Jocko Podcast - 227: Learning for Ultimate Winning. With Dave Berke. New Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication. MCDP 7 Learning.

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening  0:03:05 - MCDP 7, Learning. USMC. 1:59:58 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:19:24 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 227 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And joining us tonight as well is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. Hmm. Maradmin 22420.

Subject availability of MCDP7, learning. One purpose. The Commanding General Training and Education Command has published Marine Corps Doctrional Publication. Seven. Learning. Dated 20 February 2020. Background. The Commandant's planning guidance released 17 July 2019 establishing learning a combination of education and training as a priority focus area to develop an intellectual edge to capitalize on the unique ethos of the core and its maneuver. warfare mindset on 20 February 2020 the common on the Marine Corps general David H.

Berger approved MCDP 7 learning the first entirely new doctrinal publication released by the Marine Corps since 2001 MCDP 7 learning formalizes the philosophy principles concepts and expectations of learning MCDP 7 learning states that the Marine Corps learning philosophy seeks to create a culture of continuous learning and professional competence that yields adaptive leaders capable of successfully conducting maneuver warfare in complex uncertain and chaotic environments MCDP 7 learning has been developed to codify the Marine Corps learning philosophy and explain why learning is essential to the profession of arms

Going forward, MCDP 7, learning will serve as a guide for a culture of continuous learning and professional competence that yields adaptive leaders who can quickly recognize changing conditions in the battle space, adapt, and make timely decisions against a thinking enemy. This publication's audience is all Marines. Coordinating instructions and initial distribution of 11,330 publication hard copies is underway units requiring additional print allocations must follow procedures identified in reference a paragraph 4a this mar admin is applicable to marine corps for total force so there you go the marine corps in case you didn't gather from that message has a new doctrinal publication

the first one since 2001. And there was probably not too many people that were a little bit giddy and excited about it besides myself and David R. Burke. Proof. The release of this publication in its own right is proof that the Marine Corps is learning. That's a bold statement.

So yeah, the Marine Corps has a new pub out and we're going to study it right now. now so here we go marine corps doctrinal publication seven it's called learning here we go and we'll start off with the forward Department of the Navy headquarters United States Marine Corps the purpose of this publication is to describe the Marine Corps's learning philosophy and explain why learning is critically important to the profession of arms while the concept while many of the concepts in this publication have been passed on by Marine leaders throughout our history this publication

seeks to formalize them and provide aspirational goals. Hmm, that's a familiar subject. Learning is an institutional priority and a professional expectation for all Marines. This mentality is key to the Marine Corps becoming a more effective learning organization. Now, you're going to find as we run through this and the way they define learning

and the way they talk about learning, obviously this doesn't only apply to the profession of arms and it obviously doesn't apply only to the Marine Corps It applies to everybody in the world, every human being. Continuing on, the most important factor in this philosophy is the importance of continuous learning throughout our careers for war fighting. Continuous learning is essential to maneuver warfare because it enables Marines to quickly recognize changing conditions in the battle space,

adapt, and make timely decisions against a thinking enemy. These skills required in war must be learned, developed, and honed over time if neglected, they quickly atrophy. And this is one of the first things that I notice is they break down this thing of when you're on the battlefield, and this is so clear, but when you're on the battlefield, the enemy's doing something, they're changing their tactics, and we've talked about that for years. What you're actually doing is you're learning what they're doing and you're learning how you need to respond to it.

So the mindset of learning is that we talk about adaptation a lot. Well, if you can't learn, you're not going to be able to adapt anything. Marines leverage the art and science of learning technologies and learning environments that reflect the changing operational environment to tailor learning and provide each other with constructive feedback. Leaders hold Marines to high professional standards of performance, conduct, and discipline to include learning. As Marines rise in rank and position continuous learning and development and developing our professional skills are a professional expectation. So you are that's what it is if you're in the Marine Corps you're learning that's the expectation We must make the most of every learning opportunity Fostering our subordinates learning while continuing our own

Continuous learning is important to Marines because of the fundamental nature of war and it's ever-changing character The nature of war carries a combination of fear uncertainty Ambiguity Ambiguity Chance horror and above all friction that Marines Marines must prepare to counter. Marines must seek out education and training opportunities that stimulate these conditions. We must train how we fight. As Marines, we must understand how important learning is and be committed to the principles laid out in this publication.

Our professional responsibility as Marines is to engage in continuous learning so that we may best support our fellow Marines, our Corps, and our nation signed D.H. Berger. General U.S. Marine Corps Commodont of the Marine Corps. So that's how they kick it off. And if you haven't heard Dave and I talking about any of these other, any of the other Marine Corps manuals that we've covered. And one of the very first things that I covered on this podcast was a war fighting, which is a great publication. But the Marine Corps has a way of writing publications and a way of writing.

That is awesome. They nail it. All right. So chapter one is called the NACTS. nature of learning starts off with some quotes here as a life which which I really don't like in general I generally don't like when things start with quotes but I think the Marine Corps gets a pass here you know I generally don't like when people say even you know you'll hear someone give us a speech you know a commencement address and they'll say in

the words of so-and-so and you're like right you know Like they could have read that. They're there. If you got asked to do a graduate a commencement speech or you got asked to give a talk, they're asking you to give that talk. Right. Am I wrong? No, you're right.

And look, I'm not saying that there's not times where quotes aren't needed. I've used them. I don't use them a lot though. I will say that. In fact, I rarely use them. It's going to be probably Pat and or Hackworth. You're shaking your head. That's what I was going to say is it's Al Gray and Jim Mattis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of my threshold as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to go with the first one. As a lifetime serial learner, I found that extraordinary people can do the extraordinary who are committed to experiential learning, are intellectually curious, and possess an unquenchable desire to acquire new knowledge. This may be our only advantage in the future fight. And that's from Lorna M.

I don't know how you say that last name, Maylock, I guess, but she's a general, Marine Corps, from Brooklyn, New York. via Jamaica But what I like about that is This may be our only advantage in future fight Because at some point The playing fields get level And then it's who is smarter

It's not even who is smarter It's who can learn faster Al Gray, 29th common out of the Marine Corps Two Burgle Hearts Mustang, by the way Camis, by the way If you go and look at all the Marine Corps Commandants, they're all in their dress, blues,

except for one, Al Gray. He's in his camys getting after it. And he says, what you did isn't as important as what you were thinking. And how many times when I was in charge of training, I watched somebody do something, watched some young junior officer do something. And look, I saw what they did. And I'd say, you know, what were you thinking when you just did that?

What was your, what was in your head? What were you trying to make happen? Like I get it. I get what you did. I'm not even concerned about that. I want to know what you were thinking because you might have made a you might have made a bad decision You might have made a bad tactical call, but if you had a good idea then we can figure out how to teach you the tactics of getting it done But if you were thinking something wrong where we have a bit much bigger problem And then general Mattis The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears Indeed needs no explanation

Okay, here we go getting into it war fighting is the most complex challenging violent and dynamic human endeavor the Marine Corps as a nation's force and readiness must have the versatility and flexibility to effectively fight and succeed in any situation and at any intensity across the full spectrum of conflict whenever and wherever the nation calls if you think about what that sentence says check it out must have the versatility and flexibility to effectively fight and succeed in any situation and this is the part that I think is really stands up and at any intensity right this is from hand-to-hand blood bath combat to non-combatant

evacuation right this is just you got to be able to do anything in the full spectrum continuing to meet these demands it is critical that Marines recognize that learning has a direct impact on war fighting Marines who understand the key learning principles and continuously seek opportunities to develop knowledge, skills, and the proper attitudes throughout their careers will develop wisdom that enables success in battle. As Marines, we pass on our wisdom and our experiences to the next generation of Marines. For the Marine Corps to remain the United States force in readiness, it is critical that

every Marine strength and value learning in all facets of the Marine Corps culture, learning environments and leadership development. Learning is a professional responsibility for all Marines at all levels. Learning is a professional responsibility for all Marines at all levels. Marines must develop the habit of continuous learning early in their careers to set conditions for success in increasing levels of responsibility. Really makes it pretty clear. That's what the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps docs, man, they nail it. You talk about simple, clear, and concise comms. Yes. They just. They got it. Clear, man, it's right there. Hey, if we're going to win wars, we've got to get smart. What's, what I find most, or one of the most impressive things about when you read this is, when you read really any of the Marine Corps docks, pubs, a general, a colonel, a gunny sergeant, and a Lance Corporal can all read this and go, okay, I get that.

Yep. And I see it, right? That's what they do so well. It's just they nail it. And the way they do that is simple, clear, and concise. First section, learning and competence. Learning is developing knowledge, skills, and attitudes through study, experience, or instruction.

It is a never-ending progression that includes understanding why something is important, the intent of learning. Hmm. What do you think? Yeah. It's like, oh, okay, cool. So everything that we talk about from a decentralized command perspective, when you apply that on an individual level for learning,

the exact same rules apply, which means it is your team has to understand why they're doing what they're doing. In this case, people have to understand why something is important. What do you have to understand in decentralized command? What's the commander's intent? What you have to understand here is what is the intent of the learning? It goes on Learning is much more than gathering information or reciting facts. It includes cognitive, physical, social, emotional, ethical, and cultural components. Learning occurs in formal settings like schoolhouse or training exercise and informal settings such as social, experiential, self-directed, and other ways outside the classroom. The developing knowledge, skills, and attitudes interact to influence how Marines think, respond, and act.

Isn't it weird to think about every single thing that you do is based on what you've learned? Now, you could take the Sam Harris approach here and say that you have no, what, free will. Yes. And then you'd have to say, okay, well, if you want to take that into the philosophical world, Sam, we get it. I'm not here to argue philosophy with Sam Harris. What I am going to tell you is this, when I would see young leaders make decisions. They were making decisions based on what they learned,

what they experienced. That's where it all comes from. Learning encompasses both training and education, which are equally important and complementary. A simple explanation of the difference between training and education is that training prepares Marines to deal with known factors of war, while education prepares Marines to deal with unknown factors. It's an interesting bifurcation of those two things.

It's going to take me a little while to get my head around that because I know a lot of the training that I ran, the purpose of the training was to get seals to learn how to deal with unknown factors. So we may have to explore that one a little bit. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but they are different. Yeah, well, maybe we'll have to explore what they see as training and what they see as education when we get there. When I read this, I wasn't, I just, I underlined unknown factors.

And I was like, yeah, of course, unknown factors. That's what we're trying to teach. Teach people how to deal with unknown factors. Training, I guess, I guess where they draw the line is like, hey, here's the procedures that we can teach you, right? That's your training. Learn this procedure, learn this procedure, learn this procedure. education is how do you take those procedures that you've learned and adapt them to this random new thing that you haven't seen before it's understandable all right I'll begin to wield my yield I'll begin to yield to this to this thought process here training and education are both accomplished in different ways but they are required working together to instill the learning that results in readiness and effectiveness the complexity of the modern battlefield and increasing rate of change requires a highly educated force.

While different education and training are inextricably linked, education denotes study and intellectual development. Training is primarily learning by doing. Okay, so now they're laying it out a little bit. Education denotes study and intellectual development. Training is primarily learning by doing. Okay. We will not train without the presence of education,

and we must not educate. without the complimentary execution of well-conceived training. Okay. I see where they're going. I'm not sure that I would have, I'm not sure that I would have presented this the same way. I might have to, I would have to think about this.

Because training is learning by doing. Okay, I get it. Your hands on, you're making stuff happen. And education is not, right? Education is study and intellectual development. That's what they're saying here. Okay. Okay.

I think I'm starting to grasp it a little bit better because here's how I just grasped it in my mind the mission of both these things is to learn right and both of them result in learning and so in my mind I was thinking well one is one you learn and one you don't learn but the actual fact is both these things you're going to learn just a method of learning one of them is one of them is study and one of them is doing. Yeah, and it almost seems like it's small things, but I don't think it's not. I mean, it's a big thing to understand the difference between those two is that if you were just training all the time and never really getting an education on what

you're doing or studying or learning the bigger picture of that, that training wouldn't be nearly as useful. You wouldn't learn as much if you weren't educating yourself why you're doing it. I know they talk more about it, but there's this idea like if I'm going to go to the rifle range and get really good at shooting the rifle, like a true. train on the rifle over and over and over again. I could do the same thing in an airplane. I can train over and over again.

But my education comes from other components like what the aircraft that I'm fighting against could do, what my enemy is capable of, what the 3D environment might be. And that training evolves because of the education. And if all I ever did was sort of think about what that looked like in three-dimensional battle space and never trained for it, that education by itself, I wouldn't learn as much without doing the training with it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, yeah, I'm, I'm seeing it.

I'm seeing it. Continuing on, Marines must always seek better ways to learn throughout the entire continuum of the training, of training and education. Throughout this publication, the term learning is emphasized. Training and education are you specifically referring to one or the other? Learning is the overall intended outcome of both training and education. So there you go. Interestingly, that must have, that must have been a little clogged thing. in my brain from when I read this.

Marines continuously learn to be ready for the constantly changing and increasing demands of warfare and the range of missions. As Marine Corps doctrinal publication 6, command and control explains, we earn the trust of others by demonstrating competence, a sense of responsibility,

loyalty, and self-discipline. We just talked about that on the last podcast, right? The number one way to earn trust is competence, do your job. Think about that. We earn the trust of others by our own self-discipline. Mm-hmm. Dude.

Competence is having sufficient knowledge, judgment, and skills to perform a particular duty, job, or function. Marines improve competencies through formal and informal learning opportunities that develop the required knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Marines learn to address complex problems and develop teamwork wherever they may be, whether in garrison deployed or in formal learning centers. Learning enables Marines to think critically, develop judgment, and cultivate a bias for action without waiting to be told what to do. Learning enables Marines to think critically, develop judgment, and cultivate a bias for action without waiting to be told what to do.

That is such the opposite of what people think that the military is. Everyone thinks it to be told what to do. And here the actual words are, don't wait to be told what to do. Those are the actual words, a bias for action. A Marine with knowledge and skills who lacks judgment requires close supervision, which may not be possible in combat conditions, hence decentralized command. Our Marine Corps ethos demands competence, responsibility, loyalty, and self-discipline as military professionals charge with defense of the nation.

Learning prepares Marines to exercise initiative within the commander's intent, constantly seeking to improve developmental agility, and deal with changing situations. Whoever was the guy writing this went out of his way to not just say discipline because I think military, that's actually not what it is. It's that's that's that's that by itself is not enough. Yep. He's he's making it perfectly clear to everyone that we're not going to impose discipline on you. You need self-discipline.

That's what you need. Decentralized command. Next section. The role of learning in war fighting. Maneuver warfare requires intelligent leaders at all levels who possess a bi-discuitary. for intelligent action. Oh, he just threw a little change at you. Yeah.

Intelligent actions. Not just action, because we don't want you just to take action. We want you to do something smart. Success in land warfare depends on Marines developing an intellectual edge to accurately recognize cues, make sense of the information, and respond effectively. This intellectual edge is based on developed knowledge and experience that allows Marines to shape conditions and events to their advantage. Developing fundamental cognitive competencies such as problem.

framing, mental imaging, critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, reasoning, and problem solving enables Marines to make effective decisions more quickly in time-constrained operational environments when they often have incomplete, inaccurate, or even contradictory information. There you go. And this is one of those, when I was reading this sentence yesterday, you were editing some of my work maybe a couple weeks ago. And you said, hey, you know this sentence that you wrote here, A lot in the years, you used a lot of words here.

Think about it. Maybe you could tighten this up. And I read it and I was like, yeah, I'm not tightening that. I said, you remember that one sentence? You said, yeah. And I said, I'm not changing it. And when I read this sentence, I thought about that. I was like, well, could we have kind of made this a little bit more concise?

But then I read it again. I thought to myself, no, this, every one of these words. Yeah, what are you going to take out? Yeah, what are you going to take out? What are you going to take out? where you don't lose some level of meaning. And you know, this kind of sentence right here, you know, if you're a young Marine out there

that's reading this for the first time, you're going, wait a second. I didn't, you know, they didn't cover this in, you know, junior high school English, right? So you have to break it down a little bit. You have to go, what are they talking about? Developing fundamental cognitive competencies. Okay, what does that mean?

That means I need to be able to think about these things. Okay, what I need to be able to think about. I need to think about problem framing. What does that mean? It means assessing looking at things in a certain way Mental imaging. Okay, what do I see in those things? Critical thinking. All right, now I need to think about them. I need to analyze those things I need to synthesize. I need to take all those things and put them together. I need to reason through them and then I need to problem solve. Yeah So there's a lot going on there. Yeah, and those are just synonyms to just repeat yourself. Those are different things. Yeah, and I was I wrote, I got notes all throughout this thing. But obviously the Marine Corps, the title of this section is the role of learning and warfighting.

Well, that's cool because this is the Marine Corps, we're about war fighting. If you take out the word Marine and take out the word warfighting, this is describing life. You want to talk about how is this applicable to my world? I have to make decisions when I don't have, when I have incomplete, inaccurate, or contradictory information. When don't you have that? War fighting, it's a no-brainer, but it's actually true everywhere. I mean, this thing is, it's written so clearly for any situation. Yeah.

A central tenet of maneuver warfare is attacking the enemy's ability to make decisions and shift the mental aspects of warfare to the Marines advantage. In short, Marines develop an intellectual edge by learning cognitive skills and competencies that enable them to move through the observed orient-aside and axe cycle, often referred to as the Udoloup, more quickly and effectively than the enemy. The warfighter who recognizes what is happening adapts the situation. and makes and then makes effective decisions in the shortest amount of time will typically have an advantage the ooteloup decision-making cycle is even more important in preparation for future conflicts because as new technologies emerge the rate of change will continue to increase

therefore Marines must continuously improve their knowledge and skills by leveraging technology but never depend upon technology alone as the solution we're back to colonel boyd marines should observe their environment to recognize key cues synthesize these cues to orient and quickly make sense of the information in order to decide and act and then Marines will start the cycle again as they observe the effects of their actions so You ever play chess? Yeah, are you good? No But I can play Okay, so

So you think you can take me? No Okay, check you probably could I know I don't know if I was good a chess player you are I don't play chess. Okay. So I know how to play it, but I don't play it. But I understand the game. So one thing that's interesting about the game is, and there's a great documentary about the current world champion in chess.

And I forget his last name. His first name is Magnus. Yeah. I watched it. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. So what's cool is, and what I learned from watching that documentary is that when you're a good chess player, you're seeing patterns.

You're just seeing chunks of the board, and you can take all those pieces that are there and you understand the whole thing. And then the better you are, the more chunks you understand and the more you understand how they're going to play out. And it's the same thing now when you take that and you look at, you know, if you look at Jiu-Jitsu,

like I see where your arm is and I know what that indicates the three possibilities that you have. And one of those possibilities isn't really a possibility because you also have your leg over here, so that means two possibilities. And so you can see these chunks. you can see things and you can you can react to it and then as you get good at reacting to seeing these chunks and get good at reacting to pattern recognition what makes it so what happens is you see pattern you get pattern recognition and what makes it easy isn't that you it's not that I see a pattern and I see a pattern I know what to do and I know what to do on and do that's easy that's like level one that's your white belt thought process

but what makes it easy when you're operating a high level is you see the chunks, you see the patterns that you recognize and you know what to do, but then you see a small outlier and you're able to recognize it. If you didn't know those patterns, you wouldn't recognize that outlier at all. As soon as you see that outliner, because all those chunks, those other pieces are where they are,

you go, oh, outlier, I understand how that outlier fits into this whole picture and I can solve that problem. I can solve it a thousand times faster. than someone that has to take all the different chunks and all these different things and putting together. So when we're training Marines or we're training humans, what we're trying to get good at is that whole process right there. And when I see something, I go, oh, this is what's happening.

Okay, I see that. Yep, I'm going to do this. And I see that. I'm going to do this. Oh, here, out of the five things that took me no thought whatsoever, I can solve those without even thinking I know what to do. And then there's this one outlier thing that I see it. And I go, oh, wait, that's different.

And if I had to deal with each of those five chunks in an individual basis and solve each one of those problems, I wouldn't even notice that outlier. I wouldn't even see it. But when I see it, when I recognize everything and I have pattern recognition on five things or four out of five things, that one thing that I don't recognize, I can focus my efforts on it and I can get it solved. And that's what you're trying to train leaders to do is recognize even, you know, even when we talk about dealing with people, right? dealing with you know you're in a leadership position here's the nine different types of you know if you and I if I say I got to go talk to this guy who's you know you know has a bad temper and you and I will play it and there's eight things that will cover and I'll be like yep if he does this you does that if he does that I'll do that and when I walk in and confront you about this or talk to you about this seven of those things that you throw at me I'm already ready for and that means when you hit me with the one that I didn't expect it's cool because I can just go okay I see what

I see where he is. I see what's happening. I have the other parts handle, and I can just focus on this one little thing right now, which is I see what's happening. He's really committed to this part of his plan. Okay, cool. Hey, you know what?

I think that one part of your plan, I think that's actually one of the better plans I've seen. And all of a sudden, I solve that thing, which if I went into that room without recognizing the other patterns, I never would have even seen that outlier. Yeah.

That's a really complex thing that I just tried to explain. How did I do? Echo, did I do it? Yeah, pretty good. Not that maybe this is just maybe add to it, but yeah, so you have the eight scenarios and, you know, nine scenarios out of the 10 or whatever that you know, the one that you don't necessarily know. If you're thorough with the nine that you know, you know why you have the solutions. Like the solutions are the solutions for these nine that you do know for reasons, right? So you know about all those reasons.

So when that 10th one comes out, you don't know the solution, but you know all the reasoning behind the other solutions. apply that reasoning. Yes. So I'm saying? So yes, I dig it. You're talking about running. They reference this OOO-Loop, which they do, the Marine Corps uses, I mean, Boyd basically drove maneuver warfare of the Marine Corps with that concept.

But you're really talking about running Oudaloo-Loop with all these different Ool-Loops at the same time. And the real key is to find the one where the point of friction really is. And that's why if you and I are playing this linear game, just you against me and this one thing, it doesn't really make a difference. But if I'm running seven or eight and I recognize that this is the one where the friction really is and you don't even, you have no clothes even there, I'm not even worried about the other ones. Now, I need to keep up with those things. I can't ignore them, but I'm going to solve this thing and I'll be making decisions to maneuver this place

to where I want it and you won't even know that it's happening. That's how come when you said, are you going to beat me in chess? I'm like, well, if you actually know how to play chess, I don't, I'm not going to beat you because I'm actually sort of still just playing checkers. but you are off here solving this other problem that I'm not even paying attention to and you might have eight, nine, ten, multiple ootel loops at the same time of all these different things but only you have to figure out the one that matters

and if I don't know what you're doing, I'm not even competing with you. I'm losing it only even know it. Yeah. And as I was talking about with you the other day, yeah. I'm running ooteloups on top. I'm running ootloops with oot loops inside it.

Yeah. So it's like there's four or five things that are going on, but there's a bigger thing that's going on outside of that. we got ootaloops going on inside of oot loops and you can't do none of these things you can't deal with the seven oot loops going on at the same time and identify the other one you can't do ootloops within the loops if you get caught up in those loops yourself you've got to be able to detach step back

and the more that you train to do that the easier it becomes to recognize these things these outliers and you're able to focus your mind where you need to focus it and make decisions properly Yep. And sometimes those cues are minuscule and subtle. And you can almost unidentifiable, but if you've done it enough. Oh, yeah. If you have done it a lot, the more you do it, these things, these little tiny, unnoticeable things start to just look like just giant red flags. And it's so easy to see.

And you go, oh, there's the flank coming at me. Yep. I remember Top Gun, you do a lot of one against one, a lot of BFEM. It kind of feels somewhat two-dimensional, linear. It kind of is. But there's a million little cues that takes a lot of experience. And I remember fighting with someone and probably halfway through the fight and debriefing, kind of recognizing. This is the place here where I knew that these other things were no longer going to happen and this was going to happen.

I maneuvered here. That's how I got behind you and killed you? And it's like, how did you know this was going to happen here when I was, you know, five moves previous in the chessboard? I'm like, well, looking across the horizon, your leading edge flaps are kind of dug in a little bit lower than normal, which means you were at least between, I don't know, 220 and 240 knots. Let's go to your tape, and it's 237 knots. And he's like, how, and I'm like, look, I'm not smarter than you, but I have seen that, and I've looked for that. And I notice you're three degrees above the horizon, which means you're going a little bit slower,

which means you don't have these options anymore. I don't have to worry about you going up. And so I'm making these decisions based on what, and he doesn't even. even know those things are happening. And it's like you said, those cues, but after a while, those cues become so easy to see. Yeah, there's four or five oot loops that are going. You can, you can throw them all, throw four of them away. The fifth one, you go, oh, yeah, here's where he's going next. Got it. And I'm going to be right here waiting for him. Totally. Good luck. I'm going to start maneuvering on this chessboard. You don't even know what's happening,

and then you're going to make your movement. Like, I'm already set up to defeat you there. Totally. Totally. Next, through progressive learning and experience Marines at all levels develop a bias for action, enabled by adaptive, rapid decision making. The more Marines learn and exercise this bias for action, the better it becomes. Once again, the more Marines learn and exercise this bias for action, the better it becomes. And this is something that, you know, on EF Online, last week, a guy said, hey, I'm not an aggressive leader. You know, what do I do?

I'm not an aggressive leader. How do I get better? and I said, well, first of all, and I laid out the whole thing like when you're talking to, and we ended up covering a similar question on the podcast, which is like, hey, aggressive doesn't mean loud and in your face. It doesn't mean getting crazy. Aggressive means you're making, you're taking action. It's aggressively pursuing action.

And one of the things that I use is people say, how can I train someone to be more aggressive? It's real easy. You put them in situations where if they're not aggressive, they die. Or whatever metaphorical world you live in, hey, if you don't call them, client the client's gonna blow up in you and you're gonna lose the deal if you don't solve this this problem with your electrical system that electrical system's gonna fail and it's gonna be a disaster so what you learn to do is go okay I'm not a hundred percent sure what to do but I'm gonna do something right now and make

something happen and you must I mean this was super easy for me because I would put an element out in the field there's a you know there's there's some seals assaulting a target and as they're assaulting the target you know they'll they'll have a single shooter in an outlying building And they learn real quick. If they do nothing, cool. That guy's going to get his friends and he's going to kick their ass. And if they do something aggressive, they'll get that problem solved before it even really becomes a problem.

So you can learn a bias for action. And that's how you learn it. And by the way, sometimes you do something aggressive and it doesn't work out the way you want it to. You're playing a little bit. There's a gambling, right? There's an odds. There's odds to be played. And we covered this couple podcasts ago.

You're playing the odds, right? And odds are seven out of ten times, your aggressive move is going to be the right move. Three out of ten times, maybe it wasn't the best move, but you got to play the odds. And that's also why we do iterative decision making. Just because I'm doing something aggressive doesn't mean that I go all in and sacrifice everything else. No, I make a small move in the direction that I think is right aggressively. And then I read my feedback loop off of that. Continuing, although war games or training exercises approximate the conditions of war, Marines cannot fully replicate the dangers, complexities, emotions, and friction of actual combat.

Marines experience a variety of training situations that approximate combat situations so that learned experiences can be remembered and applied during the stresses and friction of combat. Through both direct and indirect experiences, Marines develop a realistic appreciation for what is possible in combat and what is not. So one of the things that I used to tell guys, one of the failings of training for me when I was training when I was running training was we had paintball we had laser guns to simulate One thing that I could not simulate is fear of death Because I couldn't do it with my trade at role players Because they'd be like hey, we're gonna die. We're gonna get something and that's a little bit more realistic because you could say hey these are jihadists and they don't care if they die cool but the seals to say

like you know there's a down man in the middle of the street and in one second there's four seals running out to save them when those rounds are hitting it's going to take a moment

you know it's going to take some cover fire it's going to take a moment so that's the one thing I would have a hard time simulating is hey you're going to be afraid and even if you're not afraid two of the guys three of the guys that are with you

are going to be afraid, are not going to want to step into that alleyway, or not going to step away into the street or whatever. And so you've got to calculate for that. So I would try and get people to behave as if, you do this, you die. When I read this, I was thinking of a story. You've told me, you tell the story a lot, is a story about Stoner in his first combat mission.

And you go through the story, what happens, and the guy after, I think it was the battalion commander that he was working. He was like, man. It was a MIT team leader. There's a MIT team major. Yeah, he was a major in the mid team. Which, by the way, just real quick,

MET team, that meant he had been, you know, in Ramadi for five months getting in gunfights. But yeah. Totally. And just the point where he's like, hey, man, obviously you've been in a ton of these experiences and kind of, and you're like, actually, Seth was like, no, that was my first time.

But even like, I was even looking at the little things, like the training approximates combat situations. They were smart enough to not say replicates or is exact. It's not the same. but it's just enough to get you to be prepared for what you're going to see. And actually, if you do it well, you can't make it perfect,

but if you do it well, that's exactly how people respond in that most chaotic thing, which was exactly what happened to Stoner. Yeah, yeah, and I would have guys all the time come back and say, oh yeah, thanks for the training because it was as good as it gets.

Totally. Fast forward a little bit. Marines need to develop the memory skills because Marines, as human beings, increasingly tend to digitally store and search for information rather than committing information to short-term or long-term memory. Marines cannot always rely on technologies or on being able to digitally search for information during combat due to many reasons such as time constraints, lack of network access, or the need to minimize electronic signatures. Therefore, Marines at all levels

need to train their minds to memorize and recall important information to reflect upon that knowledge, to develop understanding and to frequently exercise these skills through training so that information can be recalled instinctively during combat. And I forgot to mention that, yes, I am skipping forward through some of this information. But, you know, it's just because we're not going to, we're going to try not to do a 17-hour podcast on this one manual. I was wondering how are you going to not read the whole pub. I was wondering it too, especially in the opening when you're just going, okay, this whole thing. Totally.

This whole thing is good. Next section, key principles of learning. The first learning principle is know yourself and seek self. improvement. A Marines mindset values, ethics, and experiences impact his or her learning decisions and actions. Once again, sorry, Sam Harris. We do have free will, or at least Marines on the battlefield, Sam Harris, have free will to make decisions and take actions based on the impact of their learning, based on their mindset, based on their values, based on their ethics, based on their experiences. Fast forward a little bit. When Marines are aware of how perspectives and experiences

shape their thinking, they can better identify assumptions, biases, and other factors that influence learning. Previous experiences are valuable for many reasons, such as providing personalized references to integrate new knowledge, skills, and experience into memory. Marines learn and fight effectively despite friction, which has been described as the force in war that makes the apparently easy so difficult. Learning is not always easy. A lack of self-awareness, emotional regulation, humility, time management, or biases can cause friction that makes learning more difficult. Yeah, check it out. If you're not self-aware, if you can't regulate your emotions, if you're not humble, if you don't have good time management, or if you have biases, it's going to be hard to learn.

Which are all natural things, by the way. which are all natural things, which are all things that we kind of every, by natural, I assume you mean like that's where we tend. Yes, sir. We tend to lack self-awareness. We tend to not be able to control our emotions. We tend to lack humility. We tend not to be able to do time management. We tend to have biases.

Big time. Yeah. I think you are correct. Echo Charles. Marines overcome this friction and seek self-improvement by better understanding themselves, particularly how our values, ethics, and perspectives influence learning. And now I think it's important to remember that. When we're talking about learning in that context right there,

we're talking about, hey, what I learned from this class or this training? It's what am I learning on the battlefield? What am I seeing and how are my biases negatively impacting how I'm able to take on this new information and adapt to it? That's what happens. You know, you have this idea in your head of how things should be and therefore when the enemy does something you don't expect you, you don't accept it.

You act like it happened a different way. They couldn't, they just got lucky. You make excuses for yourself. You make excuses for the enemy. They got lucky. They can't do that again. Those are your biases, preventing you from learning.

I mean, we must have, we did that like crazy in Iraq. We as a country, right? Oh, they can't be, this can't be an organized campaign. There's just some rabble rousers out there. Like, we just wouldn't accept it. This isn't an insurgency.

These are just some outpockets, outlying of some disgruntled folks around here. And fast forward a year and a half, two years. We got a full-fledged insurgency on our hands. What's a rabble rouser? Something that just causes problems. Second principle, the second learning principle is be ready and willing to learn. You wouldn't think you'd have to say that. Yeah, but you do.

Without a doubt. Even that first one of know yourself and seek self-improvement, it seems like that would be a natural, natural tendency to do that. It's actually not. your ego at some point gets like you don't need to keep learning you don't need to get better you don't need to improve and the reason that's in there is that not only is it natural like you're saying that is an overwhelmingly powerful force your own ego telling you bro you've got this thing figured out yeah you don't know yourself yeah yeah who uh who knows me better than myself who's over

there quoting sun sue bro at a war echo charles no well i'm just saying you say you said it in there. So you ever seen yourself? Well, you're probably different, but us normal people, we sometimes will see ourselves on camera or hear our own voice in a recording and be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I sound like that.

Meanwhile, you know who listens to your voice 100% of the time? You, yet you still don't really know yourself, because when you see it kind of detached from you doing it in the moment, it seems different for some reason. Isn't that weird? So we kind of don't know ourselves. I think.

I would say there's very few people that when they hear themselves, they go, yep, that's what I sound like. Yeah, especially at first. After a while, you know, yeah, you get used to it or whatever. But at the end of the day, that's a common thing, I think, for people where they either see themselves and or they hear themselves and they're like, oh, and they're for some reason moved by it in one way or another, you know? Like they haven't been with themselves their whole life kind of thing. You know, like it's some kind of weird surprise or something like that. So it's kind of like, no, you don't really know yourself.

I think you, for the most part anyway, like you experience little, little slivers of yourself while you're behaving, and then you kind of paint your own picture. Like, oh, I just said that. I must have sounded real cool saying that. Meanwhile, you hear it played back. You like, dang, I didn't sound cool at all. Yeah, those are valid. You know what's interesting about this section right here? So I start off on saying, you know, this is, what's good about the ring course?

You know, this is they can, a Lance Corporal can read this, and a gunny sergeant can read this. The colonel can read this. And they all can like understand it. Here's what's interesting about this. This section right here, believe it or not, in my humble opinion, is actually aimed at the colonel. Because the Lance corporal's like, hey, bro, I'm here to learn. My mind is wide open. It's the colonel and the gunny or the master guns that's like, I already got this.

Or already have this, depending if it's the gunny or the current. Right? Because the minute that you think you know everything is the minute that you are not ready and willing to learn and that's when you're going backwards. So this section right here, they actually aimed this section point blank at the senior people that think they know everything. Because those young kids, man, they're ready to learn. They're not sitting there going, I already know this.

I mean, it's like a new guy in a seal platoon. That guy's, that kid's ready to learn. but once you're a senior enlisted guy or you're a more senior officer all of a sudden you know anything you know everything Marines have the professional responsibility to learn throughout their careers and should always seek opportunities to learn Marines must take an active role in learning be intellectually curious and look for new ways to adapt when they have learned to other to adapt what they learn to other relevant situations there are many factors that indicate a person's willingness and readiness to learn such as physical behavioral, societal, emotional, and cognitive skills. Additionally, humility, courage, integrity, perseverance, motivation, and discipline

are other key qualities that affect the learning readiness. What's the number one? Humility. Interesting. Courage is number two. Why is that? Because what kind of person just says, you know, I already got this? Right.

Or they don't have the courage to raise their hand. That's what I should have said. The person that is not humble says, you know, I already got this. The person that lacks courage won't go, hey, you know what? Hey, boss, you know what? I don't really understand this. Can you tell me this again? That takes courage.

You're in a group of people. Raise your hand. Man, when I was going to college and I was a 20-whatever-year-old man going to college with a bunch of 18-year-olds, I had a preponderance of moral courage. Sitting in front of the classroom, I'd be like, Professor, I don't understand that.

Can you go over that again? And it made me so much do so much better because, you know, I guarantee there's kids in the back of class. They don't understand something. They're not going to say anything and look stupid. I didn't care.

So you got to have that courage, integrity, perseverance, motivation, and discipline. Starts with humility, ends with discipline. I like this book. Marines increase their learning readiness by having courage, perseverance, and discipline to continuously seek new professional knowledge, skills, and experiences. A Marines learning can be facilitated by developing an awareness and understanding of one's

own thought processes. Marines sharpen their intellect by studying how to think better than applying these skills to improve as learners, leaders, and decision makers. The third principle is to, understand why you are learning. And this is what's key. You can take away from this. Hey, look, apply this to yourself for sure.

Apply it to your kids. Apply it to your students. Apply it to the people that you work with. You want to make sure everyone understands why they're learning, especially the kids. Like, yeah, for you absolutely apply it. But as an instructor, you can reverse engineer this as an instructor. And you lead with why something is important to know.

And that will help people open their brains. when Marines understand why they are learning concepts and skills, they better understand the importance of learning to the mission and are more motivated to learn. By understanding the context of learning, Marines are better able to apply concepts and skills to new situations, increasing their competence and adaptability. Unknowns, uncertainty, and disorder will never be eliminated in battle. Information may be unclear, misinterpreted, influenced by the enemy, or communication systems may fail. When Marines understand why they are learning, it enables them to focus on, learning the known and adapting to the familiar and adapting to the unfamiliar more quickly and effectively than the enemy.

That's the outlier thing we just talked about. I see all the things that you're doing. I see the nine pattern recognitions. There's the one outlier. I'm on it. Outlearning the enemy, therefore, is key to out fighting the enemy. That's a big deal. Outlearning the enemy is the key to outfinding.

Not the brute force, not getting bigger equipment or stronger things. It's out learning him. That's how you're going to win. Yeah, and when you start to look at learning as a skill that's required for battle, you start to look at it differently. Yes, totally. And then you could start breaking down, well, how am I going to go about learning? Right.

What am I paying attention to? How do I assess things that I'm hearing? How do I assemble all that knowledge together? There's a lot that goes into it. Dude, there's a ton. And if, and I wasn't around when somebody decided we need to put a doctrinal pub around learning for the Marine Corps. But A, it's a really good idea. And it probably came from someone who was like me that as a second lieutenant who had a pile of things that I was supposed to learn when I got to the basic school and they gave me all these same pubs war fighting tactic strategy.

And learning to me was, I'm going to read this and find the answers in these books so I can take the test and pass and be really really. good and I'm going to learn what the answers are, which is totally wrong, totally different. And the sooner the force, any organization figures out how to crack the code and getting people to actually want to do this for their own self-interest, the better. And I'm sure that that's a driver behind this is a generation of people going, I'm learning what the answers are. And that is not learning. That is not an effective way to do.

And that's part of the reason why Mattis is so credible because the things he talks about more than anything, he doesn't talk about combat nearly as much as he talks about all all the preparation he did and all the things that he read. And that's what people figured out about Mattis is what made him brilliant, was how much he read and studied. And each time he read and studied, he got a little bit of pattern recognition, understood things better. Got a little smarter.

Got a little smarter. Learned. Yes. Second Lieutenant Burke didn't learn nearly as much as he should have. Yeah, you know, and that's one of the things on the thread podcast. You know, I talk about the fact that everything's connected. and when things aren't, when you don't make the connections between things,

it'd be like if you started taking Jiu-Jitsu and people are like, okay, this is the arm lock. You're going to learn that in the arm-lock room. And then you go into another room with another instructor and they teach you the triangle. And then you go to another room with another instructor and they teach you the sweep. All those things by themselves, they're not meaningless, but they have low value. Very low value, comparatively speaking. So that was the original.

idea of the thread podcast was listen people don't connect everything and everything's connected the fourth learning principle is to provide and receive constructive feedback one cannot learn without feedback it is critical to learning and developing adaptability there are two sources of feedback intrinsic sources i.e internal and extrinsic sources i.e external for example a marine's own perception that he or she jerk the trigger when shooting a rifle, then adjusting the trigger pull on the next shot would be an example of intrinsic feedback. In this same example, extrinsic feedback would be a marksmanship instructor, identifying their error to the Marine, then demonstrating the proper trigger pull. Both intrinsic and extrinsic feedback are important for learning and developing adaptability.

Adaptability is the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions. Marines develop adaptability when they examine a situation, recognize what is happening, and adjust their response to the new conditions. The process of learning is itself a form of adaptive behavior and is essential element of combat effectiveness. Check. The final principle is that learning is purpose-driven to develop professional competence. Learning has specific goals and measurable objectives

to gauge progress toward developing competencies. Marine learning. is team-oriented so that Marines develop the skills and connections to fight collectively. Additionally, Marine study history and world events to be more prepared to respond to new challenges such as the increase in globalization and competition for resources. Effective war fighters adapt to fluid changes and circumstances in order to deal with complex problems and to proactively shape events for advantage. Marines sometimes conceptualize the enemy and or adversary as a single person or group of people,

but should be viewed as a complex system. So, obviously, Marine study history and world events. And that's, you know, one of the most awesome things that happens to me when I travel and meet Marines around the country and around the world is, A lot of Marines listen to this podcast so that they have a better understanding of war in context of history. And so by listening, they're fulfilling, you know, at least in some part, fulfilling this. And what's really cool is when someone sends me, you know, a picture of 12 books from the podcast that they ordered and read and now they have an even more in-depth knowledge of things. There's a lot in here, man. This idea of adapting to fluid changes and circumstances

in order to deal with complex problems and proactively shape events for an advantage. That's the core of every question we've been asked at Echon-Front for the last month in this complex fluid environment that nobody anticipated and nobody expected to happen and what are they going to do to proactively shape the outcome rather than just be a victim of it

on how this thing plays out. What do I need to do? to shape the outcome. What do I need to take control over? And if you don't have a long history of learning how to deal with these type of settings, you're gonna have a really hard time. And it's nice to bring that word shape in

as opposed to what can I do to control the outcome? Because that's why, you can't control the outcome. The outcome is gonna come. How can you shape it? To your advantage. Absolutely. Next section, the human dimension and science of learning. Conflict is a human phenomenon.

Understanding human nature helps Marines to understand conflict. Marines prepare for the complexities of each conflict by studying social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, interpersonal, and intrapersonal factors. You got to know human beings. How many times have I said that on this podcast? Echo Charles. I want a number. 86,701 times. these factors often exert a greater influence on this character and outcome of war

than do factors such as the size of the enemy formations and their equipment so all these things human nature has a bigger influence oftentimes than the size of the enemy formations or their equipment we're talking about just human nature and that's why leadership is always the most important thing leadership is a human endeavor you can have the best and the most equipment in the world. And if you have bad leadership, if you don't understand your people, you're going to lose.

You're going to lose against the person who is better led and better understands the human components that you're dealing with. That's really the comment you made earlier. Like, those are human things. Yeah, I even wrote that down. Leadership is also a human endeavor.

Marines, go. I was going to say, I even wrote down, this is huge and underlined that. That last comment. Marines learn as much as possible about the different human factors, cultures,

perspectives and ideas that impact operations, developing self-awareness of the personal factors that can detract from learning, such as hubris, ego, bias enables Marines to overcome friction. Marines strive to view situations and information objectively and unemotionally, provide candid feedback to each other and learn to overcome or mitigate factors that negatively impact preparedness. Yes. Yes, yes, and yes. Ego.

Bias. Bring us down. Marine strived to view situations and information objectively and unemotionally and provide candid feedback to each other and learn to overcome or mitigate factors that negatively impact preparedness. The reason I'm rehashing that one is because sometimes people utilize the candid feedback thing, but they forget about ego and hubris of the other person. So when they you I'm just going to give you some candid feedback there

Echo Charles What I forget about is that you have an ego And so by giving you this candid feedback that you're not really prepared to receive You're going to get defensive the whole nine yards You're not going to make any changes whereas if I can find a way to use maneuver warfare around that ego And provide you a feedback that somehow comes from your own brain because a seed's been planted by me It's going to be better off We'll throw a little

bone to the Marine Corps on that one. Just a little, just take your thought process a little bit further on that one. Yes, Dave, a little bit more? Can we go a little bit? Can we apply what we're talking about just a little bit more and be a little bit better? Candid feedback is

awesome when there is this level of relationships and ego. Egos have been put in check it works. And we strive for that. It's hard to achieve. It's hard to achieve.

Unemotional candid feedback. Because how many people do you know really are geared to absorb candid feedback in an unemotional manner, especially after something like preparation for more. Yeah. What I wrote about that in leadership strategy and tactics, like I tried to help the person on the receiving end, right?

I'm like, listen, when somebody gives you criticism, even if it's coming from someone that you think has no business giving you any feedback whatsoever. Listen to them. Yeah. And absorb what they say and see if you can apply it to make yourself better. And that right there, that little learning to do that as a human being, if you could learn to do that as a human being, your life is going to be a thousand times better than it would if you never get over that hump of, hey, I don't like this guy, so I'm not going to listen to what he has to say.

Whereas someone that's just open, this is, you know what? And this is to your point, Dave. How many people have I met in my entire life that were just, oh, hit me with some more candid feedback so I can just get better. Do they exist? Sure. Do we get to a point? Do sometimes people, you know, I have a relationship with someone or, you know, someone else putting someone through training? I could just tell.

Like I'm saying something. They're getting out of their notebook. They're like, hey, I got it. You know, that's a great point. Thank you. Sure. That happens for sure. doesn't happen all the time.

It doesn't happen most of the time. Does it say unemotional, candid feedback? Yes. It says, Marines strive to view situations and information objectively and unemotionally provide candid feedback to each other and learn to overcome or mitigate factors

that negatively impact preparedness. Yeah, so I guess overall provide and accept unemotional. So even the unemotional kind of feedback that might, that, So you know how in a typical situation? I don't know, typical, I don't even know what that even means, but a situation where you're like, hey, candid feedback.

And the guy kind of takes it as the golden pass to just basically hit him as hard as he can. Like, yeah, this method was straight up dog shit. You know, like that's not unemotional. That's emotional feedback right there. See what I'm saying? Like it's on the other side. It's on the negative emotion rather than, oh, you know, you could have done better. You know, it's, I mean, maybe it's candid, but it's still emotional.

And so I'm going to take this one more, one more step for the next release of this. When we're going to talk about this. The revise. When they revise this, when we talk about candid feedback, we also need to talk about human nature, right? Because human nature is, I bristle at candid feedback. And like I said, are there people that don't? And the goal here, the ideal goal is like, hey, I'm a Marine, you're a Marine. I'm going to give you some candid feedback.

You're going to take it on board. We're going to move forward. I get it. man, I love that. I wish that the way the world works. We have to remember human nature. We have to remember that human nature. It provides a level of resistance against candid feedback.

I'm sorry. Yeah, and they touch on it. They kind of talk about it a little bit, but they don't really get to the core of here's the real barrier you're going to get when you're dealing with this. Now, the good news is that anybody who listened to this podcast has already listened to the previous podcast. And if you're going to be an eminently qualified human, the way you're going to deal with

this, when they're talking about it, about viewing feedback objectively and unemotionally, the real scenario is I'm in charge of this mission. I build the plan, this is all the stuff that I'm the leader that I come back, and then Jock my instructor comes back and destroys in what, gives me feedback. Now, what he should be able to do is tell me all these things

and me go, dude, those are all really good points. I'm gonna incorporate all those in the next mission brief. I'm gonna build this in on my plan next time. We're gonna go get better. But what I do is I come, show up, ready for that feedback to defend what I did, because that was my plan. the mission commander and I can't be unemotional and detached, but I should be. So if you're listening

to this, your job is to take all the feedback you get, even from the people that you cannot stand in an unemotional and objective fashion. We got a question just last week, what do I do with the perennial complainer on my team that is constantly complaining about everything? You know what the answer is? Listen to him. Because it might actually have some feedback for you. The problem isn't that he's a complainer are the problems that you don't want to hear them. But the almost exact opposite is true is when you are providing feedback, if you go in with the assumption that that person will be just like you and unemotional and prepared, you're also going to be ineffective, that you have to make the exact opposite approach,

which is you're going to be dealing with nothing but their ego. And you know, if it turns out that I'm debriefing Jock and he's totally in the game, then that's, then we're good. We represent, I don't know, 5% or 10% of the, the interactions if you're lucky that you're going to get. But over time, if you actually take, if people see you as a leader taking other people's feedback when they appear to be not credible and not good people to take feedback from and you're willing to listen to them, you actually can influence other people doing that. It takes time. What they don't talk about in here is

when you decide to go do that, here's all the barriers are going to be in place with this plan of, hey man, I'm just going to come through the front door or jocco and give you some candid feedback. You're just going to take it. It's good to go. Again, look, look, Marine Corps, we get the ideal. I would love, I would love if that was the way the world works. Unfortunately, we have to deal with human nature. That's what we have to deal with. Just like you have to deal with it in combat.

You have to deal with it in a debrief. So be ready for it. Control what you can control. Learn from it. All right, violence and danger will always be parts of war. Learning to fight in dangerous conditions, despite fear and uncertainty, is key to war fighting. Marines of all ranks must understand how the body and mind respond to fear and stress so that they better control their responses in any situation, including combat.

Marines learn how to effectively control stress reactions and fight dangerous conditions through realistic training, increasing self-awareness, understanding the attributes of war, and increasing mental and physical resilience. For example, Marines learn breathing techniques during marksmanship training to better control how the body's nervous system response to stress in order to shoot more action. The breathing techniques help Marines to control their heart rate respiration, attention, and muscular stress and muscles under stress, which then increases the accuracy of fire. Combat can challenge unit cohesion and present Marines with a variety of moral and ethical dilemmas. Marines develop strong mental, moral, spiritual, and ethical understanding because they are as important as physical skills when operating in the violence of combat. And it's interesting, too,

I thought they were going to make this connection and maybe I forgot, maybe they make it later, but I don't think they do. But you and I made it on the last podcast, talking about the code book. The breathing techniques help Marines to control their heart rate, respiration, attention, muscles under stress,

and then increase their accuracy of their fire. That's cool. It doesn't only apply to shooting your rifle. It applies to everything that you're going to do, whether you're dealing with somebody that's combative and you've got to put hands on them, whether you're dealing with your boss that's yelling at you,

or whether you're dealing with your six-year-old kid that just threw a temper tantrum. All those things can come into play. The science of learning encompasses many disciplines, such as neuroscience, psychology, and Androgogy, which is adult learning. The human brain is a constantly reorganizing system capable of being shaped and reshaped across an entire lifespan. Each new learning event impacts the brain regardless of the Marines' age, rank, or level of experience. Therefore, Marines should understand that challenging experiences enhance the brain and better hone their warfighting capability. Science has also identified that individuals and teams have differences in the way they learn with varying sensory, preferences for learning, competencies, and strengths.

So that's something you hear about. You know, people learn in different ways, but the sentence before that one, challenging experiences enhance the brain and better hone their warfighting capability. We want to do things that are hard. We need to do things that are hard. Adult learning involves adapting or modifying the prior relevant information to specific situation or a problem that the Marine seeks to resolve. You're taking what you know and applying it to new situations.

An effective way that Marines can accelerate their learning is by indirectly learning, is by indirectly learning from others through vicarious experience. Vicarious experiences are relevant learning opportunities that each marine obtains by observing reading and studying what others have experienced. There is no excuse for not learning from others. Each marine must learn how to learn, both independently and collectively in teams. Social and interpersonal factors such as effective communication, group, cohesion, and trust all-influenced learning.

I'm gonna read that one again social and interpersonal factors such as effective communication group cohesion and trust all influence learning When these factors are positive they facilitate learning process Facilitate the learning process and create strong relationships This is the thing that I've gone over a bunch of times recently. It was like hey, why was I able to like Rip apart a young lieutenant in a debrief? It's because he trusted me and we had we had that The strong relationship and therefore I can say I can get can That's why I caught myself in the last example. I was given this example where you were going to come in and rip apart my debrief and I caught myself.

I'm like, oh, I'm actually going on the assumption when I say that, that we have such a good relationship that I realize that what you're doing is actually trying to help me as opposed to coming in here and being a tyrant to tear my plan apart was because of exactly that. When the environment is positive, you can come in and you can rip that thing to shreds as you need to to shreds. and all of it is for me to get better. And I look at every single thing and instead of going, man, I really wish you could kind of be nicer when you say that. I don't mean think about that. I just look for the things that you're saying,

which actually is a massive time saver and allows you to be more effective and more efficient because you're not worried about those other things. But like you said before, the problem with that is you can't take that for granted. That's actually really, really hard to get. And a lot of times people are like,

hey, I'm just trying to help you out, man. I'm just trying to help you here. Like, yeah. But if they don't hear you, it doesn't matter. You're not effective. Yeah. And the efficiency thing, again, I've been talking about this lately, it's like, the efficiency thing of like, well, look, wouldn't it just be easier if I could just tell Dave, hey, Dave,

here's where you screwed up in that brief and you did these three things wrong. That's obviously more efficient. And I'm a matter-of-fact kind of guy and people should just kind of get on board. And like, it would be more efficient if Dave listened to anything I said, if he made any adjustment. But the problem is he doesn't adjust anything. He just puts up his defenses. And so it's efficient in delivery. It's completely inefficient in absorption.

Totally. Doesn't work. It's not effective, period. Marine should actively seek to understand human and environmental factors that influence learning while avoiding thoughts and behaviors that can negatively affect learning and cohesion. Next section. Problem solving is a warfighting capability.

Time spent learning how to effectively think and solve problems as time well invested. Marines must build the skills to recognize potential problems. reason and think critically. Reasoning is the process of thinking about something in a logical way to form a conclusion or judgment. Critical thinking is the reflective part of that reasoning. Critical thinking skills include inference, evaluation, interpretation, and explanation. Developing these skills enables Marines to understand not only the information presented,

but also its potential implications and secondary effects. And this is one of those things where when you are, when you're in a leadership position, being able to do this quickly, being able to look at like a problem and a solution and two or three solutions and being able to figure out what's going to happen if I imply this one, this one and this one and this one and see, hey, this one will solve it quick, but then I'm not to deal with this giant mess that I just created. Cool. I'm going with option B.

That's the difference between, you know, the white belt, the blue belt leader. The blue belt leader is like, okay, I see the immediate solution that I could do, but I see the after effects are worse, so I'm going to plan B. Through reasoning and critical thinking, Marines explore a question and understand the key factors affecting the situation, which then enables Marines to develop better courses of action. And again, the more experience you have doing this, the quicker you'll be able to recognize the patterns of these things.

And I'm sitting here to think as, you know, from a leadership perspective, you and I and the rest of the guys at Essela on front working with companies, it's a classic example of, well, hey, we've got this problem. Here's how I'm going to solve it. And we all look at that problem and go,

okay, I see what you're saying. And I see that that seems like the direct, most direct efficient way to solve this problem. Here's the nine after effects that are going to make this just a complete gut check. Yeah. Because you're not thinking through, you know,

you, well, as a white belt leader, you're not seeing this or as an emotional leader or whatever. skipping ahead a little bit quickly recognizing and addressing potential problems enables marines to better deal with disruption and respond to changes in the enemy situation again pattern recognition responding to those problems the future battle space will contain increasingly difficult problems that do not necessarily have a right answer therefore Marines skills

to observe objectively, reason effectively, and take decisive action, and then adjust as needed, remain key elements of success. I mean, that's right out of what you talk about, the iterative decision making. And it's not just action, it's still decisive action, default aggressive action, but just far enough for you to figure out and get the feedback of, do I need to keep going, do any maneuver, do we need to back up, and the connection of those two, which is decisive action, and then adjust as needed, that is the connection that is so hard that people don't make sometimes. Get that feedback loop going.

Get that feedback. I like the not right answer. I remember hearing about the German war problems, war game problems, that the only solution, the only solution that would work or the only options that would work were not, you were were told not to do. So, hey, don't go past this limit of advance. The only way you're going to get out of this is go past that limit of advance. So they're trying to get the Germans who are, you know, have a propensity to follow rules.

And so they're trying to get them, hey, here's the rule. In order to get this done, you're going to need to break this rule. What are you going to do? But they don't tell them that. They just watch them and they just see them sit at the limit of advance and get killed. In this scenario, the mind as a weapon. The philosophy of maneuver warfare guides much of what Marines do. And that right there is.

is like, let's just have a podcast about that. In fact, I guess we do have a podcast about that. It's this podcast. The philosophy of maneuver warfare guides much of what Marines do. It is their way of thinking about and preparing for war with the intended purpose of taking decisive action against the enemy at the least costs themselves. By the way, this is maneuver warfare is the reason I kind of,

as a younger leader in the team, the reason I started to grasp onto it and understand it was because Jiu Jitsu. Because what's Jitsu? Jiu Jitsu is maneuver warfare. That's all it is. It's maneuver warfare. It's decisive action against the enemy with the least cost to yourself.

That's what Jiu-Jitsu is. Marine study and apply maneuver warfare in order to better exploit advantages in multiple domains and create rapidly unfolding situations in the battle that overwhelm the enemy. Maneuver warfare requires that Marines develop the, oh, by the way, also, what I just read to Jiu-Jitsu, right, create rapidly unfolding situations. that overwhelm the enemy like I'm across I'm moving here oh I judge I you're caught maneuver warfare requires that Marines develop the temperate to preserve amidst uncertainty and the mental agility to succeed in fluid and chaotic situations

Additionally it requires being able to understand the dynamic and complex situation from multiple perspectives to determine how to exploit an advantage Decentralized execution within the commander's intent is central to maneuver warfare this requires that each Marine understand the situation and execute actions to support and achieve that intent so decentralized command that's why regardless of technology and equipment Marines are ready to fight and win therefore it is essential that Marines develop and maintain an intellectual edge over any enemy by developing their minds just as they would prepare any other

weapon system for battle This intellectual edge must come from self-disciplined study and deliberate practice as Marines to build competencies in the profession of arms as individuals, teams, units, and magtafs. Once again, they're talking about self-discipline. They're kind of highlighting that. That that's what we're talking about. The last part, I think it's the last part of this section. Continuous learners, developing the mind as a weapon is a career-long process.

Marines are continuous learners. They pursue mastery in the profession of arms, recognizing that the achievement of mastery is a journey, not a destination. As adult learners, Marines recognize that they are responsible for their own learning, outcomes, actions, and decisions. As adult learners, Marines need to know why content is relevant during both training and educational activities, Marines perceive learning as a progression of goals to build competencies, not a single discrete goal. Hence the analogy of the arm bar in one room, the triangle in the other room.

No, it's all together. It's not a single goal. It's all together. Therefore, Marines benefit most from information and learning activities presented in the context of real life situations or task-specific problems. To become better warfighters, Marines continue. Gator information and engage in activities that test their assumptions, develop new knowledge, increase critical thinking and reasoning, and build deeper understanding Instead of simply asking what happened in a battle, Marines should always ask and seek to better understand why the events happened and Consequently what to apply for for future situations. Marines must learn about a broad range of topics and skills through professional reading, experience or learning, and deliberate practice. Marines must also approach each event and interaction as a learning opportunity.

There is always something to learn, even if that something is what not to do in the future. As continuous learners, Marines actively seek, apply, and share lessons learned to develop themselves and other Marines in the profession of arms. And it's interesting that in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the evaluation in the code. You know, we've got this whole section on improving your mental capability. and how that's so important. And that's the same thing that the Marines are saying here. Conclusion of this first section, they say Marines adapt to every tool that they have, weapons, equipment, and their minds to succeed and win in every climb in place,

Marines must develop and demonstrate brilliance in the basic fundamental skills combined with the mental agility to adapt to whatever situation they face. Say that again. Marines must develop and demonstrate brilliance in the basic fundamental skills. fundamental skills combined with the mental agility to adapt to whatever situation they face. So different from that stereotypical vision of a Marine that you are just gonna obey orders do as you're told.

Follow orders or people die. Oh, there you go. Few good men. Speaking of quotes. All right. So that wraps up the first chapter. And right now I'm I'm assessing that we're only gonna make it through two chapters of this thing. So we'll do one more chapter right now

And then we'll we'll save the next one for the next podcast chapter two the culture of learning starts off the quote Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on It leaves you open for truce to reveal themselves you don't stand in your own way Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there's one simple test because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. Because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don't assume I know the way. And who's that a quote from?

Winton Marsalis. jazz musician trumpet player interesting right it's interesting that the United States Marine Corps took a trumpet jazz playing musician

but his quote on humility is and you know it's interesting if we hadn't written extreme ownership with a chapter called check your ego and stay humble it's like I'd be

thinking about doing that right now. There are no secrets to success is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. That's Colin Powell. And thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation,

never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed successfully or unsuccessfully before. It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead, and that is General Mattis. So ideas and methods can have more significant impact on war fighting than weapon systems, technology, or organizational structures. This, speaking of music, right? The guitar, the guitar technology that you have, the music school that you went through, none of that can compare to, like, good ideas.

This is an underrated, an underrated. thought that I have. I always talk about this. I say, listen, you can go to a guitar center and you can put a sign up and you can say, hey, if you can play these songs, you can pick the most technical songs you know. Most underrated analogy. You can pick the most technical songs. You'd say, if you can play these songs, contact me immediately. And I'll, you know, I'll give you whatever. I'll put you on this record.

And you'll get hundreds of people that will be like, I can play all those songs, note for note. I got them. But all those people can't make a hit song because they don't have the creativity, they don't know the ideas in their head. So they're saying the same thing here. No matter what your guitar is, no matter what technology you have, your ideas can have more significant impact on war fighting than any of those things. So the Marine Corps learning culture fosters the attributes that every Marine needs to pursue,

such as adaptability, creativity, critical thinking, active listening. and bias for action. You know, there's some, there's some, there's some horses that get beat real hard in this book. Like they get beat. One of them is bias for action.

You got to remember, we're not covering the whole book right now. I mean, I'm skipping chunks and bias for actions all throughout this book. What did I call that in extreme ownership? Default aggressive. That's got to be your default mode.

Organizational culture. The Marine Corps's culture values action. Again, there's that horse getting another, in the jaw. Responsibility, ownership, adaptability and problem solving. Therefore, the Marines learning process and culture develop and exercise these values. Oh, and I've got a little note here.

And this is just like the way that the Marines roll. So listen to this sentence. Listen to these two sentences. The Marine Corps culture values action, responsibility, adaptability, and problem solving. therefore Marines learning processes and culture develop and exercise these values. What's cool about the Marine Corps is they're not saying this is what the Marine Corps should aspire to or this is what the Marine Corps should do. This is what the Marine Corps does.

Like, it's not even a question. That's what the Marine Corps does. The Marine Corps' hierarchical command structure and process may at times be perceived as an obstacle to adaptability and learning. Although both are essential for the proper exercise of command and control, Marines must ensure that they do not set conditions for unintended negative effects on learning that could negatively impact war fighting, such as discouraging Marines initiative feedback or problem solving. Huge. Huge.

What happens when the dichotomy of chain of command goes too far? Now we have people that aren't giving feedback anymore. So we need to make. sure it doesn't set those conditions. And again, I think it's really important that we think about learning. We're thinking about it from the perspective of I'm learning what the enemy is doing and it's how I'm going to defeat the enemy. It's not like effects, not like negative effect on learning the proper technique for cleaning

this weapon. We're talking about learning how to beat the enemy actively while that fight is happening. Skipping ahead a little bit. Leaders at all levels are charged with. creating an environment where continuous learning becomes the standard leaders serve as positive examples of a disciplined approach to learning while also providing their Marines with constructive feedback leaders of Marines must dedicate time and effort to learning and prioritize mental fitness as much as physical fitness dang dang you know what one of my next missions and I guess we're

kind of where we might be on it. It's probably going on right now, right? But systematic learning, and it's, again, it kind of goes back to like the idea of the thread, you should be able to just pick up and learn things in a cohesive manner. And there's, and I get that there's, there's some part of learning things in a non-cohesive manner that forces you to learn how to put them into a cohesive manner. So there's something to that and I get it. but you should be able to at least take different subjects and get them close enough to each other

so that people can easily make those connections and then maybe you learn how to spread those things apart a little further so people have to think even more to get those connections to come but we make it so hard to learn so many different subjects that we just don't connect we don't bring any cohesion to we don't act we act as if science history literature poetry art we act as if they're these separate things and they're not and the better you understand each one of those things and then the better you understand how they fit together the better you understand them all and the better you understand them all the better you understand human nature and people the better you can take all this all the things that you deal with in life and put them into context

and do something and shape the outcome of your life. So we need to prioritize mental fitness. And again, it's interesting. We wrote the code and the evaluation and the protocols before this book came out. But we made number one, the number one thing you need to take care of is physical fitness and number two is mental fitness. And the reason we prioritized them like that is because if you don't have a body, you don't have a mind. I don't think anyone can argue with that. Continuing on, integrating learning activities into physical training events when Marines are both mentally and physically challenged encourages deep learning and facilitates the recall of lessons learned during combat situations.

Awesome. As part of the learning experience, leaders must foster an environment that appropriately tolerates mistakes, errors, and challenges to existing ideas. Challenging ideas and making mistakes are part of the learning process. Boom. Challenging ideas and learning and making mistakes are part of the learning process. If you're not encouraging your subordinates to challenge your ideas, I love it when people challenge my ideas. It actually, I love it. I love it.

And it's not because I want to, and it's not because I have an opportunity to like beat them or show them that I know what's up. I like it because I know. I'm going to learn something. I'll learn from their challenge. Their challenge is going to either break through my position and I'm going to realize that they're right or it's going to make me patch a hole in my position that was a vulnerability. That now we can utilize this idea and it's going to be stronger. Challenging ideas in a respectful and constructive way contributes to improved learning for

both subordinates and leaders. Now they threw that in there thankfully. Yeah. I, yes. And in leadership strategy. strategy and tactics, I actually tell you how to say these words correctly. Because it's not easy. Yeah, like, I like to speak the truth.

I'm a straight shooter. I'm going to come right at you. Like, hey, this is how I am. So I'm going to challenge you, my boss, in a way that totally undermines the relationship we have. And I just tell you how screwed up you are and how wrong. And you're the problem because you won't listen to me. That's going to work out well.

That's not going to work out. That's right. Yeah. But I'm the guy that speaks the truth. You know, Boss just don't want to hear it. People don't like that. Boss just doesn't want to hear it. You can't handle the truth.

There are we going there? Leaders should permit ideas to be challenged in discussion and planning up to the point where the leader makes a decision. Leaders should not automatically interpret a subordinate, challenging an idea or providing feedback as challenging their authority. Cha-ching. Yeah. So they cover it both. You need to challenge it in a respectful way. And oh, by the way, you need to listen to it as if it's not an attack in your authority.

But I said in leadership strategy and tactics, people usually think their idea is the best idea. It's just kind of the way it is, right? Totally. And you know what? You can actually program yourself to not be that way. And I think I've done a pretty good job of that. Actually, I usually think like, okay, my idea is out there, but it's not necessarily right. And I want to hear other people's ideas.

You can totally train to that. You can totally teach yourself to do that. And the thing that makes that easier over time is you actually start to win more. Your life gets better. Like, oh, this was a really big stretch for my ego to start to tolerate that. I'm like, oh, my life is a hundred times better now than it was. This isn't that hard. Hey, you got feedback for me?

Dude, bring it on. Because I bet you my life gets better if I listen to your feedback. The leader's authority gives him or her the responsibility to make decisions, but it does not mean that the leaders have to develop all the ideas themselves. Leadership strategy and tactics. Weird. By the way, yeah, whoever authored this thing, legit, nicely done, I appreciate the, appreciate it.

Subordinates need to be willing to admit mistakes, ask questions, and seek corrective feedback. Naturally, a subordinate's willingness to admit mistakes depends on the commander's willingness to tolerate them. And what's good about that world, I would, you know, a little adjustment there. a subordinate's willingness to admit mistakes, but also a subordinate's willingness to make mistakes or take risks that will result in mistakes, depends on the commander's willingness to tolerate.

So if you got a person that never tolerates any mistakes, guess what? No one's going to do anything for him. That's like one of the major criticisms of like the traditional educational process. Like that, the low tolerance for mistakes. So like you take a quiz, it's probably different now. I don't know.

It's been a long time since I've been high school. But you know when you take a test or a quiz, right? Let's say you have 10 questions, right? You get five of them wrong. That's an F. Straight up F. 50. Oh, yeah.

So let's say you have four quizzes through the course of the year, right? If you got an F, that it factors into your final grade. No matter if you got those questions right later or not, you could learn 100% of the material perfectly. But if you got an F on one of those quizzes, your grade might not be 100%. So if you make them a mistake. So if you make them a mistake. Even if you correct the mistake, you still get punished for it.

You can know the correct answer to the mistake that you made thoroughly through and through. You still get punished. I see your point. However, I think there's other things that are being trained, right? Like you need to prepare and study and be ready, right? Yeah. And life doesn't always give you a second, third, and fourth chance to square yourself away from your fitty. Yeah, but, I mean,

Maybe that's what high school is for, maybe not. But so I guess you're arguing, understand, what, what I don't like about what I just said is that I'm clearly thinking of it from like a, well, I actually don't, not that I don't like what I just said. Well, you could, you could argue, well, hey, Jocko, so you just want people learning and studying for grades to get an A on a grade. And that's not, that's not what I want. But there is a fact of when you go to school, you're learning, okay, I got to do certain things. I'm going to do certain things I don't want to do and I got to do them on time. Those are important lessons to learn. Yeah.

About life. Yeah. So what you're, unless you want to throw it at me that school is developed so that we could break children mentally and train them to be factory workers, which is also true. That is one of the criticisms or the reason for that, you know,

that whole, um, you know what I actually, uh, picked up on right now. What? It's nothing new, really,

what you just did. You just responded to that, what I just said with extreme. ownership with extreme responsibility. I said this is a major criticism of the school system and you essentially said in so many words, hey, don't blame the school system. You take a responsibility for going to school. That's essentially what you said back to me.

Interesting. It doesn't make what I said any less true. But you were like, okay, cool. So what are you going to do about it kind of thing? You better, you know, you better study hard, you better work hard kind of thing. You know, and that's the point. That's the point is what are we trying to do with school, right? Is it, there's a bunch of things that are going on with school. And maybe if we clarified those things more, you could understand because do you want the person to learn education, right? Do you want them to get smarter?

Do you want them to get knowledge? Yes. Do you want them to learn about how to live their life? Yes. And how do you balance those things correctly? I think not to go too deep into the school system or nothing like that. But I think that saying that or feeling that like, hey, it teaches you to do this and do this on top of like the math that I, that you're learning in the class.

I think that's sort of like a wiggily, like, not excuse, but it's like they'll just throw that in as part of it. I guess what it needs is a clear definition of the mission of the school. Yeah, exactly. We had a clear definition of the mission of the school. And as a high school kid or whatever, you go in the class in math class, what are we learning in math class? You tell me, what are we learning in math class?

Math, right? I didn't know we're going to learn all these other life lessons that no one says, by the way. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So it's like, okay, I did it. So maybe if they clarified the mission and said, hey, this isn't just about learning math.

This is about learning how to operate with other people. This is learning about how to learn time management. It's one of the things you're about to learn. If you got told that, you'd probably be, oh, okay, I get it. If that was part of the curriculum, not if you got told that. Because, I don't know. Some people say that all the time.

But then it's like, well, the rest of the stuff going on doesn't support what you're saying right now, but whatever. But yeah, if that was part of the curriculum, oh, yeah, 100%. 100%. Check. All right. Back to the book. Marines will learn from their mistakes when they receive constructive corrective feedback. By the way, I'll do a little additive to that statement. Marines will not learn from their mistakes if they are offended by that constructive, corrective feedback. The easiest hedge against the potential of some of your guys on your team in the Marine Corps or anywhere else of having a problem with that is to actually take ownership of the mistakes they make. And I just wrote down like, hey, the ultimate form of tolerating other people's mistakes, which is really what this is about is you want to let your people make mistakes.

Because it's actually good. It's learning. It's a way is to take responsibility for that. Is to when you're setting up the debrief rather than go, hey, corporal Willink, here's 37 things you screwed up on this mission that we did as opposed to, hey, let's talk about these things. Here's all the things that happen here. here's all the things that I'm going to do differently next time to put you in a position to be successful. So he's actually not afraid like, oh, my boss, my boss thinks this was his mistake. So even inside this thing, this idea of, he said, you're tolerating your support, your willingness to tolerate your subordinates mistakes.

Well, anybody who listened to this podcast should know that that actually shouldn't be that hard at this point. Because any mistake your subordinates make is actually whose fault is that really. The machine gunners, I know we've used that example, a thousand times. And if you want to breed the idea that making those mistakes is okay, there's a really easy formula to making that happen. And it'll just make them admit it more and actually come with better creative solutions to that. So they make them less over time.

Yeah. And those are things, leadership strategy and tactics. I actually wrote down what to say and what not to say. Yeah. There's a protocol. Instead of saying this, say that. And by the way,

one of the reasons that leadership strategy and tactics that I went down that road is because, and I was saying this to a group the other day on EF Online. And it's one of these things where it's, here's the deal. I've been doing this for a long time. So when I tell someone, hey, what you need to do is take, you know, go in there and use a flanking maneuver and set them up with this and plant an idea in your head and it'll be good.

Then I have to be careful with that because I'm good at it. Like, I'm good at. I did it when I was at E5 with my platoon commander. I did it when I was, you know, I did it through the chain of command. I did I've done it a million times. So when some client says, hey, how do I handle this person that, you know, is complaining, right? Or is objecting to the way we're doing things. How do I handle that?

And I say, oh, you could do this. I have to say, and listen, you need to be tactful when you do it. You need to think about it from their perspective. Because sometimes people hear, oh, you need to go talk to them about it. Okay, got it. Boom. They're rolling into the office. Yeah, I need to talk to you about X, Y, and Z.

Ech, no, I didn't mean that. So that's why I like leadership strategy and tactics. Here's how you actually say this. The machine gunner made a mistake. It's not, hey, echo, you shot outside your field of fire. It's, hey, echo, I don't think I did a good job explaining what your field of fire was because you just got danger close to the other squad. That's my fault.

You go, there you go. Boom. Next, a critical element of learning from mistakes is embracing an appropriate level of risk. Combat is inherently dangerous and risky. However, the greatest mistake in combat could be an unwillingness to act from a fear of risk or failure to adapt to the changing situation. So how do you get good at doing, how do you get good at figuring out what the appropriate level of risk is? It's by making mistakes. So if you don't make mistakes in training, when the time comes in combat and you're obviously,

unwilling to even try anything, either out of fear or risk of failure or risk of getting yelled at or failure to adapt because you've never done it before. Like the time when you're a squad leader and you're like looking around and someone says, hey man, just go for it. You go for it. And you like things turn out, maybe they turn out okay. Maybe they turn out bad. But either way, you go, okay, well, I kind of did it.

And then you realize, you know what, next time I do it, I need to do it a little bit faster, but I need to keep the squad more distance between each other. Okay, cool. You learned a little something. Now next time you make an aggressive mood, you've got this little more dispersion in your squad and everyone stays alive and it's cool. Again, this is training.

So that way, by the time you get in a point in combat where you need to take some initiative, you've done it before. You do not want anyone on your subordinate team to the first time they have to show any initiative is in a combat situation or isn't a business meeting or isn't a with a client that's real. That's not the first time you want to see them take initiative. Have them take initiative in some controlled environments to kick it off.

Continuing on. Therefore, Marines should only take reasonable risk during training and learn to adapt to the changing situation, which is what I just said. All Marines, regardless of position or rank, must discuss what led to mistakes, take corrective action, and learn from them. You got to debrief.

Learning from mistakes is key to Marines, learning to act decisively and effectively while taking prudent risk, which is everything I just said. There's a little section in here, which I've been skipping some of these sections, but I'm going to hit this one. This is the Battle of Bella Wood. Captain John W. Thomason, Jr., who earned the Navy Cross during his service with First Battalion Fifth Marines wrote about the Fourth Marine Brigade. And he says, platoons were formed. I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but he says, platoons were formed in four ways. And he goes into it talking about how they had maps and how they had a plan and how they were basically using What they had learned from the French and so he says platoons were formed in four waves the attack formation taught by the French a formation proved in trench warfare

Where there was a short way to go and you calculated on losing the first three waves and getting the fourth one to the objective That's what they got taught hey You're gonna take four waves of people The first three, they're all going to die, and then the fourth one will get through. And then he says, after the first engagement, the Marines never used it again. It was a formation that simply accepted casualties, was not adapted for open warfare, and left formations rushing across open ground incredibly vulnerable. It did not take the Marines long to learn better and to adapt their tactics founded on sound basics

learned during their training. There's anything else on that? I knew you're going to, I knew that you were going to talk about that just because of how often you and I have talked about World War I and you hit that over and over again of all the wars. Like that's the one you look at. I'm like, what, what was going on there?

What was going on there from a leadership standpoint? And honestly, my favorite line is, after the first engagement, the Marines never use it again. one time they looked around like, we're not doing this anymore. And there's kind of a stunning piece on leadership of what was everybody else? And they've been doing it for years when the Marines showed up. Anyway, I just knew that given how much we've talked about it, that comment there is actually a really important comment that they saw it once. And they recognized right away, this is wrong.

And we need to adapt right now. You don't need to do this five, six, seven, eight, ten times to realize this is a bad, bad plan. Yeah, the, the, um, when I had Dean Ladon, Tarawa, right? And he, one of the things that he pointed out was when they were in, I think, New Zealand. So in between, in between island storming in the Pacific, they were saying that, you know, one thing that they noticed about the Japanese was that the Japanese didn't adapt. They didn't change anything. They would do the same thing. Like not only from a tactical perspective, like, oh, we're going to rush you.

And if we don't get through today, we're going to rush you tomorrow from the same position. But not only that, but then, and you could see some changes in the way they defended the islands. Like sometimes they'd let the Marines come ashore and then they'd kind of set them up. And sometimes they wouldn't let them come ash. So they would make these small changes. But for the most part, it was like, we knew what the Japanese were going to do and they weren't going to change how they were doing things. And I was talking to Laif about it. And Laif's like, yeah.

it's kind of hard to pass on lessons learned when everyone is dead, which is what was going on with the Japanese, right? Oh, you want to defend this island? Cool. Well, you know what lessons are getting to the next island? None of them. Because you're all dead. You know, the only people that survive are 14 Korean slaves.

That's who survives. Everyone else dies. Yeah. But the fact that in this situation, yeah, and that is absolutely, you know, World War I just sick and, me totally and you know all war is awful but that war and the leadership in that war to just Roger that yeah Roger that Roger that Roger that all right section

here areas of responsibility there are four functional areas of responsibility in the culture of learning as shown in the following figure and there's the other little figure here and it's got some circles that the smallest circle is marine meaning the individual Marine and then the instructor and then the commander or leader and then the Marine Corps as an entire institution. So it goes like this. First is it is each individual's Marines responsibility to progress in his or own, his or her own self-education and build a bias for intelligent action. That's incumbent upon every single Marine is to learn everything that you can and build a bias

for intelligent action there there's another little whip on that horse I think they're making it perfectly clear to every Marine that what we want you to do is take action doing something smart go it reminds me I used to tell these these young fire team leaders or these T you commanders I'd get them together and I'd be like a T you commander imagine if every one of your fire you have eight fire teams imagine if each one of your fire teams was doing something smart in support of what you were trying to make happen how hard would your job be and he'd be like not hard and I'd be like yeah check I'd be like fire team leaders

do that this guy wants you to do stuff he wants you to make something happen make something happen do us all a favor and make something happen I'm tired of watching you guys sit around trying to form a perimeter being directed by the task you to commander himself on how to form a perimeter for the love of God would you take up a security position Second, within formal schools, instructors should be selected based upon their potential to become effective teachers, facilitators, and mentors. And it goes into some of that. Third, leaders at all levels are responsible for setting the conditions within the unit for the subordinates, professional military learning and development.

In the teams, those two are probably opposite. Like, I don't know if it's opposite, but there's no doubt that in the SEAL teams, the leader of a platoon, like the leader and the platoon commander and the platoon chief or the task unit commander and the task unit senior enlisted advisor, they are way more responsible than some instructor that you had anywhere along the way. I don't know if you could make that statement about the Marine Corps. I think there's that hierarchical component

that I think just sits inside it. And I think a lot of ways it's sort of this connection of, that's something that's very easily digestible for the lowest level of Marine to recognize where they fit in the big picture. But the bigger thing that's happening there is that that sort of comes full circle when the Marine Corps as an institution has this obligation to facilitate that that goes back and affects the individual Marine and that your individual role actually plays, we talk about this all the time.

You can play an outsized influence on the entire organization if you were doing something that's making you better, which is making your team better. And then each role in leadership has an obligation to facilitate that. And then it comes right back to the individual. Whenever I talk about training with a company, I always, maybe you can help me with my own quote but it's something along the lines of training is the solemn duty of the leaders inside of a unit yeah right it's not the responsibility of the trainer it's not the responsibility of the instructor it's not a responsibility of the schoolhouse if you work for me i'm responsible for making

sure you're trained and i can use those assets however i see fit but i'm responsible for it yeah and then finally the marine corps as an institution to demonstrates a focus and commitment to encouraging career long learning by continuously refining learning methods and providing resources and opportunities for professional development. That's the way the Marine Corps roles. Professional expectations. Next section. Marines are expected to have initiative, self-discipline, and motivation to actively

engage in learning opportunities on their own. Wouldn't that be nice if that was a universal truth about humans? Right? If we just said humans are expected to have initiative, self-discipline, and motivation to actively engage in learning opportunities on their own. Marines must take ownership of personal learning by creating specific professional goals. Again, the evaluation that we wrote. After assessing progress, Marines may adjust their goals so that they remain challenging.

Conversely, if a Marine struggles to attain a goal by the date established, the goal may need to be adjusted to include additional interim steps, feedback, or modified timeline. establishing clear short, mid and long-term goals enables the Marines to plan a clear path forward toward professional development. And again, this is sort of the reason why we put together the code and the evaluation and the protocols for everything that just got just written right there.

Yeah, that paragraph to me was huge. I highlighted the whole thing. I wrote the word dude and underlined it. Dude, this is ridiculous. And then I wrote down, And this is why we did that ranking scale in the amnally qualified human being. If you're doing this thing and it's easy, guess what? You need to ramp it up because this is no longer your baseline.

This is too easy for you, so you need to make that more challenging. And if not, you get to go back. But you need initiative, self-discipline, motivation, and ownership. These are all, these are all these are. I'm in concurrence with all these items. I'm telling you, by the way. I don't know these guys, but I know who these guys are that wrote this public. I know who these guys are.

Skipping ahead a little bit. Learning is also a process of professional growth. Marines demonstrate motivation of professionalism by cultivating a growth mindset. Individuals with a growth mindset believe that effort and learning can change one's qualities, leading to development and success. Marines with a growth mindset understand that they have control over their individual learning and that the additional effort pays off in developing the knowledge. and skills to improve. Conversely, individuals with a fixed mindset believe that their

qualities are innate and are interested in feedback only to confirm their abilities avoiding feedback that indicates any perceived weaknesses. Avoiding feedback and having a fixed mindset leads to stagnation. They wrap this chapter up. I mean, we could talk about intrinsic motivation is driven by perceived internal rewards. That is one is driven to engage in a behavior because it is satisfying. Leaders can cultivate this type of motivation within Marines by supporting the growth mindset and individual Marines can sustain it throughout their careers. In this way, the Marine Corps culture of learning encourages commanders, leaders, instructors,

teams, and individuals to all support intrinsic motivation for learning and self-improvement. And the conclusion they say the Marine Corps culture supports continuous career-long learning. These can facilitate learning. As Marines develop in their careers, the responsibility. to facilitate learning also increases. Marine Corps culture embraces learning as fundamental to marine readiness to be the first to fight. Learning is essential to any profession, but it is particularly important to the Marines

profession of arms where the cost of not learning, the cost of not learning are so steep. So that's chapter two. We're two hours deep right now in an order to not make a five-hour podcast. We will save the next for the next podcast. So, I guess, Echo Charles, since we are, you know, going to try to continue to learn, continue to make continuous improvement. Yes. I don't know if there's any way that, anything that you recommend we learn, perhaps. Sure.

That could move us in the right direction. I recommend that we learn Jiu-Jitsu. One of the many recommendations. I recommend we stay on the path. This is a real general way of putting it. So we're going to learn Jiu-Situ. We're going to stay in shape, if not get in shape. We're going to stay functional and healthy.

Functional, maybe that's a played out. Not played out, but that's maybe an overuse word. We're going to say capable. How about that, Dave Burke? Good? I'm good with functional. Functional. I like capable.

I like capable. Yeah. If you like capable. why did you say functional and then like deride it and then now you're calling it capable? I'm putting a what do you call a fine point on it like sharpening it like functional is like sure, yes, functional. But let me get more specific capable, even though that's pretty general. But to do these things we're going to need, we're going to want certain tools. Okay.

So for jihitsu, we need a ghi rash card. Boom. Where do we get the ghee? I think we all know best gie in the world factually origin. OriginMain.com. This is where you can look at all this stuff. Now, can we get Gies at Origin right this moment in April 2020? Yeah.

Can we? There are some geese still a bit. Look, we've done a little, we've had to make some adjustments to what we're doing in Maine because America needed certain items to get through the COVID-19 pandemic. So we had to adjust, make some adjustments and start making face costs. coverings, which we are doing at a rapid pace, probably between 5,000 and 7,000 a day. The demand signal is very high. And so we are trying to get America what they need on those.

And look, they're not N95 masks, but at which we don't have the capability of making, which is why we weren't making any masks. But when the government and the CDC recommended face coverings for everyone, we started making face covering. So that's what we're doing right now. as soon as we push through this and as soon really as other manufacturers pick up the slack

because we were able to move very quickly because we have the entire supply chain right there we have the skills and capability capability all day you know we got crafts people up there that can go oh you want me to sew that cool we can make that happen

Pete can design it okay done pattern makers can make the patterns we can get it done and that went the original death masks was Friday we're talking about, Monday they're getting produced. There's not, I don't think there's any businesses in the world that could do what Origin just did right there.

Very rare. On, I'm going to say that again. On Friday, we're making rash guards on Monday morning, full production of face coverings. So, hey, look, but as soon as, just as we pivoted quickly into that, as soon as some other manufacturers get caught up and the demand gets met,

we'll be right back to doing what we do, which is make stuff, make apparel. So, jihitsu apparel, rash guards, geese, jeans, t-shirts, boots. We'll be right back on all that stuff. So, you know, just be on standby. Stand-by, yeah. Good stuff for there. Again, origin-main.com.

Also at origin, jaco fuel. So this will keep us capable Keep us in the game. We look after our joints when we're lifting. It's a big deal. That's what I'm saying. So joint warfare, super krill oil. Some antioxidants in there, by the way.

Also, milk, additional protein, protein supplementation. Are you still in the strawberry milk chain? Yes. Really? Yes. How much milk do you, do you have one a day? One a day. Sometimes, too.

On some rare occasion, I will have a. How many scoops per? Dude, I'm a one scoop milk, shake it in a bottle guy. I don't do any other weird stuff or things. But there are times, and I'm not going to lie to you, I've got a little extra time with my wife, maybe watching TV a little bit on like a Saturday night more than I have in the past because of what's going on.

And I need a little, you know what? I need straight up, need dessert. And I would just go back to the mulk training for that. So that's my dessert, Saturday nights. I've had maybe a little lecture these days. But during the day, dude, SOP for me is like, I will do milk. And what discipline in the can is your preferred flavor? Discipline in the can, Dax Savage, without question.

Not the other two are fine, but given the choice, and I'm lucky enough to be one of those people that I have a choice. I have options. Dakota Meyer crushed it. Dax Savage is my thing. Interesting. How often do you drink one of those? One a day.

What time? usually just a little bit after lunch. So another thing is I'm sitting at my desk longer during the day than I ever really have because usually several days a week. I'm traveling. I'm in a hotel. I'm with a client. I'm on a plane.

And now I'm like up in the morning, workout, get ready. And I sit down on my desk. And sometimes I'm sitting, literally sitting at my desk sometimes like six, seven, eight hours straight, which I typically don't do. Not normal. Not normal. No, but we're on webinars, we're on podcasts. We're in the game.

And I'm at my computer, at that chair. And these, I say ready to deploy, ready to drink cans. There's a DAC Savage. I get up, lunch, come upstairs. I don't usually eat a lunch. Don't really have like a meal for lunch. I will have a DAC Savage shortly after lunchtime. What do you feel when you, once you've digested it, what do you feel?

I feel good. What it really does for me is if I don't take it, I catch myself like not. I catch myself mid early afternoon wanting to not do what I'm doing. I don't have a little breather. I'm going to push away. And I'm like, no, I'm not. I do not have time to do that. I take that.

It's kind of almost like science at this point. I take that little hitter and I'm in the game and I can push through whatever. That normally would be the, hey, why don't you step away and kind of get some fresh air? I'd love to. I would love to go do that. They're the football with my kids. And I try to do that sometimes. But right now, dude, April 20th, 2020, dude, we are grinding.

Like we are grinding at our desks. That's what we're doing. This is the key. Yeah, I notice I will. So I'll get up. I'll have, I'll work out, I'll lift. I'll have a handful of macadamia nuts or something. So now it's, you know, eight o'clock, nine o'clock in the morning.

It's when I start feeling a little hunger. And, you know, now when I'm sitting through my morning calls, whatever, talking to clients, I'm on the, I'm on the, um, just discipline powder right jocco palmer i'm just kind of sipping that's just kind of going through it's just kind of getting on step and then like same thing around lunchtime and usually you know whatever i'll have a little gap and i'm like okay i got i got an hour here i got two hours here and i'll go i'm going to write you know i'm writing a book right now so i'll be like cool but but probably as i know i see that window approaching same thing i'll be like well

Maybe it would be a good time to check social media. Or maybe it would be a good time to just turn my brain off. And you can feel that gravitational pull, right? So I go, oh, you know what? Crack it open, 20 minutes, whatever, 30 minutes prior. Drink it. And what's cool is, it just happens. And I get down and start hammering.

And then a little while I'm like, oh, look what just happened? Because you get that little hitter. So we got that. way that's discipline go in a can discipline go or discipline powder form that was the original yeah and the jaco Palmer did I went away from powder when the cans came out and when jaco Palmer came out I went back to the yeah I stayed with the powder for a long time still going powder all day every day all day all day maybe not all day but that's that's more I stopped I won't have

any discipline go in the can after two o'clock in the afternoon three o'clock in the afternoon because then I'll just be I'll be I'll be I won't be able to sleep you know so a little cautious about that very true also where your kid mouk as well supplemental dessert like protein that's right a lot of kids a lot of kids at home all day right now yes they want a little bit of that they want some of that taste good yes get them some of that warrior kid mok they think you're hooking them up. You are in a way. And you are in many ways.

From a taste perspective. You can get this stuff at vitamin shop too. Some of the vitamin shops, if they're open, they got the full lineup. That's true. Cold War, man. I talked about it last time. I'm on the Cold War.

You're on the Cold War. I'm on the Cold War tank. Is that what we're on? I don't know. How about you're in the tank? In the Cold War tank. You got armor. The tank of cold war.

Immune armor system. That Cold War is in my repertoire. That's wake up in the morning. How many take in the morning? I take two in the morning, two at night. What are you doing? I take two in the morning, and that's all I take. I wonder if I need to take some more.

I don't know. You're looking kind of like. I don't know. I feel pretty good. Kind of exposed. No, no. No, you look good. No, right now.

For sure. Cold War's in the game right now. Check. Yes. So all these things. Origin. Main.com. Also, Jocko-T on there.

That's some good stuff. Certified organic, too. For the organic folks. That's the refreshing. Just refreshing. Also, jocko has a store. It's called jocco store. So you go to jocco store.com

and this is where we can get our representative apparel when we're representing on the path while we're learning is what I'm saying. While we're improving ourselves. Learning. In quarantine or not? See, we have a new shirt. It's not that new, but we have a shirt.

If you want to represent while on the path in quarantine, represent the quarantine scenario. It's what we've been doing. Varying levels of approval from Jocko on this one. It's a controversial shirt is what it is. Sometimes decentralized command, you know, sometimes it goes too far. People start doing things below the chain of command. They're not running their approval.

Above the chain. And things are just happening. Unapproved things are happening. Oh, yeah. So I'm below the chain. You're up the chain. Yes. I run it up.

Yes. And what happens? You want to tell the story. We can tell the story or you can just move on. Yeah, I don't think what you described is exactly what happened. This is a flat out denial. This is like a rejection of a plan. I'm like, we're doing it anyway.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking maybe I wasn't clear enough. Apparently, I mean, then I reread the text. I'm like, no, it doesn't get any more clear than that. Well, in this. case the people are the people essentially what do you call that when you kind of when you when you when you you you don't overthrow them but you soon and saying you know one like the one government officials

like brr and then the people are like well you know i don't know if we accept that what we like it you know so the people so there's a rebellion a mutiny run by echo charles we moved forward and took smart action as it were anyway go to jocco store.com look for the quarantine shirt if you like it Go ahead, get it, represent, represent while you're doing our social distancing, stopping this whole thing, is what I'm saying? Because really that's what it is. Got it. You understand.

Also, discipline equals freedom on there as well, T-shirt. Discipline equals freedom flags in the little box. Yes. Oh, yeah. The tool kid. Warrior kid. Flags in the box. Warrior kid, deck of cards with the little workouts they can do while they're in quarantine or not.

We call that PE, old school PE. Yes. It's a game too, by the way. So it's like way more fun than doing shuttle runs all day. Anyway, some hoodies on there, some hats, some good stuff. Anyway, go on there. If you like something, get something. Jocco store.com.

Also, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. Very important. Kind of important. How about this? If you want to subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. If you don't want to subscribe, don't subscribe. Here's what's more important than that. We got some other podcast.

One podcast is called The Thirteen. It is about history and the world and how everything ties together in the world. That's with Daryl Cooper of Murder Made. We got the grounded podcast, which is about Jiu-Jitsu. We got Warrior Kid podcast, which is for your warrior kids. We also have Warrior Kids soap at Irish OaksRanch.com, Young Aiden, Building an Empire. Doing good work. Very good work.

Making soap so that people can. Stay clean. It's true. Also, YouTube. Yeah. We do have a YouTube channel. Yeah, we do. Which Echo is quite proud of.

It's a good channel. Yeah, he thinks it's good. As far as channels go. He makes videos where things explode. We make videos. Yeah. He makes videos where things explode. Sometimes way too many things explode.

Sometimes too little. Sometimes a message could be perfectly clear, but it just seems to be, need to be accented with explosions and fires. man sometimes yeah yeah so YouTube channel also you can watch this whole podcast on there yeah see what day and and enhanced videos um we also have psychological warfare which is little psychological hitter if you need it to go into your ears we have flipside canvas which is visual hitters for your eyes flipside canvas.com we also have some

books we got a book called the code the evaluation and the protocols. That book is available right now. It was on the last podcast. Something to guide you through life. We have leadership strategy and tactics. We have Way of the Warrior Kid one, two, and three. We have Mikey and the Dragons.

We have discipline equals freedom field manual. We have extreme ownership and we have the dichotomy of leadership. Check out any and all of those books. They're all linked. By the way, they're linked. Yes. On joccopodcast.com. So you can get them delivered.

We have that's a long front leadership consultancy, which is what Dave talking about earlier. You want to know what we're doing all day right now? That's what we're doing. We are talking to our clients, 20, 30, 40 people in a meeting, four people in a meeting, one person in a meeting face to face. Is it legal, Dave Burke, to say, I was on a Zoom meeting with a client face to face? Yes. Because it's almost more face to face than when you're face to face. you're actually closer than normally would be where they'd be 30 feet away sitting in some sort of

classroom type scenario. Right. You were face to face and you were live. So we have adjusted our methodology at Escelon front where we no longer, well, we will eventually go back and work face to face literally. But right now, we are finding that the impact of this online virtual training, is awesome. It allows us to have more interactions,

closer interactions, more continuous interactions with the clients. So if you need help in your business, aligning your leadership, go to ashlandfront.com for details. We also have EF Online. Speaking of revamping, look, for a long time,

EF Online was a static, some static courses that you could go on there and take, and they were static. They were interactive, and you would run through scenarios, but it was pre-existing classes. So we've blown this thing wide open. We got live video webinars.

We got Q&As going on. We got immediate action drills on there. I got leadership primers. Just totally revamped that. We also changed the whole pricing structure. It used to be like you're going to take a class, almost like you were going to college for a semester, and you're going to learn these things.

Now it's like, oh, way cheaper subscription model, or you can pay it once, but it's like, boom, come in and you're part of the gang and you're interacting with me. You're interacting with Dave. You're interacting with JP Laif. Mike's really the whole crew. That's what we're doing.

We're on there. Jason Gardner. You've heard Jason Gardner on the podcast. You want to talk to him? Cool. Go to EF Online. You'll talk to him. You will talk to him.

As Dave just said, you'll be five inches away from his face. So that's what we're doing there. EFonline.com. Check that out. We've got the musters. The Orlando muster was canceled. Phoenix, this is our leadership seminar, leadership event. Orlando is canceled.

We got Phoenix in September, 16th, and 17th. We got Dallas, December 3rd, and 4th. Check Extreme Ownership.com. Everything that we've done is sold out. We were going to do three. Now we're only doing two, so they're going to sell it even quicker. A bunch of people are already going and moved their reservations. So if you want to call them, Extreme Ownership.com for that.

And then there's EF Overwatch where we take executive leadership from the military and place them into the civilian sector. And then EFlegin.com. These are frontline leaders that are being placed into civilian companies. If you're, and let me tell you, if you're a vet right now, there's a lot of companies that are out there hiring, go to EFlegin.com and just enter yourself in there. So you get looked at so people can see that you're available for employment. We got a high demand signal from our companies that we work with that are reaching out looking for squared away veterans that understand the principles we talk about. To go to eFlegin.com and enroll yourself. And if you haven't had enough of my tyrannical utterances or echoes delirious theories or Dave's over-articulated speeches,

Then you can locate us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Dine Frizebahn. Dave is at David R. Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko. Willink into all you out there in uniform serving now. Or if you've ever served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, or, of course, the Marine Corps, and we salute you and your service and sacrifice for freedom. and to the police law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, and secret service. All you first responders, thank you for your service here at home, taking care of us, and to the doctors, nurses, and medical personnel that are in the fight right now, battling against disease and despair. Thank you for your brave hearts and your benevolence.

To everyone else out there, just remember what the Marine Corps teaches us that combat is a combination of fear, uncertainty, ambiguity, chance, horror, and friction, and life is much the same. Tenuous learning is essential because it allows you to recognize change, adapt to it, and make decisions that lead to victory. And failing to learn simply means failing to win. You have to learn. So read, study, get experience, listen, and live with a bias toward action and a mind that is desperate to learn. And then, well, go. Until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out.