Jocko Podcast - 237: How to Turn a Vision into a Plan For Ultimate Victory. In Battle and in Life. Army Techniques Publication FM 3-21.10

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:22 - Army Techniques Publication / FM 3-21.10 1:35:08 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:36:40 - How to stay on THE PATH. 1:56"08 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 237 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So lots of dynamic things happening in the world right now. And when there are lots of dynamic things happening, leaders have to make things happen. Leaders have to assess, have to decide, have to plan. And since all of us are going through these. I wanted to touch on something today. It's called troop leading procedures and the version that I'm going to cover is from an army

techniques publication or field manual three tack 21.1 which is which is the name of that is infantry rifle company and it's a giant manual 500 or something pages which we're not going to go through all that. Because there's an appendix in it. And Appendix B is planning and preparing. And it's, look, it's interesting. I've planned a lot of things in my life.

And I've been in charge of a lot of planning in my life. I've been very lucky from that perspective. And I was planning things before I knew any of this stuff. And I learned a lot of lessons along the way from that. And then as I started to reflect back, And once I started kind of officially learning about how to plan, I would look back and see how things made sense and see some things that I would overlook, some things that I didn't overlook, some things that the documents overlook. So thinking about this, and this is actually based on this massive process in the army or in the military, called the military decision-making process, which is this absolutely granular way to. go through every possible element of a decision, of a big decision of how you're going to plan

something. So that is meant for higher elements above the company, right? So that's meant for a battalion, brigade division. You know, when you have a whole staff of people that their job is to do these type of long decision-making processes. So this right here is meant at the company level, you know, 100 guys, 150 guys. three platoons worth of guys. That's what this is aimed at. And there's definitely some things in here to pay attention to so that, you know, we can, we can see if we're missing things, see if there's

things we can add, see if some things we can take away from this that will help us lead and plan and make better decisions. And I'm not going to even go into massive depth. Even this subsection, even this appendix has a lot of really granular information. And that's one thing. You know, the Army does doctrine very well. And they get into it and they will get granular. You will not miss anything if you follow their doctrine. But a lot of it is very specific to the military.

But it's even worth looking at it. You can get this on the interwebs just as a PDF or whatever. This whole document, you can check this out. And it'll give you some indication of the level of granularity that they're planning to. But we're not going to dive into all that. I'm going to try and keep it to the elements in here that are, for the most part, universally applicable in anyone that's planning. So here we go. Planning and preparation, Appendix D from FM 3TAC 21.1.

Planning is a process by which the company commander translates visualization into a specific course of action for preparation and execution focusing on expected results. it's interesting to even think of the fact that what you're doing as a leader is you're taking this vision and you're turning it into an executable plan. So just that right there can help people. And I'll tell you how. If you don't have a vision, you're not going to come up with a plan. So the whole process is taking your visualization, your vision and turning it into an actionable course of action, things that you can actually do.

Just think about that from your daily life perspective, right? If you don't have a vision of what your day is going to be like, that day is not going to have a plan behind it. You're not going to have a course of action for that day. Yeah. So out of the gate, we're already learning sentence one. We're in the game. Planning helps create,

helps the commander create and communicate a common vision and a shared understanding between subordinate leaders and unified action partners. Boy, that's a weird way of saying team, right? Unified action partners. Actually, I was saying that in kind of an insulting, But then I kind of got into it, right? I kind of transitioned there in the process of saying it.

This guy is not my teammate. He's my unified action partner. See where we're coming from. That's an, you know, the army will add some, they'll make up some things like that. Team isn't good enough. We're going unified action partners. Yeah, it's cliche. We're not talking about.

The team is just, you know, you're playing games. I'm not talking unified action partners. Planning results in an order that synchronizes the action. of forces in time, space, and purpose to achieve objectives and accomplish the missions. That's a very verbose way of making that statement, right? We know what planning does. I'm not even going to read that sentence again. It was a bit much.

The commander relies on intuitive decision-making and direct contact with subordinate leaders to integrate activities when circumstances are not suited for troop leading procedures. So what does that mean? at a certain point, you're not doing all this detailed planning. You're relying on your relationship, your intuitiveness, and understanding and communicating with the subordinate leaders. So you don't get to do this all the time. That's understood.

I'm going to talk about three different types of planning. Parallel planning, collaborative planning, and distributed planning. Parallel planning allows each echelon to make maximum use of the time available. And the way it does that is that, let's see. say I was the boss and you were the subordinate and I said hey echo we're going to go film something in Texas that's all you need to know and you're going to start coming up with a plan you don't just wait for me to say hey we're going to Dallas we're going to film this we're going to be there for this many day you go okay we're going to Texas I know that start coming up with the plan I'm going to

need batteries yeah I'm going to need SD cards see I'm kind of doing your job for you over here so parallel planning you want to tell people what's happening so they can start to plan. Collaborative planning is commanders, subordinate commanders, staff, and other partners, sharing information, knowledge, perceptions, ideas, concepts, regardless of physical location throughout the planning process. Obviously, right? We are going to work together to come up with a plan. Up and down the chain of command. We're working. And then distributed planning allows the commander and staff members to execute planning from different locations. Okay. No factor. Goes into some detail about parallel planning here.

Two or more echelons planning for the same operation, sharing information sequentially through warning orders and higher headquarters prior to higher headquarters publishing their operation plan or their order. That's what I just said.

You're not waiting until I give you the full detailed timeline of what we're doing in Texas to go film this video. I'm just telling you we're going to Texas and you're kind of going to start thinking of how you're going to get it done. You don't need to know much more than that.

Parallel planning hinges on a shared understanding of the situation. Pause for a moment. That is important. Because if we don't have a shared understanding of the situation, we could come up with totally different parallel plans. If you think we're going to Texas to film, you know, a podcast, but I know that we're going to film an action sequence. Right? You're bringing different equipment.

So I need to give you a shared understanding of the situation. The company commander cannot finalize the company order until the battalion completes their order. So at some point, you have to know everything that I know. At some point, you have to know exactly what it is we're trying to make happen. So that makes sense. Okay. And so look, and I'm skipping through a bunch of stuff here, but I want to jump into the actual troop leading procedures, which it says are a dynamic, a dynamic.

process used by small unit leaders to analyze a mission, develop a plan, prepare for an operation. Troop leading procedures extend the MDMP conducted at battalion level with its coordinating staff to a company level. So the MDMP is the thing I talked about, military decision making process. These procedures enable company level leaders to maximize available planning time while developing effective plans and preparing the company for a mission. Troop leading procedures consist of eight steps.

The troop leading procedure step sequence is not rigid. So you're going to get a sequence of how you're going to plan, but it's not, it doesn't stay that way all the time. The commander modifies the sequence to meet mission, situation, and time available. Some steps are done concurrently while others may go on continuously throughout the mission. The troop leading procedure steps are as follows. So step one, receive the mission. and I'll go ahead and just pause right there.

That's something that, you know, when people think of, when let's say someone like yourself, Echo Charles, when you hear that, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of 98% of the movies that you've seen about the military, which is, you know, the troops are sitting around the board and in comes the commander. And the commander says, okay, gents, here's the next mission, right?

That's like the common thing. Am I wrong? You're not wrong. And that does happen, but it's not, well, in the SEAL teams, it's not normal. It's not the norm. The norm is the team itself, the platoon, the task unit, the troop is developing the information. They're finding out. So they're kind of making the mission.

producing the mission, gathering the intel, all those things are happening. But it does happen sometimes where you literally receive the mission. Hey, here is what you need to go do. So that's step number one. Receive the mission or I guess we would say either receive the mission or confirm the mission or select the mission because you'll have multiple missions that you're trying to bring to fruition. So when you finally decide on a mission or you receive a mission, that's to be the two things. I would say. That's number one. Number two, issue a warning order, which we'll get into. Number three, make a tentative plan. Number four, initiate movement. Number five, conduct reconnaissance.

Number six, complete the plan. Number seven, issue the order. Number eight, supervise and refine. Okay. Troop leading procedures begin with the company commander, begin when the company commander receives the first indication of an upcoming mission and continues throughout the operational process. So this whole time you're sort of supposed to be, and one of the key words here that they use is refine, you're supposed to be refining this plan all the time. That never stops. Troop leading procedures comprise a sequence of actions to help the commander use available time effectively and efficiently to issue orders and execute operations. Normally the first three steps, which is receive the mission, give the warning order, and make a tentative plan.

of troop leading procedures occur in order. The tasks involved in some actions, such as initiate movement, issue the warning order, and conduct reconnaissance may recur several times during the process. The last step, supervised, refined occurs throughout. So there you go. A couple other things to highlight from this section. Attention exists between executing current missions

and planning for future missions. The company commander must balance both. That happens all the time in business. happens all the time in any environment, right? You've got what we're doing right now, and you need to pay attention to what we're doing right now, and you also need to think about what we're going to be doing. I hate to say this,

but oftentimes it is necessary to bifurcate between who's planning what's happening right now and who's planning what's happening in the future. So, for instance, in the SEAL teams, you'll end up with someone who is the operations officer, who's kind of handling what we're doing right now, and you have future operations officer who's handling what is coming down the pipe. So that is something to think about.

If you don't have the manpower to do that, a good thing to do is to allot a certain amount of time every day to say, okay, look, we're in the firefight today, we got stuff going on, we know we need to get that handled, but I'm going to take an hour after lunch before lunch. I'm going to sit down for two hours during lunch with my team. We're going to talk about what's going on in the future

because it can be very hard to get that stuff done. I shouldn't say that. It can be very hard to actually pay attention to what's going on in the future when you have a lot of activity happening right now in front of our face. So you need to think through that and you need to pay attention to it.

The commander and subordinate leaders begin troop leading procedures when they receive an initial warning order or receive a new mission. As each subsequent order arrives, the commander modifies assessments, updates tentative plans, and continues to supervise and assess preparations. The big difference there, they're talking about, you know, your boss keeps giving you additional information.

For us, we would be waiting. The thing that would be driving us to make adjustments is intelligence that would be coming in. Oh, we're getting this information. Oh, we're getting some other information. So that's what's making us adjust and adapt our plan as we work. The commander uses troop leading procedures when working alone or with a small group to solve tactical problems, obviously. Risk management occurs continuously throughout troop leading procedures with varying emphasis on different steps at different times. So you've always got to be assessing risk.

You're always going to be assessing risk. In fact, I was talking to a client the other day and we were talking about risk assessment. And I made some statement or whatever. Right. We were going through some problem and I was talking about the risk involved and they said something along the lines of like, like, it seems like you're very schooled and, you know, risk evaluation or whatever, some statement like that. And I said, well, you know, my entire job before was doing risk evaluation and risk assessment and mitigating risk. That's what you're doing. That's what the planning of a mission is. If we insert this way, what is our risk? What's the benefit? If we insert the other way, what's the risk? How do we mitigate? it, you know, that's what you're doing for every phase of an operation. And so, and that is what you

should be doing. Every move that you make has some level of risk. And they go through the risk management steps. Step one, identify the hazard. Step two, assess the hazards. Step three, develop controls and make risk decisions. Step four, implement controls and then supervise and evaluate. There's other stuff in here on risk assessment, but that's the fundamentals of what they're telling you to do. And then it says this troop leading procedures are not a hard and fast set of rules. Some actions may be performed simultaneously or in order different than shown, and they have a big chart. They've got an, it's actually a big chart with all kinds of little arrows and boxes and showing you, which is a flow chart of how you're making decisions.

Cool to look at. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting to look at. And it's a good thing to look at and sort of maybe overlay the types of decisions that you have to make. And one thing that I'll say that is something to pay attention to is time. Time is the hardest. You know, I was talking the other day on EF Online.

And I was explaining to people that very seldom. Do you make a final decision? Right? So I'm talking like this is legit. In life, it's very seldom that you have to make a final decision. Like this is it. When you make this decision, that's it. You don't get another chance.

So for instance, you know, most decisions that you make, you have some kind of opportunity to go back and undo it. And even something as extreme as if you have to fire somebody. Yeah. Like let's say you got to, let's say, you know, you work for me and I decide, you know, you're not doing a good job and I fire you. Even that, if I could look back in two weeks and contact you and say, hey, listen, I think I made a bad call.

Like there's a, there's a way out of it, right? It's, and so many decisions are like that. Even a decision as massive as on a personal level, oh, we're going to buy a house. Yeah. Seems like this final decision. Actually, you can sell that house. You know, you can get back out of that. So there's a lot of decisions that we make that seem like their final decisions, but they're actually not.

And the reason that I was talking about this is because if you and I are discussing something, if you and I are negotiating something, chances are it's not the last negotiation we're going to have. If you, if you're pitching me your plan on how to do something and I'm fighting back with my plan, chances, are, we're going to have another opportunity to go through what plan and how the plan is executed. So for me to think, if I agree to your plan and now I'm like, well, okay, I'm agreeing with Echo's plan. Now my opportunity influence is totally gone. It's not true, actually. You know, if I agree to you, you know what, Echo, your plan seems pretty good. Let's go with it. Well, we're going to, it's not just we're going to take your plan at that moment and execute it, right? We're going to, okay, let's go through the planning process. We're going to look at how we're actually

going to do it and we can make little adjustments. So very often our negotiations are not final and our decisions are not final. I don't know. What's a final decision that you have to make in life, right? There's getting a tattoo. Even that's not final. You can get that thing removed. I think it hurts a lot, apparently. It hurts a little bit more than the actual tattoo, yeah, from what I hear. So, and I think it leaves a scar, right? Yeah, a little bit. Okay. So that's a, that's closer to a permanent decision. But generally we're making decisions that are, that have,

and this is actually what I said. I said, when you can, you actually want to make decisions that are open loop. Meaning we're not going to make the closed decision. If I can avoid it. Now, if I have to make it, I make it.

But if I can leave an opening on the decision, then I will. Because that gives me some room to maneuver. and backpedal and maybe it was the wrong choice and I made it. Yeah, do you be hard pressed really now that you kind of think about it to find a decision. I mean, of course, the obvious ones if you're going to kill somebody or something like that or do something like illegal where it's going to be like, right, you're going to go to jail for that or something, you know, that kind of stuff.

But yeah, it's like there's always a sort of like you can maneuver your way back into the, you know, a different decision. And what's important about this is if you go into something, thinking that you want to maintain the ability to maneuver, then that is a good attitude to have. So I always try and make small decisions, yes, and also trying to make the least amount of final decisions that I can. Now, look, do you get to points in some situations where you do? Yes, you do.

And when you do, you assess it and then you make your final decision, you move forward. The reason that I'm saying all this is there is something that. is non-negotiable that has no mercy and you can never go back on time time and the way we treat time sometimes oddly enough it's the thing that we act as if it's the good you know as if we're going to have more time or we can get that time back yeah we know we think it's it's a negotiatable thing and the bottom line is it's not and so the reason i bring this up is because they they talk about it and it's one of the key points of assessing planning is assessing the time that you have available. And so often I see companies, I see people in business, I see planning in the seal teams.

People used to make this mistake. And you see people make this mistake with their life, which is time is the one thing that there's no negotiation on. And once you let it go, there's literally no possible way to get it back. It's gone. It's gone. You can try and recover some of it by picking up the pace here, cutting the corner there. You can try and recover some of that time.

But let's face it, it's gone. If you sleep in and you wake up late, you can still get a workout in. You compress it to somebody, but you didn't get that full, right? You didn't get that full workout. So you have, this is, if there's anything to take away from this, if there's one thing that you need to kind of pay attention to above all, it's how you utilize your time. because it's quick. All right. Step one.

Now we're getting to step one, which has received the mission. Step one in troop leading procedures. The commander determines the company's mission and assesses the time available to accomplish the mission. There you go. That's the first thing you've got to do. And this is what's cool.

They go into this little section here. They talk a little bit about how you receive the mission. But then they say, here's some things that you can do in this first step conduct a confirmation brief to the battalion commander to verify an understanding of the battalion's intent so that's good you you've got something to do let's confirm with the upper echelon to make sure we understand what they want initial assessment you knocked that out and then it goes goes into these last three bullet points which all have to do with what i just talked about which i put a star

next to each one of these because i was thinking about this conducts an initial planning time analysis to identify critical times in the timeline. Two, analyzes the time the company commander has, the company has available, and three, prepares an initial timeline. This is so important. I'm going to say, you want to know about, well, I mean, I do this a lot,

but one time this is very obvious to me, I did this, didn't really think about it, but we were at one of the musters, and there's a lot of stuff going on. It was like one of the early musters. There was a lot of chaos going on. And actually this was this wasn't probably this was maybe like mustard like four or five so there's things happening but we're starting to understand a little bit better And everyone's got you know where we're meeting and the whole team's there and

And I can see I'm like wait a second I don't feel comfortable with where we are right now And then I said all right here's what's going on We're gonna meet it this time for this we're gonna meet it this time for this everyone's got to have their brief done by this and just put out a timeline And all of a sudden everyone's locked into position everyone knows what's happening we know how much time we have we get it Yeah If you don't do that as a leader, that time disappears. It disappears and you cannot get it back. It is impossible to get back.

So when you get a tasking of some kind, the very first thing you should do is just do a good analysis of the amount of time. And you know what? You might want to start looking at your days and your weeks like that too. Yeah. Because it's slipping. Then it says the most important element of a company's warning order is the initial timeline for planning. They're just beating this down. A warning order, this is a cool thing to know.

A warning order is a preliminary notice of an order of action to follow. So this is basically a heads up. It's a heads up. Hey, this is what's going on. This is what we got going on. This is what we expect to have happening. It's kind of like me saying to you, hey, echo, we just got a call. We're going to Texas.

We got to do a filming. That's a warning order. Hey, Echo, we're going to Texas probably in two weeks. We're gonna record a podcast there with a guest and you're like okay cool you don't need to know anything I mean you you can start a lot of initial planning that's what a warning order is It's it's important to put that together because it gives people a heads up here's some of the things Inside of a warning order mission or nature of the operation Time in place for issuing the operation order so I'm gonna give you the final order at this time

Task organized the units units or elements participating in the operations fall as like hey echo we're gonna go down there but also So good deal Dave is coming with us. Okay, cool. So now you know where you got camera. You know right? So you already know who else is involved in the situation. Oh, and J.P.'s meeting us there. Late, you know what I'm saying?

We're going to add, you're going to know everyone you're dealing with. Reconnocence and surveillance to initiate. Hey, we're going to be in the Austin area. Can you see what some possibilities are for us to record it? You see where I'm going with us? Locations. Yeah. Locations.

You're doing a little recon. You're going to get on Google Maps. You're going to look for various hotels, see what kind of conference rooms they have. Security missions to initiate, that's very militaristic thinking. If we're going to be doing an operation, sometimes we've got to shut down outside communication. We got to start doing our weapons testing every day. So if we do it the day before, people want to know. So we're going to do some security precautions.

Movement to initiate. If you had to fly in someone, you start that movement. Information requirements, what do you need to know? Essential, commander's critical information requirement, which I've actually been talking about that one, a decent amount. I've been talking about that one a decent amount because as we went into COVID-19, this lockdown that the world has been in, a lot of companies and businesses that we work with,

all of a sudden we're not coming into work. They were not co-located. Everyone's working from home. They're working on computers. And sometimes they would feel like I would have leaders asking me, well, you know, I don't know what my team is doing. And I don't know if they're doing the right things. And so I talked about some methods to make sure that they are doing the right things without micromanaging.

Two things. One of them is an execution checklist, meaning, okay, I'll be at this location at this time working on this. By this time, I'll be working on this next thing. I'll be at this other job site. By this time, I'll be done with this much of the project by this time. So you know where they're at. The other thing is this, commander's critical information requirements, which means if something happens inside these required elements, you tell me about it.

So, for instance, in Ramadi, you know, if we had troops in contact, my tactical operation center knew to come and tell me we had troops in contact. Obviously, if we had a guy wounded, if we had civilian casualties, there was things that guys knew come and tell me immediately. And to be honest with you, as time went on, we modified those. Because eventually it was like, hey, the guys are going to be in contact. If they're in the field, they're going to be in contact. let me know if it lasts for more than 15 minutes or something like that because otherwise

they're they're contacting me all the time and it's just not worth it next one is essential element of friendly information this is knowing where your friendly forces are planning and preparation instructions specific tasks not addressed by unit standard operating procedures that's an important one so if I tell you hey echo we're going to go film a podcast and by the way it's going to be underwater yeah you go okay that's not normal right this outside the norm you got to get a case housing housing yeah you got to get a hot waterproof housing and last thing most important timeline for the operation so there's some things that you put in the warning order next thing is make a tentative plan in a time-constrained

environment commander typically develops only one course of action I don't even know if it's, I don't know, they say that, I don't even know if it's possible to only develop one course of action because when you look at a problem, you automatically come up with multiple ways to solve it. So you automatically come up with multiple courses of action. I guess maybe they say develop. Maybe that's a key word that I, that I'm not focused on because you can come up with three courses of action, but only actually develop one, meaning go into it a little bit more. So I guess that does make sense. the commander does not wait for a complete op-board before starting to develop a tentative plan. This is important, and there's two parts of this that make it important.

When you develop a tentative plan, first of all, you don't want to wait too long to try and develop it. And second of all, once you start to develop it, you don't want to go all the way because you're going to waste time when you don't actually know. So you might get told, hey, you're going to hit a target in this area. Or we think it's this building, right? So you start coming up with a plan, tentative plan, then you start going further and you haven't heard anything yet. And you get all the way to where you're actually developed the perfect plan for this particular. And then they go, oh, that's sorry, wrong building. I actually wrong block.

Actually, we're one town over. So you develop this whole plan, wasted a bunch of time, spun everybody up when what you should have said is, hey, guys, we're going to do a direct action mission. Get your gear ready. Get some sleep. I'll let you know when it develops further. So now everyone gets their gear ready. Maybe they get a little sleep. Now we get more granular detailed information.

We can take that next step in planning. Moving to mission analysis. The commander conducts mission analysis to develop situational understanding, which is the product of applying analysis and judgment to relative information to determine the relationship among the operational and mission variables to facilitate decision making and to confirm what the company must do to accomplish the mission. That's a big sentence. What does it mean?

Situational understand. You want to know what's happening. You want to know what's happening and figure out what it is you need to do to accomplish the mission. Oh, we're going on a mission and there is a giant river that we're going to need to get across. Okay, we know we're going to have to do a river crossing. Okay, got it.

Oh, there's a cliff that we need to climb. Okay, so now we've got to come up with a way to climb a cliff. So you're looking at this situation overall and figuring out what it's going to take to get through that situation. Oh, there's, you know, a gate or a fence around. We need to find a way to get over, through, under, around the fence. Okay, so you're figuring out what you're going to need to make this happen and accomplish the mission. That's the mission analysis.

Mission analysis answers four questions that become inputs to developing a course of action. These questions are, what is the company's mission? What is the current situation? How does the company accomplish the mission? and what are the risks? Analyzing the mission variables is a continuous process. The commander constantly receives information from the time the planning begins through execution.

What is the company's mission? What is the current situation? How does the company accomplish the mission and what are the risks? Those are the questions you're asking yourself to figure out a course of action. And this is where it might seem like those are real obvious. In fact, I'll rephrase that.

Those seem real obvious. And yet, I will work with companies all the time and see them in the planning process for something and I'll say something like, well, wait, what is it you're trying to actually do? And they will have lost their mission in the planning. Right? They will have lost the mission in the planning.

And I forget where we were talking about this, but it's the same thing of thinking that the way we get to the target is the mission. It's not, no. The way you get the target is, not the mission the way that you the way that you execute the mission is not the mission there's a big difference yeah and so sometimes people get caught up in the way they're doing something yeah not what they're actually supposed to be doing or even

more important why they're doing it yeah actually the whole thing kind of seems obvious it seems totally a lot of this seems totally obvious and the reason that it's important to go through it is it doesn't seem obvious when you're in it. Yeah. When you're in it, you miss things and you don't pay attention to things. And that's what you have to be careful of. And you have to be careful regardless of how experienced you are because when you're experienced, you get experienced in a certain, you get experienced in a certain category in a certain rut.

I'll call it a rut, even though it's not necessarily bad, but it's a good word to use. You know, if you, if every jih Tjitsu tournament that you go in, you got great takedowns, you get the takedowns and you pass guard and that's how you win. That's great. And you can get used to that. And when you're preparing for a tournament, you're like, yep, I'm going to work my guard pass. I'm going to work my takedowns. And we all know that there's going to be someone that's got better takedowns than you. Next thing you know you're on the bottom and you're not winning because you didn't prepare for that.

You didn't think about that. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of it seems like a almost like a reminder for organization. So, you know, like some people, some of us, people will give us a suggestion to be more organized in one way or another. Yeah, I've been aware of these things. You know, it's possible. And to some people, some of us, it's like, well, you know, like, yeah, you know, but hey, that's not my methodology.

You know, like it's organized chaos kind of thing. Maybe that's more of an excuse than anything. I'm not saying it always is, but it could be. Um, it's like, it's a reminder, a constant reminder to indicate the value of being organized and organized with everything. I'm not just saying your, your pens are over here, you know, and your papers. It's not that specifically. It's like the way, the way you're thinking about this whole process from like where you are right now, given where you want to be. Yes.

And let's face it. When your world is disorganized, your mind is disorganized. Yeah. And what it takes. Something like this, you're actually making an excellent point. This type of, this type of document, this type of process, what it does is it forces you to organize your mind. Yeah. That's what it's doing.

It's forcing you to organize your mind. And even though your mind may be relatively organized and even though your world may be relatively organized, there are still things. And that takes me back to like the rut idea. There's still things that when you approach them, you've, kind of forgot or you've done something a certain way, which is within the confines of what we're talking about. But now you're doing something else that requires you to dig and step outside what you have been doing. And if you don't have anything to refer to, you're kind of going out in the wild. Yeah. And you don't want to let your brain go out in the wild. Yeah. And that's a lot of

times where when distractions come in and like other short term things come in that you attend to essentially. Yeah. And, you know, I'm going to, okay, so I just said,

you don't want to let your brain go out there in the wild. And that's actually, I don't actually want to say that. Because you do want, you do want to look at a problem and you want to analyze a problem with an open mind.

And maybe the answer is wild. Yeah. But we know that discipline equals freedom, right? So if you can't even put a structure around what the mission is and what the problem is and what the, Assets you if you can't put a structure around that

You might as well All your quote wild ideas Won't cover all the bases But if you put a get a firm grip on what you're actually dealing with Well then you can have some wild ideas Yeah and that and when you said don't let your brain go out of the wild I didn't get the impression that you meant Like stay so rigid to this style it didn't feel like that

It meant have a plan man You know, like even just, I mean, this is a common one where it's like, yeah, plan out your day or plan out your week or whatever. Or even like, it kind of applies to everything, really. Like anything that you want to do well, it's like you're going to have some sort of a solid plan that, you know, varying levels of flexibility. Obviously, depends on what it is. But like even if you want to, you want to lose weight or you want to get in shit, you know, you got meal prep. You got workout prep. Like you're going to know what you're going to do unless you're like one of these instinctive training guys, which is like way down the line.

pretty much no one can do it. But you know, like when you go in the gym, like, you know, I mean, unless you don't know what you're doing at all. So that's like another thing. But again, if you want to do something well successfully or whatever, you go in the gym, you can have the workout. Yeah, I got burpees. I got pull-ups. I got, you know, like I typically know how many. Yeah.

You know, I even, quite frankly, I mean, we talk about this a lot. I even know how much rest I'm going to take in between, you know? So the better your plan. None. So anyway, it's like a, um, I, I, If you have a plan, yes, but your brain going out in the wild, that's basically you're saying, don't not have a plan. You're just out in the wild, no plan, you know? You need some kind of a line to deviate from.

Yeah. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, it's exactly right. So like you go to the gym, right? You got your workout. Okay, let's say today I got, I got flat bench, then I got pull-ups, and then I got, you know, some curls, obviously. Straight bar curls. In fact, I'm going to do that first.

So if I go in and I go to the. straight bar curl bar I do my curls then it's time to go flat bench barbell but it's like dang there's like someone using that right what plan done plan over no bro you better go jump on the dumbbells you're going to jump on the incline you got to do something yeah you got to you got to explore that wild you know those other options those flexible options so yeah I dig it but yeah when you mean like not having a plan that's that's the wild you want to exist there yeah the the other thing is if I mean if you throw a dart with your eyes shut completely, right? That's,

you don't even have a chance, right? Yeah. But as long as you like open an eye and you go, okay, cool, I kind of see where we're going here. Boom. Now you can make up, now you can throw something out in the wild and maybe it hits. Yeah.

Check. You get to this point here where it is identify tentative decision, decisive point. Decisive point is good word. It's a doctrinal term. Decisive point is where you, you, it's like a thing that happens, a point that you reach where now you should win,

right? Now you have like a marked advantage over the enemy for different situations. You know, when you've got, you know, when Dean Lister grabs a hold of your leg, it's a decisive point, right? I'm not saying you're going to lose, but there's a strong probability. Well, let me, let me not just group everyone in this. I'll say with me. When Dean grabs my leg, I know I'm in trouble. I can get out, but I know I'm in trouble. I know I'm going to have to scramble. So those are, that's what a decisive point is. And this is a very interesting statement here. Identifying a tentative decisive point and verifying it during a course of action development is the most important aspect of the troop leading procedure. The commander

visualizes a valid decisive point to determine how to achieve success and accomplish the mission's purpose. The commander develops the entire course of action from the decisive point. Without determining a valid decisive point, the commander cannot begin to develop an appropriate course of action. So that is a bold statement. So to be clear on the decisive point, because these kind of both make sense where okay it's it's not necessarily okay this is a decisive point where we determine this mission as successful it's not that it's not achieving the mission you know it's like mission accomplishment okay it's we got we just got to a point where now we should win yeah like now we should accomplish you know if you look at a striker

versus a grappler what's the decisive point in that match you know when you go to the ground yeah The decisive point for the grappler is when he gets the takedown. The decisive point for the striker is like round two and a half. And he's stuffed four takedowns. And the fifth takedown attempt just gets brushed off like it's nothing. And all of a sudden, and now you see the grappler breathing hard. Yeah. So now the strikers can start upping the strikes and start teeing off a little bit and start throwing kicks.

So at that point, and I've had those discussions with fighters before, like, okay, like you're not throwing any kicks in the first round. You're not going to put any real weight behind your punches in the first round. Second round, I'll tell you, you know, once you've sloughed off or stuffed three or four takedowns in the first round, two takedown in the second round, decisive point just got reached. Now you can start throwing bombs. Same thing with a grappler. So those are the decisive points in a fight. You didn't necessarily win just because that happened, but that's what you're setting up for.

So now when we go into the planning, we think about that decisive point, it's obvious, okay, we got the guy to the ground. Now we're good. That's what we plan around. How do we do that? How do we make that happen? Different fighter, you know, maybe it's a fighter that doesn't do well

against the cage. So we're going to get him against the cage. That's not quite the decisive point, but that's a strategy that we're going to use. We're going to get the other fighter against the cage. Then we're going to get underhooks and we're going to look to grind, and that's where the takedown comes.

Once the takedown comes, or now we're a decisive point. So that's what it means, but it's very interesting that the planning that they're talking about is directed and related to that decisive point, not even to getting the mission done. That decisive point.

Hey, once we get control of the, you know, the external parts of this building and we get it locked down, we know what's going to happen. I used to play this game called Zanick on the original Nintendo Nintendo Entertainment System You're probably familiar with that you remember that one right the old school the cross you know it's not a joystick Anyway so was that like the original Like non-joice stick because the thing that that I saw when I was a kid was the Atari did you have Atari? Yeah, that was the first I didn't have one but I remember those joystick

Oh, sorry. Yeah, battle tank or what was it called? It was called combat but it was the is a battle tank on Atari, shoot the guy spins. Anyway, no, this is Nintendo, right? Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, you know, gyro mite, remember these? Duck Hunt. No, I never had any of these games. I didn't have any of these games. Sorry, bro.

What year was Nintendo? I think it was 82 or 84. I'm very much in the game. I mean, I should have had something, but whatever, I guess we didn't get it over at the Willing Council. Sorry, bro. Anyway, for those of us, there's this game called Zanick. And it's the typical, you know, like a Space Invaders game, right?

You know how Space Invaders are? It's like just the spaceship on the bottom. So this one was way more dynamic. You'd go forward in anyway, but you could get all these weapons, right? So each weapon has like a number. So if you get a number one, it's a certain weapon. And if you get another one,

it's that same weapon, but it's just stronger or bigger or whatever, right? Now, on like, I think it was like level three or four, there's this. And the thing is the screen moves, right? So you don't move forward. The screen moves. You just got to keep up with the screen.

You know, it's kind of that one of those kinds of games. So there's this area in like level three where if you it's this little smiley face and you got to catch it You know, because if if it passes it's gone, you know, and you got to catch it. It's a little smiley face. You got to shoot it and what that does is Any weapon you have it gives it like the fullest power Fullest power. So if you get a number seven, right? A number seven weapon, which is like this kind of one thing anyway. It doesn't matter. But you get a number seven weapon and then you shoot that smiley face. I it gives you like the most powerful weapon in the whole game. And you can just, it's super easy to just defeat the whole game.

Decisive point right there. That smiley face is a decisive point. Just like how you're saying where it's like, the plan when you play Xanaic isn't to beat the game. It is overhaul. Yeah, of course. But the plan really is to get the seven and hit that smiley face. That's it.

Have you ever thought about this worthless knowledge that you have about these games and how you could have spent your youth studying important, philosophical things of nature. Well, in a way, I did. Obviously, where you're talking about. Same thing. Zanek. What is it? Zanick.

Zanick. Yeah, it wasn't like a super duper popular game, but it was pretty solid. You know, it was a good, good one, good music, fun game, hard. Okay, so we're talking about that's the decisive point, decisive point of that game where you should win. Could you still lose if you had weapon seven? level seven smiley face or whatever yeah yeah yeah so lose oh yeah because it just makes it super super super you get shot one time once you have that you lose that lose the whole weapon yeah

exactly right and it's devastating when you have that but here's the thing like compared to not having it it's like night and day you know you know there's a lot of games like that where you get this super this one weapon that's super rare but if you get it you know it's like it makes it super super easy usually they don't last long like you know one of those guns that like you shoot it once and it kills everybody in all of those but you don't get a bunch of them this one you get the seven it runs out but it takes a lot to run out you know powerful weapon very powerful decisive point 100% yeah that's literally the example of a decisive point insanity is there any other details you want to give us one super marie brother this trick you can do where you hit the turtle shell and

you keep bouncing on them and it gives you like infinite men or something like that not infinite but gives you like a hundred men that's a decisive point You're probably gonna win. Yeah, because you can just die a bunch of times. You just keep going until you win kind of thing. Isn't it sad, though? Like, they could have set these games up so that they were really teaching you something about something, right?

Think of like some knowledge, some memorization you had to do to get this thing about some important facts or whatever. Some mental challenges that made you think and you had to know. Yeah. You learned whatever, some history or. Brother, that doesn't sound fun at all. No, but you can make it. Don't you think you could make it fun?

I'm sure. Yeah. Actually, I think a lot of the games now are kind of like that. I think. I haven't played video games at a long time. But I guess I have fun. I'm talking about it. I mean,

I don't think there's any historical facts in Grand Theft Auto 5. GTA. Yeah. All right. Let's move on, bro. Seriously. Okay. So next step, once you've put your joystick away,

develop initial commander's intent. The commander's intent is clear, concise statement of what the force must do to succeed with respect to the enemy, terrain, and desired end state, which is a set of required conditions that defines achievement of the commander's objectives. You want to figure out what it is you want to get done. That's the commander's intent. The commander's intent does not include the method by which the force will get from its current state to the end state. the method is the concept of operation and this is obviously really important what you want to let your troops do is come up with the plan tell them what it is you want to make happen and you let them come up with the plan echo we're going up Texas we're going to film a podcast it's going to be underwater we're going to need four cameras because we got four guests

good that's it that's all i'm going to tell you now you're going to figure out what kind of housing and what kind of tripod and how you're going to do it and what you're going to run wires and how we're going to talk when we're moving, you're going to figure all that stuff out. A mission and then analysis the mission. A mission is task and purpose clearly indicating the action to be taken and the reason for the action. That's the mission. Task and purpose clearly indicating the action to be taken and the reason for the action.

The commander must understand the mission, intent, and concept of operation one and two levels higher, this understanding makes it possible to exercise disciplined initiative. And it's kind of implicit here that not only must you understand the concept of operation and the intent and the mission of one and two levels above you, but man, you got to make sure you understand the broad strategic mission as well. Everyone needs to understand these things. And the classic example I'll use is when in the Battle of Vermont to think everybody needs to know that what we're trying to do is provide security for the populace. So everyone's got to have that in the back of their mind when you're going out and there's civilians and you know that what you need to do is protect them.

You're making decisions based on that. Protecting the infrastructure. Like these are things that you need to understand. even though that might not fall into your commander's intent or his commander's intent or even his commander's intent. Overall, you've got to understand what the vision is, what the strategic vision is of the entire organization. So if you've got a company, and the company is build, the most critical thing of the company

is to build its reputation with its clients. Okay, guess what that means? Everybody should know, regardless of whatever little mission we're working on, The client is who we are there to support. You know, that's where you get to like the client is always right. They come to you and they say, oh, we want this done again. Okay. Let's make it happen.

Everyone can make decisions based on that. So it's not just one or two levels above you. It's a lot more than that. And then what happens in this book is they start to go into the analysis of the terrain and weather. And this is where you just get into this absolute minutia, the five, military aspects of terrain, obstacles. They start, you know,

listing obstacles. There's a page of descriptions of existing obstacles. Manmade include town, canals, railroad embankments, buildings, power lines, telephone lines. Reinforcing obstacles, tactical. Tactical reinforces obstacles.

Inhibit the ability of opposing force to move mass and reinforce. Examples include minefields, conventional, and situational, anti-tank ditches, and wire obstacles. And they go through each particular thing that you might need to think about, and I'll throw this in for Andy Stumpf,

how will the terrain affect the employment of mortars, medium machine guns, and javelin missiles? It's my favorite Andy Stumpf weapon. Javelin missiles. It's like a man-pack missile that you can use, and it's usually used for, like, destroying big things, but it can also be used in certain situations. as an anti-personnel weapon, which Andy used it for. So they go through pages and pages of all these things, and then they start to talk about terrain.

And what's interesting is if you, I'm not going to read all this stuff, but if you look at this, it shows you the level of detail that they are asking people to think through this information. You know, just page after page of terrain and out. should produce several specific conclusions listed below. Battle, support by fire, assault fire positions, engagement areas and ambush sites,

immediate and immediate objectives, asset out locations such as enemy personalities, it goes on and on and on. And then it goes in the five aspects of military weather, visibility, winds, precipitation, cloud cover, temperature and humidity. It just details each one of those. And then it goes into analysis of the enemy. Jumping it through a little section of this, analyzing the enemy answers. question what is the enemy doing and why the commander answers what is the

composition and strength of the enemy force what are the capabilities of their weapons and other systems what is the location of current and probable enemy positions what is the enemy's most probable course of action are they going to defend reinforce attack withdraw delay and then you start talking about assumptions about the enemy and then you start talking about the doctrinal analysis of the enemy which is what you trying to figure out how the enemy is going to fight you, then composition of the enemy,

then disposition of the enemy, then the strength of the enemy, then the capabilities of the enemy, and then recent activities of the enemy, you see where I'm going with this? And you know what that all boils down to? A little bit of sunsue, my friend. Sure.

What, knowing your enemy? Know your enemy. And what's the second part you just said? Knowing yourself. Know yourself. So guess what the next section is? Analysis of troops and soldiers. support available. That's what you got. Then you're going to run through the same kind of

information. What are the strengths and weaknesses of subordinate leaders? Hey, I got, you know, three platoons, six platoons. What do they like? Who are they? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders inside those platoons? What is the supply status of ammunition, water, fuel, other necessary items? What is the present physical condition of the soldiers? What's their morale level? What does the sleep level what is the condition of the equipment what is the units training status and experience relative to the mission have they done this kind of mission before what additional soldiers or units will accompany what additional assets are required to

accomplish the mission so yes you got to know yourself you've watched the Princess Bride no okay that's it's a surprisingly good movie okay this is all completely relative you tell me something no it what is it about uh I should have asked you that question. Okay, is there a main point to the story. Yeah, so anyway, there's this guy, he's the man in black. Because time is critical. The dread pirate writers. I'm just saying, people are here. They're thinking they want to learn. Maybe they want to learn something about leadership. This movie might have almost nothing to do with that. We'll give you an opportunity. I guess it's like, it's like a little metaphor, I guess a little bit, if you understand it as such. So anyway,

this guy, he's, he's, the man in black is what they call him, but he's like the dread pirate Roberts. Doesn't matter who he is, but he basically has to, he gets, uh, uh, uh, uh, I forget he gets separated from this girl that he loves whatever and then the girl's gonna marry this evil prince So this guy comes back right they thought he was dead whatever he comes back all trained He's like a ninja almost It was like old medieval times kind of situation, but he's like a ninja he has a little black stuff or whatever But he always when you when you When you he's going down anyway, okay here's a relevant relevant part this guy was a complete planner when you think about it when I'm listening to this

So there was a part where he gets like he gets real messed up and he kind of wakes up or whatever. And these guys kind of help him. And they're like, hey, we got to go, like, we got to go save this princess and I want to kill this guy, this king or whatever. And the guy's like, barely can walk, barely can talk. He's like, what's our assets? And then they're like, okay, we got this. We got this. He goes, what's our liabilities?

And he goes, blah, blah, blah. And he runs down exactly what you're saying, like about how they have. They have 30 men. The Guard is Catholic. And he was like, just. sitting there incapable of moving, but he's planning like the whole thing. Then he's evaluating. And he goes, um, and he, you know, he comes out with a plan. But then when you think about the whole past of the movie, he plans like the whole thing. He planned like the whole thing. He,

one time he tricked the guy, right? Trick this guy. He plays this game. He goes like this. He goes, uh, here's a one glass of wine for me, one glass of wine for you. And he grabs them both. And he, and he puts poison, Iocaine powder, puts poison in one of them, right? And he goes, okay you choose choose which one is mine which one is yours we both drink and whoever wins lives so the guy's like all right so he like does some dumb distraction thing it's a comedy movie and then um so they both drink and of course the bad guy dies right and then the girl's like right there so he grabs the girl and she's like oh how'd you do that he's like oh they were both poisoned i spent years uh building my immunity to this poison is what I'm saying this guy was a planner

That's why you won. Okay. So if you're a planner, you'll probably win. Planning is important. Very important. As is antidotes to whatever poison you're talking about. You know, my point is and has always been, these lessons are everywhere. You keep your eyes open.

They're everywhere. Who's in that movie? Oh, Carrie Elwis is his name. Okay. And, you know, some various other things. We have a lot of knowledge up in that brain of yours that just has no real purpose. You know the movie, saw? Remember saw you know I know the movie but I've never watched one anyway it's the guy from the first saw

Okay more knowledge just thrown out there for the world to Appreciate amen tall tall part of it Next section analysis of time available time available refers to many factors during the operations plan during the operations process plan prepare execute and assess the four categories the commander considers in include planning and preparation, operations, next higher echelons, timeline, enemy timeline. I think about that enemy timeline. The important thing to think about, can we move fast enough that we disrupt their timeline? We don't want to give them time to set up. That's another thing that I didn't talk about when I talked about the importance of time and managing time and understanding time and that you don't get a second chance with time.

is that when you have an opportunity to disrupt your enemy, the more time you give them, the less disruptive it will be. That's why when you're doing jiu-jitsu, and you know how the arm lock is there for a second, but then you don't go because you're wanting it to be more perfect, and then it's gone. And it also means when someone passes your guard, the time to escape that new position is as soon as it happens,

not when they get a breath and settle and put the weight. Next section. Analysis of civil considerations. Civil considerations include the influences of man-made infrastructure, civilian institutions, and attitudes, activities of civilian leaders, populations, and organizations within an area of operations with regard to the conduct of military operations.

And the questions you ask are, how do civilian considerations affect the operation? How does the operation affect civilians? How does the company build national will in its area of operations? And the reason I'm, I wanted to highlight that is when we're making decisions, you have to think about the impacts beyond just your team and the enemy team, right? So if you're in business and you have the opportunity to take out a competitor, but whatever, that competitor employs a bunch of people in a certain area and you take them out.

Well, what does that do to your reputation? And you just shut them. That's the kind of thing you need to think about. Think about the other effects to, for lack of a better word, the civilian population. And it's something in the military you get trained very specifically to consider all the time. That's why I want to bring it up. some of the things that they point out inside of the civilian considerations. Ethnic dynamics, organizations of influence, patterns, leaders, and influencers,

which I know you're one of those, right, an influencer. And then economic environment. So those are some of the things you need to think about. Getting into the course of action development. Course of action development. The purpose of a course of action development is to determine one or or more ways to accomplish the mission consistent with the battalion's intent.

And you don't need to worry about the commander's battalion intent if you didn't get the mission from them. But you gotta look at any mission you've got, anything you're trying to achieve, what various courses of action can we utilize? Course of action is really, how do I wanna use this word, fun? But I always found the course of action debate, right?

Because you got this guy wants to do it this way and this guy wants to do it another way and there's always a little debate about how we're going to do this. Since I took so many leadership lessons over the years from watching or being a part of those various course of action debates. Wait, why do you like it? Because it's all creative or whatever. Because it's a real good problem solving drill.

And it's also a really good leadership drill because you can watch the dynamics of yourself and other people. And when I say, no, this is the best way to do it. And you're like, no, I like my way. And we get into a fight about it. And all of a sudden I'm like, I'm ordering you to do it my way. you're pissed off and it's like a disaster. So course of action development is like a really cool leadership experiment that happens.

And on top of that, it's a very cool problem solving because, you know, there's more than one way to skin a cat. And I'll tell you, that statement that I just made is a very important statement to understand. There's more than one way to skin a cat, true statement. And let me tell you, when you watch people develop courses of actions and try and select them, You would swear that there's only one way because everyone has their way and that's how they want to do it. And the reality is if you go into it thinking, hey, you know what, Echo's way might be cool,

Lave's way might be cool, Dave's way might be cool, it doesn't really matter to me, it's all good. If you go in with that attitude, you're already starting off on the right foot. Let me put it to you that way. If you go in with, oh, I'm looking at this problem and I see the premier solution. It looks an awesome way. Yeah. Some of the criteria for a course of action should be suitable if executed the course of action accomplishes the mission legally and ethically while consistent with the battalion commander's concept and intent. That's like one of those obvious things you're talking about.

Like, yes, the course of action should complete the mission. Should be feasible, meaning the company has the technical and tactical skills and resources to accomplish the course of action with the available time space. resources and available capabilities, that one's real obvious. Acceptable military advantage gained by executing the course of action must justify the cost in resources, especially casually. Yes, distinguishable. This one's a little bit important. If more than one course of action is developed, does it differ significantly from the other

solutions? So is it truly different, or is it six and one, half dozen the other? And believe me, I watch people fight about six and one, half dozen the other all the time. and is it complete? Does the course of action cover the operational factors of who, where, when, why? So those are the things you're looking at. And I think as you pointed out earlier, those are some of the things that are just, for lack of a better word, kind of obvious and yet worth reviewing,

worth keeping in your back pocket, worth teaching your subordinates. It might be real obvious to you, but your subordinates might not see that as super obvious. Analysis of course of action begins with friendly and enemy course of action. And this is where they start talking about using a war game. This is the, and they say wargaming is the process of determining what if factors of the overall operations. The object is to determine what can go wrong and what decision the commander likely will have to make as a result. So this is war gaming, which is saying, hey, what if this happens? What if that happens?

and you have to look at your course of actions and you have to try and poke holes in them. That's why it's good not to have yes men on your team because if you come up with the plan, you got a bunch of yes men, they're just like, sounds great boss. What you really want them to do is get out daggers and try and stab that plan and poke holes in it.

That's what you want. The best way for the commander to war game is to start at the company's current location and go through the mission from start to finish or start at a critical point such as the objective or engagement area. So you'll break the thing down phase by phase and say, okay, what could go wrong here?

What could go wrong here? What could go wrong here? And you know what you do? You challenge your team. You say, look, I think my plan is perfect. Who thinks they could poke a hole in this plan? Right? Give them a little incentive to try and poke holes

because otherwise they're going to go easy on you. And you do not want that. Goes on to course of action, comparison, and selection. If the commander has developed more than one course of action, the commander must compare them by weighing specific advantages, disadvantages, strengths, and weaknesses of each, as noted during the war game. These attributes may pertain to the accomplishment of the company's purpose, the use of the terrain, the destruction of the enemy,

or other aspect of the operation the commander believes to be important. Very straightforward, very obvious. You take your two. It's funny how often you have to actually say, well, let's figure out which one is better. You know what I mean? Have you ever been, you know, you're planning something with your wife? And someone has to say, well, let's actually figure out which one of these is the smarter way to do this. Right.

This happens all the time. Yeah. You have to make that, you know, we have to be conscious of that. The command, and then the step four, by the way, we're on step four now. The commander initiates movement. Step four is initiate movement. The commander initiates movement necessary to. continue the mission preparation or to posture the company for starting the mission.

Yeah. Step five is conduct reconnaissance. Right? Step five is conduct reconnaissance. What does that mean? You're going to go and gather intelligence. You're going to find out if the intelligence that you're gathering actually supports the plan that you've come up with and supports the other information that you've been given.

One thing that I'll say is sometimes when we're not, sometimes conducting a reconnaissance, is simply a step in a certain direction, right? So let's talk about the business world. Let's say you want to move into a new market area. Well, yeah, you can conduct a reconnaissance by gathering data. You know, oh, well, we think this is good a market area. Let's gather some data about who lives there and what the demographic is

and if they align with what it is that we're trying to do. So that's sort of gathering information, right? It's not really a reconnaissance yet. But sometimes just making a step in that direction, you don't necessarily have to send out a recon element, right? You can say, okay, I was talking about this. You want to put a market, you want to go into this area? Put a kiosk out there, right?

Put a kiosk out there and see what kind of business the kiosk does. Before you buy real estate, before you rent real estate, before you hire 14 employees to work in this building that you're, no, put a kiosk there. See if there's any traction. So all I'm saying is sometimes instead of a reconnaissance, you're just taking a small step in that direction, and then you're opening your feedback loop

and seeing if it supports the course of action that you're planning to take. Yeah. Wait, so, okay, so for example, you know how, like if you want to, I don't know, you want to start a flower delivery service, right? And what it does is instead of flowers, you get, fruit, right? I know there's a company called like edible something, but anyway, let's say you have that idea.

And then you, instead of necessarily looking, oh, is there a market, the first thing you do is you see if anyone else is doing that already. That's a good plan. Is that like? Yeah, that's more, to me, that's more like gathering intelligence. We're looking at data. We're seeing who else is doing this. We Google and we see if anyone's delivering flowers that is actually fruit, which I

guess is just a whole thing thing yeah yeah that's more that's more of an intelligence gathering thing to me maybe a reconnaissance would be posting you know posting a website that says you know fruit flowers here click here for more information are you interested in fruit flowers and then you see what kind of interest you get that's not a great example I'm trying to think of you know what you could do is you could do the kiosk thing right put the kiosk thing outside this supermarket and say, hey, food, food basket flowers. Yeah.

So it's more, it's so it's actual, it's almost like you're, it's part execution. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yes, good way of putting it. Instead of going full execution, it's an iterative decision making process that I wrote in leadership strategy and tax. You're going to make a small step in that direction. That's what I'm trying to say. These small steps that you take are a form of reconnaissance.

Okay. Gotcha. A small step of execution is a form of reconnaissance in many ways. You know, if you're going to approach a target, well, while you're approaching the target, look, you send a recon team in there. That's cool. But then you send the assault force in there. Well, that's, you're gathering information. You're not necessarily going to 100% execute just because you got on the ground.

You're going to move forward and go, okay, we're doing a better assessment. Oh, we're seeing what kind of reaction we're getting. We're seeing the village's lights are still off so that our target building isn't disturbed. All that is actually happening. It's part of the process. It is a reconnaissance even though it's part of execution. Yeah, kind of testing the waters in the way. So that's step five, step six is complete the plan.

You utilize this information that you gather through your reconnaissance or through your minor steps of execution to complete the plan and say, yep, this is going to work. This is how we're going to do it. And this is where it gets a little confusing because now they're saying you issue the operations order of what we're going to actually do. So the op-ord precisely and concisely explains both the commander's intent and the concept of how the commander envisions the company accomplishing the mission. The order does not contain unnecessary information. The op-ord is delivered quickly and in a manner allowing subordinates to concentrate on understanding the commander's vision and not just copying what the commander says verbatim. Yeah, and the reason I said this is a little bit confusing because we're kind of, in trying to explain the fact that execution can be a form of reconnaissance,

well, obviously, if you're going to conduct an assault, you're going to give a brief before you go on the assault. That's what this is. So out of that context, it doesn't make sense, except for to say once you're in the field, you definitely, you know, you get in a perimeter, you get in your final area before you launch the assault, you'll say, hey, here's some changes.

Here's what we're seeing. Here's where a guard post was that we didn't see before. so you can make some final planning changes while you're in the field. But you've already issued your op order at that point. It also says the commander completes the order with a confirmation brief at a minimum. Each subordinate leader should be able to back brief the company's mission and commander's intent, the immediate hire commander's intent, their own task and purpose, and the time they will issue their own units op-board.

So when you get done briefing and you get done telling everyone what's going to do, what they're going to do, what you're all going to do, then you have some of the supported leaders say, all right, what's your mission, ECHO, all right, what's your mission,

Leif? Okay, what's your mission, Dave? Even though I gave the brief of what we're going to do, then I say, okay, Echo, what are you guys doing? You say, yep, we're going to insert here. We're going to go there. And so everyone can kind of brief me back, not just what the overall mission was,

not just what your mission does, but also the higher headquarters, what the higher headquarters intent is. So I make sure we all have a good idea around that. And then we get to the last, of these steps, step eight, supervise and refine. The final step of the troop leading procedures is crucial. After issuing the op-board, the commander and subordinate leaders ensure the required activities

and tasks are completed in a timely manner prior to mission execution. Supervision is the primary responsibility of all leaders. Both officers and NCOs must check everything important for mission accomplishment. And I guess this is where you take this and you take it one step further to commencing the execution of the operation. And you'll find that you're going to even once the mission is starting its execution, you're still going to supervise it. Obviously, you're still going to refine that mission as things unfold. So there's a very definitive separation between planning and preparation, but it's pretty easy to take that plan. and preparation forward, especially from the perspective that just because we made this plan

doesn't mean we're not going to very leave the plan once we deviate from the plan once we get in the field. So it's very important to understand that just because you've launched doesn't mean you've stopped refining the plan. You still need to refine the plan. You still make adjustments. And you have to have the humility to do that. And you also have to brief the team that, look, when we get out there, there may be some adjustments that come.

And that is why it is important that you don't make the most rigid plan ever. The most rigid plan ever. Watch out for those rigid plans. Those are not ideal. And then we get into this section, like the final section, which is preparations, which security operations. I mentioned that. and then we get into rehearsals. Always under-emphasized.

Rehearsals are critical. They don't really sort of emphasize rehearsals as much as I think they should. They say, and I'm not reading the whole thing, but it says, the commander uses well-planned, efficiently run rehearsals to accomplish the following. Reenforce training and increased proficiency in critical.

tasks that that's kind of not that big of a deal right reveal weaknesses or problems in the plan leading to more refinement of the plan or development of additional branch plans okay that is a big deal that's a fact actually a huge deal and they just say like it's number two right reveal some weakness no man this is this is it dude this is where you figure out whether your plan is good or not by running rehearsals and seeing what happens And this is where you refine it. Next is integrate the actions of subordinate elements.

They're saying that, like, that's no big deal. Picture anything that you do in your life and you're practicing it. And then someone else that you don't know shows up to get in the game. That's not easy. There's stuff that needs to get sorted out. And they're just saying, like, oh, you're just going to integrate it. As if there's any other way to do this efficiently, there isn't. You've got to rehearse.

You've got to have people walk through how we're going to do this. Next is confirm coordination requirements between the platoon and adjacent units. Again, we're just throwing it out. We're just confirming. There's some things you didn't even know existed until you did the rehearsal. It's not just confirmation. There's actual things you won't even figure out. Next is improve each soldier's understanding of the concept of operation,

the direct fire plan anticipated contingencies and possible actions and reactions and reactions for various situations. that may arise during the operation. This is hilarious to me because it says improve the soldiers, each soldier's understanding. I'm going to tell you right now, you take someone and sit them through a brief, those young, inexperienced soldiers, seals, Marines,

they get done with that brief. They don't have a freaking clue. You got to take them out and have them walk through this thing before they understand it. Hell, never mind those junior guys. There's sometimes where I look at the faces of the senior.

you know, some lieutenant. And even during the brief, they don't really, they're briefing it. The platoon chief is briefing it. Sometimes he doesn't even understand exactly what's going to happen until you get out there and rehearse it. So they're acting like these things are all additive. Yeah. Like these are sort of like, oh yeah, just a little icing on the cake.

No, I'm telling you, this is the cake. This is the steak. This is the whole meal right here. Yeah. It's not the whole meal. This is, this is. a vast majority of the meal. Maybe it's not the drink,

but it's just about everything else. Is it the main course? It's absolutely the main course. Yeah, you can see that. And they're making it like it's just a little... Yeah, it almost doesn't... Because that's one of those deals where, you know, when you say, oh, rehearsals,

that's like, okay, maybe if you're talking about some play or some performance, you know, that you're going to... Okay, rehearsals is sort of part of it traditionally. But, you know, even just like walkthroughs, right, when you talk about those or whatever, it's like you don't really realize the value until you physically go through the situation.

Then you're like, oh, damn, this is night and day. Because just like how you're saying, like your junior officers or whoever, when they're like, yeah, I got it, the brief, I got it, all good. Then when you go out there, when you're, when you, the first walk through when it's like, oh, wait, we don't got it. We got to work on this thing.

I was talking on EF online the other day. And I was explaining we were talking. I had done a whole thing, as a matter of fact, I'd done a whole thing about narcissism and how narcissism, like we all know that's bad, but if you read the traits of being a narcissist,

you'll read through them and be like, oh, that one stings a little bit, oh, that one stinks. Oh, I've done that before, because there's things, it's like it's your ego, right? It's an extreme ego. So we all have an ego, and that means that we all have some traits of a narcissist.

And when you read those traits and you start paying attention to me, like okay it just it's another tool to assess your own ego yeah you want to know a trait um and this this was because yeah I read about narcissism for whatever reason I mean that's why but I do so um I even know the methods to deal with narcissism as well there's like a psychological protocol yeah and that's the thing I actually had to break it down because I started getting asked questions and I said listen I'm not talking about a technically

assessed like this person is an actual full-on narcissist. There's a different methodology that you have to. I'm talking about just, hey, you're kind of normal, run-of-the-mill,

big ego person that, you know, we're in charge, you know, you need to listen to me. Yeah. And so that's it. So that's the kind of narcissist I was talking about.

But what are you talking about? Yeah, the real deal one. Yeah. Like clinically diagnosed. narcissist person. I don't know if that's an actual thing or not, but like a real narcissist. Anyway, so one of the, like the telltale signs,

and it's not in the list of trace, it's more like on, okay, so there's ways to deal with narcissism, right? And there's ways not to deal with it. So, and I'm not going to go deep into that part of it, but one of the ways not to deal with it is to tell them, hey, you're a narcissist. Because a real narcissist has an element of pride

with their narcissism. So they'll be like, well, yeah, because a real narcissist literally can't see why like they're not correct in the way they're thinking

about themselves. So disturbing. It's like they, for real, think that everyone else sees the same thing as they do. You know, it's like,

it's literally that's what they think. So when you tell if you were a narcissist and I was like, hey, echo, you're such a narcissist. Yeah. Your reaction would be on the, regardless of what I'd say

and how I'd behave on the inside, I would feel like, well, fuck, yeah, because I'm dope. Like, I'm just,

I'm just seeing the truth, really about myself. Like, I don't know. You guys see it too, no matter what. You guys are just hating or whatever. That's what I would feel about it. I wouldn't feel embarrassed. It's kind of like they're jealous.

Yeah, you know. Oh, that's so sketch. And as far as like the differentiator is like a normal person. If someone's like, hey, like you're, you're kind of a narcissist. A normal person would be like, oh, like, don't call me that. Like, I'm not a narcissist. On the inside, they'd feel that. Regardless of how they'd behave.

A real narcissist is like, of course, I mean, you're jealous. Of course I am because look, I'm better than you. Yeah, because of course, they don't care about the language, you know, because you call narcissists, big ego, you think you're better than everyone. You can say all those things. They all mean the same thing to a narcissist. It means like, well, yeah, I think that because that's true. Like, everyone knows that, kind of a feeling on the inside, you know,

regardless of what they say or do. So anyway, again, that's like how not to deal with a narcissist. You know how like, like if I were to be like, hey, Jocco, you're freaking, you're a, you give up too easy or something like that, right? Sometimes that helps people when you're like, hey, you just, you just give up too easy or you're kind of like, you're just being weak minded or whatever. Like, sure, their ego will be like, screw you, but they might go home and think about it and be like, because I don't want to be weak minded. I don't want to be, I don't want to give up too, too early, you know. But a narcissist, it's the same thing.

It's like, hey, you're not. You shouldn't be narcissistic like this kind of thing, right? It's essentially trying to help them, but the thing is it like adds fuel to the fire. So you can't like you literally can't deal with a narcissist like that. So how do you deal with it? Well, there's all kinds of techniques. Give me like one positive technique. Positive.

Or one one actual technique. It's called gray rocking. What does that mean? So gray rocking is kind of like it's basically letting all their what all their techniques just fall and not get a reaction from you. Why is it called gray rocking? Because I'm like super forgetable, super like you don't get. So a narcissist basically gets their power from your response. So if you don't give them a positive or negative response, you just give you're like, oh,

normal face. Normal face all day. Yeah. But not even overdoing that. You kind of give them like an appropriate response and then that's sort of it, you know. So it's called, yeah, it's called gray rock. There's all these weird techniques. I like that.

In names, yeah. I like that. It's surprising. It works very well, too, by the way. Yeah, that sounds like a good way to deal with it. You're not adding fuel to the fire. Nope. In fact, you're extinguishing the fire.

Because fuel to the fire is positive or negative reaction. It's any reaction. Anything that feeds the idea that, like, what I say and do affects the world so hugely, you know? So this person getting mad or happy or impressed or whatever, like any, like, strong. reaction is like hell yeah I'm gonna keep keep it up whatever I'm doing you know track the reason I was talking about narcissists well the reason that we're talking about it because I was explaining that I talked about it on EF online and then I went back and talked about the next session I talked about well we talked

about narcissism and ego is too big but we seldom talk about you know lack of confidence and the reason that we the reason that I lean towards talking about about staying humble and checking your ego. The reason that I'd lean towards that is because that's the majority of the time, that's the problem. Why? Because I'm talking to leaders. And how did leaders end up in leadership positions? Because they had confidence.

And so the tendency is that confidence is gonna grow out of control. It's not a tendency that someone gets to a leadership position through confidence, then all of a sudden it falls apart. That can happen. It does happen. You can also get young leaders that are getting put into a leadership position that lack confidence. So sometimes you do have people,

their confidence gets hurt, their confidence doesn't exist, you have to improve their confidence. So I was talking about various things where you want to improve the confidence of yourself or the confidence of your subordinates. And one of the things that I talked about, like let's say you have a subordinate that has to present and they're not going to be presenting. They blew another gig where they were supposed to be presenting to a client and they messed it up and now their confidence is shot.

They're worried about talking. So you've got a job of getting them trained up. So one of the things I talk about, this is going back to rehearsals, which is where got there in the first place is you know I said you you make them rehearse you know do your presentation to me echo and then what I say is hey echo now you're going to do your presentation and I'm gonna you know make something go wrong whether it's I you know I turn off your presentation right you got slides up there I just turn it off and and you just react to it and what you'll do is you'll come up with a standard

operating procedure where you know the slides go black and you go oh looks like I got some technical difficulty, let me take a second to try and figure this out. Instead of not knowing what to do when it comes a brain lock situation or and then I'll also make you, you know, mess up, mess up a word, mess up the pronunciation of a word. So when you're trying to say flag, instead of saying flag, you say flickle and you're like, hey, you know, we want to make sure we put up the right flickle. You're going to have to excuse me on that. I don't know where that where it came from, but there it is. I meant to say flag. So you just rehearse what you're going to say when you mess up. And that way when you mess up, you're ready for it. You're a little more

ready for it. So this idea of rehearsals being sort of an additive measure, because I'll tell you what, if you were doing a presentation and I ran you through these drills, you wouldn't just be a little bit better if something went wrong. You would be 10 times better in handling that situation. You've already been there. You've already seen it. So rehearsals are something that you as a leader should focus on to such a high level because they are so beneficial, not just as an additive, but in actually bringing together and consolidating the plan inside of people's heads, how they're going to react, what they're going to do during various contingencies. It is a powerful tool. And in the SEAL teams, what we used to say was one third planning, one third preparation, one third. One third. One

third rehearsal. The Army has something, what is it? It's like one third, two thirds, which is one third of the time planning. And then the other two thirds are for people to, what do they say? Prepare and prep. Which I guess those are the same things. But they don't put that as big as emphasis in that saying as we did, which is one third planning, one third preparation, one third rehearsals. Maybe they mean that inherently, but we actually say it in the SEAL teams.

Yeah, because when you think about it, and I sort of realize this when you're, when you talk about like training, whether it be police or any or even fighters and stuff like that, where if you think of high level performance like industries, we'll say the NFL will say, right? millions of dollars per person, by the way, NBA, whatever. Think about their situation. It's like how much of their time do they spend actually performing? Very little compared to training. They're training all day, every day, offseason, springtime, no matter, you know, the seasons, what, 13 games on? Meanwhile, they're training, training, training, training, training, training. And then what kind of training do they do?

It's all rehearsals, essentially. I mean, sure, there's some. academic stuff for sure, but as far as when you go to practice as a football player or basketball player, what are you doing? Rehearsals all day going full speed, actually, but it's all rehearsals. And they're doing that. It's probably like a 10 to 1 really training. What's the ratio of rehearsals versus scrimmage?

Right. But, okay, so scrimmage. Because those are two different things. We have to admit right now. Yeah, kind of. It depends on what you mean. Because a scrimmage is like an active rehearsal. Okay.

Because all practice is for a game. That's it. It's what it is. You got the game, that's the performance part of it. Like in your situation, it's a mission, it's an operation,

whatever. Everything else is training. So scrimmage is, yeah, it's a rehearsal, but it's just more dynamic. It's like with a resistant enemy, you know?

Yeah. And then there's like a walkthrough, which is kind of maybe like a more traditional. That's more like a rehearsal. Yeah, yeah. Because you got to do all, right? All,

you've got to be ready for that. You got to be ready for that real interactive, what did you say, enemy. You got to be ready for someone that's actually going to give you resistance, just like Jiu-Jitsu. You've got to learn to move. You've got to drill the move. That's a rehearsal. But then you've got to do the move in actual situations

so that you're ready to use it in a fight. Yeah. And then you got what's called the dress rehearsal. I guess that's more with like plays and stuff, right? Dressed rehearsal. Yeah, yeah, where you go out in your equipment. Do everything the way it's going to be. Yeah.

See what I'm saying? So it's all sort of in the same bucket, you know, as training. But it's, yeah, it's essentially you're going through the motions as close as you can to the real deal, you know. And actually, it's a spectrum, really. Sometimes it's like you just go through walkthroughs, right? That's a big one. Exactly. We do that in the military.

Go do walkthroughs. You don't even have your weapon with you. You're just in a pair of shorts and you're walking around like where we tape out the shape of the building we're going to hit and everyone walks around. Okay, this is what we're going to do. You're going to go here. You're going to there. But then we will do sometimes. Like the next level, hey, bring your radios.

So now you got everyone with the radio on, so we can make little comps. And then maybe you'll do like some walkthroughs with your weapon. You're probably not going to get fully kidded up, but you will do once you're kidded up like a full inspection. Yeah. And that's actually the next section of this. Yeah. But at the end of the day, though, to your point is it's all rehearsals, really.

Even like the role play stuff that you say, it's a whole other thing. But it's yet another form of a rehearsal. Oh, for sure. Roleplay is another form of rehearsal. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you're saying that during a role play, you might not know the outcome and you have a little bit of a resistant opponent, we'll say.

Yeah. Yeah, that is a rehearsal. It's a rehearsal of problems. And this is what I was just getting to is pre-combat checks and pre-combat inspections is the last thing. Pre-combat checks and pre-combat inspections are critical for the success of the missions.

Pre-combat checks and inspections must be, tailored to the specific unit and mission requirements. One of the best ways to ensure pre-combat checks and pre-combat inspections are complete and thorough is with Echo Charles' full dress rehearsals. So there you go. That is something that, you know, takes it to the next level. And then after rehearsals, obviously, you've done with your brief. And that's the last step. And now we are going to execute. And that's it. That's, you know, a quick run through of this document, this one section of this one document. And like I said, these are some good guidelines. They're definitely good things to think about. You can use them as a framework to think through how you assess and how you decide

courses of action and how you communicate up and down the chain of command. But you're going to, you know, you listen to this and it allows you to sort of customize these thought patterns to make them fit what it is that you do more specifically. But I will say it is good. Even though these things seem obvious, it is good to write them down and put together some kind of a checklist that you can go through so you don't miss things. And so that when you have a subordinate that you bring on board that you want to take your job, which is your goal to work yourself out of a job, how much easier does it make the process to say, all right, here's the 14 things that we think about while we're doing this phase of planning.

Boom, there you go. And I'll tell you what, when you write stuff down, when you develop curriculum, when you develop standard operating procedures, and then you share those, you get better at them. So that will allow you to go out, execute properly, and get the job done. Speaking of getting the job done, echo Charles. Yes. You know, we're all out here trying to get the job done.

on a personal level as well. We're trying to hold the line. We're trying to stay on the path. Yeah. Can you help us? Yeah. Sure. I can tell you what I do.

That'll help. That will be helpful. So we are, I am, we are very disciplined with our dosages of joint warfare, crill, super krill. And now the D vitamins, well, I'm going all day, not all day, but every day. Every day. How many of those you take? I take one in the morning, one at night.

What are you doing? Two, boom, with a mix. Okay. Just two, one hit in the morning. One hit in the morning. Good to go. Yes. So, man, this is a good one.

And I said this plenty of times before, but I'll say it again. It's a big deal where try take joint warfare and cruel oil consistently. Go one month. I don't know. Two months, whatever. And then try get off it. Okay. Yeah.

Very dangerous. Not a good idea. But a really. critical and impactful, should I say, proving scenario. Because I'll get off it because of whatever. You know, I'll forget one day or I'll be like, oh, I forgot to do it. I'll do it later. And then, you know, whatever.

And then before I know it, it's like, probably like two weeks. I got a question for you, bro. Yeah. Why don't you just put the supplements that you take by your toothbrush. And when you wake up in the morning and brush your teeth, before you brush your teeth, you take your hitters as needed. And then also before you go to bed at night, you brush your teeth, you take what you're supposed to take. I don't even understand why we're having this conversation.

You're a 40-year-old man. Allegedly. I'll tell you what happened when I tried to do that. And I say tried like it was just so hard. You're older than 40, aren't you? Yes, sir. How old are you? You know, that's classified.

42? 42. Yeah. 42. You're a 42-year-old man. Even worse. I know, man. It's bad.

Do you brush your teeth every day? Yes. So why not just add this step that takes an extra 20 seconds. Yeah. Well, it takes more than 20 seconds. This is why. Because look, if I'm going to, if I'm going to sort out that, what do you call? Put them out, put them out, whatever.

Like, lay them out. Lay them out. Just to have them stage there. That's what. Okay. The staging. Okay. Yeah.

So. Yeah, I don't like pour them out the night before. No. I pay up the thing. Boom. Eat it. Eat it. Boom.

We're done. So I started doing that. But I'm like, okay, I'm not going to keep these bottles in the bath room with my toothbrush because that's sort of not where they go in my house. They go in the cabinet. I know. I know. I know.

But I'm just saying this is what happened to me when I went through that process. I was like, well, it doesn't make sense. You know, I go downstairs anyway to the cabinet every day. Apparently not because you're missing. I know. I see you talk about the reality of it. I'm saying, well, this is what happened. So anyway, I was like, okay, for me to stage them by my toothbrush,

took more work than me remembering at, you know, in the, morning when I come down. So I just stopped doing it. Then of course I forgot. So it turned out not to be as true, but nonetheless. Well, you're teaching a lot of people right now. Oh yeah. Because I'm probably extra step. Okay, yes. Put them by your toothbrush. Now, this is what I did. So, okay, so, you know, I have this wind down routine at night and a big part of it is cleaning like the whole kitchen, just cleaning it. Whether it's messy or not messy, just clean it's part of the routine nightly, right? So I put everything away. So if I leave those bottles out, it's like I didn't really clean.

I'm not saying this is what I'm thinking at the time. I'm thinking back on it. Dang, OCD. So no, no. Trust me. If you knew the actual process, it's not OCD at all. But if I'm just like, hey, I'll clean the kitchen, sure. But I'll straight up just leave those out.

Leave those out right there on the counter. So it's essentially staging just like you did, but just not with my toothbrush, just at the counter where I'm going anyway in the morning, every single morning. You see what I'm saying? Anyway, that's what I start to do. it's I'm I believe with 100% certainty that that achieves what you're achieving with the stadium of body too. Okay.

And yet you do not achieve 100% certainty. You take your supplements. I do. I'm back. I'm on it now though. I have been for a little bit. And brother, seriously, the difference is night and day. And you think sometimes sometimes really when you're like in the game or whatever and maybe you don't crush your joints or nothing like that.

Like you can kind of get by. Like you can like, I'll just warm it up a little bit more. Like, my, this shoulder right here. It's like this, just this little, real specific part. I get that right there, too. If I do, this is how specific, it weighted dips. I get this little, whew-ya. Yeah, hell yeah.

Yeah, it's weird. It's like this weird little specific spot. And yes, with specific exercise, which is like, when I do shoulder press, it doesn't hurt as much as if I do incline press, which is really weird. It's very strange. Because you think the shoulder. But either way, it's like, I'll just warm up some more, maybe rub it, you know, rub it and stretch it out more.

whatever. And then when you go back on the joint warfare and the crew oil, you're like, oh, bro, I don't even have to like do all that anymore. You know what I'm saying? Just like night and day. Yeah, man.

And then so if you just apply that to your whole thing, it's like, bro, why not? You should consistently be on that. Keep you in the game big time. I recommend instead of cleaning your kitchen, sage me in your kitchen,

so when you go downstairs inevitably, then you can decide, oh yeah, it's time for me to take my supplementation. I recommend in between your toothbrush and your toothpaste. There it is. get it done. No factor, bro.

Yeah, I can dig it. I can do it. But hey, whatever your method. Are you a little OCD? No, I don't think so. What's the wind-down routine that you're cleaning your kitchen? I think it's just like a, like, that's just how, you know,

you know, when you do something over and over and over again, it's just like, it's almost like more habit than OCD. What if it's like a long day and you've been editing? A hard, rigorous, brutal, brutal day. of editing. Yeah, no, still,

yeah. You still, we'll just get it done. Yeah. No matter what. I think it's like the process, though. You know how like,

you know how like kids, they want a bedtime story? You don't need a bedtime story. I was getting, somebody asked me like, well, you know, how did you figure out?

Or why do you post stuff on social media? And I was like, oh, because I'm just a creature of habit, and that's what I, that's the habit that I have right now. That's what I'm doing.

Yeah. No great, like, whatever, strategy or whatever. Or like, like, I'm do this for this. Yeah, exactly. Like the strategy.

But I guess clean the kitchen is both because it's like functional as well. Yeah, it's functional in the kitchen. We support it. Yeah. So, yes, that's what we're getting at. Take some supplementation. Joint warfare, krill oil. Take your vitamin B3.

Yep. And, you know, that way, maybe some cold war. See, I take the Cold War. Yeah. You know what's interesting. I take the Cold War during the day. Mm-hmm. Sure.

Okay. So, anyways. get on that. Also, we got discipline go in cans. We got discipline going pills. We got discipline going powder. If you need that little psychological hitter to keep you rocking and rolling.

And really, trishing. And milk as well. Mulk, too. If you need some protein. Or if you just want dessert. Because let's face it, sometimes you just want dessert. Oh yeah. Speaking of which, okay, so I see these videos that Pete and them at origin are

putting out and it's like the mouk bar factory setup, development. Yeah, because I've had mope bars before. Yes. And like for those... Kind of a game changer, right? It's a big deal, yes. So it... You know, like, okay, so I like these candy bars. I don't eat them all the time. Actually, I barely eat

candy bars, you know, like at the king size candy bar. Most things with peanut butter is going to be, you know, my kind of go-to when I do go to those. So those are kind of like a dessert, right? I mean, maybe do you think of dessert? It's like ice cream or some pie or something like this. But to me, a candy bar is... What's your favorite candy bar?

Anything Reese's. Actually, there's these things called Reese's sticks. They're kind of like a Reese's, you know, so it's peanut butter chocolate. But they're like, you know what Kit Kat is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know those... That was kind of one of my go-toes when I was a kid. Okay, so it's like a more robust.

You want a Kit Kat tasted cool. in your mouth in like the hot summer, right? Sure. But it's like, you know, the makeup of a Kit Kat? It's like that, but just more robust. And it has the Reese's the peanut butter and chocolate. That's right now my favorite one. But unless, if you get a milk bar, it's essentially, it's not a Reese's stick because

it's made up different, but it's a straight up candy bar. Straight up. And it tastes like a candy bar. Yeah. And here's the test. bro, you know, we all have kids varying levels of age and so my son is three

will be four later this year, whatever. He'll tear in some milk bars. And that's a tech, like, if he doesn't like, if he's like, hey, this isn't a candy bar, this is a health bar. He won't eat that. He'll be like, we're not eating that thing. Yeah, because it's not like he's unfamiliar

with candy bars, bro, he pounds candy bars when he gets the opportunity or whatever. Bro, he'll sneak. He'll see where I put the milk bars in the freezer, by the way, which is another strategy. He'll see where I put. He's three. Three years old.

He's seen and he'll go steal the mold bar. Straight up. Steal him. Anyway, so these are legitimately dessert things, things, items that are protein. Well, they're not out yet. We apologize. We're working on it. And everything here plus the jocco white tea.

Mulk, warrior kid milk. You can get it all at the vitamin shop or you can get it at origin, mane.com. You can get it on Amazon too. Yeah, it's good. So it's out there. Also, jiu-jitsu stuff, jujitsu slowly getting back into it. Everybody, everybody got to.

You know, it's one of those things. You sort of got to. What do they call it? Essential activities. Yeah. I mean, regardless of certain policies, I guess. It's like, you know. Well, you got to figure out who you can roll with in your quarantine.

Yes. Yeah, fully. And then once you got that a lock, we're good. Yep, good to go. So you get a guy. you don't have one already or even if you do have one already get an origin key made in America 100% and they're the best geese 100% are those related made in America the best maybe maybe not nonetheless they're both I think I'm leaning towards yes yeah so actually no there's like

what do you call it the the the sum is greater than the parts or yeah or whatever because it's like made in America that's something it's the best that's something and it's the best because it's made in America so the fact that it's made in America makes it even more of the best You see what I'm saying? All right. I'm agreeing with your logic. I'm not following it, but I like the outcome. Okay, here you go.

I'll put a finer point on it. If Pete grabbed one of his looms, probably more than one, went up to Washington State right at the border of Canada and made one of those geese, that ghee would still be the best geese. It would still be the best. But it wouldn't be better than the one made in America because it's not made America.

You see what I'm saying? So it's the best regardless. But since it's made in America, it's even more of the best. You see what I'm saying? Got it. That's what I'm saying. Anyway, unless or germane.com, you can get these things plus denim jeans. Again, made in America, same deal.

100% same deal. Plus boots, plus t-shirts, plus hoodies, plus beaniees. Just all kinds. If you need something, check it out. You might want to get something. You might want to get something that's made in America without compromise. Very true. Which is a bold statement.

That's what we're doing. Yep. Also, Jocko has a store. Jocco store.com. This is where you can get more stuff. Apparel, if you will, shirts, t-shirts, hoodies, hats, a lot of stuff back in stock, man. So you can get them now straight up.

I know. I know. In the past, we've been sold out of this or that or whatever. It's not like that anymore. Things are changing on the Jocco store. In a positive way. In a positive way. They're improving.

Echo is stepping up his game. They're improving. Yes. So anyway, if you want discipline equals freedom, you know, things where you want to represent like on the path while you're on the path and you want to represent hardcore, deafcore. That's this is where you get the stuff. Jocco store. Dot com. I like the way you did that.

Well, you know, it's one of those things. You know, it's true. Also subscribe to this podcast if you want to. Go and leave some reviews if you want to. Don't forget about some other podcasts that we've got, including the thread, which will be back soon with a new name. which I've already thought of. We have the new name. All right.

There you go. We have to make some final refinements to the new name, but I think we're going to like it. We also have the grounded podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast. We got Warrior Kid soap from Irish Oaks Ranch.com. Also on the jocco store.com made by a warrior kid who owns his own business at age 13. Making something that's not just a business product, but it's something that every person can use so that they can stay clean.

Don't forget about our YouTube channel. because Echo is putting all kinds of time and effort into YouTube videos. Amen. It's true. Brutal. Are you going to put some kind of a special effect into this video that we're talking about? No, man. I don't know.

You know, there's mixed emotions about the special effect. There's a lot of people that think that this right there is the best idea, you know, that anyone's had in a long time, is to occasionally throw in some kind of a cool effect into this video. Yeah. Yeah. So people are watching it in the life. Like, what? Yeah, I'm sure they'd be very impressed.

Don't you think the world could use that right now? You know? I do. Yeah. Apparently you're undecided. I'm telling you the world could use some special effects in this video that I'm making right now. It's kind of a nuanced situation.

I should be able to like put my hand at you and it just sends fire into your eyes. Yeah. Well, yeah, I kind of get that from you, I guess sometimes. So yeah, maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Some people say that, hey man, no effect or anything. enhancement needed. That's, you know, some of the word I've been getting. Okay. Not maybe not needed, but would be nice. I'm not talking about like something crazy. I'm talking about occasionally there's

something happens or I say something or you say something and it merits a little highlight. All right. So this is, okay, and actually I got to think of what to do. But okay, this is what I did. So I try to like learn new dumb things CGI wise so I have this this program pretty extensive programs like 3D modeling and stuff but I just came across what do you call it a plug-in

whatever it's a thing that allows you to do more stuff that it's facial recognition so it'll recognize your face create like a mask you know those masks that you know you just sort of put on or whatever a mask and you can talk you can whatever it'll take all that data and create a mask and then you can put like

your real face on the mask so it looks like a talking face of your mask you can incorporate that into your video. I don't even know. Isn't a talking face of your talking mask of your face? Isn't that just your face? Yeah. But so why is it even cool? Because now I'm just saying there's a bunch of things you can do with it.

But one of the things, for example, I could get your talking face and then I could make a video of you talking, whatever I want you to say. say and then I can incorporate that floating mask what do you call a disembodied face of jocco in the video somewhere okay see now we're getting somewhere yeah you know anytime I do like I'm trying to describe some event unfolding and there's a couple people talking and I say so this guy says you don't want to do that and then someone else says yes I do see you could all boom disembodied my face we can be having a conversation with myself yeah maybe put a little bit of uh you know Something that makes the face just a little bit different, but it's still me.

Sure. Yeah, see, there you go. All you need is a little creativity, bro. You can make something happen. Thank you. Don't forget about we have psychological warfare little psychological hitters to help you over any potential pitfalls of discipline you might encounter. We also have flipside canvas.com run by my brother Dakota Meyer. If you need a little visual something to keep you nudged on this. the path, then go to flipside canvas.com. Made in America. Question?

Made in America? Yes. Answer. Also got a bunch of books. The code. Leadership strategy and tactics. Field manual. Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3.

Mikey and the Dragons. Discipline equals freedom field manual. How to get after it. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. We got Eschelon Front, which is my leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership. EF Online. This is it.

This is live. We got a new version up right now. We got a new platform. And I know you like that word, Echo Charles. We got a new platform, which is way more dynamic. We got a really awesome forum on there.

So you've got leadership problems. You can connect with the brigade of people that are on EF online, exchanging ideas. The instructors, all the instructors are on there. We're all getting after it. We're doing live events several times a week

where you can communicate. You want to ask me a question? Just, yeah, Twitter will work. I may get to it. Come to EF Online. Ask me the question. Let me see your disembodied head on a Zoom meeting asking me a question. We can talk about it.

Go to EFonline.com for that. We got the muster. Next one is Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th, Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Go to Extreme Ownership.com for details. And look, we're probably going to have to implement some social distancing in there, so we're going to have less tickets to sell. So that means they're going to sell out faster. So be, if you want to come, go to Extreme Ownership.com for that.

We have EFoverwatch.com where we have individuals from the special operations community, ready to go to work in the civilian sector. Go to EF.Overwatch.com. If you're on either side of that equation, America's mighty warriors.org. This is Mama Lee. Mark Lee's mom, and she has made her mission in life to help service members, their families, gold star families around the world on deployment here in America. If you want to donate or you want to get involved on some level, go to America's mighty

warriors.org. And if you haven't had enough of my bland blathering, or you do, you do. just could use a little bit more of Echo's digressive declarations than you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocka Willink. To all the military folks out there, thank you for your service day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, protecting our way of life and our liberty.

and to all the police out there and law enforcement. And then the firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service, you all do a job that is underpaid, underappreciated, and over-demanding. And we thank you all for protecting us here at home. And to everyone else out there, you know, I talked a lot about planning today. We talked a lot about planning. planning today. Collaborative planning and parallel planning and distributed planning and I talk

timelines and courses of action and analysis of the enemy and all those elements. But listen, planning means absolutely nothing without execution. So yes, come up with a plan, think through it, make sure it makes sense, and then go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Thanks for joining us. Out.