's our job as leaders is to set that bar and to set it even a little bit higher and in and then inspire and encourage and bring everybody along to try and get to that next level further than what they wait wait oh 24 days yeah all right okay boss what am I got yeah what am I for just here wait a second you really think this is possible yes I do yeah and you know what we're going to make the whole world we're going to make everyone at this company look at us and say dang they did that in 24 days right I guess what some other team is going to do. We can do it in 23. That's what my team would be doing. Yeah, I know.

I know. And then we get some good competition going. So that's awesome. That's what you have to do. That's how you build teams. Stress builds teams. Now if you have a team that's slightly fractured, guess what that stress will do?

Break it apart. Yeah, it's got to find those weaknesses. Yes. That's right. So there's a balance. Oh, there's also a balance between, hey, you can set goals. Hey, there's a project that's doing 30 days.

We're going to do it in 15. It's unrealistic. Take everyone just looks like it goes yeah jock was an idiot he's in the ivory tower doesn't even know what it takes to get this done so balance Balance there 100% continuing on back to the book the strength of the troops must be able to meet the highest demands in decisive moments He who unnecessarily fatigues the troops jeopardizes success. Oh wow there we go The strength employed in battle must stand in proportion to the objective desired Unreliable demands prejudice the trust in the leaders and shake the spirit of the troops again This is a cry wolf situation we got to get this done in 15 days

It's like and that's my you know the first time everyone goes okay and maybe we get it done in 15 days And then people look up what are we doing for the next 15 days? We're gonna do more You know and you eventually just burn everyone out right? So there's a balance that Back to the book from the youngest soldier on up, the employment of every spiritual and bodily power is demanded to the utmost. Only in such conduct is the full power of accomplishments of the troops achieved. So do men develop and maintain their courage and powers of decision in hours of stress and carry forward with them to greater deeds, their weaker comrades. So you can actually pass on your strength to the people

around you in moments of stress if you're strong. Does that, you know, like when people quit in buds, I got, I, I like took their power. It's so funny, you say that, man. I can't, I was literally about to see.

But some people, some people, some people, they see someone quitting, they're like, oh, dude, if he's quitting, I'm quitting. That's, I can't even relate. Yeah. I mean, I'm not, I saw it. I saw it happen. And not from some, dude,

I'm not like some big, you know, I'm, this is not from some egotistical perspective. I say I can't relate. I just, I'm not wired like that. I'm wired like, call it corny, but, you know, Highlander? Like, you know how he would absorb like the strength of like, that's kind of, but like, you know, when a guy would quit, I somehow, I felt like I absorbed his, what was left of his power. And it actually, it more like it inspired me, it inspired me to keep going. The fact that I could keep going and that guy couldn't, it just, I was like, okay, you know, I mean, it gave.

me more purpose. Yeah. That's why you just got to stay hard, man. You know? People are starting to, because you're, if other people start to see you like cracking and they're your troops, they're going to be like, oh, no. Right. This is a bad sign.

Jocco's breaking down. This is not good. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because we also are like, well, that will never happen with Jocko. So Jock don't ever do that. Now, don't worry. If you took a knee, we wouldn't let you. Or we would just step in for you.

Yeah. But I don't see that happening. Not happening. Here, this is what you, I was actually going to jump right here because when we started this thing off, you talked about this a little bit. The first demand in war is decisive action. So like you were saying, like, hey, you can be the smartest person with a great plan, but if you can't do it, if you can't act on it. Everyone, the highest commander and most junior soldier must be aware that omissions and neglects. incriminate him more severely than the mistake of choice.

So if you decide not to act, you are a worse criminal in the world than someone that just makes a bad judgment but moves. I just disappeared for a second back to Ramadi and thought of that exactly happening, like in real life. Like in those moments when there is things going on, you act and you can maneuver and aggressively solve a problem, even if you make a small mistake.

It's the default aggressive. Yes. Right? It's the complacency while I sit back and articulate. No, I just steamroll. Yes. You've got to make a call. Now, obviously, I hate having to point this stuff all the whole time, but it's the truth.

If you just jump and make rash decisions without thinking about them, that's also stupid. Of course. You have to let things develop. But this idea of inaction, I mean, it is the worst. That's why what do people say about inaction is a decision? Like no decision is a bad decision, right? No decision is the worst decision. No decision is a decision, first of all.

Yeah. No decision is a decision. And it might be the worst decision. Sometimes no decision while I watch things develop might be the right call. But let's be clear, no decision is a decision. What I've been trying to teach people lately is, like a standard operating procedure for when you don't know what to do. Here's the standard operating procedure for when you don't know what to do.

You look at what the situation. You take, you detach, you take a step back, you look at what's unfolding. Then you make the smallest decision in the area that you guess is the right direction to move. And then you assess what that did. So you don't just jump off and flank left because you thought that was the right call.

No, you go, okay, hey, guys start pushing left. Okay. So they start moving a little bit. Do they meet major resistance? No? Okay, cool.

Continue with a flank. You don't just go flank left. Now they run over there. Now they're getting flanked and it's a bad situation. So that's the thing. You make a small decision, the smallest possible decision that you can, but you make a decision. You start moving in the direction that you think is correct. Assess.

Yes. Move. Yes. Assess. Yeah, you get in an ootloop is what you're going to do. You're going to end up in a little ooteloup. But people get afraid of making a big decision. Now, sometimes you have to make a big bold decision, of course, but people get afraid of making, they can't see, they only want to go 100% in.

Right. They don't see that they can go 8%. You can go 8% in. Is it at the last muster? I think it was at the last muster. Someone asked me something about this, but, you know, when you say, hey, we want to go explore this new market area, let's buy three buildings in that market area and see where it happens. No, that's not what you do. First, you do market research.

Then maybe you put a couple kiosks up on the street corner and see if there's any interest. Leave some space. Maybe you lease some space. You know, like that's what you do. That's the kind of mentality you can have. You don't need to just be paralyzed by the fact that it's this giant, you break it down into some smaller decisions. I iterative decision making is what I call it. And to be clear, this is in the I don't know what to do right now.

I'm in an unknown position, right? I mean, because, you know, we're not talking about sheepishly. going in directions here. We're talking about, I don't know what to do here. So I will go in the direction that I believe to be the best, but I'm going to take as small a decision as I can. I don't want to take too much ground in the right, because it could be the wrong direction.

Could be the wrong direction. I'm going to go the direction that I think is right, but in the smallest of a decision that I can make in that direction, and then I'm going to reassess. Yes. And guess what? If it's the wrong decision, now you know that. If it's the wrong direction, you just,

you hit a wall there. Now you just figured that out where when you made no decision you still you don't still know which way to go that's right you go 360 degrees So when I say hey we're gonna go 90 degrees cool we take a step and we realize there's massive resistance there Cool we're gonna go 180 degrees oh okay right on you know it's a you know it's a really good like modern day example of that What you've been sitting like using your map like like Google Maps or whatever and if you're not moving in a direction it sometimes doesn't know which direction you're going in Oh the little arrow just kind of rotates right it's like a step out of of a hotel and I'm like, which way I'm supposed to go here. Dang it.

This thing is doesn't even know which way. So, all right. You know what? I think it's that direction is where I'm supposed to go. So I start walking. As soon as I take 10 steps, the map, the arrow orientes itself and it's like, yep, you're going the right way. Sometimes I don't actually.

Oh, you know, you went the wrong way. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. I'll turn around and go back the other way. Or you could have stood there in the door of the hotel blocking the, blocking the traffic and staring at that compass rotating. And never go anywhere. That is exactly what happens. And so that's why you make a small decision.

You didn't you didn't hail a cab and get in. That's right. I didn't start sprinting down the road. It took 10 steps. Yeah, that's right. That's the way it works. All right. And by the way, I always have to say this.

I'm not covering this whole book. This book is online, PDF. You can download it. It's free. I'm not reading the whole thing. There's a bunch of like granularly tactical things inside that we're not going to cover. But we're covering the big. the big stuff the stuff that's applicable to everything that we do next section section two

it's a section called leadership so here we go great successes presume boldness and daring preceded by good judgment check we never have at our disposal all the desire forces for decisive action news flash you're not going to have everything you want all the time it's not happening He who will be secure everywhere or who fixes forces in secondary tasks, acts contrary to the fundamental task. So if you're, A, trying to do too many things at the same time, we call that prioritize an execute. If you're trying to do all these secondary tasks,

you're not focused on the main one, you're going to get crushed. And if you're so dang rooted in your situation, if you're secure everywhere. If you're secure everywhere, you're not going to make any progress. Yeah, man, that's hunker down. Yeah, I'm secure. I'm safe. When you're hunker down, the enemy's maneuvering on you.

That's what's happening. The weaker force through speed mobility, great march accomplishments, utilization of darkness and the terrain to the fullest, surprise and deception can be the stronger at the decisive end. area. So boom, that's Jiu-Jitsu, by the way. And special forces and everything we do to leverage our numerically smaller force. Yeah. Time and space must be correctly estimated, favorable situations quickly recognized and decisively exploited. Every advantage over the enemy increases our own freedom of action. And yeah, it's not just special forces, it's not just special

operations. It's every military unit. They all do this if they're good. Repidity of action in the displacement of troops can be greatly, can be assisted greatly or retarded by the roads and streets, nets, and by the terrain conditions. The season, the weather, the condition of the troops are also of influence. The duration of strategical and tactical operations cannot always be foreseen. You don't know how long something's going to last. Successful engagements often proceed slowly. Often the success of today's battle is first recognized tomorrow. It's an interesting one. Surprise of the enemy is a decisive factor in success. Actions based on surprises are only of great success when we do not permit the enemy to take adequate countermeasures. So you've got to follow up. That's why you're

going to follow up. That's why in striking you've got to throw combat. You can't just throw one punch. You've got to sting them with the jab and then you got to hit him with the straight and then you got to come in with the hook That's what you got to do you know. It's interesting the The one about often the success of today's battle is first recognized tomorrow. What's interesting about that one I don't know if you remember this because I don't know you might not have been I might not have engaged you at this level But when we first started doing sniper overwatches in Ramadi and And I was getting some questions from up the chain of command. They were, hey, look, you know, this is after a couple weeks, it was, hey, you know, we get

that you're killing some people, but there's no metrics. Like there's the, you've said you've shot three IED emplacers. IEDs have not gone down. Like the end I and D placements have not gone down. And luckily I had read the one of the, what is it, the one tech 24, the counterinsurgency manual. And I had learned from that manual that the average counterinsurgency takes seven years. So I replied back to the chain of command and said, hey, just kind of FYI, we're fighting a counterinsurgency. The average counterinsurgency takes seven years to achieve victory.

We've been doing this for two and a half weeks. Can I get a little more time to see some metrics on it? And that's true. And actually, Colonel McFarlane, this was a battle that he had. had to fight because here you are, you know, it's a metrics based, people that are looking at things from a metrics based level, right? They're saying, okay, in Ramadi, there's 30 enemy attacks a day. And all of a sudden, McFarlane rolls in and starts this counterinsurgency and the enemy

attacks go up. Oh, yeah. And they go, up a lot. And so his Janik man's looking at him, go, what are you doing? Right. What are you doing? The enemy attacks are getting worse. Your thing's not working.

And he has to explain to them. You know why the enemy attacks are going up? Because we are actually taking ground from them and they're fighting. Yeah. And we're killing them. But this is what's going to happen. So the initial metrics are the reverse of what you want. And that's the way it is.

That's what, so these, the success of Vic, the success of a battle is not always visible today. You have to look at the long term effects. Well, we went into the hornet's nest. I mean, it's like, hey, you know what? My kid gets stung by this bee like, you know, once a year. Well, we're going to go in and get rid of the bees nest. All right, well, we go in there. Well, you guys got stung like 20 times.

Well, yeah, because we went in and we actually are destroying the hornet's nest, so they're stinging us now even more. That's why it went up. And when we're done, though, they're not going to sting us at all. But for now, the numbers went up. That's exactly what happened when we went in there like that. We used to go after the hornet's nest. It was sort of a test of, you know, when you're eight years old.

It was always a test of courage, basically, because you're going to go in there with a stick and lack that thing and see if you can get it to fall down. And, you know, it's like playing pinata. You don't get it on the first shot. Like, it takes a few. So you whack, and then you run and those things come after you. Right.

But then, so all of a sudden, this things go up. Enemy attacks go up. Yeah. You're getting stung. Like, when you go in and hit a hornet's nest with a stick, you're getting stung. Pretty much. That's what's going to happen.

All right. Back to the book. The enemy will likewise endeavor to make use of surprise, our conduct. must take this into consideration. The knowledge of hostile leadership and war principles can influence the decision and aid our battle conduct,

but it must never lead to preconceptions. Oh, that's good, isn't it? Like, we know what the enemy's gonna do, but we don't really know what the enemy's gonna do. That's right. Hey, they're gonna use the laws of combat, but we gotta remember that they might step outside the bounds of the laws of combat.

Those conditions which facilitate the conduct of war in our land, make it more difficult in foreign lands require consideration. Yeah, it's much easier on your own granted. We've learned that over and over again. In strenuous combat, troops are soon worn out and quickly used up. The forces must receive timely reinforcements in leaders, men, animals, battle needs, and war materials of all kinds. Boys are going to get worn out after a while. The mission, and the situation form the basis of action. The mission and the situation form the basis of action.

The mission designates the objective to be attained. The leader must never forget his mission. A mission which indicates several tasks easily diverts from the main objective. So once again, prioritize and execute. If you've got a bunch of different things, you're not going to achieve the main objective. I had a situation recently where people were wearing. some of their teammates out. And I was talking to this company about how to do this.

And I said, the mission is number one. That's our mission. Our mission is number one. But the mission requires people. And so you have to take care of your people and you have to balance their, you know, how tired they are, whether they're being replenished. But again, always in balance. But the mission is number one.

But it takes the people and the team to accomplish the mission. So if you wear your team out, then you've got nobody left to even accomplish the mission. That's, so. That's the dichotomy. You talk about that in the dichotomy of leadership. I mean, if you, if all you're focused on is the mission, your men will be either used up, destroyed. They won't trust you anymore. It'll be a disaster.

So your men, your people have to come first. And at the same time, the dichotomy is, if you do nothing but care about your people, then guess what? You won't have anyone, you won't accomplish the mission, which, by the way, hurts your people. Because if you're in the business world and you're trying to push your people to drive production or or or or do their job at a faster pace Great. Then you burn them out and they leave and all of a sudden the company folds or the opposite. Okay guys, you know, take your time. Well, guess what now we don't get anything done and the company folds. So what you have to do is you have to balance right? Obscurity of the situation is the rule Seldom will one have exact information of the enemy. Clarification of hostile situation is is a self-evolution demand however to wait intense set intense situations for information is seldom a

token of strong leadership often of weakness so look you're not gonna know everything it's not gonna happen you have to make decisions that's what you got to do otherwise sign a weakness they edited me on billions oh yes they there was one little section where I was in the show billions and there was one little sections where where where they showed dollar bill getting like a massage or something like that and I was looking at him and I just go weak but I didn't make the cut next the decision arises from the mission and the situation the decision arises from the mission and the

situation should the mission no longer suffice as the fundamental of conduct or if it is changed by events the decisions the decision must take these considerations into account. He who changes his mission or does not execute the one given must report his actions at once and assume all responsibility for the consequences. He must always keep in mind the whole situation. So they're not saying it's wrong. They're not saying it's wrong. Somebody's like, hey, Andrew wanted me to go and take this building and the building is untenable. The enemy's too strong. I need, you know, I make the decision. I'm not going to take that building. We need to drop a bomb. We need to do something else. I just, that's fine. But I need to tell you,

And I need to keep the whole picture in mind because if that building was strategically important for what we were trying to accomplish, well, then maybe I have to take more sacrifices than I thought to take the building down. The decision must depict a clear objective aimed at with the whole force. The strong will of the commander must support it. Often the stronger will gains success. without very good reasons a decision once made should not be abandoned. Okay, so this is, again, critical. Without very good reasons, a decision once made should not be abandoned. And then it says, however, in the vicissitudes of war,

an inflexible maintenance of the original decision may lead to great mistakes. Timely recognition of the conditions and the time which call for a new decision is an attribution of, the art of leadership. Don't stick to the one plan that you came up with. Doesn't work. If it's not working, change plans. I work for some hard-headed people, and the plan would be completely falling apart,

and they're riding that thing into the ground. They're just taking that thing all the way. They're saying they got real ownership of their plan. Oh, they're taking real ownership of the plan. They're not going to let it go. They're going to be right. The commander must permit freedom of action. to his subordinates insofar that this does not endanger the whole scheme.

He must not surrender to them those decisions for which he alone is responsible. So freedom of movement, what does that mean? That means decentralized command. The attack is launched in order to defeat the enemy. The attacker has the initiative. Superiority of leadership and of troops show the best advantage in the attack. Success does not always come to superiority of numbers. So go on the offense.

I say that all the time. Go on the offense. Now, is this 100% of the time? No. But you have, you're, you're just that much better off when you're on offense. You have surprise. You have initiative. You have the people on their heels.

It's amazing that we were able to take down the island, like the island campaign in World War II, going into those heavily fortified, where the Japanese imperial military had been digging in for three, four. five years preparing those islands for to defend against assaults. United States Marine Corps come and get some. Seriously. United States Marine Corps. And of course, the Navy, the Army. But dang, just unbelievable that they were able to.

That's going on offense. That's right. Momentum. Yeah, we're going on offense. Oh, you've been digging in. Oh, you built a miles long tunnel system to defend this island. Cool. Watch this.

We're coming in. We got naval gunfire. We got corsairs. We got flame throwers. And we're coming. And obviously that great sacrifice. But being on the offense, being on the offense is a weapon in its own right. Agreed.

Notice this in jihit-to, too. Like when you're on offense, you have the edge. You know, you're one step ahead. When you're on defense, you're one step behind. And it's not fun. And if you're defending for too long, eventually you will get caught. You will, if you're on defense, defense, defense, defense, defense, defense, defense, defense. Eventually.

You will get caught eventually. You have to at some point switch. Yeah. And get on offense. I don't know who said that maybe it's even cliche at this in these days. But, you know, the best defense is a good offense. So you're on defense. So you need to convert that to an offense.

So somebody attacks you, you're on defense. Yes. The best defense is a good offense. Yes. Be on offense, for sure. Yeah. So somebody attacks me first. I'm on defense.

My best defense to that is to return with an offense. Yeah. You know what's interesting is a time when this is different is, this is another thing I was talking about at the Buster, is if we're arguing about something. If I go with that theory, the best defense is a good offense and you start to try to. try and tell me something. And I jump in and cut you off. And I'm like, no, we need to do it like this. That's actually wrong.

I agree with you. And that's interesting. Right. It's interesting because, and I see that all the time because leaders, people end up in leadership position, their personality kind of drives them to be sort of outspoken and speak up and all those things. When the reality is the, the more senior you get in the leadership position, the more you should actually use the ears, you know?

And what I said at the muster was, 98% use your ears. 2% use your mouth. That's where you end up. So this idea that that, you know, being on offense is the best way. Well, when it comes to discussions, you should gather some intel before you act and listen to what other people have to say.

Check. The possibility that an attack may miscarry should never permit the fettering of energetic leadership from the first. Yes, we may lose. Doesn't matter. We're going to get some. Pursuit reaps the fruits of victory. It strives to destroy the enemy,

which destruction was not possible in the preceding engagement. Only a throughgoing, relentless pursuit, which prevents the enemy from gaining time to rest and recuperate, saves ourselves, sacrifices necessitated if we permit the enemy force another decisive engagement. No, when you get them on the ropes, go, put them all the way to the river and then toss their bodies in the river.

That's one book we read on here. The defense waits for the opponent. The defender seeks to prescribe the battle terrain. That's important, right? If you're on defense, you want to bring people into your arena. Right. The defense is chosen when our own inferiority permits no other choice, or if for other reasons, it appears advantageous.

I was just reading a note from a friend of mine, a team guy whose grandfather was in World War II, still alive, going to get him on the podcast. And when he did the island campaign and then went into, like, Japan surrendered after the bombs, and the Japanese were told, on your gun emplacements put a white flag. So Americans, we're sailing in.

Like the war's over. Sailing in, I think it was into like, I don't know, he was into some big port in Japan. And when he was sailing in, there was just white flags everywhere, everywhere. And he was looking around. He said it literally looked like snow. Wow. There were so many weapons and placements. And he just said, I knew at that point that those atomic bombs saved hundreds of thousands of Americans

that would have had to go in there and fight until the end. end. So the advantage of the defender, as a defender, you want to pull people into your, into your zone to where you know. Well, that's what the Russians do, right? Channelized terrain. Yeah, channelized terrain, perfect. But the Russians, what are the Russians do? Oh, yeah, you want to fight us? Cool. Come on. Come a little bit further. Come a little bit further. What is it? It's September. Come a little bit further. Oh, it's October. Come just a little bit further. It's November. Welcome to Russia. It's negative 48 degrees. Hope you brought your warmies.

Hope you brought your warmies. The defense is chosen when our own inferiority permits no other choice or if for other reasons it appears advantageous. So if you can be on offense, but if you have to, you go on defense. Breaking off an engagement has the purpose of terminating the battle or giving up the former position in order to continue the engagement at a more favorable position. In the latter instance, delaying action is often. employed. So yes, sometimes you have to retreat. The retreat intends to avoid further combat.

The engagement must, for this purpose, be terminated and the withdrawal of the troops be protected. The changing fortunes of battle demand often the passing from one type of engagement to another. So sometimes you've got to attack and sometimes you've got to defend. That's what's going to happen. That's the reality. And Hitler was not. Hitler got to this point as the war went on where he actually didn't understand that, which is why at Stalingrad, they left those guys. And they had plenty of opportunities to retreat. No, no, hold the line.

I did that. I covered the book called Stalingrad from the Nazi perspective. And those guys were surrounded. They were listening to the radio and Hitler was making speeches talking about the brave sacrifices of them in Stalingrad. They weren't even dead yet. Like he was saying, hey, look, they're surrounded, but they fought to the end. They're still there.

They were still there. Wow. Talk about coward. Talk about being in your ivory tower. He left those guys to die, surrounded. Delaying action avoids the decision. It will gain time, keep the enemy busy and deceived. So delaying action.

Let's let's let's let's let things develop a little bit more. During the course of the battle, the commander influences the action most strongly by the concentration and increase of fire and through the employment of his reserve. Distribution, location, and employment of the reserve require careful consideration. Mobility increases the possibility for their employment. Always have a little bit in the tank. You know, always got to have a little bit in the tank.

tank. Everybody says that. You know, it's interesting about delaying. You're talking about like the Russians. So we're a little bit further, a little bit further. And then going on in this next couple of sentences, whether it's an enemy, whether it's a competitor, you know, when they're going on the attack, they're also expending considerable resources. Absolutely. Right. So if you can kind of think, think about a jiu jitsu match, a guy's on the attack and you're, you know, you're in the guard and you're kind of in a defensive position, right? You're kind of letting them use his energy up, right? So let him keep using that energy, use that energy. And

And the troops are expending. It takes effort, logistical support to keep pushing, pushing, pushing, and you're spreading further and further and further away from, you know, home base where you've got all your support. And then when they're spread and they've expended their resources and they're down to just maybe the last of their fuel and their food, boom, then you launch your counterattack. Yeah.

So. And speaking of, you know, what I brought up before about when you're, I don't want to use the term arguing, but when you're discussing something from a leadership perspective. You're in a group. You're in a meeting. The exact same situation. Let the other people talk and express their viewpoints because every time they express their viewpoint, you have an opportunity to listen to it, to understand it, to hear someone else make a counter to it and hear their counter to the counter. So you're getting all this information. You're receiving all this information. You haven't given up any. You haven't used any bullets. You haven't used any magazines. You've got

everything and you're just observing I mean it's um I think it was it was either dick winners or but they wrote hey when when I let someone talk I know everything that they know and I know everything that I know it's like well there you go so you keep talking because I'm gonna know everything that you know and I'm gonna know everything that I know and you know how you know how when you when you do something for the second time it's like X but it's not twice as easy it's not twice as easier it's it's exponentially more easy to make a decision. So when you go into a room for the first time

and there's a guy in the corner you don't know what to do with your weapon, like it's hard. And then you go into that room again or there's whatever. There's like a couch and an obstacle, whatever, and you got to do, you got to make a decision.

The first time you go in there, you see a new guy going in there the very first time he's ever done it. He jams up and everything's a disaster. He does it one time. You know, he looks at it and go, okay, you step out, do it again. He's exponentially better at doing it.

So when we're having a discussion, and I get to listen and listen and listen and listen and hear other people give points and counterpoints around a table. And you sit there and just listen and you go, okay, and you can assemble it all. You can assemble the strongest facts. You can identify the biggest weaknesses. And then when you finally, like you said, you've now, everyone has expended all their ammunition. But you have a full magazine.

Your magazines have actually been filled up with more rounds because everyone else is expressing their points and counterpoints. So you just sit there and listen. And then by the end, here we go. Here's the plan. And everyone goes, dang, jocco's smart. How did you do that? I just shut my mouth and listen.

All right, going back to the book, this next section, communications, information reports, situation maps. So if you think about it, what leadership is, is actually just communicating with other human beings. That's actually what it is. Agreed. You have to be able to communicate what it is that you need to get done to other people. That's what it is. So how does that work? The reports and information of the enemy form one of the most important foundations of the estimate of the situation, the decision and its execution. You got to know what's going on. And here it talks about air and ground reconnaissance. It talks about continual observation. It talks about information secured through special means. And I'm sure they're talking about human research. You know, like human intelligence, so spies or whatever. That's not human resources, is it?

Different kind of human resources. Different kind of human resources. And then it says from the whole, from the whole of all these different things, the commander is able to draw correct conclusions. Apparently unimportant details in connection with other reports have considerable worth. And this is something that they always told us in the military. When you come back from an operation and you debrief, you'd say like, well, I remember this specific thing.

Where did you guys find? Because my first deployment, we would be looking for weapons, you know, munitions or something, anything that they could be using to build IDs, right? And the question was always,

where did you find it? Where did you find it? And at first I was like, well, we found it in the bedroom, but where? Because is it, is it inconceivable to think

that if you and I were bad guys? And I said, hey man, I'm keeping my stuff taped up under my tape. When the good guys come in, they never find it there. Oh, okay, cool. So I'll do the same thing. And we, I'm going this from an actual example, we found debt cord taped up underneath

a Mujahideen fighter's table in his house. And so it's like, I was like, oh, that's when it clicked to me. Oh, well, we should tell everyone that, because they probably tell everyone. Right. Because that's a pretty good place to hide. You know how tables, well, this tables have like legs, but then they've got things that the legs attached to. So if you just look glance under it and it's up under there, it's kind of hard to see.

Right. So maybe someone says, hey, this is where I've been behind it. They've searched my house three times. I haven't found it. We'll find it now. That's why we flip things over. That's why we break it in half. So it continues on every report and the best information are of little or no value when they reach too late into the command for which they're intended. So yeah, if you don't pass information timely, doesn't make any difference.

All commanders are enjoined as early and to the greatest extent possible to inform the higher commander of the situation and to transmit all important information. Yes. The one making a report must express himself clearly and positively. He must differentiate between what he has seen, what another has noted or stated and what is presumed. The source of the information must be stated. Suspitions must have bases. Those are big. Yeah.

I've, you've got to pay attention to those things. There's a big difference, and that's why we use appears to be, right? That's right. That's one of the biggest ones that they teach us is you don't say, hey, he has an AK-47, or hey, he's got a weapon. If you can't confirm 100% that that guy legitimately has a weapon, because it's a big difference between, oh, it looks like there's something under his dish dasher, right? Oh, it looks like he's, looks like he's got a chest rig.

underneath his dish dasha that's a lot different than he's wearing a chest rig right and he's got an AK 47 so it always appears to be unless you can confirm it and there's a when I did the mili masker on here that breakdown of intelligence of it going from like the division level which was hey this is a I think they used the word the the original word was like a suspected VC. Oh no. It was like possible. Possible VC coordination point.

Went from there down to like the brigade level. Then it turned into like from from possible to suspected. Just a little bit of a different word. Yep. Yep. And then from brigade to battalion, it was like likely. Likely. And it went all the way down.

When those guys, when those, when that Charlie company got those words, it was this is a VC stronghold. Not only was it that. This is a VC stronghold. The civilians are no longer there. The civilians, there's no civilians there. And what they had heard was on Wednesdays, they go to some market. The women and children go to this market.

And maybe they did, but it wasn't like, I mean, does every single person in your neighborhood go and shop on the same day at the same time? No. Is there, hey, Wednesday, they got specials at the grocery store. Cool. A bunch of people go down there. Not everyone. But the report that they got was there's no friendlies in this village, all VC. Wow.

And so as that escalated, you know, you tell that to an 18-year-old trooper, this is an enemy village. And guess what they did? They went in there and they killed. They murdered everyone. So that's why you have to pay attention to those. And I had this happen to me, too. We did an op on my first deployment. We got a piece of overhead imagery.

and on that piece of overhead imagery, there was a red X on one of the buildings. And I was like, cool. I mean, this was early in my deployment. I'm like, oh, that's where the bad guys are. Cool. We'll go get them. We went out.

We hit this building and we cleared it, you know, blew the door off the hinges, go in there, start SSE. While we're doing SSE, our Terps are interrogating or what's the tactical questioning because we don't do interrogation, but doing tactical questioning of the people.

The people are like, oh, no, that's not me. the person you're looking for is three doors down. And so we went and hit it and we actually got the bad guy. When I got back, I was pissed because I'm thinking, A, like we wrecked this person's house. Now we, you know, that's horrible. That's not good for our strategic vision

what we're trying to get done here. The guy, the enemy, the real bad guy, could have escaped. And so I asked the question, I said, who drew this, who put this red X on this building? Yeah, who? Like, what was the reason? And who?

actually said yeah yeah who and why and as I dug down into it they had they had through various intelligence sources narrowed it down to like this one area and this one area the center of that circle was the building with the red X on it so that's my fault right that's my fault because I should have said okay so from then on it was my deal to say who put this red X there and why. Yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, what does it mean? Yeah, I mean that red X implied at the time that like that was the target house as opposed to

here's the center of the ring and it could be anywhere in there. You would have planned that mission completely differently. There's five houses in this ring and it's one of them. We would have cordoned off the whole area. And if you, you can think about all the different ways that intel can come in and every different type of intel that you could have could come up with, you know, hey, here's the probable chances, you know, it's going to be one of these houses. So that was a big lesson learned for me.

And, you know, if you're people, people to know when we would make a mistake like that, we would, obviously, what we did is we carried money. We carried money. And we'd pay them for the damages that we caused. And we would more than, more than pay for the damage that we caused. It was kind of a good deal to get your door blown off at the time. Would you like to use my home? Now, I mean, the thing is, yeah, we gave them a good chunk of money.

And, you know, it was all documented. And we had account for all that. I mean, I remember going on the logistics of that. But, but nonetheless, I mean, it's still terrifying. Those people who hadn't done anything wrong all of a sudden have their door blown off, a bunch of Americans who are already. It's absolutely horrible. Yeah.

The money doesn't, the money doesn't. It's a strategic loss. It's a strategic loss. So that's why I was so pissed that this happened. And that's why I was pissed at myself because I accepted that intel as what. what we were just talking about. Hey, cool, there's the Red X. That must be the bad guy.

Cool, let's go hit that house. So many examples in life and in business on that too. People say something and you're like, well, wait, did they say they weren't going to be there? Or did they say they didn't think they could be? Like, I mean, there's just so many conversations that you can have about whether it's marketing in your business, whether it's something of you doing with your family. Hey, just clarify for a second. Hey, wait, what did they really say?

Did they actually say this? Yeah, well, no, they didn't really say that. Oh, okay. That totally changes everything. And it's in that moment. Yeah, it totally changed. And that's in those moments as a leader. It's like, hey, well, hold on.

Before we actually go and pull the trigger on this, actually in the case of combat or figuratively, before we start marching. Let's just clarify real quick before we go pushing off in this direction. Oh, yeah. The rumor mill, the gossip, the he said, she said, those things are just awful. And as a leader, you have to take a step back. You can't let your emotions get a hold of you when someone says, Oh, he said he didn't want to come to this thing. Wait.

Oh, really? He didn't want to come? He didn't want to come? Or his father's sick? Yeah, he's got a parent-teacher conference and his kids really struggling in school right now. So he just, he can't be there. Oh, well, that's a totally different situation. Totally different story.

Totally different story. Check. Next one. Battle itself provides the most reliable means of estimating the enemy. Boom. For sure. That's a confirmation. Yeah, that's just legit.

That's the truth, which means sometimes you've got to take some risk. Got to take some calculated risk and figure out what's going on. All of this is just talking about preparing, you know, mindset, the troops, the tactics, the techniques, logistics, all of that. But now to, okay, sooner or later, battle's going to happen. That was a tough one in Ramadi. So there would be little checkpoints out in town. And the checkpoints would be run by. Americans and then eventually there'd be run by half Americans and half Iraqis and at some point it was okay

Iraqis are going to have to run this checkpoint by themselves and that was a huge risk every time to see if they could pull it off then the first several times it was not successful and We would turn over the checkpoints to the Iraqis and there was there was I think three of them got overrun oh yeah, I Overrun and just mass casualties But that's what we what that's a risk that the commander had to take you know that's a risk that Colonel McFarland at the time had to take you had to say okay We've trained them we've we've we've pushed them they've been out there we've done the right seat left seat We need to see if they can maintain it. We need to see what the enemy is going to do and so the first few times it got tried it was horrific and

And eventually We did get the level of violence down and we did get the Iraqi soldiers trained up enough that they could handle it, but it took some, we had to do what we're talking about right here. Battle itself provides the most reliable means of estimating the enemy. Sometimes you've got to take that risk. It's awful. Continuing on this next little section called estimate of, it's called estimate of situation, period, decision, period. An estimate of the situation precedes each decision. It demands rapid thought, simple, logical consideration of the essential details only.

Our mission is the basis. We proceed from it and determine what it prescribes and how we can best accomplish it. Rapid thought, simple, logical. You wouldn't think that you would need to tell people in the military and business in the world that, hey, when you're going to make a decision, you need to think simple and logical, right? How often do I see people making decisions that are not simple and not logical Emotional? Yeah, just emotional decision making. Here, this is why, and you know that General Beck had seen this over and over again

in order to get to a point where he's making it evident in this book that you need to be logical about your decision making process. That would be like if you were to sit there and talk to it, hey listen guys, here's the most important thing I want to start off with about your decision making process. sure it's logical. You get laughed out of the room. Well, no kidding. Okay, let's see what happens when we crank up the stress. Right. That's right. Yeah, relationships and people are not making logical decisions. You know when things get emotional whenever people are involved. Yes. Like, that's it. Because that's just there's, there's all those dynamics of those relationships and

history and the way people talk and treat each other and it creates and then people become emotionally attached to their own plan. And so he has to put it in the book to codify it as you've got to be able to unemotionally detach and analyze what is the best decision that is going to have the biggest impact on the battlefield or to impact the battlefield. Yeah. The character of the hostile leader and the hostile troops may be used in estimating the conduct of the enemy, especially if we have had previous battle experience with those.

So you've got to know who you're going against. That's a patent right there. I read your book. As a determined decision must be the logical result of careful consideration of all factors. The decisions made will not always correspond to the actual conditions presented. This is interesting. The decisions made will not always correspond to the actual conditions, conditions presented. Then the situation develops other than the decision contemplated.

He has the greatest prospect of success who quickly and skillfully exploits other reconnaissance, but does not change the decision except with compelling reasons. So it's the same thing we were talking about earlier. You stick with your decision until you see that it's not a good decision. And the faster you can do that, you get quickly analyzed it, right? That's how, like Boyd said, with Oudaloup, is quicker you can go through that Oudaloup, than better you can out maneuver. I used to do this all the time in even in task unit bruiser when things weren't going the way I expected them to go

My my My strongest Desire was to keep doing what we plan to do like okay look. Oh, we didn't expect to take contact from over there Cool, but we're gonna keep pressing through from the north or whatever And that was my that was my that was where I lean toward I always lean toward go with the plan you know So plan your dive, dive your plan, right? We say on diving, hey, you come up with a plan, you go out there, everyone's walked through it, everyone knows what the plan, and we briefed it.

If you can stick with that, you stick with it. But then sometimes you gotta go, oh, you know what? I didn't expect what that, and that is too big of a curveball for us to handle, I'm making an adjustment or making a call. And that's why we have standard operating procedures and we make an adjustment based on something that else that we've rehearsed a thousand times. That's right. So you've got to pay attention to that.

Now we get into orders. This is pretty cool. The order puts the decision into effect. Clear orders are an essential for the frictionless cooperation of all commanders. For the higher commander, the written order provides the foundation for leadership. It is communicated to the lower units printed as a carbon copy typewritten or written by hand or by technical communications means. Frequently, it is dictated over the telephone. In every instance, the most sure and suitable method of transmission is to be chosen.

Should the order be simple or short, it may be orally communicated. It must later, however, be committed to paper. So this is something that I talk about a lot. And I always throw out this question to trip everyone up. I say, what's better communication, email or voice? You know, email or conversation. And everyone goes, conversation, conversation, conversation. And they're right, right?

Yep, kind of. Because what goes on? What goes on is if I call you up and I say, hey, Andrew, we're going to do A, B, and C. You good with that? And you're like, cool, got it. And then you go out and what I said isn't what you heard. And you do A, B, and D. That's right.

And I go, what's wrong with you? And you say what? You told me to do A, B, and D? No, I told you do A, B, and C. And here we go. Right. We have a problem. So that's why, when you and I have a problem.

have a phone conversation, I say, we get done. I call you, I send you an email. It says, hey, just want to confirm we're on the same sheet. We're going to do A, B, and C. And you email me back and say, no, I thought you said you wanted me to do A, B, and D. No, sorry, I didn't articulate it right. We're definitely doing A, B, and C. And you say, okay, cool, got it.

So verbal is great. Voice is great. Phone is great. Yes. But email is very clear. Now you flip that over. Okay. now I'm just emailing you, hey, Andrew, do A, B, and C.

And you're like, wait, why is he telling me this? Is he, is he told me this because he thinks I don't know how to do this myself? Right. You know, it's like, and then we get into this whole thing. Or it's these long emails. Yeah, long, super stupid, long emails that you didn't, don't even read the whole thing because it's too long. So what you want to do is you want to use both.

This is this stuff here. The fact that, this is why I, this is actually why I majored in English. because when I was a young officer and I hadn't been to college yet, luckily, so I was able to figure out what I wanted to major in, but I could already see, and there was no war going on.

This is like 1998, 1999. I could already see that the written messages that we'd get, they were so important to be able to understand, and then you had to be able to write a concept of operation that made sense. And so I knew, I was like, okay, well, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to get really good at this. And I realized that this idea of communicating with other humans, humans was the actual basis of all leadership, up and down the chain of command. And what really helped me a lot was, when I had to study Shakespeare in college, the thing is Shakespeare is very humbling

because you don't know what the freaking words mean because they're barely English, right? It's barely English. And anyone that says they can pick up Shakespeare and understand it is either lying to you or they came from a time machine. in middle England because it doesn't happen. So what I realize, you know,

because at first you're reading Shakespeare and you're like, oh, I must be stupid. I'm stupid because I, and you know, it's like, no, actually, you wouldn't know that word. That word hasn't been used since 1648. So why would you know this word? Why would you know the meaning of that word? You wouldn't know it?

So you have to look it up. And you got very, it's just, you know what it is? It's just humbling. So when I would get some R.O.E. from down from some rules of engagement down from the chain of command. And I'd look at it go, I'm not really sure what this means. I didn't just go, oh, well, screw it. I'll just make my best guess.

No, I would get out a dictionary and look up the damn words that I didn't understand. And then simplify them because I, you know, if I don't understand what a word means, there's no way in hell. And you're an English major. Yeah, and I'm an English major. And there's no way in hell that some of our frontline guys are going to know it. So you've got to translate it for them. So this stuff about communications. Huge.

Specks is simple. It's just, yeah, it's got to be simple, clear, concise is what we say at Eselam Front. Simple, clear, concise. That's the way it's got to be. Continuing on, this is so good. The more pressing the situation, the shorter the order. Where circumstances permit oral orders are given in accordance with the terrain, not the map. Oh, that's good.

So whenever a chance, whenever I can, I'm actually taking you out there. I'm actually looking, okay, Andrew, you see that hill over there? I want you to get, you know, put some machine guns up there because we're going to assault through. You go, okay, got it. Not looking at a map. We're looking at the terrain itself. How often can you actually get eyes on? In the front lines and with the lower commanders, this is particularly so.

With important orders, it is often advisable to use two or more means of transmission, which is what I just said. And I tell that to companies all the time. Hey, you want to get your, you want to get your vision out to the company, email it to them, do a video, do a conference call, do a poster that they can do it all. Get that message out there. Do you, you know, I hate to say overcommunicate because that implies it's too much, but overcommunicate. When I think of overcommunicate, it's like, I'm going to send you, hey, Andrew, I'm going to send you 48 emails every day. Yeah. Now I don't even know which one I should be reading here.

Yeah. You know I had a good conversation with Sarah. I was wrong at the, at muster about this, and about how in this day and age, if anything, people tend to overuse email, and we have these just swamped inboxes. And having a, in this modern day and age, having a good plan in place for some comms discipline. And it's exactly what you said earlier.

And I've been using this in business for years. It's a conversation because you can get to the bottom line quicker because so much of the communication is non-remoner. It's like tonality and if you can do it over a video of ETC or Zoom or Skype or whatever, great. So you get to the solution quicker because we're going back and forth on each other. We get to that final conclusion. And then you follow up with an email because then it's black and white and then you have like the confirmation of this is what we talk about. Documented.

Exactly. It is easy to underestimate the time required to get an order through. That's a good one. It's going to take a little bit longer than you thought. Oh, here we go. This is what you were just talking about. Too many orders, especially in battle, during which the communication means may miscarry,

produces the danger of causing injury to independence of action or of the lower commanders. So if you're trying to tell everyone exactly what to do, guess what? Eventually that order is not going to get through, and you know what they're doing? They're waiting to hear it because you haven't decentralized command enough. You've trained them like a dog only to do what you tell them to do.

An order shall contain all that is necessary, for the lower commander to know an order for him to execute independently his task. It should contain no more. Correspondingly, the order must be brief and clear, decisive in tone and complete, adopted to the understanding of the receiver. Oh, that's what I just talked about. Adopted to the understanding. So you've got to translate those big words in the ROE down to the front line troops.

And according to conditions, his peculiarity. The commander must never fail to place himself in the position of the receiver. I talk about perspective all the time. You've got to understand the perspective of the person that you're talking to. They don't have all the context that you have. You've got to recognize that. The language of orders must be simple and understandable. Clarity, which eliminates doubts, is more important than correct technique.

Clarity must not be sacrificed for brevity. So sometimes you've got to go a little bit more detailed. Negative expressions and changes lead to half measures and are objectionable. Exaggerations are equally bad. Orders may bind only insofar as they correspond to the situation and its conditions. So that's a good one. Orders may bind only insofar as they correspond to the situation and its conditions. So as soon as there's something outside that, you can't say, no.

Don't go across the line of the limit of advance ever. Because guess what? You might get into contact and the only way to get out of it is across that limit of advance. So you better leave some flexibility in there. Still, it is often necessary to issue orders in uncertain situations. If changes in the situation are to be expected before the order is put into execution, the order should not go into details. So if you don't know really 100% is what's going to happen,

If you have, he says still, still it is often necessary to issue orders in uncertain situations. You're still going to give orders. But if change in the situation is to be expected before the orders put in execution, the order should not go into details. In great strategic operations, especially when orders must be issued for several days in advance, this abstention from details is to be specifically observed. The general intention is expressed. The end to be achieved is especially stressed.

In the execution of impending action, the main instructions are given. The immediate conduct of the engagement is left to subordinate commanders. In such a way, the order is fully executed. Decentralized command 100%. Mission and state. Yes. This is what we're trying to get done. Here's where we're trying to end up.

Go make it happen. Insofar as conditions permit, it is often best for the commander to clarify, His intentions to his subordinates by word of mouth and discussion yet he must not make himself dependent on his subordinates The decision and orders are therefore solely his this is hey you talk to your platoon chief as a platoon commander And your platoon chief is saying we should come in from the west and attack from the west and you go okay Sounds good and then you get hit strong forces and you fail your mission You know chief told me we're coming in for the west that you said that's right no shut up it was your call he made his recommendation continuing it is recommended that the written order which directs the

activities of different elements to a common goal be paragraphed and the paragraphs numbered that's like I kind of left that in there because this is the kind of detail this manual goes into like number your paragraphs yeah that which is important should be placed first check here we get here this is this is good the following sequence is recommended for Operations orders. Number one, information. So in the U.S. military and in NATO, as a matter of fact, we use something called the five-paragraph order, Smeak, situation, mission, execution, admin, and logistics, and command and signal. That's what we use in the U.S. military.

That's sort of our abbreviated troop leading procedures. Boom. You use situation, mission, execution, admin and logistics, and command and signal. So here's they're talking about operational orders. The first thing, information of the enemy and neighboring units insofar as this is importance of the receiver. So what is that? That's the situation.

Enemy situation and friendly situation. Next, the intention of the commander insofar as it is communication, as its communication is essential to the accomplishment of the end sought. What is that? It's mission. So we've got situation mission. We've got literally the exact same thing. Execution is what we have next.

And theirs is missions for the elements of the whole command. What's that? Yeah, that's the execution. That's what we're actually going to do. For America, we have admin and logistics next. And they have orders for the light motorized columns, the field trains and baggage trains, the battle echelon, and the remaining reserve elements insofar as this is of an importance the troop. So what's that? It's all the logistics.

It's all the admin. And the last one we have is command and signal, which is how you're going to communicate and where, you know, this is when you'd be briefing, you'd say, you know, hey, as the tasking commander, I'm going to be on this ridgeline. So we have command and signal. And the last thing that they say is command post and communications to and from. I wonder where we got Smeyak from. So there's the origination of Smeyak. It's, you know, it comes.

from the troupe and furong. That's where we got. So good, man. How this book has escaped like my junior officer training? You know what I mean? Like that's what we're trying to solve right now. Yeah. That's what we're trying to solve it.

We can't go back in time. But I promise you, there are NCOs out there. I talk to them all the time. There are junior officers out there. I talk to them all the time. They send me messages. There are battalion commanders. that go through this and listen to it.

So we're good. Yeah. We're taking care of the problems of the past. This is absolutely true. That's why I'm sitting here. It's literally why I'm sitting here. Because I get a damn email or I get a message from a Marine Corps second lieutenant that's in the game.

Or I get a letter from an army sergeant that's leading a squad and is like, Thank you. Got it. I got to admit, when I was a junior officer, I was so busy, so busy, you know, rabid ears. You guys can't see that. Like whatever I was tasked with. I never had time to read a book like this. I read what books I was basically forced to read and I got through them as best I could. And the best leaders made me do those things because I was so darn busy.

It wasn't a priority of me at 23 years old to do that. But man, some of these things. things I learned firsthand. And like, as you're reading them, I'm like, yeah, why I absolutely know this to be true. But I learned it like by actually touching the hot stove myself, you know. Well, Dave Burke was talking about it when he was at the basic school. He's like they gave him a stack of manuals and said read the manuals. But the problem is you don't have the context around them.

Yeah. So that makes it much, much harder to read. It's like distant. You don't really. And even for me, when I, when I'm reading something with all the context I have around it like when I read it like when I first started reading books that I knew I was going to do on the podcast it gave me a new level of appreciation for when I was reading because I was like oh okay so here's how I'm going to describe this to everyone because just like we were talking about written versus email

versus verbal right when you read the written word it's different than when someone is putting the influence on the right spot, right? When you're using the tone and all that stuff. And I mean, that's coming from, that's coming from Colonel William Reeder who had, I was reading his book to him on this podcast. And he's like, this is very emotional for me because I haven't, you know, read this book since I wrote it.

And it's very hard to listen. to you know it's like yes when you add the voice it's there's something more to it and then when you have someone that's a knuckle-drager like me that says oh here's what this is here's what we're talking about here's what here's what this actually means here's what this translates to on on the battlefield in the boardroom somewhere here's the way it actually works so that's what's good even though we didn't get the ideal training we can give it two of them now. Yeah.

And I think it's so important. We talk about training and how important training is for preparation. Like at least, at the very least, hey, you got to read this book. At the very least, okay, in the absence of that, it's like a complete failure. But at least, okay, you read these books. But you've got to find the time to do the training. Read the books. And then as a leader, sit down to you.

What does that really mean? When we go out and we operate in this way, what are the lessons from this book that we can apply? Yeah. Really do it. Yeah. You know, it's like, for me, what I was reading about, And I read about face, like when we were in Ramadi.

I read it for the first time. I'm not sure, 100% sure when I read it for the first time. But I knew that when I brought it to Ramadi, I was like, that's the only book I brought with me. Wow. And the thing is, I would read that. Like, I would read that to fall sleep, right? I just get up to my room.

I would open up to a random page because I've read it enough times that I don't need to read it from cover to cover. But I'd open up to a random page and I'd be like, oh, oh, this is what I'm experiencing right now. Oh, yeah, okay. He experienced the same thing. I remember one of the first nights I was there, flipped it open, and I start reading it. And what it's saying is they're working with the South Vietnamese military.

And the South Vietnamese military was untrained, unequipped. They were totally devoid of any kind of ethics in terms of money. And, you know, it was corrupt. So I was like, oh, okay. So in Vietnam, they were dealing with the exact same thing that we're dealing with. with here. Okay, cool. Let's look at how he dealt with it. You know what I mean? Look, that's the person that actually made me say, okay, the Iraqi soldiers are not going to be like us. They have a different culture. They run things a different way. It's not wrong. It's just different from the

way we do think. The classic cases, the Iraqi officers skimming money off the enlisted guys' paychecks. Right. And we're, to us, this is like a total, total sin, right? Right. The ultimate sin. You're going to steal money from your enlisted troops. For them, the enlisted guys, that's what they expected. Yeah, they totally expect.

Yeah, he's the boss. Yeah. Hey, he's going to take a little bit. He's going to take his little cut. Of course, he's the boss. You know, what are we doing? We're, we're going to, he's still generous to us, you know, he's not taking all of it. Right.

And we had to get that through our minds, you know, that, that, that their attitude. they're culturally different. And so if we waste a bunch of time trying to sort out their pay, they're all looking at us going, what are you doing? Why are you trying to create a conflict with us? I'm the boss.

I'm going to take my cut. What are you talking about? To them, it's just as simple as... That's how it is. That's just how it is. You know? And so for me, like reading about face, that was the book that really tuned me into,

okay, there are lessons here. I mean, that's why I named Tasking a bruiser, Tassing a Bruser, because that's what Hackworth did. 100% stolen from Hackworth, 100%. But all the little things, cover and movie talks about in there. Talks about decentralized command all the time. All those things are in there. He doesn't, it's not even a leadership book.

It's all in there, though. So, yes, these types of situations where the other thing that happens is everything we've said so far, right? Just every topic that we've talked about is in extreme. ownership it's in the dichotomy of leadership it's all in there but all of it is a different angle and just like when you when you experience the same thing but from a little bit of a different angle you know it better that's right you know it if I teach you an arm lock and then Dean teaches you an arm lock and then Andy teaches you an arm lock you got a little something different from each one of us it's just a

little different sign a little different movement and you get better at it same thing happens here you hear that same message maybe in a little different way Maybe a little different spin on it, maybe shown in a different scenario. You actually learn from it. And that's what's important. Because the more you, the more,

the more variations of the same thing you've seen, the better off, the better you understand it. And it makes you that much better. And if you see the way, if you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. And the more you see it, the more you know it.

So, yes, that's the way it should be. That's the way it should be. be. Continuing on, suppositions and expectations are to be so indicated. Reasons for the measures order belong only exceptionally in the order. Detailed instructions covering all possible contingencies, which are matters of training, do not belong in an order. It's interesting, they say suppositions and expectations. What do we call those in the military column assumptions? We just talked about that too.

Yep. me lying. It is often suitable to issue a warning order. Warning order informs the latest developments of the situation. It is used to affect with the most urgent preparations. Likewise, it is used to permit the troops to come to rest earlier and also permit them to plan to rest longer. So warning order is something that we also use. Another section here.

When an order or report is transmitted orally, the one bearing the order, or report must repeat it to the issuing person. A person transmitting a written report should be instructed as to its contents in so far as conditions permit. Officers transmitting orders should, as a rule, be instructed as to the tactical situation. It's funny, even in the teams, when someone says, peel right, everyone repeats the call. You repeat it back to the person that just told you, and then you repeat it to the next person. The place of the commander and his staff.

this is the next section we're going into. The personal effect of the commander on the troops is of great importance. He must be near the fighting troops. The choice of location for the core commander should be based upon the requirement of the establishment of rapid and continuous communication to the divisions and the rear. He cannot rely along technical communications, meaning telephone wires and all that. We can do better with this now, but back in the day. And even so, there's no. Nothing that beats face to face.

Nothing. Nothing beats face to face. Great distance, in spite of adequate communication facilities, lengthens the command and report lines, endangers the system, and may lead to late reports and orders or even failure of arrival. Moreover, great distance makes difficult personal terrain study and a personal knowledge of the progress of the battle. the division commander belongs with his troops.

Boom. Don't get so detached. This section is called, I just jump through a bunch of really granular tactical stuff. If you're a military, good stuff to read. Gonna jump through it. This section is called attack,

which is just worth covering in its own, right? The attack is affected through movement, fire, thrusts, and through, thrust and through the direction in which it is directed. The attack can be directed from one direction against the front, but ordinarily the greatest strength is launched against the flank or the rear of the enemy. Moreover, an attack can be launched from several directions with a breakthrough of the hostile front new attack directions are provided.

So when you flank someone, guess what? There's going to be other opportunities that are up here. The frontal attack is the most difficult of execution, yet it is the most frequent. The outflanking attack is more efficient than the frontal. Simultaneously, outflanking of both enemy flanks presumes considerable superiority. An envelopment of one or both hostile flanks and reaching deep into his rear can lead to the annihilation of the enemy. This is something that's very tricky because we talk about envelopment of the enemy, which means surrounding the enemy and in a sense.

small that's cool if you're in a battalion or bigger and actually I want to say brigade or bigger like we're talking massive battlefield movements because when you get when you if you envelop if you have a if you have a company of soldiers 150 soldiers and you envelop the enemy guess what you're doing you spread thin well not only you spread thin when you surround an enemy you are all pointing your weapons at yourselves that that's the real problem so ran into this a lot in the teams where guys would want to surround a target and and there's some it's problematic it's very problematic you have to that's why you know the classic L shaped right whether ambush or L-shaped assault there's a reason for that there's a

reason why the guys in Vietnam taught us to do that right because as long as you know what your fields of fire are you can you can go hot if you're in an L-shaped ambush or you're an L-shaped assault the minute I put people, you know, whether it's 270 degrees around the target or 360 degrees, I can, now I have to worry about my backdrop. And it's a real problem. And you know what? You can get away with those, you can get away with enveloping a target all day long,

as long as there's no shooting. But the minute the enemy starts shooting, it's a problem. So there are ways to cover exits from an L. You extend that a little bit. You can put some overwatches in. but it is a real problem to think that you're going to envelop a target in a small, you know, let's say with direct fire weapons, company size are smaller.

It's a real problem to think you're going to be able to envelop a target and not have a problem if there's a big firefight. It's going to suck. Yeah, and those lines, those phase lines can get confused real quickly as we know. But flanking the enemy is awesome. And you should do it every opportunity. do you get in all aspects of life.

Continuing a little bit more about the development, the development presumes a frontal fixation of the enemy. So you still have to lay down some sort of fire to make them distracted. The enemy is most certainly fixed if his entire front is attacked. However, such an attack demands strong forces, which must be absent from the enveloping wing. often therefore must the attacker be content with limited objective or faint attacks. So you're trying to, yeah, if you use every troop that you have to do the frontal frontal assault, well then you've got no one left to flank.

So another cool thing, like in the teams, you'd have the little assault force that was going to move. And so when I first was like going through SQT, well, we'd just take all the big machine gunners and put them in the base element. Like you guys are going to lay down fire. And then all of all the other guys with the with the M4s, we would be the assault team. Well,

what happens when the assault team gets compromised? They're compromised. They're compromised. And now they can't advance. So now they lay down and start laying down fire. Well, now the base force just became the assault force. Right, right. And guess what they're holding?

Yeah. A bunch of heavy weapons. They're not very, they're not as mobile. And even worse, the now base force, all they have is, M16s and they're going ping, ping, ping. That's not going to keep anyone's head down compared to an M60. Right.

So I learned that very early. What you don't, you don't. And it was great for me because that was another thing that initially taught me, hey, you got your standard operating procedures. You got two squads. You know, you got two squads in a platoon. Cool. One is base.

One is assault. Don't pull the heavy weapons into the base force because you might need them. Well, I think in two, it's if the enemy, in there he's saying well if the enemy is fixed right you have it presumes the frontal assault like that's the main effort and and but if

that shifts if they become wise to the flanking maneuver and they begin to put more forces there then the whole thing just dynamically shifted around and so by loading up your base with your automatic weapons now you're now you're totally off balance yes yeah yes these are the little things

that I learned along the way that I that I was like oh that that makes sense So there's a good reason to have an AW or two in each squad. Yes. Yeah. AW2. That's the best position. Check.

Here's talking about execution of attacks. Bases of the cooperation of arms. So what are we talking about here? Hmm. The objective of combined arms in an attack is to bring the infantry in its decisive action against the enemy with sufficient firepower and shock. Action so that it is possible to drive through deeply and break down the final hostile resistance. This goal is first reached when the hostile artillery is taken or is forced to retire.

All arms cooperating in an attack must recognize their mutual capabilities and consider their respective limitations. They require continuous close communications with one another. The cooperation between the attacking infantry and the supporting artillery governs the course of the attack. Full cooperation must exist in time and space throughout the attack. This is a little something that we call cover and move. And what's interesting is how much they talk about communication, continuous close communication with one another. In the cooperation. You know, in the Marine Corps, when we covered, when Dave Burke and I covered,

the tactics manual, they call cover move, cooperation. That's what they call it. And so I wonder where they got that from. Well, cooperation working together, but also like break the word in two pieces, it's co-operation, right? So you have two different elements that may even have different chains of command, right?

You got an artillery unit, you have an infantry unit. And, you know, we saw this in Ramadi, too. Here we are a naval special forces unit with one set of communication method working with Army and Marines, to use different types of communication who owned the battle space. We were guests in their battle space,

and we had to co-operate. We had to co-operate. That meant communication, working together to ensure that synchrony of effort. And without that, that's when, you know, well, we're going to be operating this here. Where are you going to be?

Well, I don't need to tell you. Like that was kind of like this old, you know, some people talk like that. That's not what we did. And that's part of why we had success there is because we co-operated with the Army and the Marines. No doubt about it. Continuously.

Yeah, we covered moved with them 100%. It is the duty of both infantry and artillery to secure their cooperation through mutual established, permanent and effective communication. What does that mean? That means you better have a relationship with them. Dude, I mean, it's just, sorry, I didn't know you're about to read what I just said. No, no, it's good. That's once again proving that actually what we're talking about is timeless. and it should be obvious to people on the battlefield.

It should be obvious to people in the business world. It should be obvious to people that are trying to work together inside of a family. It should be obvious. But once again, the reason we have a business, the reason we have a business is because it's not as obvious. It's not as easy to execute this stuff as it is to read it. Yep, exactly. And it takes practice and it takes technique.

And the best way to get good at it is to do it, but you're going to make mistakes and you're going to learn from them. Well, you better learn from them. So I think that's actually a good place to wrap up this document, you know, this document, this crazy document, croup infuring, which is just tons of those. lessons in there and either lessons learned most of them are just lessons reinforced that's what most of them are simplicity of conduct will most surely obtain the objective friction and mistakes are an everyday occurrence this is for those you out there with the what do they call it a zero defect

mentality wrong people are gonna make mistakes there's gonna be friction there's not you're not gonna get to do anything easy if you're doing something easy guess what it's you shouldn't move on and find something more challenging mutual trust is the surest form of discipline that right there when you when you think of discipline as something you're going to impose on your troops you're wrong you're wrong discipline is formulated through trust strictly maintained discipline is a benefit to all and and then this one one of my favorites from this is the

first demand of war is decisive action decisive action That is what we need. That's what we all need. The words and the thoughts and the plans and the ideas, they all mean nothing without action. And I'm definitely not saying that you don't need to think or you don't need to plan or you don't need to have ideas, but I am saying that none of those things matter

unless you take action. So I think that's all we've got for tonight. And if you want to take some action, in your life, in your world. Here's some things that you can do. Train jihitsu. That's a good one. You're training right now, Andrew?

I am. Check. Back on the mats of justice. Very humbling. The last muster, which is what got me back on the mats. Oh, because you realized you need to get your game back. It was just humbling.

That's just the only way I can describe it. See, you're lucky you had that jiu-jitsu. You had jih Tijuana before a lot of people had jiu-jitsu because you were training in the 90s? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Late 90s. So you kind of rested on those laurels a bit, right? Right? Yeah. Well, and everybody else got really good and I got rusty. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been training.

Not in Jiu-Jitsu anyway. Yeah. So back on the mats. Hey, if you're training Jiu-Jitsu, go to origin, mane.com. You can get American made everything. Geese, the best geese. You can support this podcast and you can support America. We got T-shirts.

It's hoodies, geese. Did I say geese? Yes, I did. And jeans, by the way. Now we got jeans. That's right. American-made jeans. Cotton from America.

Wove in America. Sown in America. By Americans. It's awesome. And actually available now for the first time for pre-order or a deal. origin boots. Origin boots. So same thing.

You know, we invested in the machinery. We found the old timers that know that did that for their living before factory started going overseas. So check out the origin boots, supplements, joint warfare, acrylic oil, discipline, discipline go. And also discipline go, ready to drink. Boo, yeah. I see you've been sucking on that thing over there.

You drank a lot of those during the mustard. You know, I was like, dang. Well, I had some at night, and you're like, you're drinking that right now. I'm like, yeah, man, it tastes great. I like it. I'm a fan of the Tropic Thunder. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we got Tropic Thunder.

We got lemon lime, which is called citrus psycho. I'm running low on that right now, that's why I didn't bring them. Oh, I thought when you brought it in here, you just remembered that my preference. No, you got lucky. I was like, oh, wow, look at that, Jocko, paying attention to the guys of work. form like you know you know don't care don't care all the thing I said about caring was not true I just that's what I have left I didn't want to sacrifice any of my lemon line right to that no dude I remembered I was taking care of you so yeah you can get the you can get

those cans ultimately you're gonna be able to get those everywhere in the world that's what I'm talking about because it's good for you those the ingredients have you seen the ingredients filtered carbonated water natural flavor citric acid monk fruit extract That's the ingredients. Look at the ingredients on any other can of what crap is in there. Oh, it's so bad for you. So it's got a bunch of other things, B12 and magnesium and sodium and potassium and there's caffeine in it. So anyways, check it out.

You'll dig it. And it will get you. It'll get you kind of fired up. They'll get you going. Yeah, exactly. You'll get you going. Warrior Kid, Mulk, mulk, strawberry, chocolate, whatever, a bunch of different flavors, jaco white tea. Check that out.

We have our own store, joccal store.com. Rashcards. shirts truckers hats beanie's hoodies everything on there's legit if you want to support the podcast it's awesome subscribe to the podcast subscribe to this podcast the warrior kid podcast I got a couple that are approaching readiness so we'll be there I usually roll those out three to time so I got one in the bank working on a couple more YouTube if you want to see Echo Charles's legit videos that you can go there and you can in the comments tell Echo that he's just

jacked. He's not here right now to defend himself, but boy, does he love it when people tell him he's jacked. He acts all humble, but he loves every second. Psychological warfare. You get that on iTunes, Google Play. If you want an alarm clock, you want the Jocko alarm clock. Jockle, you should make an alarm clock. It's there. Oh, I have it. This is what I use. It's called psychological warfare. If you want that, go to any MP3 platform. You can get it. Flipsidecanvus.com. Dakota, my brother, he's making cool things to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books.

The next book to come out is called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Breaking down this stuff at a tactical level pragmatically so you can execute it. Also, way the Warrior Three Kid just came out a little while ago. It's called Where There's a Will.

We talked about will today. Shouldn't children know about the power of their will? Yes, they should. Get them the book that's literally called Where There's a Will, and you know the rest of it. it. The other way the warrior kid books are also available way the warrior kid in Mark's mission. Mikey and the Dragons best kids book ever. You're one of the first people I read it

to. Yes. Before it was even in print. It wasn't even in print. It was like I just scratched it out. It's so good. Yeah, it was awesome when I read it to you and you were like I could see the look in your face. You're like, how did this knuckle dress you write that same exact. So good. That's a gift I give to like friends of mine to give to like kids like it's a bedtime story. It's so good and there's something in there for all of us adults too. There is. There is indeed. And then there's discipline equals freedom field manual.

How to get after it manual. The audio version of that is on its mp3 is not audible. It's because same thing. I want to be able to be able to break it down and put on their alarms. So that's what I did. iTunes. whatever, MP3. Extreme ownership with my brother, Laf Babin,

dichotomy leadership with my brother Laf Babin. Everything that we're talking about, in modern language, examples from the battlefield in the business world, very straightforward principles. One of the best, I think it's the best selling business book since it came out, extreme ownership.

Dicotomy leadership, people say, is better, interestingly enough. So get those two. EF Online. We made online, training for leadership because you can't just go to one event or read one book and think that you're all good to go you need to continually train and and that's what we made EF online for EFonline.com it is leadership training interactive leadership

training online check it out and we have one more muster this year it's in Sydney Australia all the other muster we did we did Chicago so We did Denver sold out. We had to change the room around in Denver. Yeah. To, because we had so much demand. So we changed the room around. That's not happening in Sydney.

Sydney is absolutely going to sell out. Go to extreme ownership.com. If you want to come, I look forward to seeing you all in Sydney. And we're going to announce the 2020 dates pretty soon. How'd you like muster? Oh, muster is so amazing, so good. And, you know, teams need to come together. Yeah.

You know, you, I mean, I've gone to events for years. There's nothing like muster, you know, running a business, there's nothing like muster. And I'll just tell you that you come as a leader, for sure. The value of bringing several of your other key leaders with you, so you're all hearing the material together. Yeah. It's one thing to go individually. Sure, that's great. But the tendency is to come back like Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets.

And everyone's, you're fired up. And everyone's like, okay. But when several of you hear it together, you can really implement change in your organization. That's a good call. And we've seen a lot more of that. There were some people, some companies that brought 20 plus people to the muster. Amazing. And we set aside some seats so that they could be together like you're talking about.

Like 20 plus people. And there's plenty of companies that brought four. Yep. You know, brought six. Some people come alone. That's fine too. But yeah, if you can bring a few people from your team and you can all hear it from the horse's mouth and you can all bounce these ideas on.

each other it just adds that much more to the experience and just kind of FYI when we do these we go to the hotels the hotel people are like this is the most incredible thing this is the only event where when the doors open at 745 in the morning after we do PT at 745 come back shower when the there's people lined up waiting to get in there and then every you know the the hotel staff would be like Everyone's so proactive and nice and you know no one's rude. It's just like good people. It's awesome Because what are people focused on people are focused on getting after it Winning and and and being good and I'll tell you too just something I've seen

You don't see this at other events for those who are listening lay and jocco Basically they don't basically eat all day Every break so called lay and jocco are sitting there talking to everybody and that's something the feedback that I see consistently people are like wow Laef and Jocco and all the instructors are so accessible. So it's not like the session's end and lay van Jocko disappear back into their green room. Yeah, yeah. A cup of tea.

They're out front meeting. So you get a lot of really good interaction. I stopped saying no green room, but there is no green room at the muster. So we're there. If you think, if you want to come hang out, come hang out. That's what we're doing. And of course, right now we have EF Overwatch. And this was cool, too, to see this at the muster.

You know, people say, where can I get? leaders that have these Principles in their brain how can I get them to my company? Well believe me Laif and I have been getting asked that for years and so what we did was We created a company with Mike Sorrelli Who's another Ashland front guy another one of our brothers from T u Bruiser And and you know he said hey look he'd been working with veterans transitioning into the civilian sector and he said hey let's rock this and so That's where we did.

Great idea from Mike. And so now we've got it. EF. Overwatch, whether you're Special Operations veteran or aviation, combat aviation veteran. And little newsflash, coming soon, we are opening it up. We got another wing of EF Overwatch we're about to bring online, which is going to be for everyone in the military. Because the demand is so high. And look, you're in special operations great.

You've got great leadership experience. You know who else has great leadership experience? An infantry platoon commander, right? An infantry platoon sergeant. So we started with the community that we know. We know it best. But the fact of the matter is, and you know this as well as anyone, the rest of the military, they're great people.

They're great leaders. They've great experiences. So we're creating something right now that is going to open this up so we can plug in our great experienced military people from every branch, from every MOS, from every job specialty, and let them apply those leadership skills, that discipline to the civilian workforce and make the veterans life better and make America better, make the companies better. It's just a win-win. So we got that rolling out in the next few months, but just a heads up on that. one and if you need more of this conversation because two straight hours of me and Andrew Paul is not enough then you can find us on the inner webs we're on Twitter we're on Instagram and we are on Dine Fruzenbach Andrew is the Andrew Paul and I am at

Jocko Willink Andrew you got any closing thoughts get after it every day I'll I love your post. None of us are promised tomorrow. Make as big of an impact you can every single day. I've had a lot of time to think about life and particularly recently passing on my grandfather and other friends of ours. At the end of the day, we're only here on this earth

for a certain amount of time. And I think the biggest legacy that we can leave is how we impact the lives of other people. And that can be at a small level. It doesn't cost anything to say a kind word to somebody, to offer some encouragement, to show an act of kindness to hold the door. That doesn't cost anything. And I think we can make a huge difference every day in just how we interact with other people in kindness and in getting after it every single day. So that when I meet St. Peter at the Burley Gates and I meet my maker, he says, well done, good and faithful servant.

Check. And it's interesting that that ties right back into this premise. that as a leader, one of the most important things, if not the most important thing that you can do as a leader, is care about your people. Now, we learn from military history, and those lessons are, of course, written in blood, written in blood by the men and women around the globe

that have served, that are currently serving, that protect our freedom every day. Thank you to all of them. 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. Same thing. Holding the line. Thank you all for keeping us protected here at home and to everyone else out there whether you're in the military or not.

Whether you're a first responder or not, whether you have a mission or you just have a job no matter what situation you're in it all starts when you start when you actually start when you take decisive action that's what you need to do you need to make it happen by getting up every day and getting after it and until next time this is Andrew Paul and Jocko Out.