Jocko Podcast - 198: Life is a WAR. Fighting for How You Live. Field Service Regulations FM 100-5 w/ Dave Berke.

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:28 - Field Service Regulations FM 100-5 2:12:50 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:20:45 - Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:39:07 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 198 with David Burke and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, David. Good evening. And David is back on the podcast because Echo is, well, he's still on vacation. And we are continuing the thread that we did on the last podcast with Andrew Paul. The last podcast, we discussed a German fieldman. annual called Troopen Fehrung, which means leading troops. And I mentioned the American version of that document. It's called Field Service Regulations FM 100 Tack 5. And the one, and this is a little

bit, it's not that important, but I'm going to bring it up later. The one that we're going to talk about was published in 1941. So prior to the entry of, of us into World War II. And they plagiarized heavily from the Troopen Furuk. But there are enough differences in here that it does merit its own review. So we're gonna look at it. We're gonna explore leadership once again, Dave.

Are you ready? I'm ready. All right, let's go to field service regulations FM 100, TAC5. There's actually a little intro section in here, and it goes like this. Preface, on 22 May, 1941, the War Department published a new version of FM 105 operations.

This manual superseded a tentative 1939 version, which I actually have not seen. I'll have to dig that one up. The most recent official edition had been the field service regulations dated 1923. The army of 1941 desperately needed an up-to-date doctrinal guidance. The world was already engulfed in war and the United States had begun to mobilize. Thus, the army was eight times larger than it had been in 1939. That's two years, 1939 to 1941. You want to talk, you know,

you and I work with companies now and we're growing a lot. We're in a growth phase. Eight times bigger in two years. And we're not talking about a small organization. It's one thing to go from, you know, two people to 16. Hey, we're eight times bigger. But to go from whatever, a few hundred thousand to over a million. That's serious growth. So continuing, moreover, it had also embarked on a modernization program that affected virtually every facet of military activity.

The addition, the 1941 edition of FM 100, Tack 5 in California. The State of Army Doctrine on the eve of America's entry into World War II The 1941 version of FM 100-Tac-5 has long been recognized as a classic piece of doctrine writing Remarkable for its clarity of concept and prose now come on folks We can't give you that much credit We just read the German version and we know that we know where you're getting this from So that's that's a little bit of a bold statement there coming from from this Preface. It also has valuable historical. It is also a valuable historical artifact preserving as it does the doctrinal thought of the army at a critical juncture in history. And this is signed by Christopher R. Gable, PhD, historian, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Did you go to war college?

No, I went to Johns Hopkins instead. Oh, wait. What do they call you? Oh, that's right. Good deal, Dave. Yeah. Check. And what did you study there? International public policy. How long was it? How long was the school? About 18 months. So I was on an academic fellowship. So I was basically a civilian, got a master's degree and started working on a second degree while I was there. What was the second degree that you started working on? MBA. Oh, okay. The policy, what were you doing?

Yeah, so really what I was about is the reason why the Marine Corps sent me to do that is to when I, after that, was going to go to the joint staff to help formulate how we relate to other countries and the security that goes along with that and the relationships we have with other countries is actually pretty important. A lot of those lessons came from World War II. And, you know, this isolationist mindset didn't help us in the beginning and how to form policy that helps the country create security around the world, really. Who are the professors? Probably the most prominent professor there was Elliot Cohen. He's now the dean at Seiss, but he ran the strategic studies department that I was there.

And then John McLaughlin, who was the former acting director of the CIA. So some pretty amazing guys there, some pretty great access to some really smart folks. And it spent their careers in international arena. Yeah, that's kind of epic. It's pretty legit. So no, I didn't go to war college. Good deal, Dave. Coming in hot.

All right. Now, I will say that the troop infirung has a much better, kickoff much better kickoff than than the field service regulations but we're going to jump in here's where I'm going to pick it up the the in fact this this one is so unepic I'm not reading it

well now I kind of have to it starts off with with just kind of a blah blah field service regulations it's just yeah here here's what it says FM 100-Tac-5 field service regulations operations is published for the information and guidance of all concerned It contains the doctrines of leading troops in combat and tactics of the combined arms and constitutes the basis of instruction of all arms and services for field service Okay, that's not bad this is actually decent

While the fundamental doctrines of combat operations are neither numerous nor complex Their application is sometimes difficult I think we call that simple not easy That is simple not easy 100%. Knowledge of these doctrines and experience in the application provide all commanders a firm basis of action in a particular situation. So let's think about this.

This reminds me of what Mattis says. You know, Mattis is like, I'm not going to get surprised on the battlefield because I've read something close to it. I've read something close to it. Something I can relate to it. So knowledge of these doctrines and experience in their application provide all commanders a firm basis for action in a particular situation. This knowledge and experience enable the commander to utilize the flexible organization with which he is provided to group his forces into task units most suitable for the accomplishment of his mission.

Now, we get what that's saying. And it's pretty cool what it's saying. It's also very verbose, right? Hey, you've got to task organized sometimes. You got to have a flexible organization. Yes, definitely. It goes on, and this is where we get, we start getting a little bit, a little bit of fire going here. Set rules and methods must be avoided.

That is probably the last thing that someone would think about the military, right? Set rules and methods must be avoided. And I'll tell you, I actually think that's a little bit of a strong statement. Like, you actually have to have standard operating procedures. You have to have some rules in place. I think maybe that's the kind of statement where you're making it because the common practice is to follow set rules so strictly. And I'll give you another example. So you know we talk about humility all the time?

We talk about humility all the time, even though confidence is an equally important trait for a leader to have. Why aren't we running around telling people to be confident all the time? It's because 98% of the time the issue is not people are. lack confidence, 98% of the time it's that they lack humility. So that's why we end up talking about that all the time. Hey, you gotta be humble, you gotta be humble. Because who ends up in leadership positions, right? Does somebody that's afraid to step up and isn't confident?

They don't end up in leadership positions. So over years, if we're dealing with the CEO of a company, or we're dealing with a unit commander in the military, or a team leader in any organization, they got there for years of a being confident for sure that's how they ended up there so and it worked for him and that only exacerbates and and magnifies their confidence which is good but when they get to a point where all of a sudden they start believing their own their own hype and that's where it becomes a problem so 98% of the time the problem that

we're dealing with isn't a lack of a lack of confidence it's a lack of humility now where this changes is when we're dealing with it like a young junior officer that feels like they're insecure they don't really know what they should do and they need to say they need to have confidence right yeah and the confidence that they actually need is the confidence to say hey you know what sergeant or hey you know what foreman on a job site I don't really know how to do this can you guide me through it that's the only confidence I need they don't know how to do the actual thing yeah they just need to they just need to have the confidence that they can say I don't get it yeah and it won't

undermine their credibility as a leader to admit that they don't know what to do no yeah Doesn't undermine it at all. So what they're saying here is, you've got these military folks that are always following the rules. That's kind of the, that's the lean. That's the tendency. The tendency is military guy, you got told to do something, you're going to do it. So what they're saying is leaning, getting you pulling back the other direction a little bit harder to balance the dichotomy a little bit as set rules and methods must be avoided. And then it continues.

They limit imagination and initiative, which are so important in the successful, prosecution of war they provide the enemy a fixed pattern of operations which he can more easily counter yeah which he can exploit right yeah yeah so you're doing the same thing over and over again cool watch this we'll be waiting for you and and and and now we get to the point where I was kind of like well what this what this book starts off with is basically you know you know you get a legal document and it starts off with the definition of all the terms that's what this starts off with theater of war comprises this theater of operations is that a combat zone is this

Communication zone is that. So it goes through a bunch of sort of tactical terms, which is fine. I mean, they're necessary, necessary. But that's kind of where this thing starts off. Whereas the troop infuring starts off with just the most legit intro, here's number one from the troop infer. The conduct of war is an art depending upon free creative activity scientifically grounded. It makes the highest demands on the personality. That's how that's how that one starts off.

This one I'll read, because these are both numbered the same way. That's how much they ripped it off. They're both kind of every single paragraph throughout is numbered. This one starts off with theater of war comprises those areas of land, sea and air, which are or may become directly involved in the conduct of war. Weak. Yeah. We didn't want that.

That's not what we were looking for. So then finally, in chapter two, it starts to step up a little bit. And you're going to start, this is where you're going to start hearing some of the same stuff, a little bit different, translated a little bit differently. Here we go.

No one arm wins battles. The combined action of all arms and services is essential to success. The characteristics of each arm and service adapt it to the performance of its special function. The higher commander coordinates and directs the action of all, exploiting their powers to attain the,

ends sought. So we have to work together. We have to cover move for each other. Important to remember. You're not going to win alone. It's not happening. And that's also why they say there, there's no set answer for this. You don't know what arm or which component you have is going to be the one that you're going to use. And if I sat at an SOP, it says in this situation, you do this every single time. You're going to lose every single time because there is no prescribed way to do it. There's just a framework and understanding how they work. And the art is, what do I do now? Yeah. This is also an interesting, if you break this down to a really granular level. And this is a question that has come up before to me, you've got a person

that's naturally good at something, but they're really not naturally good at something else. What do you do? Well, according to this, what you do is you exploit their powers, right? You take advantage of what they're good at. Of course, it doesn't mean, you know, if I've got Dave Burke, who's really good at interacting relationships with a client, but you're horrible at paperwork. I don't assign you to be in charge the paperwork and not let you talk to clients. Sure. Right. But I want to make you better.

No. I want to take advantage of what you're good at. I will still say, hey, Dave, man. You got to get better paperwork. You got to get better at paperwork. I'm not going to have you running it, but you got to get better at it. And you're like, cool. And over time, you do get better at it, but it's not, I'm not.

And then I got someone else that's awesome at paperwork, but they're not good at communications. Well, I'm not going to put them in the client facing position. I'm going to put them in the best. I'm going to put them in the back room with a computer, but we are going to work with them. We're going to make them get up and, you know, talk to some clients so that we do build a more well-rounded team. Yeah, for sure.

You actually don't know when that person who is weak at this one thing might need to rely on that for organizational success. You can't ignore that. Yeah. Yeah, in a seal platoon, I mean, every, okay, you've got your, you got your Corman, your medic. And the Corman, obviously, is the go-to guy who's carrying the med gear and is trained at it.

at an incredibly advanced level, but every single person knows how to put out a tourniquet, knows how to stop the bleeding, IV, knows how to do an IV, knows how to do a needle-down decompression. Like, we all get that training. We can make it happen. Yep.

Same thing with comms. Same thing with everyone. Everybody knows how to shoot that pig gun. Everybody in the squad. Everyone in the platoon knows how to do that. Everybody's going to need to know how to program the radio. Yes, indeed. True statement.

All right. Now what it does now is it breaks down every sort of arm that we're talking about. We're talking about arms. The different no one arm wins battles. It breaks down every arm. It breaks down cavalry, field artillery, coast artillery, air corps, engineers, signal core, chemical warfare.

Because remember, this is coming off World War I. I'm not going to cover all those, but I will look at infantry. Because it just says a couple things about infantry. The infantry is essentially an arm of close combat. Its primary mission in the attack is to close with the enemy and destroy or capture him in defense to hold its position and repel the hostile attack. Infantry fights by combining fire movement, I think we call that cover move, and shock action. Sometimes people use words that I need to completely embed into my vocabulary. Shock action is one of those things.

By fire, it inflicts losses on the enemy and neutralizes his consequences. combat power. By movement, it closes with the enemy and makes its fire more effective. By shock action, it completes the destruction of the enemy in close combat. Amen. Totally. Then we got a little butt here because we all love infantry, but here we go. Infantry is capable of limited independent in action through the employment of its own weapons. Its offensive power decreases appreciably when its freedom to maneuver is limited or when it is confronted by an organized defensive position. That's why, as much as I love infantry, you have to have the supporting arms.

And when you capture the enemy in the combined arms dilemma, that is the glory of warfare. You know what was crazy. I don't remember when I first heard the term the combined arms dilemma. And for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, it's when the enemy or when you are attacking the enemy from multiple different weapon systems and no matter what they do, they're trapped. They're in a dilemma. If they move one direction, they're going to hit with one type of weapon.

If they move in another direction, they're going to hit with another. If they go to ground and hide, then the infantry is going to move in. You've got them in the combined arms dilemma. This is what it is, you know what essentially? It's checkmate. Yeah, it's a checkmate. That's exactly right. You can't go anywhere else.

What's interesting is, and what was scary was in Ramadi, the enemy would trap coalition forces in the combined arms dilemma. So they would initiate perhaps by dropping mortars onto a little outstation. One, everyone, when you're getting mortared, what you have to do is you have to get overhead cover. So now when you get overhead cover, you're basically hiding. When you're hiding, then they come out with machine gun fire. They start shooting machine guns because they can expose themselves.

They can start shooting machine guns. And the machine guns, you can shoulder and shoot a machine gun very rapidly. So while that's happening, now you're essentially pinned down. Well, now they come out with the rockets because they take a little bit longer to aim. You know, an RPG takes a little bit more time to aim. And you're more exposed. There's back blast to deal with. So it's a little bit harder of a weapon to handle.

so it takes a little bit more time. But when you're getting cover fire from a machine gun, you got that time. So then in come the rockets. Now while this is happening, here comes the vehicle-borne IED. And now everyone's heads are down. Explosions are going off. And while this is happening, a vehicle-borne IED now closes in,

makes it through the serpentine and blows up inside of one of these little outposts. It happened multiple times while we were. in Ramadi and these little outposts, these little checkpoints, these little ECPs would be, in several cases, overrun. Yeah. The enemy also evolved while we were there too, and we started to see them account for what they knew our normal reaction would be. We understand what a combined arms element is, and the other thing that they did that

made that situation so hard was they would interact with the civilians, so they knew our normal response. If you wanted to get on your heavy machine guns and lay down a... base of fire, there was so much risk at injuring civilians that we had to account for, and they knew that. So they made our normal response to that so much more difficult, and they added that additional layer of complexity for us, so we had limited options, and they took full advantage of that, and those V-bids, those fuel-laden, you know, trash trucks and things like that, those things that those things that they did and watch them get better accounting for what they knew we would do,

made it even harder for us. And they look, they got good at that, and it was really, really tough. And taking it, again, adaptation, if you recall when, well, when I first got there, they would do one of those attacks at a time. Yeah. There was a couple days where they did two, two or three of those attacks simultaneously in different parts of the city because then they knew, hey, they're going to overwhelm our casualty evacuation. They're going to overwhelm our fire support. They're going to overwhelm our QRF. So they were good. Yeah, man.

They were good. The combined arms dilemma, it's, it's, it's, it's. a positive thing when you put somebody in it, it's a negative thing when it happens to you. By the way, just, I mean, it's worth noting that when you're doing jiu-jitsu, you're looking for the same thing. You're looking to set up a triangle arm lock sweep combined arms dilemma. You've got three things. If they defend one, you're going to catch them in the other. You've got them in checkmate. That's what you're trying to do. All right. Now, after that, like I said, this whole next section, it just explains each one of the various arms that we have, you know, from, like I said,

from cavalry to field artillery. And boy, was I happy in Ramadi when we were able to use field artillery. That was, that was awesome. I mean, it was awesome to tanks and field artillery. There's not too many people in modern warfare that get to do that. Yeah, I got to control some artillery. I think it was like the 2-2-F-A. And we didn't get to use them a lot.

But, man, they were so dialed in when we called for them. They were ready to go. Getting to use them was awesome. Because it wasn't that common. But when we did, man, they were so dialed in. Yeah. I remember the most, I remember they fired a ton of a loom. We were doing a big night operation.

I think it was when we were pushing into like cop iron. Yeah. Springfield, maybe something like that. Yeah, something like that. And they just put up a loom for a solid 45 minutes. It was so epic. Yeah. And it was because the Iraqi soldiers couldn't, didn't have night vision.

So, hey, let's get them, let's get them be able to say. So it covers that. It covers, it covers the, what do they call it, coastal, coast artillery corps. They cover the air core, which, which is pretty short. And we'll get into that later. You know, pre-World War II, air was not a huge element in warfare. In World War II, it was. In many in many cases, you know, the biggest part of warfare.

Some battles were almost pure warfare were air warfare. I mean, a lot of those naval battles were I don't know what percentage, but a massive percentage was air warfare. The Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain was 100% air warfare. So and we'll talk about some of the changes that happened in 1944 when they rewrote this thing. So then they talk about the Signal Corps. They talk about the chemical warfare. So, So they cover all those things and again kind of lay out What they are and what's important about them And then they finally Get into chapter three which is called leadership And now they get it they get some credit right now because they're coming out strong

Strong maybe even stronger than our our German friends over here in the troupenjuring So opening line, chapter three, leadership. Leadership is based on knowledge of men. So understanding human nature is what you have to do if you're going to be in a leadership position. That's what we're talking about. That's what we've been talking about. That's what we talk about all the time. And that's not just leadership in war.

That's leadership everywhere. That's what business, everything. It is. That's exactly right. It's people. Yeah. It's men. And that is that's why when I went to college, you know, we were talking about your college where you studied policy, right?

I studied men. And I did. And I did it because I was reading books. And I'll tell you, I've said this before. The guy that understands human nature, I think may be better than anyone else, Shakespeare. as crazy as that sounds. You start diving into those books. He understood people.

And there's a lot of lessons to be learned. At some point in my life, I'm going to do every Shakespeare play. I'm going to cover it all. Because there's so many lessons in each one of those. We'll get there. All right. Continues on.

And it's where we're still, we're still staying strong right now. Man is the fundamental instrument in war. Other instruments may change, but he remains relatively constant. Unless his behavior and elemental attributes are understood, gross mistakes will be made in planning operations and in troop leading. In training the individual soldier, the essential considerations are to integrate individuals into a group

and establish for that group a high standard of military conduct and performance of duty without destroying the initiative of the individual. Yes. Is there much more to say? That should just be read over and over again. And how hard the balance is for a leader to cultivate that and to allow that to happen and how critical that is. Because without either of those, you simply cannot be successful.

I can't remember if it was Laif or J.P. at the muster was telling a story about how they were watching, it was Leif. He was out watching when he was the ops officer at a SEAL team. He was out watching the training. I was putting the guys through training. And all chaos was breaking loose. It was total mayhem. It was an urban environment.

And one, there was no leadership happening. Leaders were all just overwhelmed. And he sees me walk over to like this young kind of pipe hitting E5, who I've been watching him you know I've been tracking him and I can see that he's he's good like he's a good aggressive he's a natural leader and I walk over to him and he's holding like a saw and I was like bro you know and I'm like bro what's going on he's like we need to get out of here and I was like make it happen and you can see his eyes he's kind of questioning because you know he's I think he's a one cruise wonder I'm like you make it happen and

He's like, okay, and just starts making the call. And that right there. At some point, his initiative as an individual had been beat down. And as soon as it was released into the wild, he took charge and made things happen. And so it is a hard balance because you can't have this dude just out there being rogue. And trust me, some of these young seals, you give them a little indication that they can get after. it and they're going to go to the N3 and I would see that happen too you get some some kid that's so over the top that they'll just start making you know trying to make everything

happen themselves and they'll get out of control and that'll be bad so yes this is what it is understanding behavior understanding elemental attributes yeah all right and then it goes on war places is a severe test on the physical endurance and moral stamina of the individual soldier. To perform his duties efficiently, he must not only be well equipped and technically trained, but he must also be physically qualified to endure the hardships of field service and be constantly fortified by discipline based on the high ideals of military conduct. We salute you. You got to keep that.

You got to keep that physical, the physical readiness. You have to have it. Yeah, for sure. But in the same sentence, they just say the phrase, you know, the moral standard, too. Like, it's, that's a really important thing. And it's crazy how these sentences, they're so succinct and so straightforward. But just how powerful that comment is, the physical fitness and the moral standard, you have to keep both of those. Just those two things.

Yeah. So easy for that to break down. Strong men, inculcated with a proper. sense of duty a conscious pride in their unit and a feeling of mutual obligation to their comrades in the group can dominate and demoralize Can dominate the demoralizing influences of battle far better than those imbued only with the fear of punishment or disgrace Yeah, there's a couple things. I was I was I was on Theo Vaughn's podcast yesterday and we were talking about Controlling your emotions. You know he's an emotional guy and he was saying he doesn't he was saying he's hilarious, but he's He was saying he doesn't have any emotion,

he doesn't have a very good emotional memory. So when something bad happens, he does something and he gets a bad result and it's horrible. And then he'll make the same mistake, you know, a week later because he just doesn't remember. And then he goes, oh, man, I'm so stupid. And I was talking about the fact that, I was trying to figure out,

because I do consciously try and control my emotions, right? And I was trying to think of where did that come from? Where do you start doing this? And the answer is actually pretty straightforward. I remember as I got more senior in the SEAL teams, well, when I was junior, I remember this, I see a leader lose their temper and think that's not good. That's negative. Every person in our platoon right now is looking at this guy like he's an idiot because

they're acting that way. And then as I got older and got into leadership positions, I realized, oh, if I, if I go negative, everyone's going negative. If I stay positive, everyone is staying positive. That's a big deal. That's where it comes from. So then we get to this here. And this is so obvious.

I mean, you know, while I was reading this, I could see your head just nodding in affirmation that. And this is the, this is where there's a, there's like a split. I don't know if it's a split, but there's definitely a frisure of some kind, a fissure of some kind between people that think, hey, if I bark orders and people fear me, I guess it's that one. It's fear, do they fear me or do they respect me? Do people fear me or do they love and respect me?

You will get 1,000 times better leadership from people that love you and respect you than you will from people that are afraid of you. Yeah, and that fear and intimidation, you get those short-term wins. You typically get the response you want to say, hey, that worked out. Suckered in. Yeah, that worked. I got a little tactical, little tactical victory. You and I talk about this all the time, the tactical versus strategic.

And that could be addictive. I tell you to do something, you do it because you're afraid of the retaliation if you don't. If I give you any resistance, cool, yell at me. Yeah. Brow beat me down. And then I'll submit to your orders because I just don't want to be browbeat anymore. And I go and do what you told me to do. And you walk her way going, see, that's right, I won.

That's how you lead. Yeah, I won. That's how you lead. That seal you're talking about, probably what happened is he made an aggressive decision. One of his leaders came back and crushed him for it. And had you not been there, that E5 is thinking, I actually know what to do here to save the platoon. But I'm not going to say anything because I don't want to get crushed by that guy. And those teams get wiped out in training.

Yeah. And all, yeah. So if you're, if you find yourself in a situation, where you feel you need to escalate your emotions, you're wrong in 19 different ways. We get that question working with the clients all the time. And I've gotten to a point now my answer is straightforward when people ask, oh, how do I control my emotions?

And I'm like, well, do you want to win? Yeah. I'm like, then control your emotions. It's pretty much it because every time you don't, you lose. And don't be a robot. We know that. But that idea of like losing your mind you're losing control of yourself, the answer is always, hey, do you like winning?

Good. Stop doing that. And you'll win more. Check. Continuing. In spite of the advances in technology, the worth of the individual man is still decisive. The open order of combat accentuates his importance. Every individual must be trained to exploit a situation with energy and boldness and must be imbued with the idea that success will depend upon his initiative and action. Is there any more empowerment that a human being needs than that right there? Every individual. Every individual must be trained to exploit a situation with energy and boldness and must be

imbued with the idea that success will depend upon his initiative and action. Again, going back to the muster, where JP told the story of how I was like, listen, everyone's going to be relying on you. And he was like, dang. And then I came up on stage afterwards and I said, what JP doesn't know is I told that to everyone. I told that to everyone. That's what I was doing was this right here.

Everyone is going to be counting you. And it's the truth. It's the truth because if we're in a horrible situation and we need fire support, it's the radio man that's going to save us. If we're in a firefight and we need to maneuver, it's the machine gunners that are going to save us. If someone gets wounded,

it's the corman that's going to save us. If there's a decision that needs to be made us, the leaders that are going to save us. If we're dealing with the IED threat, it's the EOD guys are going to save us. Everyone is that person. Yeah. And everyone has to be imbued with the idea that success will depend upon his initiative and action. We were talking about the one tag three a couple months ago and I'm paraphrasing, but there's

a line on there. It's like every single person on your team is critical and even the most junior person has the ability to destroy your entire plan. You know, something along was, that was Klaus Fitz right there. That was a Klauswitz quote inside the one three. For sure.

Yeah. So they can win or they can lose. All right. Continuing. The dispersion of troops in battle caused by the influence of modern weapons makes control more difficult. Cohesion within a unit is promoted by good leadership, discipline, pride in the accomplishments

and reputation of the unit, and mutual confidence and comradeship among its members. We're not going to be around each other. It's not happening. Yeah. You're on your own out there. Leading troops in combat, regardless of the echelon of command, calls for cool and thoughtful leaders with a strong feeling of great responsibility imposed upon them. Extreme ownership.

At every level. Detach. Cool. They must be resolute and self-reliant in their decisions. energetic and insistent in execution and unperturbed by the fluctuations of combat. Ah, yes. Who is I talking to? I was talking to someone lately and they're like, do you get spun up about anything?

And I'm like, nope. What am I going to get spun up about nothing? Things are going to go bad. Yep. Things are going to go great. Yep, that's the way it's going to be. Troops are strongly influenced by the example and conduct of their leaders. Again, that's the conversation I had with Theo yesterday.

A leader must have superior knowledge. That's why we study. That's why you read. You know, it's funny because Andrew Paul was reading this thing with Andrew Paul, and he's like, it's just ridiculous. This is Andrew Paul talking. It's ridiculous that I didn't read this when I was a young lieutenant in the SEAL teams. And we went through the whole conversation about you talking about getting a stack of manuals at the basic school like hey, I'm going to read them because I have to.

I'm going to memorize whatever words are in there that I think I'm going to get tested on. But that's not what we're doing. That's not knowledge. This is knowledge. So a leader must have superior knowledge willpower. Self-confidence, initiative and disregard of self. There you go. a leader must have superior knowledge,

willpower, self-confidence, initiative, and disregard of self. I like how they had to throw that in there. They had to throw that in there. You know what, that offsets? That offsets self-confidence. It offsets willpower. It offsets superior knowledge

because disregard of self is humility, right? Hey, that's what it is. I'm not important. I don't know everything. I'm not overconfident. Continuing, any show of fear or unwillingness to share danger is fatal to leadership. On the other hand, a bold and determined leader will carry his troops with him no matter how difficult the enterprise. Mutual confidence between the leader and his men is the surest basis of discipline.

Now, they use trust in the troupe and furin. They use the word trust. Same type of sentence, but mutual confidence. And again, you know, I'm not down there when Laf is a platoon commander inspecting his weapons once a day to make sure that they're being cleaned. He knows me. I know him. He trusts me. I trust him.

That's the best form of discipline. Yeah. Not imposed discipline, but mutual confidence. That's the accountability you talk about too. It's like, hey, the accountability is the recognition of this needs to happen. Yeah. And you know that about me because our relationship is. strong enough for you to not have to wonder if this is important. And it just gets done.

Yeah. Because you know it needs to get done. Yeah. Um, to gain this confidence, the leader must find a way to the hearts of his men. Here we go. Isn't that kind of crazy? Here we are. We're talking about military operation. We're talking 1941. 1941. Depression is going on. People are starving in America and we talk about how soft things are now. Well, guess what? Here we are, 1941, and we're talking about to gain confidence, the leader must find the way to the hearts of his men. This he will do by acquiring an understanding of their thoughts and feelings and by showing a constant concern for their comfort and welfare. And as one of my heroes, General Mukayama, said you you got to care about your men you got to care about your men you got to care about

your men how do they say to here show a constant concern for their welfare a comfort welfare yeah what does that mean you got to care about your men yeah for the people listening to this is not some sort of robotic action to you actually have to care about your men this is this is as the authentic authenticity of this is is probably more critical than anything else because what your men will will figure out if it's not real they'll see through that immediately. I got a good idea.

If you don't care about your men, if you don't care about your troops, if you don't care about your people, you shouldn't be in a leadership position. Right. How's that? Leave. Go and be a solo entrepreneur or be by yourself.

A good commander avoids subjecting his troops to useless hardships. He guards against dissipating their combat strength in inconsequential actions or harassing them through faulty staff management so yeah can you can you go I discipline training train hard train how you fight all those things can you do that too much yes you can he keeps in close touch with all subordinate units by means of personal visits and observation it is essential that he know from personal contact the mental moral and physical state of his troops the conditions

with which they are confronted their accomplishments their desires their needs know your people. The commander should promptly extend recognition for services well done. Lend help where help is needed and give encouragement in adversity. Considerate to those whom he commands, he must be faithful and loyal to those who command him. A commander must live with his troops and share their dangers and privations as well as their joys and sorrows.

By personal observation and experience, he will then be able to judge their needs. and combat value. A commander who unnecessarily taxes the endurance of his troops will only penalize himself. The proper expenditure of combat strength in proportion to the objective to be attained. When necessary to the execution of the mission, the commander requires and receives from his unit the complete measure of sacrifice. We can sum all that up actually by saying, and this is what we say with them, you've got to build relationships. Yeah. And that gets back to the comment that was made earlier is when you violate these things,

when you don't do these things for your men and your people, you certainly hurt them, but you actually are hurting yourself. You are actually going to be the loser in the end of all this because you're not doing those things. And something that people should understand, too, is when they talk about all these different needs, and everybody on your team is different too. This isn't just some blanket. I have a platoon of 25 or a company of 50.

every person's needs are going to be different. And you as a leader actually need to know individually what all those are. Yes. And what I thought you were going to say, that's a great point. I thought you were going to say, when you said everybody, I said, oh, I know where he's going this. When you're doing these little maneuvers to take care of yourself, everybody notices it 100%. And not only that, not only do they see it, but they think that you think that they're stupid

and you don't notice what's happening. Yep. And you look like the biggest idiot. The biggest idiot in the world. So you make these little maneuvers. You have that little that little space heater, right? You have that little heater in your room

when everyone else is freezing. They know that. They know that. You set up your, you're in a logger site, and it's raining, and you go into the spot where you're under the protection of the whatever

and all of a sudden you're drying, everyone else is wet. And you think no one notices that? They notice it 100%. And they actually are looking at you thinking, oh, you think we don't see you? You take not just one hit for being all warm and cozy. You take two hits for being warm and cozy and for letting everyone know that you think there are a bunch of idiots.

You think you're smart. You're any. Idiot. Yeah. When you do that. Everybody sees it. Everybody sees it. Everybody sees it.

I was, we had to do security on, we would capture guys, my first deployment to Iraq, we would capture guys. And then we had to, we held them in detention ourselves. We, like, had our own little detention facility. And this is just the first example that I thought of. So we would have to stand watch, you know, which sucks. You know, it's whatever. And in my mind, the worst watch to take, I think it was like, it was a two-hour watch, and I thought two to four, right?

Zero 200 to zero-400. That's where, you know, you got to wake up in the middle of the night. It takes you 20 minutes to get there. You're all, and then you get back and you get to sleep for another hour before you got to wake up. So two to four is the worst possible watch. And I remember telling my assistant platoon commander, I'm like, hey, right on, we're taking zero-two to zero-four.

And he's like, really? And I'm like, yeah, and he's like, check. You knew exactly why. Because if I'm going to be asking everyone else to stay awake or get up early or whatever, we're taking the worst possible one. And you know, you don't need to say anything about that. And no one says, hey, thanks. No one says that to you.

But I'll tell you what, if you take the 8 to 10 watch so you can go do your watch, wind down, go back and sleep like a normal human being, every single person, every single person will take note of that. And they'll log it down in their little, the little mental logbook of your leadership capabilities. So don't be an idiot. Everyone's watching. Yeah.

And you can become that guy. Oh, if you do it enough, you'll become that guy. Oh, yeah. And then even when you figure it out and you start to try to do the right thing, if you've been that guy for so long, they'll just write it like, oh, you're just trying to do the right. And you can't even dig out of that hole. You got to be careful.

got to stay out of that hole from the very beginning. If you dig yourself in that hole, then you got to start making like real sacrifices. It takes a long time. Listen, don't worry about watch. I got it all night tonight. I'm just going to suck it up. Okay. You know, he's taking one for the team a little bit.

And you're going to have to do that like 14 more times before you reach level. So yeah, if you think no one's noticing that, they're noticing. Next, a spirit of unselfish cooperation with their fellows is to be fostered among officers and men the strong and the capable must encourage and lead the weak and less experienced on such a foundation of feeling of true comradeship will be become firmly established and the full combat value of the troops will be made available to the higher commander both both of these the troop and furong and this both talk about how the strong have to help the week it's an interesting concept because it's very easy to get the ad-a-euvre and

of like hey that guy's sucks is a non-hatter and I'm not gonna help him yeah it's really easy to take that attitude and if you have that attitude I remember to officer candidate school there was some complaining to my drill instructor who is an outstanding obviously an outstanding Marine you know it was like I think we got to write little notes to him like little little comments you know what I mean and he got a comment that was like you know some of these people just shouldn't be here and he came out and said hey should we let's say Lee you know what I agree with you we're going to get rid of the bottom 10% and someone's like eight people like yeah and then he goes

and then you know what we're going to have a new bottom 10% and then a new bottom 10% and then a new bottom 10% and then the only person that's going to graduate from austral kenned school is jaco it's like that's what that's what it turns out to right so what you have to do and what he was trying to say to us was hey what you need to do your your whole military career, you're going to have people that need help. You freaking help them. Yeah, and it also feeds this myth that you can just fire your way to success. I'd just get rid of these guys and we'd be so good to go if I could just get rid of these guys. Like, come on. And business who say it all the time. We ask people, hey, what are the people like in your company? And most people are hardworking and

motivated and the care and they try and say, so what do those people need if they're struggling? They need help. That's what they need more than anything else. Does some people got to go? Yes, there are some people got to go, but we're just going to cycle through 10% all the time. Come on, man. Back to the book. The combat value of a unit is determined in great measure by the soldierly qualities of its leaders and members and its will to fight. Outward marks of this combat value will be found in the setup and appearance of the men, in the condition care and maintenance of the weapons and equipment and in the readiness of the unit for action. Superior combat value will offset numerical inferiority. Superior leadership combined with superior combat value of troops constitutes

a reliable basis for success in battle. Go, you were writing. I know you must have something important to say. Well, I was actually thinking about something that you had already said, I was going to save it for later, but it occurred to me as you were talking about that previous comment about these are attributes we're talking about leaders in combat and war and we're always making the connection to business and things like that. Here's the thing about that last comment about helping the week. You can teach this at any age. Go read the Warrior Kid Code.

These are lessons that your five, six, seven-year-old can start to learn now. And to understand that the best thing you can do for the weak person in your class or the person struggling on your soccer team or these aren't adult lessons. And if you're a leader out there and you've got kids, you can start to instill this right now. And that lesson is not just relevant for combat or for your platoon or even for your company. It's relevant for everybody at every age. And if you teach it now, think about the success your kids will have in the long run. You do that.

Anyway, just making that connection. And, yeah, so the warrior kid, let me see what number it is. The bottom line is, and this is where it gets a little bit, the warrior kid, number, The Warrior Kid treats people with respect and helps out other people whenever possible. This is where everything is beautiful in the universe. Everything is beautiful in the universe because when you help other people, you get better. Your team gets better, but you get better. Every time you teach something, you get better at it.

It's just the way it works. So there's like that mutual benefit. And so the idea that, hey, I'm just going to get rid of someone that's weak instead of helping them, wrong. The warrior kids trains hard, exercises, and eats right to be strong and healthy. And he knows how to fight so we can stand up to bullies and protect the weak. I mean, that's something for your kids right there. That is the same exact thing. They're saying you have to protect the weak.

And it helps you when you do that. Continuing, a poorly trained unit is likely to fail in a critical moment due to demoralizing impressions caused by unexpected events in combat. This is particularly true in the first. engagements of a unit therefore training and discipline are of great importance every leader must take energetic action against in-discipline panic pillage and other disruptive forces discipline is the main cohesive force that binds the member the members of a unit discipline is the main cohesive force that binds you know it's interesting I think we were covering SLA Marshall's men under fire

and he's talking about when when Units got routed and when like mayhem broke loose and people start running away It they have documented cases where you know the the platoon leader up in the front line goes hey runner go back and tell headquarters we need more ammunition He goes cool got it gets up and starts running someone sees him running and goes oh dang we're running and so someone else gets up and and then that next thing you know everyone is running from one person just just seeing it happen and And once again, that's what talking with Theo yesterday, the way you act as a leader, you got to act correctly. If you start to panic, if you start to freak out, if you start to lose your temper,

if you start to lose your mind, everyone else is going to do the same thing. If you run away, everyone's going to do the same. If you go forward, everyone's going to follow you. And yes, discipline is the main cohesive force that binds the members of a unit together. A wise and capable commander will see that the men assigned to the competent groups of his unit are compatible and that the composition of the groups is changed as little as possible. All right.

So I'll read that one more time. A wise and capable commander will see that the men assigned to the component to the component groups of his unit are compatible. Right. So they can interoperate. They can change around and that the compositions of his group groups is changed as little as possible. So when you have little. subunits, keep them together. Keep them together.

That's, they get to know each other, they get to understand each other, they can read each other, and that's the way you need to work. You don't, they don't need to freaking redevelop a relationship. They already have it. When a, when task unit bruiser went through our urban training and we, we had a bunch of strap hangers with us. It wasn't really strap hangers. We had a, a bunch of other people.

EOD people, some other, we probably had an additional like 15 people with our task unit. And so the initial reaction from Lief and Seth was make put those guys, you know, that's two, you know, that's two other squads. You know, that's, we don't want them in our platoon. And I was like, uh, no. What we're going to do is we're going to take one or two of them and put them in each one of our fire teams and make them part of our unit. And, you know, they objected. But what happens?

What happens is that those people get individually, it's very easy for a four or five-man fire team to absorb one or two people. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, cool. What's your name, Fred? Cool.

Right on. You're good. Hey, I'm Bill. Let me know. Here's where I'm at. Here's how we do our head count. Here's what we're looking for. Boom.

Integration was almost immediate. Now we have, now when it was time to assault a building, and we call them sections. Because they weren't really fire teams. They were a little bit bigger now. So I called them sections. And which is I stole from the Grom, which is the Polish special operations that I worked a ton with my first

deployment to Baghdad. They called them. They had sections of like six guys. I was like, cool. We're going to have sections now because we're a little bit bigger than a fire team. Cool. And then it was like sections two, three, and four. Assault.

Section one, hold fast. And everyone knows what to do. And you've got little micro section leaders that are making things happen. Yeah. That doesn't happen when you take the six new guys and give. them as their own section yeah yeah yeah no and then you take then you have three of those right which is probably what we would have had three sections of people just

randomly out there but by the way and those people weren't even integrated as a unit it wasn't like it was a separate platoon if it was a full put another platoon of seals that would have made some sense okay cool we got a full another platoon of seals they have they're broken into fire teams okay cool we get it we can command that but we have 16 15 20 random people that haven't been working together cool guess what you're about to report to a leader in tasking a bruiser This is petty officer second class gets some Yeah, but that's so that's what you want to do you want to you want to keep your teams together

Continuing he will provide each group with a leader in whom its members have confidence That's another thing right so now you got you got the task unit bruiser guys everyone knows that fire team leader They don't have to meet Fred that guy was at the jump team for eight years He doesn't know what he's doing no it doesn't matter you know Fred's on board with the program. He wants to win He will so regulate the interior administration of the units that all groups perform the same amount of work and enjoy the same amount of leisure He will see that demonstrated efficiency is promptly recognized and rewarded he will set before all the high standard of military conduct and apply the same rules of discipline to all Here's a good one good morale and a sense of unity in a command cannot be improvised.

They must be thoroughly planned and systematically promoted. They are born of just and fair treatment. A constant concern for the soldiers welfare. Oh, you want to build morale? There you go. A constant concern for the soldiers' welfare. Thorough training in basic duties. Comradeship among men and pride and self, organization, and country.

Morale is a byproduct of your leadership. Good leaders have units with good morale. Bad leaders don't. Period. Yeah. The Marine Corps does a damn good job of this one, don't they? I mean, and I mean, the military does in general,

but damn, the Marine Corps is good at that. Because when you're in the Marine Corps, you're in the Marine Corps. That's just the way it is. The establishment and maintenance of good morale are incumbent upon every commander and are the marks of good leadership, which is what you just said.

And then we get to number 111. The first demand in war is decisive action. Commanders inspire confidence in their subordinates by their decisive conduct and their ability to gain material advantage over the enemy. A reputation for failure in a leader destroys morale. The morale of a unit is that of its, Leader.

Again, that's what you just said. But hey, the first demand in war is decisive action. And again, it talked about this with Andrew Paul. And Andrew Paul gave a great example. You know, decisive action doesn't mean you just make the full commitment to a decision. And he gave that example of looking at your Google Maps. You know, you've got to walk through the city to a place and it's two miles away. And so you walk out of the hotel and you look at your Google Maps.

and you're, the arrow is just spinning. Yeah. Because you're not going anywhere. Cool. Start walking. Take 10 steps. Take 10 steps. That thing will self-correct because, and now you'll know where you're supposed to be

going. So that's, that's a decisive action. Sitting there, not doing anything, isn't getting you anywhere. And the enemy's maneuvering on you, by the way. Yeah. And that flip side you talked about is, hey, we want to get into this space. Let's buy three buildings. Whoa, whoa.

Hang on. We actually, that is overly, that's way overly aggressive and actually isn't what you need. Yeah, that example was awesome. A commander must bear in mind that physical unfitness will undermine his efficiency. And actually, surprisingly, I don't think this is in the troupe infuring at all. I don't think they talk about physical fitness in this much clarity. A commander must bear in mind that physical unfitness will undermine his efficiency. He owes it to the men under his command to conserve his own fitness.

Neglect renders him unable to bring a normal mind to the solution of his problems and reacts unfavorable on his whole command That is that is a heavy statement here's the thing that you know that you know that term Fatigue will make a coward out of any man like when you get tired It's you start making bad decisions and you can't maintain So that's what this is is. And if you're the better physical condition you're in, the more you'll be able to maintain for. You know, people freak out because I don't sleep a lot, which I'm not, I don't encourage people not to sleep a lot. You should sleep as much sleep as you need. Get a bunch of sleep. It's great. I know

the the sleep diplomat guy, sleep. I'm not against that sleep. But what I will say is this, like if you're in good physical condition and you eat well, you will not. Need as much sleep. I'm here to tell you like well at least I don't think you do I was talking about with with with with with fun Coggren the other day on being on the road all the time and Sometimes we're on the road. I flew literally to Maine 36 hours ago and I flew back the very next day. I was on the road and and and The the best thing you can do in a situation like where you're going to be tired is actually go work out for sure I mean it's the best thing you can do and the days that I get I'm like oh I'd have to work out at 3.30 and and I don't I regret it the entire day. I've never once heard you say you don't need sleep.

But what the reality is, is when you're tired, the best thing you can do is get out of bed and do something physical. Yeah. It's the best way to, without a doubt. Yeah. And yeah, it's physical fitness. Don't neglect it. And that happens a lot of times in business. People get wrapped in the business.

And if you don't make some time to stay physically fit, strategic look there's gonna be times in business there's times at Eschelon front there's times in our lives where hey man you you like I don't I can't do my normal workouts during the muster like we do a we do we work out but it's not it's not my normal workout it's a workout that takes 40 minutes not and it's only one a day you know so that's not normal we got to suck it up for the muster it's you know four or five days of us very very work intensive But when that's over, man, you've got to get right back into it. So people that go, hey, I get it.

You got some project due and you got a week where you can only work out for 10 minutes a day, 8 minutes a day, 28 minutes a day, 28 minutes a day, whatever. Cool. I get it. If you don't work out and then all of a sudden you develop that habit, well, then you have to bear in mind that the physical unfitness is going to undermine your efficiency, period, end of the story. So that closes out leadership. The next chapter is called the exercise of command. Doctrines of Combat, Chapter 4. Here's where we give credit, good writing, solid statement.

The ultimate objective of all military operations is the destruction of the enemy's armed forces in battle. Which those simple statements like that, it's interesting when we go work with companies and no one, everyone has completely lost track of what it is that they're trying to to do yeah what's your mission yep the ability to select objectives whose attainment contributes most decisively and quickly to the defeat of the hostile armed forces is one attribute of the able commander what does that mean a good leader has the ability to prioritize and execute the most important things I'll read it again the ability to select objectives whose attainment can contributes most decisively and quickly to

defeat the hostile armed forces is one attribute of the able commander that is prioritized and execute you got to pick the most important what they call it here the the objective whose attainment contributes most decisively that's the most important thing that's what you're gonna focus on prioritize next you next simple and direct plans and methods with prompt and thorough execution are often decisive in the attainment of success that is almost verbatim from croup and furor. Almost the exact same thing.

You got to keep things simple. People have been saying that forever. Next, unity of command obtains that unity of effort, which is essential to the decisive application of full combat power of the available forces. Unity of effort is furthered by full cooperation between elements of the command. So yes, prioritize and execute, figure out what's

most important and then cover and move for each other as you as you execute next through offensive action a commander exercises his initiative preserves his freedom of action and imposes his will on the enemy boom there you go what is that offensive action being on the offense not being on the defense think of what it does for you as a person as a human, as a leader, it exercises your initiative, preserves your freedom of action, and imposes your will on the enemy. You've got to go on offense.

A defensive attitude may, however, be deliberately adopted as a temporary expedient while awaiting an opportunity for counteroffensive action. Hey, look, sometimes you've got to be defensive for a minute, but you better be looking for that moment to go back on the offense. The defensive posture is designed to find the opportunity to go on the defensive, go on the offensive.

That's why you're doing it. If you're on the defense, this is so clear in Jiu-Jitsu, if you're on defense in Jiu-Jitsu and you stay on defense, you will lose. Eventually you're going to get caught. You can only defend so much.

They're attacking. They have the initiative. They have the freedom of action. They're imposing their will on you. You can defend for a little while, but eventually you're going to get taken. You're going to get submitted. Same in flying.

And there's a comment in there that I think described the freedom of movement. It's a thing we talk all the time is the attribute to make sure that you're doing it correctly is can you still maneuver. And so you can't be so offensive that you no longer can maneuver. But the ability to maneuver in that position is what allows you to find the opportunity to exploit and then go on the offensive to preserve your maneuvering room is the part that you know that you're balanced in those. So how do you overcommit in an aircraft?

Actually, it's easy and it happens all the time. And you have the aircraft have potential energy or capability, and if you're maneuvered to get closer or whatever you're trying to do with another aircraft, if you overdo that, and then at your next move, you don't have any energy to turn the aircraft, you're going to lose. And that could happen in the most powerful airplane in the world. I could be in a raptor, and if I turn it really hard and actually turn it too hard, and my energy goes from 300 knots to 100 knots, and I haven't allowed myself to kill them at that move, so I need another move on the chessboard, and there's no energy left. I literally can't maneuver, and I can and I will lose to an inferior platform.

So when you're riding a bicycle, if you're if you're going slow, it's harder to stay balanced and it's harder to turn. Is that the same is that the same thing? Like when you're in an aircraft, you get a certain amount of speed. There's a point at which and it's measured. You know what that point is

is where you're maneuvering gets to a peak and then starts to diminish and then you can no longer maneuver based on that speed. And that's speed. That's solely based on speed. It's exactly right. Or it would call potential energy you might need altitude, you would descend to get that energy back,

but it's a combination of the actual airspeed, the number in your display, 100 miles an hour or whatever it is, and how much altitude that you have. And the ground is the ground. And so if you cannot descend, whatever your airspeed is, that's what you have left. And we call it potential energy, but it boils down to how much maneuvering airspeed do you have.

How fast does a raptor have to be going so it doesn't stall? Well, that number happens to be extremely low. And the irony in that is a lot of people don't understand is that your minimum controllable airspeed is a critical component. So the slower I can go and be maneuverable is a huge advantage for me. But every aircraft has a limit that if you get past whatever that number is, you're out of maneuvering airspeed and you're going to lose. You have to have the ability to maneuver no matter what situation you're in to include being on the defensive. And that's what they're talking about is I'm going to stay in this position until I see the opportunity to go on the offensive and I'm going to maneuver in that position. What was that standard move that you do when you don't know what to do?

Lift vector on and pull. Point of the guy and turn until you figure out what you need to do next. Lift vector. It's essentially where your airplane is going in the sky. And if you don't know what to do, you put your lift vector directly on your opponent. You point directly at him and you start to maneuver towards directly towards him. That doesn't mean it's the right move. It means because you don't know what the right move is, you have to be doing something.

Because if you sit there and do nothing, which is sort of the ultimate defensive position is I'm just going to hole up and bury, you're going to die so quickly. Go on the offense. Go on the offense. Even if you're not 100% sure what to do, go on the offense. The defensive posture is actually a decision you make by design. Going on the offensive, if you don't know what to do, as long as you're maneuvering, the more training, the more reps you have, the sooner you're going to figure out what to do. The default aggressive mindset of going on the offensive, where doesn't that apply?

Yeah, I mean, and this is something in Andrew and I talked about, you obviously, you don't just commit. And what you just said, you just don't commit ignorantly. No. And you don't over commit. You make the small decisions. Even lift vector on and pull. Even that, that's like an adjustment,

but then you're immediately, you just enter the uter loop. That's your 10 steps down the road to get oriented that Andrew just described. And as soon as you, okay, I've got it figured out. Now you go do something else. You've got to keep that maneuvering speed. Continue on. The selection by the commander of the right time and place for offensive action is a decisive factor in the success of the operation.

Numerical inferiority does not necessarily commit a command to a defensive attitude. Superior hostile numbers may be overcome through greater mobility, better armament, and equipment, more effective fire, higher morale, and better leadership. Superior leadership often enables a numerically inferior force to be stronger at the point of decisive action. Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. So legit. Mobility.

Better armament and equipment. More effective fire. Higher morale. Isn't it interesting? Everyone would think better armament, right? everyone would think better equipment. Most people would think better effective fire, but higher morale. Just having higher morale is an element in achieving victory,

even if you're in a numerically inferior position. A strategically defensive mission is frequently most effectively effectively executed through offensive action. It is often necessary for an inferior force to strike at an early moment in order to secure initial advantages or to prevent itself from being overwhelmed by a growing superiority in hostile forces. If you run a company and you're the smaller company

that you're competing with your competitors, being defensive is going to get you killed. You're going to lose. You're going to get run over by this bigger company because they're going to use their resources and size to bulldoze you. You have to be poised to strike, go on the offensive. The first opportunity you can. That is the right opportunity to do that.

Yeah. It's interesting in jiu-jitsu is the same thing happens. one of the best things to do if you're on the defensive is attack something. And then all of a sudden you can turn the tables really, really quick, if you're lucky. Concentration of superior forces, both on the ground and in the air at the decisive place and time and their employment in a decisive direction creates conditions essential to victory. So again, this is prioritized next year. What are you doing?

You're concentrating your resources, your people. people, your manpower, you're concentrating everything at the right time. Such concentration requires strict economy and the strength of forces assigned to secondary missions. What does that mean if you focus on other things? If you don't prioritize and execute, you're going to fall apart. Detachments during combat are justifiable only when the execution of tasks assigned them contributes directly to success in the main battle.

So I got a little note there never split forces I loved it when Tilt was on and Tilt was talking about He's like yeah so I had one group in the valley and one group in the tree line or something like that and I was kind of like I was all I was all bummed out and I was all nervous and I was all sad because I always preached don't split forces And I was like I was like man I was like I I never really liked to split forces he goes I only did it two times I was like yes yes Yeah Yeah, because when you, well, there's all kinds of confusion that happens there, but then this is this isn't really talking about not splitting forces.

What this is talking about is if you start peeling people off to do other things, it better really still contribute to the main effort. Surprise must be sought throughout the action by every means and by every echelonic command. It may be obtained by fire as well as by movement. Surprise is produced through measures which either deny information to the enemy or positively deceive him as to a our dispositions, movements, and plans. Terrain, which appears to impose great difficulties on operations, may often be utilized to gain surprise. Surprise is furthered by variation in the means and methods employed in combat and by rapidity

of execution. When Brian Stan was on, he was like, he loved to talk about that operational tempo. And that's what this is talking about in that last sentence. How quickly can you execute? If you can turn quickly and you can get back out there, that's a lot of. that's going to surprise the enemy. Going into Ramadi in boats, that was a terrain that the enemy didn't expect the boys to come in on.

Like, that's what's going to happen. There was other times where guys went on long patrols. The enemy didn't think we're going to be out there. Surprise finds the enemy in a state of mental, moral, or physical unpreparedness. Every effort should be made to deny him to take effective countermeasures. The effect of surprise may be lost through. Dolatory methods of execution to guard against surprise requires a correct estimate of enemy capabilities adequate security measures effective reconnaissance and readiness for action of all units every unit takes the necessary measures for its own local ground and air security provision for the security of flanks and rear is of special importance it also requires humility to recognize that

that you don't necessarily know exactly what your enemy is going to do and might want to think that they are more capable than you think they might be and you have to have the humility to recognize. Hey, they might do something that we might not anticipate and a humble leader doesn't get complacent what the enemy can and will do. They'll never attack us. They never do that. We don't have to worry about, like, that's exactly what they're going to do if you're not.

Yeah, absolutely. Command is the authority, this section is called Command. Command is the authority which an individual in the military service lawfully exercises over subordinates by virtue of rank or assignment. So that's what command is. Hey, I lawfully outrank you and therefore, you know,

you have to obey me. Then it says this. Command and leadership are inseparable. Whether the force is large or small, whether the functions of command are complex or simple. The commander must be the controlling head. His must be the mastermind. And from him must flow the energy and impulse, which are to animate all under him.

So that's a little bit interesting. And then we get into this. And that's when I was talking earlier about how there's always that difference between people that think, hey, good leadership means these people will just listen to me because I have authority. over them, right? And then there's people that realize the truth, which is that's not the way you want to lead at all. Yeah.

Which we, which we'll get into here. Decision as to specific course of action is responsibility of the commander alone. While he may accept advice and suggestions from any of his subordinates, he alone is responsible for what the unit does or fails to do. And I think that was, that's really the crux of what that last statement was trying to see. is like, listen, you're going to have a platoon chief, a platoon sergeant, whatever, a company first sergeant, a chief operating officer or chief operations officer.

That's going to give you advice. It's going to help you make decisions. But if you're the boss, it's on you. And at the end, the idea that the leader, the commander is responsible for the outcome no matter what, I think what they're getting at. I mean, I hear that and there are words that I don't like exactly the way that they say it, but I'm glad that they're making that clear distinction, that command and leadership are two different things.

Command is the structure. And we all understand that the military, I know who my boss is, the org chart in any company defines the CEO, the CFO, the frontline supervisor. But the leadership component, a good commander, not only am I going to take advice from other people, there are times that I simply won't be where they are, and I need them to make those decisions and lead their team. And if it ends up being wrong, it's still my responsibility. And that piece of it, I think is 100% true.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, we'll dig into it a little bit more here in a second. This continues on, which is, this is getting into exactly what you were just saying. A willingness to accept responsibility is the foremost trait of leadership. So we wrote an entire book about that called Extreme Ownership. A willingness to accept responsibility is the foremost trait of leadership. Every individual from the highest commander to the lowest private must always remember that inaction and neglect of opportunities will warrant even more severe censure than an error of judgment in the action taken.

So this is something that troop and fur indefinitely hit on almost word for word. It's worse to not do anything than it is to make a call and try and execute and you have bad judgment. So those are bold statements. Continues on. The criterion by which a commander judges the soundness of his own decision is whether it will further the intentions of the higher commander. So there you go. That makes it really easy to make decisions out on the battlefield. If you can come back to me and say, hey, Jockel, this is what I did.

You know, I know that we were trying to push West and I had an opportunity to get on this knoll. I know it was outside our limit of advance, but it gave me a really good field of. fire over the west, that's why I went there. And I'm like, you know what? Ended up not working out the way we wanted it to, but I'm glad that you did it. Okay, at least you went for it. As opposed to, well, you know, I know, I know we were going west, but I decided, you know, maybe it would be smarter for us to go east.

And that's why I backed my force off, right? You can't just ignore the overall commander, the overall commander in the higher position. You got to support his intentions. So as long, and what that means is for the higher commander, you got to make sure that your intentions are known. That's why we have commander's intent. Totally. Willingness to accept responsibility must not manifest itself in a disregard of orders

on the basis of a mere probability of having better knowledge of the situation than the higher commander. The subordinate unit is a part of a tactical team employed by the higher commander to accomplish a certain mission, and any independence on the part of the subordinate commander must conform to the general plan for the unit as a whole. So that's why we have parameters. That's what decentralized command. That's why I'm always going off about, hey, for decentralized command to work, you have to make sure everyone understands what the mission is, what the goal is, what the end state is, what the parameters are that people are allowed to work with it.

That's what you need to do, and that's what they're talking about here. Continuing, the commander's mission is contained in the orders which he has received. Nevertheless, a commander of a subordinate unit cannot plead absence of orders or the non-receipt of orders as an excuse for inactivity in a situation where action is, where action is, where action on part, on his part is essential. Or where a change in the situation upon which the issued orders were based, renders such orders impractable or impossible of execution. So lack of orders lead.

In absence of orders, lead. I didn't know, nobody told me what to do. And that same responsibility for the leader of recognizing that he has to train his people to be able to lead in the absence of orders is 100% going to, happen all the time in those situations. And this is so scary, especially from a military perspective. It's really scary because if this sounds like could easily just just devolve into total mayhem, right?

Hey, look, just because you don't have orders doesn't mean you should sit around and do nothing. And, and people, there's some people that think, well, I don't want my damn for some, you know, corporal fire team leader out there making calls. Yes, you do. You have to. As long as he understands from you what the intent is, then he's cleared hot. Yeah. And he'll figure out the right thing to do.

I had 13 guys in my Anglico team in Ramadi. 13. And I was thinking, man, this is 13 guys. This is a small group. But this is easy. And when I got there immediately, immediately, I think the second day I'm there, I'm like, man, I got to split these teams up. There's just too many missions, too much to do.

I simply can't do this as 13 people. I got to do four here, four here. And I split them up. nine, maybe 10 of the 13 guys were on their very first deployment. And look, I'll be honest with you, the first time I watched another gun truck go off the base without me, I'm like, man, I don't like this. I didn't like that. But not only was it necessary, obviously, it was completely necessary because the op tempo and Ramadi was just completely out of control. I could have used 30 more people if I had them.

But the reality is, is that if you train them and they actually understand what they, They're there to get accomplished. They can go lead without you being there and you need them to and they have to go do it. And yeah, as a leader, it is a little hard to let that go. Decentralized command. The ultimate culmination of these laws, which is what you want. It is a little scary and it's a little hard. But you can't, there's no other alternative.

What that fear should do, that fear should compel you to make sure that everyone understands what the commander's intent is. Make sure they understand what the parameters are. Make sure they understand the rules of engagement. Make sure they understand everything that's. in your head, that's what it should compel you to do because it is scary. Yeah. And that you've done all the other things required to get to that. I have incredibly strong relationships.

They understand every single thing I need them to understand. And they know that when we have to make hard decisions on the battlefield and prioritize, they're going to do the ones that greatly, the most impact on the mission that were trying to accomplish. I actually have to follow the laws of combat if I want to get to decentralized command. Check. Continuing on. If the situation does not permit communication with the superior commander and the subordinate commander is familiar with the general plan of operations or the mission of the whole command, he should take appropriate action and report situation as early as practicable, which is what exactly what your guys did and what you did with them.

The situations that confront a commander in war are of infinite variety. In spite of the most careful planning and anticipation, unexpected obstacles, frictions, and mistakes are common occurrences in battle. So that's right. Things are going to go wrong. A commander must school himself to regard these events as commonplace and not permit them to frustrate him in the accomplishment of the mission. Yeah. What spins me up? Nothing.

Nothing. Everyone's going to screw up. I'm going to screw up. You're going to screw up. The team leader's going to screw up. The platoon sergeant's going to screw up. The platoon commander's going to the enemy is going to do unexpected things. That's what's going to happen.

Guess what's going to happen in your life? Things are going to go wrong. The deal's not going to get closed. The kid's going to get sick. The car's going to crap. These things are going to happen. They're going to happen. It's the way life is.

No one's rolling through life, not hitting speed bumps. It's not happening. Don't let them throw you off. Now here we go. Personal conferences between the higher commander and his subordinates who are to execute his orders may at times be advisable. that the latter may arrive at a correct understanding of the plans and intentions of their superior. Then it continues on. Commanders do not justify their decisions to subordinates,

nor do they seek the approval of subordinates for their actions. Now, when I read that, like the other one that we were both kind of like, when I read that right there, I was like, here's my notes. You see what they say? It says wrong. I wrote that's wrong.

That's just wrong. I'll read it again so we know what's wrong. It starts off with something cool. Hey, personal conferences between the higher commander and his subordinates who are to execute his orders. May at times be advisable. Yep, you want to meet with your people so that the latter may arrive at the correct understanding of the plans and intentions of the spirit. Yes, meet with your people to what's going on. But then it says this.

I kind of have to change voices for this one a little bit. Commanders do not justify their decisions to subordinates. do they seek the approval of their subordinates for their actions and so I highlighted that circled it and I wrote wrong and I was really pissed when I read it and I was like you know what let's see if anything changed so I went to the 1944 manual and in 1944 that there's there are very limited changes in this section in fact mostly what is different between 1944 and 1941 is they have the massive sections on air power on how it's going to be used closer all that stuff in the 1944 version they completely eliminate that sentence

yeah good they completely eliminate that sentence because guess what as a commander you are absolutely trying to explain your decisions to your subordinacy you want them to understand why you're making a decision. You want them to, never mind to prove, you want them to actually just totally embrace and love and probably hopefully even come up with that decision themselves. Totally. There's probably some element in there

of this idea of decisiveness. And the language of probably trying to get to something that they were thinking about that was clearly not explained correctly. But this idea that you don't owe your people and explanation is crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy.

And as a matter of fact, if you can't explain it in a way that's really compelling and have them go, oh, boss, got it. I'm on board. You're doing it wrong. You actually don't understand it well enough. And if you have to leverage the, oh, you don't understand what I'm saying. Okay, just do your job because I'm in charge of you. It's just wrong. Period.

And it's like this stood out for me. This is not in the German manual at all. It's not in there. There's nothing that says anything close to that in the German manual. So what that told me is That's why I started thinking about this pull Between people that leaders that are like Hey listen to bottom line is people got to do what you tell me to do

That's what there was a guy in the room I wonder if there's that that guy there's so hey this is 41 now I think You know a little of a piece time you know hey There's this piece of this this time that they didn't really quite get it The 44 guys are thinking well what have we been doing for the last three years? Get rid of that because that's crap it doesn't work exactly Yeah. This room, in this room, there was some Pogue, some rear echelon dude that was sitting there going,

hey, you know, the bottom line, though, I understand that we want, you know, people got to understand. But the bottom line is you don't have to go and justify your decisions to your subordinates, you know, you don't need to seek approval. Yeah. You tell them what to do, and they go and damn do it. That's the way it's got to be. In the end, you're in charge. So if they can't, you know, go back and forth for a while, but soon or later, you got to put your foot down and let them know who's in charge.

Yeah. Yeah, you got to just let them have it. And like you said, can you imagine they reconvene after three years of war? Yeah. And they say, you know what? Who wrote, who's the POG that wrote that? We're not going to rewrite it or change it. Get rid of that sentence.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to, we were actually going to cover this manual. But when I got to that, I was like, oh, this is all, this makes it all worthwhile. This makes it all worthwhile. Because you understand that after three years, of war, this should be a notification to leaders around the world that if you think that you can just order people and that's going to work out for you, you're wrong. You're wrong. And you know, the way you worded something, I got to jump back to it because you said, you

said if you, something like if you can't explain to your people why you're doing something, then you're doing it wrong. I want to make it clear that when you say you're. doing it wrong, you're talking about what you're telling them to do is wrong. Because if I can't, if I say, hey, Dave, we want to assault this target from the west and you're like, why? And I say, well, because that's the best spot. And you go, well, there's a channelized area. You're going to have to go through. And I say, no, we're going to go from the west. And you say, but there's an open area here from the south where we can get cover on this high ground. And I say, no, we're going from the

West and I and my only recourse is to say no Dave I'm the boss you're going in from the West you're doing it wrong yeah not just my leadership you're doing the thing that you're trying to get done is wrong yeah so worthwhile continues on and you got to look at the 44 like it's almost like here's the next one after this in in 1941 it was all troops assigned to the execution of a distinct mission should be placed under one command. The very next line, after they eliminate all troops assigned to the execution. It's literally the same. They went through this thing.

It's like, hey, this is a pretty solid. Get rid of that line. What turd wrote that. So check. All troops assigned to the execution of a distinct mission should be placed under one command to function as a task force for the duration of the operation. So long as a commander can exercise effective command, he does not disturb the established chain of command in his force.

in some situations condition dictate that attachments must be made to subordinate commands. So this is this is something that see a little bit of this sometimes you know like a group a task unit a battalion a company gets assigned and if the leader if the overall leader doesn't have the wherewithal to say okay, you know what Task unit bruiser you're supporting and task unit alpha you're you guys are running this and the task unit bruiser guy the tasking Bruiser guys say, cool, hey, Alpha, what do you need? What do you need? So often it's like, man, I should have been the one meeting this.

That should be me. And I remember a couple times early in Tasking of Bruiser while I was trying to be trying to hang out with the fair fairy and be like, well, you know, why don't we fake? No, it's like, no. Lay, you're running this one. Seth, your support. Or Seth, you're running this one. That's the way it is.

I think I tried that one time like, oh, you guys can each be a way. No, stupid. And if your guys actually believe in the mission. It's no factor. It's never they don't care at all. Roger that boss. I'm on it. Yeah.

What do you need, man? And I'm in. If they get it, the big picture, if you've explained the mission and they buy into it, you could put that guy as a support element forever. Yep. And he's like, no factor. No factor at all. What do you need?

I will support all day long. What do you need? Not to mention half the time you go out there and the situation completely changes in the supporting effort becomes the main effort. Of course. Of course. Isn't it crazy though if you're working for me and I go, hey Dave, your supporting effort and you're like awesome got it and then the next night I'm like hey Dave

you're supporting effort and you're and you say awesome got it and I say hey you know what you're going to be supporting effort again you're like bring it I'm I'm ready we're getting this dialed and then I say hey man I need you to do a supporting effort again and you say roger that we'll be ready so if that's your attitude that's awesome and eventually I go hey you know what Dave you're running this thing guess is going to be the main effort yeah now if I go hey Dave you're the supporting effort. You go, okay, okay. And then the next night I go, hey, you're supporting effort.

Why? I was supporting effort last night. I immediately hate you. Yeah. I immediately go, bro, is your ego really that out of control that on this random piece of paper somewhere, on this particular operation, on an operation that we have no idea where it's going to go or what's going to happen and you could end up being the element that's in the big giant firefight that needs to step up.

And you want to, you're so concerned about that right now. that's where your priorities are, that that's where we're at. Okay, cool, noted. I will never make you, I'll never put you in charge of anything ever. Yeah. You know what nobody ever asked me in 23 years of conducting missions in the Marine Corps? Hey, were you assigned the main effort or were we the support? Nobody cares.

And yeah, it's the blend of the ego and just, hey, what's the best way to, what's the thing I can do to help accomplish a mission? I'm in. I don't care what it is. And by the way, if you and I meet and I say, hey, Dave, you know, I, you know, I, been assigned supporter, you know, to you, which is kind of crap because I think my, my, my company's better than your company, but whatever. That's what the boss decided. So tell me what you need and I'll do it.

Like, just think about that. And now when I say, hey, Dave, you know, we shouldn't do it like that. You will, you won't, you're going to listen to a damn thing I say. But if I say, hey, Dave, hey, man, we're here to support. And if you need anything, tell me and let's let's get it done. And then we're an hour into planning, I go, hey, what do you think about us setting up over here? You know, a little bit different than your thoughts, but what do you think of that? And you go, hmm, well, that's actually not a bad idea.

So I have a little bit of humility. And all of a sudden I can actually influence the situation a thousand times more than if I go in there with my chest bowed out and my ego barking like a rabid dog. Yeah. And the worst part about that is if you do that, your idea might actually still be better than mine. And I won't listen to you. And you're killing both of us. Of course. Yeah.

It's just a freaking disaster. Just get on board for the entire team to win and everything works out. Get on board for the big win. Estimate of the situation. In any tactical operation, the commander must quickly evaluate all available information bearing on his task. Estimate the situation and reach a decision. The commander's estimate of the situation is based on the mission of the unit. The means available to him and to the enemy, the conditions in his area of operations, including the terrain and weather, the probable effects of various lines.

of action on future operations the basis of these factors he considers the lines of action open to him which if successful will accomplish his mission and the lines of action with of which the enemy is physically capable and which can interfere with such accomplishment he analyzes the opposing lines of action one against another to arrive at conclusions as to the probability of success for each of his own lines of action it's a lot of words Check all the different courses of action. See what the potential outcomes are.

Move forward with one of them. On the basis of this analysis, he considers the relative advantages and disadvantages of his own lines of action and selects the line of action which most promises success regardless of what the enemy may do. If two or more lines of action appear equally promising, he chooses the one that will most favor future action. Pretty straightforward.

The estimate often requires rapid thinking with consideration limited to essential factors. In campaign, exact conclusions concerning the enemy can seldom be drawn. To delay action in an emergency because of insufficient information shows a lack of energetic leadership and may result in lost opportunities. The commander must take calculated risks. I read all that so I could say that last thing. Udaloop.

Strategic versus tactical. If you don't do anything in a tactical situation, you're going to do it. lose. And you're not going to know everything. No. Ever. Ever. You do not know the potential outcomes. Even if you have the best intelligence, it's going to change. Continue on. Considering the enemy's possible lines of action, the commander must guard against unwarranted belief that he has discovered the enemy's intentions and against ignoring other lines of action open to the enemy. This is what you said earlier. If you think you know what the enemy's going to do, you're wrong. Don't fall into that ego trapped.

Even when the weight of evidence warrants the belief that the enemy is committed to a definite line of action, the commander must bear in mind that a change in the enemy's plans may occur at any time. That's the way it happens. You've got to stay humble. The estimate of the situation culminates in the decision. A decision once made is not changed without some compelling reason. In combat, the will and energy of the commander must persist until the mission is accomplished. Estimation of the situation is, however, a continuous process and changed conditions may at any time call for a new decision.

Two stubborn adherence to a previous decision may result in costly delay, loss of opportunity for decisive action, or outright failure. So the Troop and Furin covered this very, very well. Sometimes, yeah, it's this. You want to stick with your plan, but you're constantly assessing to see if your plan was the right plan, if your decision was the right decision. And if it's not, you change it. That's the Oudaloup.

Impets are happening all the time and sooner later, hey, there's enough inputs tell me, I got to change. I got to do something different. And you better have the ability to maneuver. When you're in that, when you're making those, you made that decision, you're taking action. You have to preserve the ability to maneuver

because it's going to change, period. Yeah. That's that over commitment. It starts to talk about terrain here. The part of the commander's estimate dealing with terrain often exercises decisive influence upon his decision and plan. The proper evaluation and utilization of the terrain reduced the disadvantage of incomplete information of the enemy. The more important features to be considered in evaluating terrain include not only natural ground forms such as mountain ridges, streams, bodies of water, woods, and open spaces, but also artificial features such as roads, railroads, in towns.

The commander seeks always to utilize the terrain to his own advantage and to the enemy's disadvantage. Now, that's one of those things where I was like, yeah, you know what? I definitely, for me as a leader, when I, actually as a leader, but more as an instructor, the difference between like someone that sucks as a small element unit leader, small unit leader, someone that doesn't do it right and someone that does it well is someone that does it right utilizes the terrain and someone that doesn't they don't yeah so that that's why I put that in there but there's much more truth than that and that is the fact that when you are leading

people when you're interacting with human beings there's terrain that needs to be accounted for the terrain isn't bridges streams and mountains the terrain is ego it's a It's personalities, it's nuances, it's idiosyncrasies that people have. That's the terrain. That's so important. And it's that every single person you're interacting with is going to be a little bit different. And those idiosyncrasies and all those little small components, a good leader understands all of those different things. So the idea of what terrain is in their mind is all of that together.

Yeah. I think you were setting me up for a meeting and you gave me like an eight minute brief on the scenario that was happening Like hey this is what's going on this is this guy this is where he comes from This is what he likes this is the problems he's had here's where here's what I think he wants to do And this is the approach I would take and I was like check what did you just brief me on you you didn't mention Trails and mountains but you gave me the terrain brief that I was I was about to walk into. That's what it is.

And then when I walk into that meeting, instead of me being a leader that doesn't know what's happening, all of a sudden, I'm a leader that understands the terrain and can make the right maneuvers. Know your terrain. Think about what, and really what this boils down to from a leadership perspective in the business world is identify your terrain, right?

Identify it. Let's talk about. what that is and see how we can use it to our advantage. Next section is called conduct in battle. The commander's decision for his unit as a whole and the missions to subordinate units in support of the decision are communicated to subordinates by clear and concise orders which give them freedom of action appropriate to their professional knowledge, to the situation, to their dependability, and to the team play desired.

So again, I think there was a Pogue in the room and sometimes the other, other guys were like, hey, bro, no, freedom of action is what these guys need. And they just had to like sometimes add this stuff while the Pogue was out getting coffee. I think the Pogue was probably the senior guy. And a couple times he just overrode him. Yeah. But then they just, they just like he, they sent him to get, they went to a meeting and they did like several sections. That sentence is the exact opposite of what that said.

Yeah. You know, a couple pages back. It's the exact opposite thing. Freedom of action. Clear and concise orders, which gives them freedom of action. Use that as your guide. Next, after providing for the issuance of orders, the commander places himself where he can best control the course of action and exert his leadership.

His command post affords the advantage of established signal communication. When opportunity offers and when his presence at the command post is not urgently required, he visits subordinates commanders and his troops in order to inspire competence and to assure himself that his orders are understood and properly executed. Yep, you got it. In the Navy, they started calling that deck plate leadership. Did you guys ever hear that? It's like, hey, you need to get out. You need to get out with the troops.

You can't sit in the air conditioning space when you got your bosun's mates down there in the well deck. Right. And it's 180 degrees in the well deck with diesel fumes. Yeah. Whenever the commander leaves his command post, he should orient his staff as to further plans to be made or measures to be taken in anticipation of future contingencies.

and should inform his staff where he can be reached. Yep. During the decisive phase of battle, the place of the commander is near the critical point of action. Not in it, but near it. A commander influences the course of subsequent action by his leadership, by the use of his reserves, by the concentration of artillery and other supporting fires,

and by the employment of combat aviation and armored units. The duration of a tactical operation can seldom be predicted, Successful engagements sometimes progress so slowly that gains made are not immediately apparent. Other times, they progress so fast that gains made can be capitalized only by the most aggressive and far-sighted leadership. Troops are used up rapidly in decisive phases of combat. This attrition must be anticipated by the commander and his staff who take timely measures for replacement of men, units, transports, weapons, and for replenishment of ammunition and other supplies. when the situation permits troops which have been heavily engaged are rested and reorganized

before being assigned new and important mission. The staff assists the commander to the extent that he may require by providing information data and advice by preparing detailed plans and orders in accordance with his directions and by exercising such supervision over the execution of his orders as he may prescribe. A staff officer as such does not exercise command. The staff may be divided into two groups. the general staff and the special staff in large units, these two staff groups are separate and distinct.

And smaller units, they merge into each other. And one staff officer frequently is charged with the duties pertaining to both staff groups. Now, the whole reason that I read the last two, three paragraphs was so I could read this. In every headquarters, there is a constant tendency to multiply personnel, expand the functions of staff administration, and accumulate records and often. equipment. And then this is one of the only thing that is italicized in this book. It says, the commander must avoid this expansion.

He must organize his headquarters so as to maintain its readiness for prompt movement. So again, this is when the Pogue walked out of the room. They're like, the Pogue wrote all those other three paragraphs. He was in there like, the staff, this and the staff commander. And then these guys were like, listen, they're going to try and expand the staff. You don't need it. I was almost surprised, like, there's a section on the staff. I was like, oh, do we need to put that?

And I've been listening to even some of the other things. There's something that he said earlier, even about that, at that point of friction, I think really what he was saying is you'll burn through resources more quickly, which is true. I understand that because that's where the culminating event is. And that means, you know, your people have to be cycled through more quickly and you have to pull them on. There's a part of that that's true. For sure, the point of friction is going to require the most resources and the most energy

and you're going to exert yourself the most. But there's a piece in there that probably needs to be worth expanding on a little bit is that the point of friction is actually, if you're prepared and briefed for it, those people actually have the most endurance because that's where they want to be. That's where they've been anticipating. That's the entire thing this whole build has been about is to get there. And they're the most involved. They're the most engaged.

Those people also have the most endurance. It's the places where there's a least amount going on, the least amount of friction where you feel you're making the least impact. those are the people that are the first ones to really struggle because they feel disconnected. And it's not 100% wrong the way they said it. But I wanted there to be a piece of saying, oh, by the way, everybody wants to be at the point of friction on your team if you've prepared and built them. And those people can actually endure the longest.

You still need to pull some of those folks off the line. You still need to assess how they're doing. But the people most engaged are typically the people that are most willing to stay engaged the longest. and that piece was missing in that last section there. And there's this peacetime hint to all these comments that are in there. And like, the point of friction, you would have to choke me out to get me away from that to give me a chance to rest and to refit.

And again, it doesn't mean that you just let them go in the red forever. But there's just a part missing in there that this guy were talking about, whoever this guy was. The POG. Yeah, the POG is in the room. The RMF had a lot of information. I'm like yeah what about the other part that says oh by the way that's where everybody really wants to be Yeah because that guy doesn't want to be there no and he's like all those guys need a break like I dare you to pull me off the line Yeah when when things are out there most intense good luck getting me off the line

The next section is called Combat orders the authority to issue orders is an inherent function of command orders are normally issued to next subordinate commanders Bypassing the normal channels of command is resorted only to in order urgent situations in such cases both commander issuing the come and the commander receiving the order should notify intermediate commanders of its purport as soon as possible so try not to jump the chain of command orders may be either complete or fragmentary the order is complete when it covers all the essential aspects of the phases of operations complete orders include missions to all subordinate

units charged with the execution of tactical operations in carrying out the commander's plan so that's a complete order fragmentary orders and by the way there's no there's no distinction between these two things in troupe and funeral so I think the POG

was like no orders have to be detailed and the guys were like okay yep you're Roger that sir but uh you know there's something else that can happen maybe possibly we call them they made up fragmentary orders fragmentary orders fragmentary orders are used when speed and delivery and execution is imperative

guess which one you're going to do the most of Yeah. Fragg orders are issued successively as the situation develops and as decisions are made and consist of separate instructions to one or more subordinate units prescribed, prescribing each, the part each is to play in the operation in the separate phases thereof. This procedure will be usual in divisions and smaller units. Pogue snucked that one in there. Fragmentary orders may be either oral or written. They are concise, but not at the expense of clarity and omission of essential information. That's very, very clear in the, uh, in the, in the, in the, trouping theorem. Instructions issued in fragmentary orders may be repeated in a complete field order or in an annex if considered desirable.

Orders should be originated sufficiently, sufficiently early and transmitted in such form as to permit subordinate commanders, the maximum superior periods to, to reconnoiter, to estimate their own situations, to issue their orders, and to prepare their troops for the contemplated operation. In many situations, it may be necessary or desirable to order a warn of impending operations. Warning order. A warning order contains information which enables subordinate commanders to make preparations for a contemplated operation. It's principal purposes to gain the time for preparatory measures and to conserve the energy of the troops. So that is in the troop and furgue the idea of a warning order. Warning orders are awesome.

Yeah. Be prepared to. Here's what we're probably going to do. It's going to look something like this, prep this gear, think about that area of operations. And if I was going to take away something from that long section there, if I'm a leader in a business or a key leader in an organization, the takeaway for me is it may feel. feel like you at the top of the org chart needs to talk the most, give the most information. Actually, what you should do is the time that you should maximize is your subordinate leaders going to figure out what they need to do to support your overall mission.

The least amount of information you can pass, it has to be the right amount of information, but the more time you can give them to figure out their particular situation to support that, the better. Less talking, more time for your people to go dear their job as opposed to, let's get everybody in the room. I'm going to talk all day long about every single detail and not give them any time to go figure out. That's that's opposite. So the Fraggo and the warning O, that's probably 95% of the way you're going to communicate as leader.

Yeah, once at your annual conference for sure. Yeah, we need to spend some time. We'll do that. But that's not going to happen on day to day. And the less you talk is probably the better for your team because it gives them more time to lead. Yeah. And those detailed plans are going to change. They're going to change.

Yeah. So you can, if you've got the relationships and you've got the well-trained people and you've got the trust bill, man, the orders are so freaking simple to give. And now's the thing with, and I didn't say this, but that's the whole jumping the chain of command thing is what you really want. There are time, look, don't jump the chain of command if you can void it. For sure. That's a good blanket statement. But the reality is, is that are there times to jump the chain? Yes, there are.

And the best thing I have when I jump the chain of command is whoever that leader that I bypass to give direct orders or information to their folks, if I got a really good relationship and a long history of them, they don't even care. It's no factor. And I'm like, hey, and I was so good back. Hey, Jocko, you weren't around. I had to make this thing happen. This is what we did and why.

You're like, good to go. Cool. Sounds good. It's the POG. It's the guy who really likes the chain of commands. You shouldn't bypass me to speak to my men is the guy who's most offended. and it's probably the hardest relationship because what that guy cares about the most

is his positional authority. And there's so much in there on, even the jump in the chain is, you have a good relationship, you can jump the chain all day long. And I'm saying you should go out of your way to do it, but sometimes it's required and strong relationships,

you're like, yeah, no factor, thanks for giving me the heads up. My guy's back briefed me anyway. We're all good, I'm all in. Yeah, they told me what they're doing. Got it. Appreciate it. Thanks. Yeah. No factor.

People that are insecure about their leadership capabilities are the ones that really, that's the, that's the guy. the POG. Lieutenant Colonel Paul, I think he's actually a full colonel, this POG. Colonel POG.

Yeah, no, he's the senior guy. Yeah, he's the senior guy. And yeah, Colonel POG is in the house for some of this. Orders, an order should not trespass upon the province of a subordinate. It should contain everything that the subordinate must know to carry out his mission, but nothing more. I really like that order should not trespass upon the province of a subordinate. Yes. Like, you got to let him run his thing.

Tell him what he needs and then give him all the time in the world you can to get. Let him go lead. Orders must be clear and explicit and as brief as, as is consistent with clarity. Short sentences are easily understood. You know, they're like, hey, Colonel, Colonel, Colonel, do you mind if we just say that short sentences are easily understood? some of the guys might not get that. And he's like, well, I'd like to talk to you about that for a while. Clarity is more important than technique.

The more urgent the situation, the greater the need for conciseness in the order. Think about that. The more urgent the situation, the greater the need for conciseness in the order. I think it was Mark Twain that said, I wanted to write you a short note, but I didn't have time. So I'm writing you this long letter, which is, easier than writing something short and concise. I come back, you tell the story a lot on the podcast, and it's the, bust that door.

Just the simplest, and the reason you have to say it like that is because there's actually not any more time than you need to talk about, hey, well, I feel like the enemy might be maneuvering this. Bust that door. Yeah. And they go, and they go do that. Yeah. And problem solved.

Totally. Any statement of reasons for measures adopted should be limited to what is necessary to obtain an intelligent cooperation from the subordinates. I'm going to read that one again. Any statement of reasons for measures adopted should be limited to what is necessary to obtain intelligent cooperation from the subordinates. There's a little bit, there's a little argument about that one because the, the Pogue, Colonel Pogue was like, you don't, you need to tell them what to do. You tell them what to do. And the other guys were like, listen, you need to give them. some information on why this is happening.

And he's like, no, you don't. And they said, yes, you do. And finally they wrote this statement. The compromise. Yeah, the compromise is like, at least let them know, give them what's limited so that they have, have the information and can understand why it's happening. Now, there are times when leaders give too much information. And it overwhelms the machine gunner who's like, bro, tell me what my field of fire is.

For sure. Can you tell me that again? detailed instructions for a variety of contingencies or prescriptions that are a matter of training do not inspire confidence and have no place in an order. Trivial and meaningless expressions divide responsibility and lead to the adoption of half measures by subordinates. Trivial and meaningless expressions. They're actually telling you how to write and how to speak. Yeah.

Trivial and meaningless expressions divide responsibility. and lead to the adoption of half measures by subordinates. Exaggerated and bombastic phrases invite ridicule and weaken the force of an order. You cannot do that. You cannot use exaggerated and bombastic phrases. What's what happens is you think you're not getting the message apart. to your people. Yeah. You think that they don't get it.

If we don't do this, it's going to destroy the company. And you're thinking, like, oh, I better pay attention. And actually all that does is just undermine your message. Like, bro, yeah. Hang on. It's not going to destroy the company. If you're the leader that, that, if you can have these humility to recognize, you're the one that covers all these little detailed points.

Your people are tuning you out. They're tuning you out. And actually what's going to happen is they're going to miss the important things. So you just need to say just the important things. Yeah, what you do is you paint yourself into a corner. Totally. Because if you're talking and you're saying this and then you're saying that

and then you're saying that and then you're saying that and then you finally want to say something important, you want to make sure everyone pays attention. So you put an exaggeration or you make it a bombastic phrase. And then what you end up doing is now you're making exaggerations and bombastic phrases all the time. They have no impact. And you end up the boy that cried wolf.

Last muster, somebody asked you a question. and the answer was basically kind of like how much talking, how much listening. And you're like 98% listening, 2% talking. And you pause and you're like, now that I've thought about it, that's the perfect ratio. It's just the least amount of things you can say to pass the pertinent information and then stop talking. And if it's the only way to compel your people to do it is that the risk is total destruction, then the one in a million times that actually it could be total destruction, they actually don't respond the way that they need to.

They don't care because you've been saying that this could crush us. This could destroy. It's like the one time that's true, they've filtered you out years ago. Yeah. 98% of the time use your ears, 2% of the time, use your mouth. I would not talk on the radio in TASC unit bruiser. I would not talk on the radio. When I talked, everybody listened.

Totally. And same thing. You know, when one of the platoon commanders is given a brief. I'm not talking. I got three things to say at the end, maybe two. Here's what's important. That's what you need to think about. Boom.

Expressions such as attack vigorously, if used in orders, are not only verbose and meaningless, but tend to weaken the force of subsequent orders in which such expressions are not there. That's exactly what you were just saying. Like, you're going to run out of adjectives, bro. This is critically important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. there's the hierarchy of adjectives and you're going to reach the end of it, which is going to suck. Next, orders should prescribe only so far as conditions can be foreseen.

Orders which attempt to regulate matters too far in the future result in frequent changes. Frequent changes in orders overload the means of signal communication, cause confusion and misunderstanding, impose needless hardship on the troops and injure their morale. So there you go. That's freaking epic right there. Totally. You sit there and you're trying to, what I just said, this, we're, we're going to, we're, going to come out with a detailed plan of how it's going to go from day one to day 19.

No. No, you're not. You're not. No one is. And it, it pisses your guys off. It pisses them off. For sure. I learned this lesson.

So, uh, I was on an ARG deployment, which meant I was on a ship. And we were planning for some mission. And at first they said, okay, you're going to launch from, you're going to launch from the boats, the, the, the rib boats, the rigid hole inflatable boats. You'll load yours. Zodiacs on there. We'll put them in the water and you guys will go do your mission. And so we start prepping for that.

And then they come back and they say, actually, sorry, our bust. You're going to use helicopters. So we're like, okay, now this is a totally different rigging exercise. I mean completely different. So we have to bring the zodiacs, which we had rigged for boat launch. We had to completely break them down and now rigged them to go inside of a CH-46 and get kicked out the back. And then we jump in the water and we go. This takes us, I'm not even kidding,

this takes six hours of hard labor. And hour five and a half comes back. Actually, you're not using heloes. You're using boats again. And there was like borderline, just total breakdown of chain of command. We're like, are you kidding me? Because guess what?

We hadn't planned anything. We hadn't done any of our personal gear prep. All we were doing was, and when you're on an arc, like you you go check out bringing a 55 horsepower engine from the flight deck next to the ribs down into the weld deck you know and then you do that with every piece of gear that you have well it it was just stupid and and of course this was a three minute conversation this is a decision a three minute conversation and a four second decision that my upper chain of command

above my platoon commanders you know was like oh it'd be good to get him some work in the in the Helos. Okay, well, yeah, let's get the helos going. Have them get ready for a helo. It wasn't like, okay, are they committed? No, they just made a little decision. And I learned that in that moment in time, when you're the guy in charge, you better know what the hell your decisions, how your decisions impact the boys.

Because not, look, wasn't hard work, yes, but it was even worse than the fact that it was hard work. We were not prepared now. We had wasted. It took us another six hours. to get everything derigged. So we were not planning the way we should have been planning because we were running around like idiots, wasting time.

Wasting time. Orders issued by subordinates should not be mere repetition of those from higher authority with additions of their own. New orders are clearer and more satisfactory. As a rule, it is desirable to keep contemplated operation secret as long as possible

and to confined knowledge thereof to a few staff officers and senior commanders. However, upon entry into action, no unit should be in doubt as to what the commander wants to do. Whenever knowledge of his intentions is necessary to ensure the cooperation of units engaged, the commander does not hesitate to disclose them to all concerned. Ignorance of his intentions may often lead to inactivity on the part of subordinates. Commander's intent is the actual thing that you lead with.

It's the most important piece of information of all of it. And when we work with companies all the time, there's this phrase that people know. It's like, if you ever hear yourself or the people around you saying, you don't need to know that, just do your job, man, the likelihood of success is basically zero. Check. It is impossible to prescribe detailed forms of orders to fit every tactical situation. To attempt to do so would result in a rigid form and a routine style of expression

which would not be in accord with the tactical requirements presented by the diverse situations that arise in war. You don't know what's going to happen. That circles back, I think, to the first sentence you read. And war is like, you can't script the answer. You don't know what's going to happen. To the extent practical, however, it has been found efficient and convenient

to classify combat orders according to their purpose and scope of for some of these to adopt a standard sequence of composition. This makes for the ease of understanding avoidance of emissions and ready reference. Yeah, for sure. That's where you get smic, which they surprisingly don't cover. They cover it in troupe and furoring, but they don't cover it in this one. But that's what they're talking about. Moreover, experience has shown that an order which can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.

And experience has shown that an order that which can be misunderstood will be misunderstood and to obviate the designations of boundaries, details of time and place, military terminology, abbreviations, designations of units, and the like. For details related to these matters,

CFM 101, TAC 5, and I wrote TAC 1, which is the operational turns and graphics, which in the SEAL teams, when the war kicked off, we were not, we didn't know what we were doing.

Like, in terms of operational terms and graphics, we just kind of drew error. And like made it obvious to the guys in a platoon like, hey, move there. Bad guys there. We didn't realize that there was an actual, an actual language that was utilized throughout all. I remember when I was trying to convince people that we. The entire military?

Well, it's through, it's not just through our military. It's all NATO forces, by the way. Because I remember having, I would be like, hey, listen, you know, you need to put this. stuff in here there's this manual it's called the 101 tack five I used to literally have the 101 tack five tack one I had a printed copy and I had it in my bathroom I had like one copy my bathroom and I would read through it you know because at some point I think I was probably I think I was probably a platoon commander and I realized like oh everyone uses this but us okay so I just started trying to learn terms and you know because we we don't have the basic school

in the SEAL teams. We don't even have, you know, advanced infantry training like they have in the Army where you're going to, you go through a platoon workup, but it's this isolated thing, right? It's this isolated thing. And luckily I did two ARG deployments where we worked with the Marine Corps extensively,

which was awesome. And I got my taste and my indoctrination in how the rest of the freaking military works because you got Big Navy, you got the Marine Corps, you got Marine Corps air. It was awesome. I was so lucky that I got put in those situations. And that's kind of where I first would see these things.

I'd be like, oh, that's an interesting symbol. But, you know, it was pre-internet. It wasn't like I could explore this idea. But yeah, I used to have one of those next to my bed. But I remember trying to, I would be telling guys like, hey, the symbol for the enemy actually isn't a red X. It's a diamond. Yeah. And they'd be like, that's dumb.

No, no one's going to know what that means. Actually, everyone in NATO forces knows what that means. The only people that don't know is the 16 guys in your seal platoon. How about we get on board with what everyone else in the military is doing? Check. And now we get, this is the last section. That's, you know, that's covered, worth covering. In every unit, standing operating procedures is prescribed by the commander wherever practicable.

This procedure covers those features of the operation, which lend them. themselves to a definite or standardized procedure without loss of effectiveness. The adoption of such procedures will save time in the preparation and issuance of orders, minimize the chances for confusion and errors when under stress of combat and greatly simplify and expedite the execution of operations in the field. Pretty straightforward. And they close out talking about command posts, which nothing, they talk about signal communication, which, you know, this is very, very tactical level stuff like how you're going to communicate at during this time period with with message centers and advanced message I mean it's it's like the actual how they're doing it

so it's not super applicable other than the stuff that we've already covered about things being simple clear and concise I mean literally airplane messengers may be employed when distance intervening obstacles on the ground and how the factors prevent use of other means so that's what it's talking about. It's actually talking to take it one step further. Homing pigeons are a mean of communication from front to rear when other means it's held. So that's where we're at. I'm not going to dive into all those things, even though they are interesting and fascinating. And we can, I'm sure, learn something, but we're not going to dive too deep. So that's, that's kind of where it wraps up. And as I mentioned before, the, the 1944 version, if you look

at that, the other than the differences than what I pointed out, there's an entire big section of air power and how you utilize it. And then there's more granular tactics. But again, it's a little bit homing pigeon-ish, you know, not readilyly applicable as leaders. But the leadership principles, other than that one sentence that we pointed out, other than that one sentence, it's almost, it doesn't change. And it's very similar to the troupe infuring, which is very similar to everything

that we talk about all the time. Good leadership requires understanding people. Good leadership means you have to care about your men. You have to, as the book says, show a constant concern for their comfort and welfare. How about you make that a priority as a leader? You can't unnecessarily tax the endurance of the troops. Discipline is the means.

Cohesive force in a unit good morale cannot be improvised and and finally through offensive action through offensive action the commander exercises his initiative preserves his his freedom of action and imposes his will on the enemy That's what we need to do is go on the offense on all fronts don't wait for orders don't wait for the intel to be perfect and if you have to be on the defense don't stay there look for that moment in time where you can flip the scenario go on the offense take ground move forward and impose your will on the enemy and yes that does translate to business and it certainly translates to what you do with your life You go on offense when you wake up in the morning.

That's what you do. Don't wait to react. You'll end up on the defense and you will eventually get taken out. I think that's all I got for this one. Anything else? Crazy, isn't it? So good, man. Somebody will reach out to me and tell me who wrote this.

Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Yeah. Somebody will reach out to me. Somebody reached out to me. I've got a track on the FM one tack three. I've got a master, I think it's a master gunnery sergeant that was in the room. Who is a Vietnam guy?

Yeah. Who's like, oh, you know, it's, I want to say his son, I think his son reached out to me. Hey, just kind of, or maybe it was one of the guys who served with him. Hey, just FYI, you know, this guy was in the room. had a big part in writing it. And, you know, if you want to ask them some questions, I'm like, uh, 100%. Unfortunately, since Colonel Pogue was probably 48 years old when he was doing this, we won't get him in the room.

We don't need him in the room, no. You know, the timing of that, when you start, when you look at the timing when they're written, I mean, the takeaway you think about is you learn the hardest lessons from the most difficult situations. And you learn the hardest lessons from the most challenging environments. with your team. And just think about how different the world was from 1920 to 1940 and then from 1941 to 1943.

Yeah. Yeah. And even if you looked at if you had a closed mind and you were looking at World War I, even if Colonel Pogue served in World War I, what he took away from that was like, listen, when I say charge, there's just problems. There's people that don't charge when I say charge. That's horrible. He might have been emphatically saying,

Listen, obedience is the most important thing. And there were some guys that came back. And when he said it the first time, they were like, well, hey, I know you were a platoon commander, but like, I was over here. And we actually needed to think about what we were doing. Then after three years of war, they just shut him down and said, hey, the methods that you used in World War I sucked. And if we would have trained our troops to say, hey, boss, that's a dumb idea. We should not get up and charge this. we should not go online at 0,600 when the bugle sounds, I'm not doing it.

And we should not do it. Should not do this because we are going to lose 480 men when that bugle sounds. And that's stupid. Yeah. Because we're going to get nothing out of it. And so that's what we want. And that's what this whole book begs for. At least that, at least the other guys in the room beg for people think.

That's what they beg for. Use your initiative. Question your boss. If your boss can't explain why we're doing something, then he's doing it wrong. And a leader who has subordinates, put that pushback and go, hey boss, hey, I don't get this. I don't think this is right. That's the best leadership you can have it. I want my guys to go, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Hang on. I don't understand this. That's the best feedback I could possibly get, which is them saying, time out. I don't understand. We need to keep talking about this as opposed to one of two things. It's sort of this blind loyalty where they just do whatever I say because there's no way I've got it all right. Or worse, they think, this guy's an idiot and it's not even worth talking to him about it, how disconnected those people are.

If you're a leader, you want your people pushing back. You want them asking you hard questions. And if you can't answer their questions, you have more work to do. Yeah. Yep. And if you're smart, the ones that you will charge with answering those questions is those men themselves that are asking them. Because if they say, why are we coming in from the West?

You say, well, I thought it looked good. Please tell me why you don't think that's going to work. Go do a better map study than I did, by the way, because I got three other elements that I'm looking at, but cool. You come up with a better plan. Please. We're standing by for that. So, yeah, these principles of combat, man,

these principles of leadership, they just don't change. And it's so, it's crazy that in 2019 right now, you and I can work with leaders, you and I can meet leaders that are 100% aligned with Colonel Pogue. Yeah. They're 100% aligned with Colonel Pogue.

Their attitude is, listen, hey, what I want is people just do what I tell them to do. And God, that sounds good, doesn't it? This sounds great. Hey, if these guys just do what I tell them to do, here's the problem. You're not that freaking smart. You don't even know what they should do. How can you? You're not on the front lines.

You're not seen what's happening. You're not in that manufacturing. You're not on that line. You're not on that construction site. You're not in that meeting. You're supposed to be looking up and out. So how can you know what's going on down there? You don't.

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It's been a hot summer in San Diego, California. And I've been burning through the jocco white tea in a can. So all those things, all good to go. And then we have another store called Jocco store where you can get rash cards, T-shirts, hats, hoodies, whatever. a bunch of stuff on there if you want to as echo Charles says if you want to represent while you're on the path he seems to think that gets the the message across he could be right we don't know he might be right there's some evidence out there I saw on Twitter the other day

a guy posted something that his wife said hey you got a birthday coming up is there anything you want and his answer was we have a store it's called jaco store and that was his answer to is why I say it's getting out there. That is legit. Jocko is a store. It's called Jocko store. That's what ECHO usually says about that. Subscribe to the podcast.

Wherever you subscribe to a podcast, leave a review so I can read your review and be a entertained or be informed about your critique points. So that's good. Echo seems to think people don't subscribe. So maybe it's hard to get people to subscribe to a podcast because they think it fills up their phone or something. No, but anyways, if you don't subscribe, scribe, also check out the Warrior Kid podcast. We are working always to try and get more Warrior Kid podcast on because I know parents are mad at me when I don't release them.

Yes. Because they listen to the same podcast. I think there's 23 of them right now. There's 23? Yeah, I think there's 23. So I owe, I try and put them out in threes for some reason. I don't even know why. I have one in the bank.

I'll do two more. Sorry. But check it out and then get some Warrior Kid. soap irishokes ranch com aiden he sold his thousandth package the other day thousand he's i think he's 13 now

but you know he's just getting after it so stay clean irishokes ranch dot com youtube channel there's a youtube channel you can subscribe to you can see what dave burke looks like you can see what i look like you can see what i look like you can see us laughing and carrying on

you can see our expressions you can see what we look like when we're talking about Colonel Pogue, my new arch enemy in the world. And you can see Echo's completely overly enhanced videos where things are blowing up. It's the worst overuse of special effects. Walls are being smashed. Walls are being smashed.

Things are exploding. But a lot of people like them, including Echo. Psychological warfare, if you need that little A little shot in the brain. If you need it, you can get it from psychological warfare on iTunes, MP3 platforms of all kinds. Flipsidecanvas.com. That's Dakota Myers Company, and he's making shot in the arm that you can hang on the wall. That's what it is.

A shot in the arm that you can hang on the wall so you wake up every morning, you can see something that says discipline equals freedom. I got some books. the next book to come out is called leadership strategy and tactics field manual you can pre-order it right now if you want the first a dish I was talking to my publisher the other day and we're talking about what to do I said listen my people are there they want the first a dish and I want them to know that they got the first a dish so we're going to do something I'm not 100% sure yet but something to indicate at least that's the plan something to indicate that you got that first a dish so you get one chance to

be on the first a dish train and then you're forever well I guess you could buy a used one for thousands of dollars off of eBay if you miss the if you miss the initial first to dish train and you don't want to let that happen so so leadership strategy and tactics really break down this stuff on a granular level on how to apply it in specific situations that you're in. Pre-order that one now. Way the Warrior Kid.

There's three of them. The most recent is where there's a will. Your daughter seems to be mega on the path, right? Yeah. I mean, you gotta be so proud. Dude, she is dialed in, man. I'm stoked and we actually were talking about it the other day, she is.

She had to write a little letter, all the kids in that started school, they had to write a little bio about themselves and kind of put it up on the wall to introduce themselves to the class. And inside that biography, it was talking about things that are important to you, what do you think you like? She used the phrase discipline. She used the phrase ownership. She said, good people don't make excuses. I didn't even know she wrote it until I went back to school and had a couple weeks ago and I read it, took a picture of it. I'm like, man, this kid is so far ahead of where I was at that age. It's, Uncle Jake's been a good influence in her life.

Uncle Jake, he has lessons for everyone. But the problem is kids don't listen to their parents like they listen to Uncle Jake. They don't. It's just the way it is. My own kids don't listen to me as much as they listen to Uncle Jake. That's just the way it is. They're programmed to rebel against you.

They have to. Otherwise, they'll be living at home when they're 38 years old. You don't want that. You want them to rebel against you. But when they look outside for guidance, you want them. them to find the right guidance. There's Uncle Jake standing at a rigid parade rest, ready to put out the word. And if you're a parent, you've now know, and you're listening, you now know you have those resources available to you. Because if you're like most parents, when your kid rebels,

you know what most of us do, we squash that, which is the worst thing you can do. Push them away further. And now you can say, hey, look, I understand. And now you've got some other, you've got some flanking maneuvers you can implement and have them because they're going I think they're figuring out on their own, which in some ways they are. But the reason they're even getting there in the first place is because of you. Yeah, it's legit. So way of the warrior kid, one, two, and three. The first one's called Way of the Warrior Kid.

The second one's Mark's Mission. The third one is Way of the Warrior Kid three, where there's a will. Got Mikey and the Dragons. You're gonna, like, I just had this, when I was on with Theo Vaughn, this guy had, he had called in the last time and had a kid on the way. He was super freaked out and scared and he was like what should I do and you know, it's like, okay, here's a plan to go forward and then we called him yesterday. We called the guy back and he's like, yeah, I got the kid and it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it's actually amazing and I was like, yeah, those dragons are small. Those dragons aren't as big as you think they're going to be. So Mike and the dragon, teach your kids to overcome. Teach your kids to stand up. Teach your kids to understand what fear is and how they can actually. react to it in a positive way Mikey and the Dragons get that book for kids that you know man that's another book I wish I had when I was little discipline

equals freedom field manual how to get after it yes you need that manual that's another one you what do you need to read to that a day read one page read one page and calibrate your brain for the day that's what it is brain calibration calibrate your brain one page a day it'll take you three minutes to read and you'll be crowd calibrated and then of course there's the two books that I wrote with my brother Laif Babin extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership talking about all the things that we've been talking about today leadership how to lead what to look out for how to overcome

those obstacles we have echelon front which is our leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership all of your problems are leadership problems that's what we do Dave Burke got him got Andrew Paul who's on last time it's it's all of us that's what we do we do it 24 hours a day seven days a week we are working with companies and then on top of that we have EF online which is it's interactive training online where you can learn the leadership principles that we talk about look the books are are great the podcast

is a great come to the muster all these things are good none of them work alone you you want to give yourself as many advantages as possible get on eFonline.com and learn these leadership principles

deeper more granular leadership is a skill it requires reps reps after reps after reps muster's an awesome rep this podcast is an awesome rep the books are awesome reps if online gives you an unlimited number of reps to go get and you need to get reps when you're learning leadership period um speaking to the muster the next one we're

doing is in sydney australia the other two sold out chicago sold out denver sold out city's going to sell out extreme ownership dot com if you want to come and when it sells out there's no caveats no Denver was sold out. Yeah. No additional seat existed. Yeah. And you've got fire marshals. Like, it's not like we can bend the rules.

Sorry. We can't put people at risk because they want to come to the muster. That's not the way it works. So if you want to come, we're looking forward to coming out down to Australia and getting after it with y'all. And of course, we have EF Overwatch now, which is we're taking proven leaders from the SpeckOps community, the combat aviation community. and we're placing them into companies that need to implement all these leadership principles that we're talking about.

You don't need somebody that knows your industry. What you need is someone that knows how to lead. They'll figure out your industry. Trust me, they know how to adapt and overcome. They will get there and get in the game. If you want that, go to eFoverwatch.com. And if you want to continue this discussion with us, which I can promise. You Dave and I spend a lot of time together when we do spend time together or I shouldn't say we spend a lot of time together

When we spend time together because we're on the road a lot when we spend time together We talk about leadership all the time. That's all we just talk about just talk about leadership So if you want to talk about leadership with us cool you can find us on the interwebs Twitter Instagram Do Fasson book Dave is at Dave Burke David's at David R Burke and I am at Jacka Willing. Dave, any closing thoughts on this one? Yeah, one parting thought. You were going through the books. Anytime I'm on the podcast, which is completely awesome. I get a lot of hits on social media asking me about the eminently qualified human being project.

174. 174. Podcast 174. Let me tell you why you don't have that yet is because I simply haven't done a good enough job getting it done. It is close. but I am not doing my job. We are getting very close. That is coming out soon. I will finish that project and I'll get that done. What about the app? We are we finished an awesome beta test. Thank you for all of you out there that were dialed in on that. We are close on that as well and what you're going to see pretty soon is the app getting released and hopefully a digital version of that but you guys are asking the questions. The answer is I'm just not doing a good enough job. It's coming soon. interesting thing about and I know this when I said this to you you were like what and I was

like hey well we'll get an app out you know we can build an app and release that like soon as soon as possible and you're like well wouldn't it be easier to like just print to publish a book and I'm like nope believe it or not it's an archaic system and we're not I don't we're not 100% certain of how we're going to roll that out but the priority is speed right this priority of getting the eminently qualified human being app and document book, which we've also, well, we've actually, see, we had a little mission creep, right? Little mission creep, because as I'm looking at it, I'm thinking, hey, this is cool, this is awesome, but guess what?

There's some protocols that we could give people. It grew. Yeah. It grew. So now we've got some protocols in there for kind of standard operating procedures for things that go down in your life. and they're really good. I didn't have that big picture vision

we started working on it, but we've had some folks contribute to that. A lot of things have gone into it. It's certainly bigger, but it's actually where it needs to be. It's pretty close right now. Dude, it's close, man. We got to just get it out there.

Okay, cool. So that's that. And obviously, once again, we would not even be sitting in this room at all if it were not for our brave and courageous military men and women around the world. So thanks to all of you that have served and those that are currently serving, thank you.

And the same goes to our police and law enforcement. The firefighters out there, the paramedics, the EMTs, the dispatchers, the correctional officers, the Border Patrol, the Secret Service, to all the first responders. Once again, without you, we cannot live the life. that we live here.

So thanks to all of you for what you're doing and to both your families that are supporting, that are sacrificing, thanks to your families as well. And to everyone else out there, life is a war, right? It is a war, that's what it is. At least at a minimum, it's a metaphor for war. It's a fight.

And there are people out there and there are things out there that are trying to take you down. There is friction and there are obstacles and there is complacency. And you might think when I say life's war, you're like, well, not really. But check this out. Listen to me. In this situation that you're in, your life is at stake. Your life is actually at stake right now.

What you do with your life is at stake. You are fighting for your life every day. The way that you live it. The mark that you're going to leave. The legacy that you're going to leave. The people that you help. People that you help. People that you can help move forward.

The people that are weak that you can make stronger. All that is going to come back to you. That is your life. And your life is at stake right now, every day, almost as if you are at war. So don't sit back and be on the defense and allow life to happen to you. Don't do that. Instead, go on the offense every day by getting up and getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave Burke and Jocko.

Out.