Jocko Podcast - 266: Pay Attention to What You're Paying Attention To. MCD 1-4, w/ Dave Berke. Pt.3

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:12:09 - MCDP 1-4 Competing. Chapter 31:36:11 - Final Thoughts.1:51:59 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:08:31 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 266 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And joining us again tonight is Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So we've knocked out two chapters of Marine Corps doctrinal publication one,

TAC 4, which is called Competing. And today we're going to delve into the third chapter. Now, we have had expectations in each one of these of doing more than one chapter, I don't think we're going to make it, especially because three has a lot of good stuff in it, and four is longer. So I don't know. I want to get halfway through four. Anyways, so we're going to delve into chapter three. And before we kind of kick that off, in the last chapter and throughout the book thus far,

the Marines have been calling competition or describing competition as an end. during conditioning, an enduring condition. It's enduring, it's always happening, always. And then when we got done, I think it was with the first chapter, and we did an underground podcast, and I talked about that clip from, there will be blood, I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. And I kind of talked about this fact that I related to that,

and that I can be really competitive in a lot of ways. And since competition is an enduring condition, that must mean that I'm always competing with everyone all the time. And if I'm always in competition, well, then when do I get a break? When do I sleep? Well, we're not sleeping a lot, obviously. But how am I not getting burnt out?

I'm always competing. Always competing, how am I not getting burnout? And I was thinking about that because I, you know, I start to think about people hearing this. And I like to think through how people are going to interpret what I'm saying. And Dave, you and I say this a lot with just the title of the first book, Extreme Ownership, and people think Extreme Ownership, well, that would just mean we need to be extreme about stuff. And we have to write a whole other book, had to write a whole other book with Laf called the dichotomy of leadership, saying, no, actually you've got to be balanced.

We don't want to be extreme. So when I think about talking and I'm sitting here saying I'm competing all the time and we're competing in everything as a competition And I think of someone going okay well We're going hard all the time and then they're going to get burnt out and how is it that I'm not getting burned? Am I superhuman? No I'm just another person so how is it that I'm competing all the time? Which I can tell you I can tell you honestly I am competing all the time and I'm also telling you I'm not superhuman.

How is this happening? I can explain it. The kind of people that get burnt out and fall apart, the reason that that happens is because they are competing at a tactical level. That's what's going on. They are getting caught up in bar brawls and street fights and duels and arguments and they want to. to win every altercation they see occurring anywhere around them and their ego won't let them rest and I'm not doing that I don't care about the bar brawl or the street fight or the argument I don't care about those things don't care about them I'm in competition but I'm not in competition

at a tactical level I'm competing strategically at least I'm trying to right I'm not perfect I'm trying to compete strategically. Now, do you sometimes have to win tactical battles? Do you sometimes, do you have a battle, a tactical battle that you have to win? Some people will come to me with that argument. You know, there's some battles that you have to win. You know what? You're right.

And you know what they call those battles? They call them strategic battles. That's not a tactical battle anymore. If I'm in a strategic battle, I'm going to win that. And the point of saying this is, as we talk about, competition and you hear Dave and me and Echo getting all fired up about competition and competing all the time and I keep saying you're always in competition and everything's a competition as we talk about that don't get

wrapped around a tactical competition think strategic think strategic all the time and you know you you should get in some tactical scraps sometimes so you don't lose your edge I'm gonna go ahead and say that I'll I'll you You want to get a little scrap? We're going to go a little sparring session going. Let's do it. But I'll tell you what, I'm not going to waste any resources. I'm definitely not going to take any significant damage.

Look, I might get a little dinged up. It's okay. But I'm not going to waste resources, real resources. And here's another thing. If you're competing against me, I will have you in tactical fights all day long. I will put tactical things out there to distract you and fight you. and I put some minimum amount of resources against your whole deal and make you think you're achieving this big victory,

and you're not. I will be watching you take damage. I'll be watching you waste resources. I'll be watching you expend leadership capital while I'm putting money in the bank. I'm putting money in the bank and I'm going to win. I am going to win. So don't mistake that as we talk through this manual.

Don't mistake tactical competition for strategic competition. And we have been saying you are competing and you should remember that you are competing and you are competing all the time But you should be competing strategically and with that We can go into the book. What do you got Dave? Bro, I'm just over here taking notes I'm just trying to write down because I'm taking this home and thinking about it You could probably say that again a tactical battle that you need to win isn't a tactical battle Just thinking of it in those terms like if you have to win that battle

meaning it's necessary. By definition, that's not tactical. It's a strategic thing because if you didn't, if it didn't matter, then it's not strategic. Isn't that crazy? If it doesn't matter, then who cares? Just the concept of a tactical battle you need to win isn't tactical. And that, even on the leadership side,

when people ask the question, hey, where do I hold the line? Where do I have to apply resources or expend capital? And the idea that even in reverse, like it, hey, if it has to be achieved, this is not a tactical thing, this is a strategic thing. And understanding that, again, that's just, some of that's just for me to think about because. And then you ask yourself,

or you see a client or you see a human being, treating something as if it's a strategic battle and they don't think through it. Yeah. They don't see that. I mean, really, what's the deal? What happens? What's the worst case scenario if you lose that battle?

Well, I'm going to, they're going to get the upper whatever thing they've rationalized inside their head, which is dragging them to expend resources, to expend leadership capital to make someone do something because they're going to look bad. Which is just insanity. It's total insanity. There's almost nothing. There's almost nothing that I need to make one of my subordinates do.

I can barely think of anything that I need to make one of my subordinates do. of my subordinates do. You know what I need to make one of my subordinates do? I need to make sure that all my subordinates knew how to program their radios before they went out by them, by, when on an operation in Ramadi because if they got stuck without a radio, not knowing how to program it,

they would die. So on that, that's, you know why you always use that example? Because there's, it's like one of the few that I can possibly think of. Yeah. It's one of the few that I can possibly think of where I was like,

yeah, you know what? You have to do this. Now, here's why, and it's not like I had to have a big discussion. All I said was, hey, guys, if you can't program your radio and you get separated, you're going to die. Therefore, you're not going out. Did anyone say, well, actually, I don't think it's that big of risk? No, everyone, yeah, Roger that.

There was no discussion about it. It wasn't like an argument. It was, hey, guys, I should have done a better job explaining how easy it is to get separated in an urban environment. And if you get separated in this environment, the people that would be coming to get you, they won't be us. There'll be an Army unit or a Marine Corps unit, and you'll need to know how to put those frequencies into your radio by yourself. Otherwise, you'll be out there alone,

and you'll get captured, and you'll have your head cut off. And it takes, by the way, 15 minutes to learn how to program a radio. Let's get it done. And everyone goes, yeah, Roger that. But there's not too many things that require that. And like I said, even that didn't require.

It didn't even cost me leadership capital. It didn't. It actually, that moved. actually didn't cost me leadership capital. Instead, people like, yeah, man, I would venture to guess that my leadership capital went up a little bit. Because guys are thinking, I don't really think of that.

I didn't really think of that. And by the way, this guy cares about me because he doesn't want me to be stuck in the middle of Ramadi without being able to communicate. The reason this guy wants me to do this is because he cares about me. It has nothing to do with my personal gain. Zero. What do I get out of it?

Nothing. Well, I guess I'm taking care of my guys. But again, what is that? I'm taking care of my guys. The discrimination between tactical and strategic is a huge area for growth for us as human beings. And I think, Echo, this has been your constant theme since we started the podcast of the biggest lesson that you learned was long-term versus short-term, which is the civilian way of saying strategic, long-term, tactical, short-term, and the difference between those two.

Yes, sir. And the more you figured that out, the better your life got. Yep, just like that. How old were you when we started this podcast? 38, maybe, 38. There's people that are listening this podcast right now that are thinking, I'm 32, man, it's already too late. No.

No. It doesn't matter. And I mean, I get messages from people that are 58. Yeah. And they say, yo, I'm starting to look at this long term and make these adjustments and here's what I'm going to do. It's never too late. No. It's never too late to start thinking strategic.

What's the expression about jih Tutsu, like when's the best time to plant a tree or start you do you do whatever? Best time to plant a tree. Either 28 years ago. Right. Or today. Yeah. Same deal, man. Same exact, exact same deal.

Yep. Check. All right. Chapter 3. It's a short chapter, but there's a lot in it. Chapter 3 is called preparing for competition. So you know how that's going to sound. The most important task for Marines and the Marine Corps is to recognize that we are always competing.

Even choosing to do nothing is a competitive decision. It just happens to be one that surrenders the initiative to our competitors. Yes. When you choose to do nothing, you are surrendering the initiative to your competitor. Now, I got to throw a caveat in there that there are sometimes where tactical patience, which is the cool way of saying waiting, is a good thing. There's absolutely times where you want to give things a second to develop. We used to say that to the young seals

If they were making calls too fast Hey, let it develop a little bit You don't even know what's really happening You've heard four gunshots And you're trying to make a decision On which way to go No, let's wait till we hear Some volume of fire from the enemy

So we actually have a more relevant And real idea As to where they are But I think the number is seven out of ten times Maybe eight out of ten times action is better than inaction. So that's why the Marine Corps says bias for action.

That's why echelon front says default aggressive. It's better to make a move. Eight out of ten times, nine out of ten times. It's better to make a move. And if you have an open mind and you're going to read a feedback loop, it almost becomes 10 out of 10. And if you're going to do iterative decision making, meaning I'm going to make a small move really quickly, then it becomes 100%.

I'm going to make a really quick move. I'm going to then read the feedback loop. see what I've got. And if you can do that, which is what I do, that's how I cheated. That's how I cheat in decision making. I don't make a big decision. Why don't I make a big decision? I make a little one. Make a little tiny decision. Yeah, it does kind of the more you think about it, the more it becomes like, yeah, like a 10 out of 10, especially when you think of it in those terms where, yeah, default aggressive, not meaning you're going all out full speed one direction every single time. It's not that.

It's like you got to be because it comes from a mindset, right? Where obviously default aggressive does. But if taking action versus not taking action, if you just reduce it just to the mindset, like then you can kind of understand like, oh yeah, to not take action is with very few, if any exceptions, the wrong thing to do. Yeah. Especially when you consider what action, how small an action can be. Yes. and still be action. Right, exactly right, yeah.

Yeah, because like hesitation, right? That's what you don't want, the hesitation. That's like in action. That's like I'm not making any decision to hold here or anticipate this. I'm not making a decision. I'm just like hesitating kind of thing. Like just not doing nothing. Yeah, when you think about like immediate action drills,

which you'll have in a platoon where if we get shot at, Here's the immediate action is going to happen without anything. There's action happening with no call being made. No decision's been made, but there's action happening. Dave, I apologize for not have, that I haven't memorized this immediate action that you have in a jet. And it's some move that you make when you don't know what else to do, but you just do it. What is it? Lift, vector on and pull.

Yes. Lift vector on and pull. That's an action. And that action, you can take that immediately and then you can figure out what you're going to do. That's right. So it's good to think through those things. It's good if you can just think about, if you can just have an SOP or standard operating procedure that, hey, if this happens, I know I'm at least going to do this. That's a really positive thing.

Yeah, I'm racking my brain kind of trying to think of a time we're doing nothing. And you already said it. I think the thing I was thinking about is even the smallest move, even the smallest decision that to do anything, you interact with the environment somehow and get some feedback. You get something. Now, that something could be very little and okay, cool, then I can move a little bit more. But even the smallest move gives you something. So thinking of it in those terms, it's really hard. And I'm just thinking of an example.

We're doing nothing. And I can't, I can't think of one when the alternative is, hey, make a really small move just to see what you get in that feedback loop, just to see what kind of return you get on that. And even if the return is like all negative, it's such a small move. that the risk of even that 100% negative feedback is like, hey, that's good information. That hasn't toppled us over or crushed us. So even if the response is all bad, the move is so small that's actually good for you.

So I just can't piece something together. We go, no, actually, here's a time where I really think doing nothing is right. When that is the alternative we're thinking about. Right, right. And when you factor in the small iterative decisions, it really eliminates a lot of inaction being good. And neither one of us and none of us are saying that that's never the case.

But definitely lean towards a bias for action. Definitely lean towards default aggressive. That's where you want to go. And then lean with little footsteps. Yeah. And I think where people get hung up on this and we talk about this a lot, the way you describe it, your iterative decision making, the way you do it happens so quickly and so rapidly, it appears that you're just, just going from here all the way to there. So from the outside, it looks like you're making these huge moves. And the reason you say you're cheating is you're going to, I know that's what it looks like,

but that's not what's happening. If you look at it like, hey, you're going from here all the way to there and you're thinking, I don't know how to do that yet, so I'm gonna do nothing. If that's your frame of reference, I understand why doing nothing is a reasonable alternative. What is, what you don't understand is that you're not doing that.

You never go from here all the way to there. You have a thousand little moves along the way, but they happen so quickly, And the maneuvers are so fast that it doesn't appear like that. And if that's all you think is, oh, he just, Janko just goes from here to there. You're like, that's actually not happening. Yeah.

And what's interesting about what you're saying is, I don't think anyone thinks I'm going all the way from here, from point A to point F. I don't think they think that. I think that they don't even know if we should go to point F or point Z or point Y. And so they're just, they haven't made any decision whatsoever. Meanwhile, I go, go to B.

That's right. You're not saying go to F. I'm not saying go to F. I'm saying, go to B. And meanwhile, they don't even know where to go, but then I all of a sudden say, hey, we're going to B right now. And everyone goes, oh, damn, how did you know to go to B? Because B is only a little tiny ways away, but everybody thinks that's a big move because they were trying to calculate. They were trying to try to do that calculus for a giant movement.

And that's what leads to doing nothing. And that's what leads to doing nothing because you can't do that calculus. And by the way, what helps you do the calculus? What helps you do the calculus when you start filling into the variables? What starts filling in the variables is when you start gathering information. And when you start gathering this information, you start filling in those variables. And like you said, even if that variable is negative and we go, oh, there's more enemy to the west. Okay, cool.

Now guess what we know? We're not going west. We can start moving east. We can start moving south. Whereas if we just sat there, we still don't know where to go. We don't know where to go east, west, north, we don't know where to go. So that small movement to the east, oh, hey, we just identified more bad guys. Okay, cool.

Now we know not to go there. So there's the opening sentence. Competition in the Marine Corps. Marines and the Marine Corps are tools for the nation to, by the way, you know, the, the, the people talk about, like, what's the greatest speech that's ever been delivered? You know, is it Martin Luther King? Is it Winston Churchill? Is it Teddy Roosevelt? You know, we have nothing to fear.

But which one of those speeches is the greatest speech ever? Someone's ever asked me this question in a public forum where I could answer this question the way I want to answer this question. But chesty polar gave a speech at like some Marine Corps ball gathering and he was already retired. He was already chesty polar. And, you know, they call him up to give the speech that he's going to give. And the freaking place goes completely nuts, obviously. and he gets up there and he delivers what I believe to be

at least a strong contender, at least for me, the greatest speech of all time. And you know what he says? He just says, Marines. And that's it. The place went freaking nuts and he walked off the stage.

So whenever I see the word Marines, I think of that. That's all he needs. to say. So, Marines and the Marine Corps are tools for the nation to use in the enduring competition that takes place in international relations. So what does that mean? What does that mean? That means every single thing that you do. Every single thing that you do is playing into this competition that you're in in all these different aspects. Every day, marine capabilities and force posture affect the thinking of our competitors and potential adversaries.

Again, this is propaganda for the Marine Corps. In case me talking about chesty puller saying Marines isn't good enough propaganda for the Marine Corps, the more credible the Marine Corps, the more attractive we are to allies and partners. The more credible the Marine Corps is as a deterrent force, the more we affect potential rivals thinking. For Marines, participation in our nation's competitions starts at recruitment. The quality level of individuals brought into the service provides the raw material to build a credible force. Attributes like education level, physical fitness, and mental resilience determine how quickly these individuals can be transformed into members of a coherent, capable organization. These attributes also help establish the range of possibilities available to adapt the existing force or innovate to create a new one. How much do you know about Marine Corps recruiting, Dave?

I mean, I have my own personal experience with it. I don't know if I'm an expert on it, but I have a small sense of how it works. The rumor that I've always heard about the Marine Corps is that the Marine Corps spends like a fraction of the amount of money that the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force spend on recruiting. Do you know anything about that? I can't give you any facts on that. That wouldn't surprise me, but I couldn't prove that. Yeah, that's what I've always heard. I believe it's now.

I know that they must spend some money. because they have advertisements and they have, you know, commercials and stuff like that. But, man, they do a good job based on narrative alone. I mean, my recollection of when I was like really getting into thinking about the Marine Corps was the way that, one of the ways I was convinced is it made it sound like it was probably impossible. Like they're recruiting like, you're probably not good enough. Yeah. But if you are, this is where you should be.

and there was this sense of like, oh, man. Now, Dakota Meyer, almost the exact same story. You know, he showed up, and I forget what kind of crazy. He was talking about he had some crazy, like, haircut, whatever. He was a punk-ass kid. And he shows up and says, I want to be in the Marine Corps. And they said, you don't really look like your Marine Corps material. Yeah.

Now, do you think this is, when you go to recruiting school, are they teaching you that as a recruiter? I'm pretty sure that's a technique that they leverage. Now, what's interesting is JP to know. Now, same thing, walked into the Navy recruiter. I want to be a Navy SEAL. Or I should probably like, I want to be a Navy SEAL because he's 14 years old or whatever he was. And they said, eh, the wannabes need to come in on Thursday. What do you mean wannabe?

And he was determined just to prove that freaking recruiter in Sacramento, California, that that JP had what it took. It's a great screening tool because I know the Marine Corps wants people that think that they want people that have big egos in the sense. think they could do things that are hard. And a great way to test that is, hey, this is too hard for you. And if you go, yeah, you're right, they don't want you anyway. What they want us are going to go, oh, really? So I would say I'm pretty sure that that is a technique that they proliferate throughout officer and enlisted recruiting is you're probably not good enough, but we'll see.

Now, what percentage of people does that backfire? The humble guy that's a super stud that says, yeah, you know, probably you're. I guess I'm not just I'm probably not just cut out for it and I guess maybe that is a good self-selection because now we got a dude that maybe at the moment a truth kick but I really believe in his capabilities Very strange Historically the Marine Corps has been the nation's hybrid force Conducting activities that straddled the line between violence and non-violence Marines have often deployed two places to help the local people in time of need while being ready to restore order in those same places if required. The direction for the Marine Corps to be the most ready when the nation is least ready

applies as much to competition as it does to war. And this is another one of these statements where you think, well, that right there is a maneuver to the Department of Defense to give us money. You need to allocate money to the Marine Corps because when the nation is least ready, the Marine Corps will be the most ready. In fact, this statement can be viewed as a competitive act in the informational element of national power. Next section is called campaigning mindset. Competition is in, and you know I love the word campaign.

Why? Because that's the opposite of tactical battle. That's the opposite of a hack. It's the opposite of a shortcut. It's an opposite of this easy solution. sweatless solution, as Colonel David Hackworth once said. It's a campaign. Campaigns don't happen overnight.

Competition is enduring in nature at the national level, and the military element normally plays a supporting role, especially on the spectrum of competition short of war. This leads us to develop a campaigning mindset about competition, which is characterized by long-term thinking and recognition that we need to integrate our actions with others. Marines compete as part of a naval and joint force, but also as part of the interagency in an approach that combines all the elements of national power.

Now, it's sentences like this where I think this, this document is not aimed at a Lance corporal. This document is aimed at the DOD. This is a campaign. This document is a campaign. It's correct. But this document is a campaign to make sure that we keep the Marine Corps strong. Marines should strive to integrate our allies and partners into our competitions as this will increase our options

While also increasing the potential number of dilemmas Dilemas we can present to our rival our rivals What a and we're gonna get to this I don't know if it's in this chapter or one of the later chapters when we start talking about One of my favorite military terms the combined armed dilemma Combined arms dilemma But when you think about what you're doing is creating dilemmas for your rivals, even in not necessarily in a wartime scenario, but even in a competitive scenario, or a threshold less than violence, you're trying to create dilemmas for them.

It's a powerful thing. The cultivation of humility is also important for this mindset. Hmm. Humility is the most important characteristic for a leader to have. And even though we just had a little conversation about the fact that we want people in the Marine Corps that have at least some level of arrogance, you could, you know, you can, you you don't think I can do this? Watch this.

That's why we got to remind them that the cultivation of humility is also important for this mindset. Marines learn early on about the observe, orient, decide, act loop or udal loop. Understanding of Uda teaches us that each decision is a hypothesis that gets tested in the real world when we act. Lately when I've been talking to clients, well, I shouldn't say lately, as COVID kicked off.

and I would be talking to clients. I had this little spiel that I was giving them. And basically what I was saying is, hey, if you're in a leadership position and you're not sure what to do, what you've got to do in that situation? You've got to guess. And then I'd go off about guess.

I'd say, listen, everybody, no one wants to hear the word guess. Like, hey, Dave, you're in charge. What do you want me to do? Oh, let me take a guess. No one wants to hear that. That sounds horrible. Who wants to follow somebody that?

I guess we should. Have you ever heard a leader? in your life that was inspiring with confidence when they said, hey, I'm guessing we should go over there. You don't say that as a leader. You don't use those words. And yet, and then I followed up and say, but when you're in a leadership position, when you are making a decision, what you're calling a decision, it is a guess.

And what the Marine Corps did here, because they didn't want to use the word guess, they sent us up into the next level and just called it a hypothesis. Well, that's what that is. Which is a guess. Educated guess, which is an educated guess, which is still a guess. Yes, sir. But the amount of times that you are in a leadership position where you know for certain what's going to happen next is 0.001% because we can't predict the future. We don't know what all these little variables are, how all these little variables are going to turn out.

So that's what we're doing as leaders is we're making guesses. We're making hypotheses. We're taking what you say, educated guesses. That's like in between, right? A guess is just a guess. An educated guess next level hypothesis. Yes, sir. Yeah.

So we've got to understand that. We understand that that decision is a hypothesis that gets tested in the real world when we actually act. The campaigning mindset then includes the understanding that we base our plans on a model we created of our competitor. Okay. Our decisions about how to achieve our goals and competition are theories. Their guesses. A lot of guesswork going on. And what's good, what I like about using the word guess, what I like about that is I think, you know, Dave, you were talking earlier about hesitation if you're making a decision making process.

Well, if I'm a young leader and I'm looking at my options, A, B, or C, and I'm not sure which one to do, I might be thinking in my mind, well, what am I supposed to do? Just guess? Am I supposed to just take an educated guess with what we should do right now? I got all these resources. I got maybe lives at stake or I got capital at stake. I got all these things going on. I don't feel comfortable just guessing. So I'm just going to sit here.

I'm just going to sit here and wait because I'm scared. Because it doesn't seem right that I should be guessing what to do. Yes, you should. Now, what I recommend you do is you guess little. Just take a little guess. Hey, should I go in door A, B, or C? You know what I'm going to do immediately? Hey, I'm going to walk up at that door and take a listen.

What do I hear in there? right is there a party going on or is there gunfire so or is there no noise now no noise I'm a little scared about but if I hear music that's kind of a positive sign but I didn't enter the door all I did was put my ear up to it so that's what you do you make a little guess I guess we should check out that door I hear gunfire that doesn't sound like a good door what about the next door I hear nothing not sure about that one what about this door over hear I hear music. I hear music that echo Charles plays in his vehicle from the islands,

which means everyone in that room is kind of cruising. And I'm feeling pretty good about it. We're opening that door, no factor. So if you're not comfortable taking the guess, then it's hard to make a decision. Our plans then need to have feedback loops built into them to either confirm that our models and theories are correct enough. to help us reach our goals or that we need to modify them. And by the way, they don't bring this back up to humility.

They should because if you're not humble and you think, I'm guessing door C and you walk up to it, you hear gunshots, you're like, well, I guess C, we're going in. Bad idea. So it takes humility to modify your plan. And if you're not humble, you won't be modifying your plan. You'll be sticking with your plan until it kills you. Competition campaigning introduces the idea of persistence. Strategic competition is more like a marathon than a sprint.

Competitions enduring nature means that any campaign will require long-term commitment to achieve its goals. We also need to be alert for how our competitive advantages and those of our rivals will shift over time. This is what's scary about wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, where your enemy is home. They're not on deployment. they're going to be there and when the wars they'll wait they'll be there for 100 years there's not an American that wants to be there there's not an American that's hey I'm stoked I'm in Al-Qaim hey I'm stoked I'm in cut hey I'm stoked I'm in cut hey I'm stoked wherever they want to be back in Nebraska they want to be back in

Iowa But the people that we're fighting against, they are home. So before you get into that combat, you've got to figure out who's got the home field advantage. It's a big deal. It's a way bigger deal than it is in sports. This next section is professionalism. As military professionals charged with the defense of the nation, marine leaders must be true experts in the conduct of war. This statement from warfighting want the,

the MCDP one war fighting establishes the first priority for Marines which to defend the nation as professionals Marines recognize this defense as a vital and enduring national interest our professionalism is grounded in our nation's values which sets us apart from our from from competitors achieving that standard being prepared to defend the nation has been and will continue to be a competitive act so us just being ready is is is is is is is how we are helping America compete with everybody else in the world, because they got to keep up. You see what the Marine Corps is doing.

You know you better to be trained in order. We accept that the existence of the Marine Corps helps deter potential foes. Our goal is for that deterrence to take place below the violence threshold. So what we're doing right there, we're kind of making sure that even the doves in the government are looking at the Marine Corps thinking, you know, the Marine Corps doesn't want war either. The Marine Corps wants peace.

They want these things to happen below them. We better give them more money. Well-funded Marine Corps. Professionals understand this goal and thus direct their energies, self-study and unit development in particular, toward achieving it. So all Marines are trying to become professionals.

Professionals. True experts in the context. Conductive war as professionals we recognize that development of coercive tools must be balanced with the need to attract in competition as well for example one component of an attraction strategy could lead to greater deterrence through building increased interoperability with an ally It could also lead to advances through the informal element of national power as we perform disaster relief mission Marines must remain alert for the opportunities to use and integrate both coercion and attraction into the larger competition So the Marine Corps is not, they're saying here, we're not just here to fight wars. We're here to build relationships.

Now at Eshalam Front, we talk about building relationships all the time. That's how you lead. You lead by building relationships. That's how you get things done by building relationships. And what we're talking about here is we are competing. And in order to compete, guess what we do? We build relationships. We build relationships.

And just to give people an example of, and I'm sure you have some more, Dave, but especially before the war started for me in the 90s, this is what the SEAL teams did. Go to a country, train their special operations unit, do a big exercise, train them in the use of our weapons. We train in the use of their weapons. We send some people to learn how to speak their language. We bring some people to learn that they can learn how to speak English. We form these relationships. We work together. So that way, we're strengthening our allies.

We have somebody we can rely upon. We get to know them. But that's just relationships. That's what it is. Did you guys do that in the pilot world? Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about carrier deployments. And I think right now there's a connotation that the aircraft carrier, and it's probably already always existed, but certainly now since, you know, post-9-11,

the carrier is this power projection tool, this, you know, the, you know, the, um, you know, 90,000 tons of diplomacy, you know, sovereign U.S. soil all over the way. They have these great taglines, the Navy leverages, which are true in a lot of ways. But pre-9-11, if you ever did a cruise pre-9-11 like I did back in the day, the joke, we called them pleasure cruises. It was like 13, 14 port calls. And the two months, you know, that you sailed from San Diego to the Persian Gulf was a bunch of port calls. you're doing joint operations with different countries.

You're pulling up peer side and contributing to their economy. You're building all those relationships. And most of it is allies or people we want to build relationships with. Then you go to the Gulf for a couple months, do that thing. And in that, you're doing three or four portals to Bahrain, to the UAE, all these places that we're trying to strengthen relationships. And that the carrier was an instrument of power projection. It was an instrument of diplomacy, which was building those relationships.

Obviously, post 9-11, you know, my experience, my second cruise was like, go, to the North Arabian Gulf, stay there for seven months, come home. But, you know, before that, the investment that Navy was making was mostly strengthening the relationships. And there are stories out there even somewhat recently that carriers would deploy for disaster relief with no aircraft on them just to send a carrier to help, you know, floods and crazy things that happen in different places, strictly for strengthening ties in relationships that are projecting literal no combat power by design because the Navy, well, I'm sure it's larger than just the Navy, but that's my connection. And you know, I deployed off carriers for the most part.

So that's attraction, right? That's attraction as opposed to the turns, right? We're just trying to show people that, hey, you want to be friends with us. Yeah. We're attractive. We can help you if you get no time of need. We're a good ally. At a tactical level, when I would deploy in the 90s, back in the day, we would go out and do exercises where I would be in the jungle with some special operations unit from some other country.

what do you do when you are a fighter pilot? Same thing. Are you giving them a tour? Are you taking them in the backseat? At a tactical level, just out of my own curiosity, what would you do? You're flying with them.

You're spending time with them. And there's a little bit. Wait, wait, are they flying their aircraft? And so they're your wingman and you work some stuff. Yeah, you're integrating with them. Sometimes you fight against them. Sometimes you fight with them.

Really what it's supposed to be is kind of this. Did you ever put your ego in check and let one of these, what let one of these, foreigners beat you in a dog fight? No, dude. Come on, man. Zero percent chance. Zero. Now, certain countries, they would have, we would fly with different countries that they would have different R-O-E, different rules, training rules and things like that. And you could see some of them were geared very specifically to make sure that certain people had advantages. And we would play by those rules and sometimes get in trouble for not following those rules. You know, one of the thing that's really cool

about the American military, and certainly in aviation, and there's a saying we have, there's no rank in the cockpit. So I could be the junior dude in the squadron. I'm not saying this happened very often, but you could be a mid-level guy. You're going to go out fly with your boss. And once you start fighting him, like, you can pummel him to just pummel him into the ground. And it's, there is no like deference. Like, I don't want to make the old man look bad. You go out there and do your thing. That's not always like that. But the interaction, in some sense, was this idea that this American military with this big might, this big power, our aviation world is something they can learn from. But we always learned stuff from them too. We would

share briefing techniques and how they ran their briefs, how they trained their guys, how they did certain things. And a lot of it, at least on paper, was for us to bring to them, things that can help them get better. But it was always reciprocal. We always learned from operating with other countries. And I flew with pilots and airplanes from all sorts of different countries, even sometimes the same exact airplane, but they fly it differently. They do things differently. So there's a whole bunch of things that you can do to interact with them that is beneficial for both It was probably lopsided What we knew and how we did it was usually more more beneficial to them, but it wasn't completely one-sided either

Flying dissimilar with different countries is a blast because you learn stuff to go oh man We don't do that in our airplanes. That's really good for me to see it makes me more prepared for if something actually really happens Would you guys go toe-to-to-top gun dog fight style one-on-one? Yeah, you'd have a you'd have different things I I I have never been in a situation where if the brief was you and me are going to fight, I don't care what country or what plan. Once fights on, it is game on. There is no like, hey, go easy on this guy or let this guy. I have never been in a dog fight once in my life other than, hey, I'm there to show you certain things.

But if it's like a real dog fight, like just a real fight, you're just, you fly your best airplane. there are times that you would dial back your best jet because it would be really it would undermine the effectiveness of the training of the relationship building as well but it never to like oh you did were even never did you never good job you really caught me off guard there yeah yeah you got me that would be that would be you know in in the heyday of can you when you're a top gun IP and you're fighting against you know somebody else and you're going to come back no joke you come back with 25 30 values shots. That can be really disheartening for somebody to look on paper and go, hey, let me

see your shot card and they've got zero shots. And you're like, oh, hang on, I need to get my second sheet of paper. And if there's a Topkin IP or a WebExco IP list and this, they're laughing right now because you can come back with in four or five sets, five, six shots per and you have 30 valid shots and the other guys got zero. If you do that set after set after set after a while, it'd be like you and me rolling on the mats and you doing nothing but trying to beat me. You're not teaching me. You're not training me. You're just going to beat me.

You're like, bro, I don't want to do this anymore. So you would dial that back. But you never be like, oh, Dave, that was amazing how you did that. I didn't think you could, you would never get to that level of that in an actual fight. When we're training and doing other things, yeah, you're there to learn. And they learn from you, learn from them. But I've never been in a one one, one, one, one, where I'm dialing it back because somebody needs, you know, somebody's saying, hey, don't, don't fight your best yet.

I'm only doing that, you know, in a tactical sense of helping him see sight pictures and maneuvering in a way that's benefiting him, but not like, because I feel bad or something like that. Are the personalities of the foreign countries fighter pilots similar to Americans? Yeah. One other thing, too, and I'd be interested in what you saw with special forces around the world. What I came to find is despite what appears to be a whole bunch of differences between different countries, when it came down to it, the personalities of fighter pilots are really, similar. There are differences. There are some cultural things. There are some organizational things. But at the end of the day, fighter pilots that fly fighters in any country in every type, any type of fighter, they're much more similar than they are different. Yeah, same thing with special operations.

They'd have, there's definitely some, some differences in culture and whatnot. But it's a pretty thin, pretty thin layer that you have to pull back and all of a sudden, oh, these guys are kind of just like us. The mentality. Yeah, totally. Yeah. From a maintenance perspective. it seems like just the American sort of from manufacturing to like maintenance the maintenance programs in the Navy, you know, even in the SEAL teams, we would, especially, like, once a war started, we kind of, we saw less of the Navy kind of administrative stuff right on our, inside the terms. But when the 90s, it was like, hey, you got to do these protocols that the big Navy follows. And so you'd see, oh, well, you know, these guys are squared away. The Navy is squared away. There's a reason that when you pull a piece of firefighting gear off of a wall on a ship that's been there for three years, it works.

It works because it's gone through this maintenance check. It's gone through every 30 days and every 90 days it's gotten this and it's got this. The other thing is, are there are, do foreign countries have that same level of being squared away from a maintenance perspective? You know, I don't know. I don't know if I ever got to that level, that layer of fidelity. I will say that the American military, certainly the Navy and the Marine Corps, where I get most of my experience with, that is something we take really, really seriously. And what you just described is the equipment that we have, the things we have as old as they are,

whatever, the things that we have work. And that when I manned up an aircraft, I never once got on an airplane and felt like kind of getchy about it. Never once did I get in an airplane and not feel like I'm getting into a airplane. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure if that's true for other countries or other services, well, outside of America. But I always, and I've flown with the Navy a lot. I've flown with the Marine Corps a lot. I've flown with the Air Force a lot. And that is universal. Okay. So I have a different feeling and I have gotten into aircraft and been completely sketched out with both my fingers crossed, hoping that this thing is going to make it. And in all those cases, it was in an aircraft that was not an

American military aircraft and you're going, well, I guess this could go down like that. This could be it. I never had the best feeling. And what's weird is, you know, the other thing about the American military aircraft is they're working, man, like the Navy helicopters, they're great. They're just, they're, you know what they are? They're daily drivers. Yeah. They're a daily driver. a CH 46, a Navy CH-46, that thing is a daily driver. That thing is a Ford F-150 that's just ready. That thing is going to do its job. So I always felt, even though there'd be hydraulic fluid all over the deck,

and it would be a little bit, it would look sketchy. But you know that that thing's been flying. Well, first, how old is the CH-46 platform in 19, early 1960s? And some of those birds are from the 1960s. Still flying. Well, at least they were still flying when I was in. Yeah. All right, a little tangent right there.

And what's interesting is everything we just talked about all plays. That's what this whole book is about. It's about competition. But it's all those things. That's the reason I was kind of diving into it. It's all these things are how we are competing with our allies and with our rivals. And we're letting everybody know that this is what we've got. And these are capabilities.

And this is what we can do. Like, that's all part of the game. Yeah. And I was thinking that that tangent was also like, that's what makes us professionals. That's the profession of what we're doing. It's not a, it's not a, it's not a hobby. As fun as it is, it's flying airplanes. All those are professional things.

And that's, when we were working with other countries, the one thing I will say this is that I, when you were going to fight someone outside of your squadron, so another squadron and then outside of the service, like we're going to go with the Air Force, you, you had the sense I said like, hey, you got to be on your A game. When we're fighting with other countries, it was like you are going to show them your absolute best game in everything we do, from brief to shut down and everything in between. So there was a sense of looking the part,

and that every step away from your squadron, from your bros, that went up higher. Like, don't you go fight with the Air Force and embarrass us? And when you're working with foreign countries, the need to look professional was absolutely understood. Verbalized at all or no? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Jack. Who would you train with, like, for example, like what other country? Let me, I mean, okay, so I have trained personally with Canadians, Australians, Brits, Saudis, Emirates, Kuwaitis, Singapore, Malaysia. I'm running out. There's more. These are all just air forces or services, your countries that fly different airplanes or interacted in some way. Japan, a whole bunch of countries. Do you ever fly airplanes?

So every, you said something, I'm kind of laughing at it, and I didn't know we're going to circle back to it. Every single time you go do this, kind of the last day or two, you have some graduation thing, and they're always offering, hey, you jump in our, and remember,

I flew single-seat airplanes, so it wasn't always that we could do that, but if there's a two-seat jet or something, we always offering, and they're always offering us, hey, jump in the back seat. I never once, never once. I don't want to be in the back seat.

First of all, of anything, certainly not of a, you know, a former Soviet Union Mig 29 that's, you know, wow, I never got in the backseat of somebody else's airplane. You were busy. Couldn't do it that day. Not available. And that, I think, is what you were saying, like, I don't know anything about any of these. I don't know about this airplane.

And first of all, I don't want to even the back seat. I don't know if the cool, and guys would, guys would kill for that stuff. And I never wanted to do it. But, you know, back of a flanker or a mig or something. Go for it, dude. That's all you. Yeah. Sometimes you'd have the same planes though, right?

Or no? Yeah. Canadians, Australians, we flew the exact same airplanes. It's the, like in the seal teams, if you're going to do something, you're in some foreign aircraft, the only way to get out of it would be to basically quit. You know, you can't say, well, hey, guys, I'm not really comfortable with this aircraft. And so you're sitting there in a squad. And every single one of those, there's probably like, there's every single one of those guys, is thinking we should not be doing this.

And every single one of those guys doesn't say a word about it, gets on that bird and goes and does what you got to do. Not me. Back to the book, war fighting also instructs that the, quote, military profession is a thinking profession. End quote. This means that Marines must practice the mental discipline necessary to challenge our assumptions. As professionals, we need to dispassionately assess. the environment and make certain we are setting the pace for our competitors. I was on with a client the other day and well you know the lead into the question that I got

asked was well you know in the military of course it's a it's a very hierarchy structured thing and what you want is people at all think the same way you know that was the lead into the question so then he asked the question then I had to start with well let me just tell you that the last thing I want on my team is a bunch of people that think the same way I do it actually I want a bunch people that push back and think different thoughts and see different perspectives than me. And so here's the Marine Corps, quoting from their manual number one, which is called war fighting military profession, is a thinking profession.

And it takes discipline to challenge our own assumptions. Again, it's totally, it's the complete opposite of what everyone thinks the Marine Corps is. Everybody thinks everyone wants, oh, we want every Marine to think the same. No, you don't. We want them to actually, it's actually we're being instructed to challenge. our own assumptions. Yeah, I like that connection, too. You were talking earlier about wanting to see this thing connect back to humility,

which was that sentence that's kind of started this. And that there is an undeniable connection there. The mental discipline necessary to challenge our own assumptions, the humility that it takes to go and look at your own guess, your own assumption and go, I might be wrong. The humility inside of that, and they're calling it mental discipline, but those two are completely linked. And even if you just think about the things you say,

the self-discipline it takes for you to do the things that you do, as discipline as you are, the reason you do it is that you don't want to get complacent. You don't want to get comfortable. You don't want to get weak. So you have the mental discipline to do that. And that is humility. Because if you don't have you like,

I can skip a day. I can skip a couple days, whatever. Either a lack of mental discipline or a lack of humility will lead you to not challenge your substance and just think that everything is going forward. and we'll just go through with it. My plan's good to go. Yeah.

Next section is education. Before we go into this next section, let me ask you this. Do you remember when I was talking about diving and not wanting to be the buddy? Yeah, totally. That was, I think when we were talking about and I was the single seat mindset of my experience. Is it a similar thing where if you're in the back seat, you're just kind of not in control and you're not much to do and you're sort of. Yeah, I mean, that was for me. And there were guys just like me that had no problem sitting in the backseat.

If you lined up like 10 fighter pilots today and like, hey, do you want to go fly in the backseat of an authentic P51 from World War II? Nine of them would be in there like this and I would say no thanks. So it could even be 100 or 99 of them would say I'll be in there. Just about everybody. I want to get in there. I'm not even a freaking pilot. Yeah. And I understand that.

the historical significance of that. And I'm not even sure it's rational to even think that, but I never, ever, ever, even wanting to fly a two-seat airplane, I didn't want to do that because I didn't, I didn't want people looking at me. You're like, hey, what are you like? I got this, you know, and that's all young stuff. I mean, I think I've grown that in some ways,

but there is an absolute mentality, a uniqueness of being a, in an airplane there's a there's a there's something about that there's something unique about that you know i got a big smile on my face right now so there's a um i i'm not even 100% sure about this but i'm 99 this is why this is crap every time you say single seat every time you're like well it's a single seat there's a i there's a Ferrari sports car which is one of the the most expensive Ferraris that you can get. It's nuts. You know, it's got 10 million horsepower and it can do the whatever.

And it's a single seat car. And I, we're going to, I'm going to have to fact check this. The name of the car is egoist. That's the name. It's like, it's like something ego. That's the name of the car. Totally. I'm in this thing by myself.

There's not even anyone else to come in here. It's not possible. This is all about me. Well, think of the ego. I mean, if you want to think about even just me, think of the ego of flying for the military, not good enough. Flying helicopters, not good enough. Flying cobras, not good enough.

Flying F-18s, not good enough. Flying single-seat F-18s, Okay, that I'll do. Like the criteria of what I had created in my mind of what success was. Like what success was was just that. And I don't mean to like presume that I know what you, you know what you were thinking, but, hey, do you want to just be in the Navy? That's not enough for me.

You could be a diver. And you could go through the criteria. And even, and I'm implying like it's kind of crazy like green beret. like, that's not what I want to do. Like, Djago, you know how many people would kill to say their Green Bridge? Like, yeah, I know, I understand that, but that's not what I want. And I had created a scenario in my mind, like, if it's not a single seat, high lot F-18 in the Marine Corps, I'm not going to be happy, which is kind of, it's insane.

It's crazy. But that is what, that's what I wanted to do. And I don't, maybe if I ended up in a two-seat scroge and what I've, somehow go, hey, you know what, I was an idiot. This was, this is totally awesome. This is great. Maybe. But you know, the ego, the power of the ego going.

And that's, I think, not to defend myself too much, but I think that's a little bit different than arrogance. The ego and the arrogance, you know, the flaunting of, I'm better than you are against. I'm more like, no, that to me is the hardest. That's the highest peak you can get to. That's where I want to be. and I had created it that that's what I wanted. And other guys, like, they didn't, I don't care.

I'll fly whatever. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, cool, whatever. I'll fly that. Cool. Go fly that. If you don't have that, how far do you make it? Not where I wanted to go.

I mean, okay, so there might be some small, tiny, minuscule part of the population that is just so talented that they can kind of just cruise by and they're going to get. get it. Right. Yeah, there are. And there's some people that are like, guess what I'm doing this weekend? I'm sharpening my knife. I'm polishing my boots. That was me in seal training. You know, me and seal training was, oh, guys are going to go to whatever, you know, go to the mall, go try and meet girls or whatever. I'm going to sharpen my knife the whole weekend and get ready for inspection because I want to make sure I get through this thing. So I'm not sure, I see pitfalls all over the place and I don't need any more pitfalls than are already in existence. And you're not going to feel like you're missing out either. You're not going like, man, I wish I was at the bar,

out there at the club. Like you're not thinking that at all. You're like, this is what I should be doing. This is what I should be doing. I don't care about anything else. So you don't even feel like you're doing it even though you don't want to. You wouldn't want to do anything else. As a matter fact, if you did the other thing, you're like, you know what I should be doing right now? I should be back home prepping. That's what I should be doing. So the, the, I think that's the difference. Well, maybe not the difference. But when you talk about, when you talk about ego, and you cross-section some humility in there, guess what that equals?

That equals someone that's working as hard as they possibly can and holding themselves to the highest possible standard so that they can achieve what they want to achieve. When someone's just arrogant, guess what? They don't do that extra studying. They don't stay and sharpen their knives. They don't, and look, there's a tiny minuscule percentage chance that they have the natural talent.

And it's probably, well, I'll tell you, it's a lot easier in the C, to get, through basic seal training just based on the fact that you're a really good athlete and you're decently tough. And if you have that, you can be pretty arrogant and still make it through because you don't really need to do anything extra because you can do a rope climb and you can carry a log around and it's like, okay, you know, you played whatever. You did track and field and you played football and you, you know, you show up and you're 21 years old and you're in really good shape. You can be pretty arrogant and not really have to do anything extra and make it through the program.

I bet it's a little bit more challenging. There's probably less people that would fall into that category in pilot school because you get hit with the academics. You get hit with the fine motor skills. You get hit with the natural ability to, like I remember when I took the test for officer candidate school and they're showing you pictures. Is this plane? Is this plane? They're showing, like, I wasn't even going into aviation or anything. They're showing you a plane.

Is this thing coming or going? Right. Is this that? And so you're getting hit with those kind of tests as well. So there's got to be, there's, there's, there's different types of screening that's taking place that are more, there's a broader modality of screening. As opposed to seal training, it's like, be cold, do pull-ups. That's not a huge.

How much autonomy do you have over your schedule and stuff in, in seal training as well? I'm sure at some places you have zero, but do you have a bunch of free time? And you surprisingly, what's surprising to a lot of people is you do have a lot. Yeah. You do have a decent amount of free time. And that is part of the test. Yes. Part of the test is, oh, you want to get drunk and get in a fight?

Cool. You're not here anymore. Right. Because you just got in trouble. We don't need you in the seal teams. Oh, you just went and didn't prepare this weekend. And now you're failing your third inspection. Cool.

We don't need you in the seal team. So there is a, they have to give you some opportunity. They have to give you enough rope that you can hang yourself and you certainly can. And there's plenty of guys that did. Yeah. Plenty of guys that got in trouble in town. It didn't come back from Mexico in time for muster. And, you know, you hit a couple of those things and you're gone.

So they give you enough rope. If you're a knucklehead, you'll hang yourself with it. But other than that, if you can do pull-ups and you can suffer, you can do it with some rope climbs, like you can kind of just grit through it. And that's why I think you, that's why I think I would venture to say that we have a high, percentage of arrogance in the SEAL teams because you don't because you're not going to get humbled quite as much as as you are in such a selective scenario as going to flight school well going to OCS going to the basic school you know

getting down selected down selected to get in down selected at OCS down selected at the basic school down selected at flight school and then down selected to go to top gun like that's that's a bunch of very narrow, very narrow funnels that you got to get through if you're going to make it all the way to top gun instructor. We don't, that's, that's a bunch of very narrow things to pass. Yeah. Even with that, it's not a flawless system. I mean, even with that, there are guys that are, that are there that maybe shouldn't be there. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, equate, and I'm probably wrong about this.

Just my perception. I equate the seals. Being a Navy SEAL is, as even inside the community of these highly, highly capable special operations, organizations throughout the different services, that the seals, I elevate them in my own mind, that there's just something unique about that. And if I take a step back and I think, like, okay, flying F-16s for the Air Force or flying F-18s for the Navy, the Marine Corps, look, man, it's the same. And there's probably people say, yeah, Green Beret, Navy, Sea, like, you could account a couple

of that are, that's not what I had in my mind, that there was a piece that would just set up a tiny bit compared to everything else. That's what I think when I think from the outside of seals or at least can understand someone in your shoes going, that one. And I would say when I was 18 and I was raising my right hand to enlist in the Navy, that's what I was thinking. Once I was in, and I work with the, I work with the Marine Corps, I work with the Army Special Force. I work with the soldiers from the 100 and first airborne. I was thinking. I was thinking, I was in. I was thinking, I realize there's guys here that are 10 times better than me. And they're a ground pounder in an infantry unit.

Yeah. Good. I am a humble person. I was going to ask you, so once you make it through wicket after wicket after narrow wicket, after narrow wicket, after narrow wicket, after narrow wicket. And now you're at a point where you're a top gun senior instructor. And there's no person that can beat you in a dog fight. How are you finding your humility at that point? for me it was that there actually still were people that could beat me got it and I think it was

almost luck that I was able to keep being reminded of that and what I mean by that is no one I will never even if you could track it I will never be considered the best even the guys at my topic of my generation I'm in a conversation of of a couple of guys but nobody's going to go oh Dave Brooke was the best guy nobody's going to say that I I simply was not. Now, I was good enough to be in a strata of a couple people that we had a small pool of, of instructors that sort of fit in that little category. And I was in there.

But no question that I was not at the top. Is there a singular person that was? Or is it too? No, it's usually not. In my experience, it was like, there's a little group. But inside that, every now and then, those guys get to fight each other. And what almost always happen is at the end, it's neutral. You come back and it was awesome, but nobody got really the upper hand.

Every now you go, oh, dude, he was pushing me around a little bit. So he, but it's never like he shot me or he was pushing me, bullying me. It was like, you had like 10 degrees on me there at the end of that 20-minute fight. So it was really super, I went out towards the later half of my career. I was the senior instructor at Top Gun. I was the training officer as a Marine. So you're talking wicked after wicked after wicked. I went out and flew the guy named Trim Downing, legendary Navy pilot, CEO of Top Gun, my boss at the time.

And he went out and we did four fights. First three were just how you play out neutral, neutral, neutral. I was paying really close attention. I got to the last fight and I did the first turn and go, I'm going to get him. I got him. I figured him out. And it was going to be a really satisfying moment for me. And he ended up doing something.

I didn't think it could even be done in there. And he completely pummeled me. And to the point that I'm looking over my shoulder, almost like a brand new guy going, what is happening? How did this happen to me? me and you know he's laughing at me on the radio and not only when I forget it those are the things that at just the right intervals in my career right when I was about to go over the edge of I'm unbeatable I'm better than everybody I never got to that point could something would always happen and go and I would go oh damn that guy is better than me trim did that to me

at a time where had that not happened I just didn't fight against him there's some risk that I could have just left there and gone off the deep end and looked back and go, I was the best pilot in the world, which is a ridiculous thought. I was lucky that at every interval where I got right to the edge, something would happen to me and go, dude, that guy is better than you. And it happened just enough. Now, that doesn't happen to a lot of people. And what do you mean that doesn't? What doesn't? The reminder, there are people that managed to get through and not have that experience It's happened. And, and the irony is that there's, there's more humility at Top Gun than you would think

because it keeps happening. When you get stratified in an organization like Top Gun, that is humbling because everybody gets there for the same reason. You get there because you are the best. And then you get there and then you kind of start stratifying inside that. And that little tier that I was talking about, that little line and then the three or four, everybody knows who those guys are everybody especially if you're not one of them and that that is that is a humbling thing in and of itself and if you make it up there the only risk is if you

kind of believe it like oh I'm here because I'm better than everyone if you don't get beat at some interval that's where you can kind of go hey I have done something that nobody else can I've made it to a place that nobody else can make that fight against trim you could call him right now and he would he would know exactly what I'm talking about because he also knew it from the other he had been in this third time on the staff as an instructor he'd been there three times he had seen it all and the crazy part about that was his were the first three fights a setup I don't think so I really don't I think the setup for him was the third the second merge of the fourth fight where I looked over and I'm like he's slow he can't make this turn he can't do this

maneuver, I'm gonna, I can draw it out. I unload and I said he doesn't have the airspeed to fly over the top. He can't do a loop in this case. The difference was, is my threshold for loop airspeed, which was really low. His was lower than mine. And that's something. Why? Because of his aircraft?

Because of his skill. Because of his skill. His ability to fly. So I'd have, we'd have a thing called. So you could do like, for instance, you could do a loop in a half a mile and he could do one in a quarter mile. It's more of speed, but yeah, so we had a thing called min vertical airspeed. We would teach guys below 150 knots, you cannot go over the top.

You can't loop your jet. We did that to keep people from, you know, spinning airplanes out of control. My min vertical airspeed was way lower than that. Like what? Are you not allowed to talk about it? No, no, I mean, at this point, I'm good. Probably, I don't know, 115, you can milk it up 120. And his, because he was a better pilot than me, he was able to fly his airplane.

plane closer to the edge of being out of control than I was. And I did my math of, nobody can do that. I can do that. And I got right to my minimum vertical air speed. He was slower than me, which meant I actually had an advantage over him. I had more speed than him, probably 10 knots over him. So these are really fine margins. But that 10 not differential didn't affect him as much as it affected me. So when I went up and I literally looked this way thinking he'd be falling off. You look to the left. And he wasn't. there and I'm like, well, where else could he be? And he was actually inside my turn above me.

And part of me saying, like, you physically can't do that. Like, physics won't allow that. The only thing that allowed was, and you remember Dan Pedersen talking about flying the airplane beyond the capability. That's what I was thinking. And to the end of it, the simplest way to describe it, that guy was a better pilot than I was. He could do something in his machine that I couldn't do, the exact same machine. And the outcome was he wins.

Not like a little advantage. It was a lopsided, one-sided at the end was he's directly behind me laughing in me. If you can't get some humility from that and go, oh, okay, I've made it all the way up here and there's still someone better than me. And thank God those things happen to me, Jocco. Like, thank God that happened to me because I take that with me and I keep that. And that was a really good lesson for me. Had that been reversed? Who knows, man?

Yeah, General Boyd, when. Dan Pedersen was talking about the fact that he went to the conference in general Boyd was talking who is the you know and he's saying look this is what the aircraft doing we can do it we can calculate more and all the top gun guys are going we can do things that are beyond that that's right and what that reminds me is that you'll be doing jihitsu with someone and they'll have some capability that's not normal the two capabilities that might not be normal one is flexibility someone someone that's massively flexible and you you get past their guard and you think you're past their guard and there's no human that's going to be able to take their leg and put it back in front of you and yet they do it or someone that's just Psycho strong and you get a cross-side on them and they kind of bridge and get a position with their hands and you go what are you gonna do push me? Oh, they push you off of them and that's pretty freaking crazy, but it's a similar thing that There's no possible way you think there's no human that's gonna put their leg in front of me right now Jeff Glover. Jeff Glover like your pass his garden all of a sudden there's a leg coming, you know, over your side and you're thinking,

yeah, is there someone else on the mat with us right now? Because a human can't do this. Well, he's doing it right now and he's got your back. Yeah. And the other thing I was, I was thinking about was I was on my first deployment to Iraq and we were doing a bunch of ops. And look, at this point, I was very lucky because there wasn't a lot of people that we were the only platoon in Iraq at this time.

For a short period of time, I had the only platoon in Iraq. And we were plused up with some people, but I had the only platoon. Imagine that. Imagine that. All the seals, I have the only platoon in Iraq. So it's freaking awesome. And I remember. And then eventually, you know, now the other platoon started coming in.

When my other platoon started coming in, my commanding officer came in. And, you know, we had a really good relationship. I'd worked for him before. And we had done a series of operations. Rapid operations. Really tight turn times. And got the targets we were going after. And I remember my commanding officer,

he gave me some like incredibly strong compliment. You know, like, I mean, now it sounds completely ridiculous. At the time, it was this, you know, really strong compliment about what incredible, you know, groundbreaking and all this stuff. And I looked at him. I remember I looked at him. I said, hey, sir, give me 24 hours and I'll screw it up because. And the reason I said that is because on all these operations, you're like, man.

so many things can go wrong. Bad things can happen. And I don't even, you know, and we had already had some bad things happen. You know, we'd already had some mistakes. We had already had some things that should have gone different. And maybe they didn't quite leak out to, you know, maybe we kept them inside the platoon. Like, hey, dude, what were you doing? Why were you over there?

If we would have, you know, if we didn't de-conflict at that moment, you could have got shot. Like some things where we got away with it, right? We got away with some mistakes. And so he's telling me what a great. job and I just looked at him, hey, sir, give us 24 hours and I'll screw it up. And that to me is something I always tell myself, you know, they'll always have that, always have that, uh, that person whispering in your ear telling you that all glory is fleeting because it is. I think that lesson is, it's impossible to say how important that is. And, and you probably know this, but every single

day at work at echelon front, no matter what good work we've done, a matter what impact we made, no matter what the client tells me how great echelon front is, every single new phone call, every single, every time I do the same thing I've done 100 times, I think about that. And that event I was talking about in the airplane, that's why I think like that. And I think like that every single time, every single day. I'm about to start off a keynote that I've done 100 times or 400 times. And I think, ooh, you don't want to screw this up.

You got to get this right. You can undo all the work that you've done by not having this be as good as every other one that you do. So there is so much value in that recognition. And for me, being reminded that at my best, there's still somebody better, that I keep with me Every single day every day and everything that I do so losing is sometimes a good thing Jack we're about to jump into the next section before I went down that tangent education And by the way we're on page six now out of this chapter is something we're moving right along Professional military education for Marines intends to develop creative

thinking leaders in a continuous progressive process of development those are some words that people do not think of when they think of the United States Marine Corps or the military at large, creative thinking leaders in a continuous progressive process of development. This philosophy aligns well with the kind of education Marines need to succeed in competition as well as in war. While the nature of competition endures over extended periods, like war, its character constantly evolves. Rivals continually strive to improve their competitive advantages, strive to gain the initiative, and strive to keep their competitors off balance.

If you wake up in the morning and you just read that line to yourself that your rivals are continually striving to improve their competitive advantages, they're striving to gain the initiative and they're striving to keep you off of balance, that's a good thing to wake up to in the morning. Because it's real easy to forget that. Education is a primary method for Marines to sustain competitive advantage over time. I'm going to say that again. What's the primary method? Is it is it? Is it? Is it?

Battle exercises? No, they're saying education. Now, it's a primary, but a lot of people don't think that that even falls in the top ten for the Marine Corps. Education. As Marine leaders progress through their careers, they need to develop mastery of the concepts that provide an ability to lead organizations like the Marine Corps through cycles of innovation,

cycles of innovation that are essential to staying at the forefront of competition. These concepts go beyond just adaptation. They go beyond just, look, if you're just adapting to what's happening, you're wrong. If I'm just adapting to what you're doing, Dave, I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I need to be making you adapt to what I'm doing. I'm going to be on offense. They include topics like organizational learning, the ability for an organization to sense changes in its environment.

Sense, not react to changes in its environment, but sense those changes. You know what lately I've been talking a lot about, um, But just being more aware of what's happening when people ask me, well, the home life balance. You know how am I supposed to? Hey, the answer is you need to balance them. How can I help you? I can help you by making sure that you're more aware and you're more attuned to when things get off balance. You need to sense those things more and you need to sense changes in the environment and improve its effectiveness and efficiency in response to those changes.

Change management. When leaders are able to implement needed change in an organization while. keeping its people engaged and the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation, which is essentially a difference between incremental improvements of what already exists versus new and better approaches that displaced the old methods over time. That's what we're trying to do. It is not enough for Marines to educate themselves on war and war fighting alone. Such a narrow focus limits the benefit they can give to the nation.

Most of a Marines career will be spent training in the, fleet Marine force are serving in a support establishment, understanding competition, and how the Marine Corps contributes to it is an essential skill, especially for career Marines who will have the greatest impact on the Marine Corps's competitive attributes over time. Self-education in social, economic, technological, and other matters beyond military history and leadership are essential if Marines are to excel in competition. Now, what's really cool about working at Ashlawn Front and working with all these different companies is we get to work in economic environments. We get to work in technological environments. We get to work in construction and

manufacture. We get to work in all these different environments. And what's awesome is when we can take what we know and we can overlay it into those things and get to see and get to learn how our principles impact even in these, this wide, array of different environments. And that actually makes us smarter. Because when I see how a principle, when I see how cover and move applies in a manufacturing plant, and I see how it works in a financial company,

and I see how it works in a sales organization, when I see all those things, guess what I know better? I know cover and move better. I understand it better. And that's what they're talking about here. The better you understand all these different aspects of what's going on in the competition between America and other nation states, the better you can see how your organization contributes to that competition and how you can better contribute to that competition. The goal for education then is to foster awareness with the campaigning mindset of how all capabilities available to Marines can fit into and, support a larger competition strategy. It should improve knowledge of openness to the interests of

potential and existing allies and partners. The outcome we seek from education is to increase the ability of Marines to envision greater possibilities in competition. Next section, talent management. Our doctrine of maneuver warfare places a premium on individual judgment and action. Wait a second. Are we talking about the Marine Corps? Is everyone just following orders? No. we place a premium on individual judgment and action, which also means we recognize all Marines of a given grade and occupational specialty are not interchangeable. They should be assigned to billets based on specific ability and temperament.

This expression of talent management found in war fighting applies equally as well to competing. People have different strengths and weaknesses. The organizations that compete most effectively place their people in. position to use their strengths. Now, this is something we get asked them quite a bit. And, you know, I wrote about leadership strategy and tactics. Hey, if I've got, if Dave's really good at, at sales and he's not that great at administrative duties, what should I do with him?

Well, I'll tell you, we should put him in sales. That's what he's good at. Let him go do it. Now, does that mean you let him just ignore the administrative part and he never has to touch paperwork and we hire someone? No, no, no. We want to strengthen his weaknesses, but we want to utilize and capitalize on his strengths. They also coach their people on the development of their strengths and link their use to the organization's goals.

Some people excel at planning and creating new designs for operations and organizations. Others excel at taking a blueprint and then optimizing it so it works as well as possible. Few have the ability to do all these things with equal skill. To compete at peak effectiveness, marine leaders need to measure the talents of the people they lead and then match these skills to the duties they perform. Organizations that do this well and for a sustained period also have a sustained competitive advantage. They maximize the performance of their people over time.

That answers a lot of questions if you're in a leadership position. You find someone that's good at something, let them do it. Force planning, which includes the functions of design, development, and management of the force for the Marine Corps must balance utility at many points on the competition continuum with building a force that is a functional tool for the joint force to use in winning battles. The output of this complex undertaking must serve the needs of competing generally and of war fighting in particular, realizing that they both exist on the same continuum and that they are interrelated shapes, shapes our overall approach to this planning. So we could take

the Marine Corps and if we only wanted them to be good at war fighting, we would do things differently. We would change entire portions of the way we raise Marines. We would get rid of certain parts. Hey, what are you talking about? We need to know marksmanship. We need a cover move. That's what we need to do. We need to be awesome at our tactics.

We need to know how to win. We know how to interact with each other. Catch people in the combined numbers and love, but that's what we're going to focus on. There's a whole other bunch of stuff that we focus on. Well, that the Marine Corps focuses on. And what they're saying here is you have to find that balance. You've got to be able to compete,

which means we've got to be able to go out and shake hands and make friends and build relationships. And we've got to be able to fight. We've got to find out, we've got to balance those two. and we got to realize that they're both interrelated. So this happens with companies where companies, hey, we've got to make money. We've got to make money. That's great.

Guess what else we have to do? We have to maintain our reputation because we can make a ton of money and blow our reputation out the door or we can have a great reputation and now we're going bankrupt. So what do we need to do? We need to find balance on these two things. To do this successfully, the output of our force planning should present a dilemma to our potential competitors and defeat their plans against us. The way we combined our organization, the way we combined our organization doctrine training and equipment should produce a competitive advantage or multiple advantages. The options we choose within each of these elements effects are competitiveness over time.

For example, if we enhance the training for equipment mechanics so that they can operate for extended periods without external support, then we also enhance our ability to operate in. austere environments for a long period of time. The output of force planning is the sum of choices made inside each of these elements. These choices must be guided by the goal of establishing competitive advantages, which are useful for combat and also useful for competition. Having that goal, when you make sure that you're sticking with your goal, you have to be guided. Your choices are guided by the goal of establishing these competitive advantages. That's what we're making our choices based on. Is this going to give us a competitive advantage or not?

That's a very good way of simplifying your decision-making process. How is this going to give us a competitive advantage? If it's not, why are we doing it? I mean, that competitive advantage is something you have to have to be successful. And when you're making the connection to business, especially when you're sort of just looking at the most basic level of what consumers want, They've got a bunch of options. They can get the product or the thing you make usually from a whole bunch of different companies.

And the competitive advantage is how you can deliver that to what they want better than everybody else. And if what you're doing isn't contributing to that, that I think over time, we've talked about complacency, the other things, the inability to recognize that you have to continue to contribute to that competitive advantage. That doesn't stay. If you have that competitive advantage now, your competitors are trying to erode that and take that away from you. And so even the idea that everything you're doing has to be designed to contribute to either building or sustaining that advantage or you're gonna go away.

You will be outmaneuvered by your competition. And I love that even in the Marine Corps, they're saying it's useful for combat and competition. Those are two different things. And we're telling the Marine Corps, the Marines are telling Marines, those are two different things. Which is interesting

because they're also saying throughout this entire book that those are on the same continuum. Right. So I'm going to do something that's going to be useful at multiple locations on that continuum.

Right. Because if all we cared about is you being good at combat, we would raise Marines, just like you said, in a totally different way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we would forgive a whole bunch of things

that happened. Like, that's okay. He can do all those crazy things because when we go to war, we're going to unleash that guy. And we know that's not enough. You can't do that for a whole bunch of things.

different reasons and the recognition that, hey, combat is, combat's going to happen. I mean, certainly in this day and age, you're going to see some combat, but that might be fleeting. You might get one opportunity, a one good deployment, but the competition piece, and they've said it over, that is happening all the time in a whole bunch of different ways. Continuing on, if we are to fully prepare, then Marines need to also consider the merits and challenges of asymmetry in competition, truly asymmetric, asymmetric competition actions or competitive actions can impose costs on the rival. For example,

the original assault breaker concept developed in this 1970s and 1980s was an asymmetric response to the Soviet advantage in armor. So in Europe in the 70s and 80s, they had this massive, the Soviet bloc had more armor than we did. And if they attacked, it was their armor versus NATO armor, they had the numbers.

So they came up with, this plan, which was, hey, as soon as something breaks out, we're going to attack deep behind enemy lines with long-range weapons, missiles, to take out all those extra tanks that they have. So that was something that we came up with, to negate their competitive advantage. Yeah, that we'll hear it says,

improved sensors with precision munitions to negate the sovious advantages. So I guess I could have just really, Reddit. The execution of force planning starts a cycle that begins putting forth a theory about how we can contribute to the nation's strategic competitions throughout the continuum, building capabilities to bring theory to reality and then testing the capabilities through exercises and operations.

So again, now they've gone from guessing, well, I'm going from guessing to hypothesis. Now it's putting forth a theory. My theory is because that's another word for guess. It's another nice word for I'm going to take a guess. My theory is, and then you take those and you take those theories and you put them to the test, just like a hypothesis in exercises and operations. Let's see how they work. Other political actors observe this theory unfold and adapt themselves so they can compete more effectively against it.

That's what's going to happen. Our observations of these adaptations starts the cycle once again. Force planning then is a continual effort to stay ahead of potential adversaries. Thus, we see that force planning itself is a competitive act and the Marine Corps must retain the ability to reconfigure the force when necessary to sustain its competitive advantage or develop new ones. This ability starts with the mental flexibility that comes from humility and the disciplined practice of questioning assumptions.

Tattoo that on your. forehead well maybe on your forearm so you can see it we don't want to have to look in the mirror this ability that we we should be constantly checking and and seeing where we're at and seeing what adaptations the enemy is making the competitors are making and if we don't have mental flexibility we're wrong and if we don't have humility we're wrong and if we don't have discipline we're wrong I think these people listen to the podcast that's what I'm thinking I'm thinking that the authors listen to the podcast.

Let us know. Our awareness of the competition continuum and its existence both above and below the threshold of violence broadens our view on force planning. So the better you understand that, the better you understand that the game is much bigger than, hey, we're going to fight you with violence. The game is much bigger than that. Our philosophy is that we can, as we have done in the past, prepare Marines to succeed in competition without sacrificing the Marine Corps. ability to prevail in battle. Our understanding of ourselves must include how the Marine Corps fits into the complex adaptive system that is the Naval Service and the Joint Force.

We know that the Marine Corps is operated on both sides of the violence threshold and expect us to continue into the future. However, our campaigning mindset should lead us to explore thoroughly how the Marine Corps can contribute to preventing war. Again, a little sciops. How the Marine Corps can contribute to preventing war by regular. operating below the violence threshold even as Marines are ready to operate above it when required I had some had a note here and I don't even know what it meant when I talked about

preparing the Marines to succeeding competition without sacrificing the Marine Corps ability to prevail in battle I have in parentheses harder than you think oh and then I have as an example I have college sports teams okay so now it now it makes sense The example I thought of is if you've got a college sports team. A simple example would be, hey, if the only thing we want these athletes to do is play football, everything is out of the table. Well, it gives you a lot of capability on the football field, but let's face it, no one has anything other than football when they're done. So you have to balance it. It's an example of, you know, if Echo Charles, hey, he's not doing well in geometry class, he's got a D.

We need to bench him. Well, what if he's our best player? We don't want to bench him, but we have to balance it. Now on to the conclusion. The Marine Corps is one of the nation's tools for the strategic competition that is the normal state of events in international relations. And by the way, man, as you watch the news, as you read the news, which I recommend, if you think about the international news and you pay attention to the competitions that are going on, all this makes a lot more sense when you see what China's doing, when you see what Iran's doing,

when you see what's going on in Syria, when you see what's going on in the Middle East, when you see what's going on in Europe, when you start to think about all those things from a more holistic viewpoint and you overlay the fact that it's one big competition, which, look, We that's the way it is. Look at what Russia does. Look at what Russia does. See, they are competing. They are competing.

And not only that, uh, uh, sometimes echo Charles, people around Russia, like, people other than Russia, they're out playing flag football and Russia's playing tackle. You know what I'm saying? They're, you know, Someone else is playing, you know, a Tai Chi, and they're playing combat sombo. And the Tai Chi people are thinking like, oh, you know, and also they get punched in the face. Or they're in a bad position. More or worse, they're in a bad position.

They don't even know it. They don't know the capability that that Sambo practitioner has. So you've got to pay attention to that. You've got to start singing that these little maneuvers that these other nation states make. They're not. I can't even believe I'm having to say this. right now. But you can watch things happen and the way people respond to it, it's almost as if it's just by chance that this other nation state is making this maneuver. And throughout this book,

and I wish I would have, should have been doing this all along, you can, you can find examples of where this is happening. Oh, there's a boundary getting stretched. Oh, there's a salami slice. Like all these things are going on. Oh, there's a there's a below the violence threat. threshold, maneuver, and they're going to back off right before there's a response coming. This is what's happening all the time. There's a competition piece inside that, too, that I think about is we were talking earlier about hierarchy. Everybody kind of knows the hierarchy, too.

Everybody kind of knows where we are in the hierarchy. And what that should tell us is that they know, which is even more reason for them to be competing all the time. because they know where they sit and they don't like being there. They don't like being there. And that is true for nation states and that shop that you're running on that street corner. If the hierarchy is known, which it almost always is, the other people in the hierarchy that are underneath you don't like that. They also know that they can't go toe to toe with you.

They can't do the brute force method and just run you out. So they got to out maneuver you and out compete you with little tiny moves here and there. And when you were talking about the idea of, I can't believe I have to say this, is the complacence that comes from being at the top of your food chain, whatever it is, everybody else knows what's going on and they're all trying to out maneuver you. So you shouldn't be surprised by any of it. That's what they're doing. You were saying earlier, you're out on the weekends going to the club. They're home sharpening their knives. And that's what they're supposed to be doing.

And actually, sometimes they're not even sharpening their knives. What they're doing is they've got a bar out in town that they're working with that's giving free drinks for you. To you. And so even though they can only sharpen their knife so much, so what are they going to do? They're going to weaken you. Yeah. You got to be on the watch for that. You ever seen the movie Training Day?

Yes. Excellent film, by the way. That's what that whole movie was about essentially. So he was trying to, you know, he basically had this new recruit who'd do anything he wanted to make the team or whatever, right? So we sets him up to have to do everything like he asked him to do. It started with making him smoke that weed or whatever. If you watch a movie, you understand. And he even says in one of the pivotal parts when he's manipulating them, he says, hey, it's chess.

It's not checkers. So like, yeah, if you don't know you're in a competition or whatever, essentially the explanation, where you're just like, oh yeah, today we're just sort of cruising where, and actually your example of like, okay, if you know where you are in the hierarchy, our hierarchy, and you're, let's say you're high and you have all these challenger people or entities, right? You're kind of cruising and they know they can't go to toe with you with how you put it, but their move can be like 10 years down the road and they're plotting for that, you know, that 10 years, they're plotting for that move or that series of moves.

You know? So we got Denzel plays the bad cop essentially. Yeah, Alonzo. Who plays the other one? Jake is played by Ethan Hawk. Okay. So, and that's the first escalation is smoking pot. The first escalate, it starts in the beginning.

So like right, the way he talks to him in the beginning, where you can tell this guy, Jake, is like, he just wants to make the team, he wants to do everything. So it starts with that, even a show phone call. By the way, is that whole movie take place in one day? Or is that just the name of the moon? Oh, that's all in one day. Yeah, yeah. Because I was going to say, what's interesting about that is if Ethan Hawke, Jake Hoyt, Jake Hoyt, aka, if he would have gotten a brief prior to that day starting that there was a competition happening and there was maneuvers that were about to be made.

He wouldn't have, you know, if he knows that this guy is maneuvering, it's like, hey, you need to smoke this weed. No, no. That's not happening. Because to me, once he got him to do that, and I don't know, I don't remember the movie. That's almost checkmate, right? That's almost checkmate. Like, hey, dude, I'll get you. You need to get piss tested.

And now you're out of the force and now you're in trouble. Now you've got a bad reputation or not even a bad reputation. You've got a, what's an RE4 code in the military where you're not allowed to get a federal job anymore. But you've got a bad thing happening. You got a dishonorable discharge. That's a checkmate move. Almost out of the gate. That's literally how it played out because that was like one of the first.

first major moves and it didn't come into play till later when he was like hey kill that guy but if he if he would have been aware of the competition that was happening he would have known hey man this is not a good move hey i'm not doing that and that's totally actually would have flipped almost flipped the checkmate the whole deal the whole deal is flipped but you're not aware of it you get lowered in well maybe i mean obviously it was a movie so there were was he always had it you've never put out that qualifier before normally you just treat movies like their reality he he did in that I mean you're right obviously but in the in that particular movie he had him by the he had him by the balls the whole time because

jay quite went into the thing he wants to make the team like all this even he's even he's even he's even beyond not knowing that he's competing he's in like the he's in the beyond opposite direction where he's thinking that he wants to like prove and be a part of the team you know opposite of competing exact opposite and it's funny you say that too where it's like oh that was checkmate where he was like when that came up when he's like hey kill the guy he's like no I'm not going to do it he's like in fact you know what I'm tired of this whole thing I'm turning you guys in he's like yeah go ahead but what what's going to happen when they pull your blood you've been smoking weed and math all day or not math he

was like PCP or whatever all day having you and he's like looking at him you can see the wheel Wait, he made him smoke PCP, or is it like intertwined in the pot? Yeah, exactly right. So it was weed. So he made him smoke the weed. And then after he smoked it, he was like, dang, I didn't know you smoked BCP. He's like, you did. I haven't, but you have now, you know?

Like that kind, like. Wait, did Denzel's character smoke weed as well? No. He made him. He put a gun to his head. Yeah, yeah. He was like, hey. And the way he rasped, have he seen Chinese Day?

The way rationalized it was like, hey, if you refuse weed in an undercover situation, they're just going to kill you. So you've got to be ready to do this kind of stuff. And he's like, oh, no. He's like, I don't want you on my team. Gun to his head. I don't want you on my team. Wait, puts a gun to his head?

Yeah. Just as like a like a demonstration. Oh, like what if it was like this? Exactly right. If we were on the street, you'd be dead right now, like that kind of stuff, you know? So it's kind of like he learned. It's almost like he felt like he was learning this big, huge, impactful lesson at that time, you know? Where he's like, yeah, you got to kind of, you got to push it far sometimes, you know, to me.

Brood him out. out. Yeah, kind of. Or did he browbeat him? He browed beating him kind of both. Actually, the whole movie is him doing one or the other. It's weird. It's a weird manipulation thing. Yeah. And finally, when he was tired of it, he was like, I'm not doing this. He was like, oh, yeah, but you've been smoking PCP all day. So you kind of got to. And all my guys who are in on it, they're all going to say the same thing. And he's like, and he kind of has to do it. Then soon, like, right after he's like, hey, I know it's crazy. I know, but this is how it is. You know, we got to. be wolves.

Wait, does he kill him? Spoiler alert. Does he kill him? No. Since we're talking about training day, I have a small request. You may or may not comply. But let's face it, when you give me the, okay.

It sounds a lot like Denzel Washington. Let's hear it. I'm not going to do it, but that's exactly where I got it from. No, I know that. Because even though I don't know that movie very well, yeah, there was a part. If I get a little overly hostile with you, kind of one of your

defensive mechanisms is to throw that, okay, back at me. Dave Burke, there was a time in training day, in the beginning

he meets him at the diner. Right. And he's like, oh, the guy, Jake, he's trying to make small talk, you know, it's all awkward.

And Alonzo, he's reading the newspaper. And he's like, not talking to him. It's real awkward. So Jake keeps trying to make small time. He's like, hey, shut up.

Let me read my paper. Jake's like, all awkward. So he can't help himself. He has to say something again just to fight the awkwardness. And then he puts down the paper. He's like, hey, tell me a story.

He's like, what are you talking about? He's like, Brad, you want, I read the newspaper for the stories or blah, blah, blah. He says this thing. It's like, so you got to tell me a story. So I start telling him a story and then in the part when he's like, all you have him with this, my training officer,

she was a girl or whatever. He's like, oh, it was a girl training officer? Oh, man, that's. And he's like, yeah. He's like, all right, all right. So that's where it came from I use it in a different context But yes

Yeah Got it from Thank you, Joko For that It always makes me smile If I can push you to the point Where you throw that at me I know I did my job for the day

Yes sir The Manipulation You gotta be on the lookout for it You gotta be on the lookout Because if you're not competing all the time If you don't recognize that you're competing

That's when you're gonna get caught And you should never, never, ever give that kind of leverage to another human being over you. Not to go back to training day too much, but there was the smoking weed part when he realized it when he was like, hey, you've been smoking PCP all day, haven't you? And he's like, he looked at him. He's like, you've been planning this all day? And he goes, I've been planning it all week. So you'm saying, though? That's the demonstration.

Hey, you're always competing last week. We didn't even meet each other. I was already, I was still competing. You weren't. And look at you now. Is you what I'm saying? I'm just retracing my steps for the last four years and trying to make sure I know what's actually going on here. Back to the book for the conclusion.

As professionals, Marines acknowledge this condition and prepare themselves and the Marine Corps to succeed in this struggle. Adopting a campaigning mindset helps us do this effectively as it aids us in visualizing the long, timelines that often span years and decades. This influences the type of education. They say, I mean, it's so crazy to not think about years and decades. That's, if you're not thinking in years and decades, you're gonna have some issues. Yeah, none of us thinking years and decades. I mean, whatever. Typically, we don't think in years and decades, typically. I mean, we're for a handful of things, but that's it. And those handful things of what I'm talking about.

Yeah, yeah, that's important. This influences the type of education they seek to prepare them for the continual innovation that will be required to sustain competitive advantage and create new ones over the course of long-term campaign. It also influences their thinking on talent management because the most competitive organizations are the ones that get the most from their people by placing them in positions to use their strengths on a regular basis. All of this preparation leads to the type of agile force planning needed in long-term competition. in a succession of force planning that outcomes, planning outcomes that achieve and then sustain competitive advantages in the military element of national power. That's the conclusion there of chapter three,

almost two hours deep. So, good place to stop for now, because I don't even want to crack open chapter four yet. Too much for one night. So we're always in competition. We should be in strategic competition. And all of this chapter three, we are preparing for competition. Echo Charles, here comes the tee up.

Here comes the softball coming your way. Let's see if you can knock it out of the park. Speaking of preparing for competitions, do you have any suggestions that will help us stay prepared? Yeah, take supplements. And here's why. Straight to it. Yep. Here's why.

So, you know, okay, so we'll start with the joint stuff as we always do. This is why. So a lot of times I'm one of these people, well, I don't have joint problems, right, until you do. You see what I'm saying? So that time, if we're not thinking that, if we're not considering the fact that we might have these issues with joints, we're lifting weights, or doing the jujits. And we're not anticipating the potential for joint problems. We're not going to be competing in that way or aware of that competition. Okay.

we also need to be strategic in the way that we're thinking. Because we are putting wear and tear. It might not hurt you right now, but guess what you're doing in two years, three years, five years. You want to keep those things maintained in the Navy, in the Marine Corps that we know about. I'm sure it's this way in the Army and the Air Force as well.

You're going to follow these maintenance protocols. And they're going to help when you need that element, when you need that piece of equipment, when you need that shoulder, that elbow, that knee. and look your knee let's face it it could already come with a kind of genetic disadvantage you might have knees that are skinny they need all the help they can get

and if that's the case hey you can get these supplements listen we are doing something at jaco fuel to try and help out so what we're doing is if you we know that shipping is expensive.

We know that people are already paying for the product and now all of a sudden they got to pay for shipping too. And what we want to do is we want to give you a way to get that shipping cost down. Well, we got a way to get it down. We got a way to get it down a lot. We got a way to make it free. If you subscribe to any of these items,

if you subscribe to any of these items, shipping is free. It was in January. But now it's free, period. Straight up. It's free period. And if you subscribe, you save money too. You save like cost.

The cost goes down by 10%. So if you want to be prepared, if you want to be competitive, and you want to help out your bank account, hey, go subscribe and the shipping is free. And you get 10% off, which is pretty cool. So we're trying to make this stuff. more available, easier to everybody.

So that's what we're doing. Joint warfare, super krill, discipline, discipline, go. Even the drinks shipping for free, milk shipping for free, strawberry, chocolate, warrior kids, stuff, everything's shipping for free, if you want to get it. Interesting. That's good.

That's going to help you later. It's going to help you. All these things are going to help you later. Yep, in the campaign. True story. Also, other things are going to help you later. You can also get this stuff at Wawa. Well, you can get the ready to drink.

What do you drink? What do you have tonight, Dave? You went too deep and so did I. Yeah. We started recording late. We both kind of like, it was an early morning. I know that.

What flavors did we go over? I went after burn orange with the Dax Savage. Follow up. I went. Chaser. Dack Savage Chaser. I went. I went.

I went Jocko Palmer and then I went Sour Apple Sniper. JP. Appreciate it. That's what I went. So I went. We both went back to back. Back to back. Back to back.

I don't do that very awesome. No, I was thinking, too, like, I don't usually start hitting this late at night, but I'm glad I did. I have work to do when I get home, too. So that's a positive thing. You can get it. You can also get the stuff at the vitamin shop. So hit those up or get the free shipping. There you go.

It's true. Also at origin.maine.com. You can get stuff as well. Yeah. There's a lot of other cool stuff at origin. Orgin. orghum. All American.

made stuff by the way the boots jeans jujitsu stuff do you ever watch Pete do you ever watch Pete's you ever watch the origin USA Instagram story yes so the other day Pete Roberts sure he made a story about how he was all fired up because he bought we bought we bought origin USA dot com okay the domain name the domain domain name and he was all fired up and he was all fired up and he was he was he spent we spent 50 grand on that and he's all fired up it I don't know if you did you know anything about buying what's called a URL do you know anything about yes yeah so if it's a kind of a kind of a good word yeah they can be very very expensive I e for origin USA 50 grand 50 thousand dollars and he's on there and he's like you know

a couple years ago I wouldn't have even dreamt of spending 50 grand for this, but this is where we're going. We need this new URL, so we're doing it. We're executing. And I didn't have time because I saw the story. We, me also bought another domain name, which will be up soon. And people you could argue would say this is even more a valuable name, URL. I bought jaco.com.

Jocko.com. And I almost posted this because what I was going to say, and this is the true story, I bought jaco.com. How much you think I paid for it? Origin USA costs 50 grand. Dave, what do you think? How much you think I paid for it?

I think it's unfair for me to answer this question. Oh, you already know the answer? Me too. Oh, you're right. So if you're wondering, so I got jaco.com for $1. dollar. No, awesome guy owned it and he's a trooper. He's in the game and he just reached out to Jamie and said, hey, I own jaco. And we get all kinds of things. Like we get all kinds. Jamie forces me. He's like, hey, what do we do? Hey, what we do? Hey, what we do? Hey, what we do? Hey, what we do? Hey,

Jocco.com and I open it up and Jamie's like, hey, do you want me to do anything with this? I'm like, he wants to sell me jocco.com for a dollar. And he also came out here with his wife. We had a cool time. We hung out. But yeah, so I was going to post that Pete, the businessman, Pete, the negotiator. I was going to say, hey, my business partner, Pete, great job negotiating the price to $50,000. Meanwhile, I got jaco.com for a dollar.

You know what that is right there? Competition. I beat you, Pete. Yes, sir. That's below market price, by the way. Yeah, for sure. That was super cool. So that should be up soon, jocco.com.

And yes, I won that competition, Pete. Cool. So Urgin went from Maine to straight up USA expanding. It's not there yet. Yeah. Right now go to Jock Fuel. Oh, I also bought Jock Fuel. I think I bought that one.

Did you buy that? What did you pay for? $9. $11.19. You got to love it. You know, market price. Market price. Actually, I don't know.

I think you did it. By that either way. Yes, it's true. Always compete. I bought that a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Check. But yes.

So yeah, origin main, soon to be origin USA.com. This is cool. This is where you can get American made stuff. Also, we have a store. Jocco store.com. I bought that one, by the way. Back in the day. This is where you can get discipline equals freedom.

Did you think of that name yourself? That's a good original. No, I think you started that one. No, actually, I know I didn't. Oh, yeah. I didn't like, oh, what is it? You like, Jaco store. I was like, cool, I guess we're going with the theme.

Yes. This is not a hard one to figure out. I remember too. Yeah, you were like, yeah, Jocko podcast because it's simple or whatever. I was like, I had to online store. There you go, Jocko store all day. And, you know, it's yours. So boom.

Anyway, this is where you can get. This one equals freedom shirts and hoodies and hats and a lot of cool stuff there. There's a T-shirt club called the Shert Locker. I did. I did. Just so you know, you no longer have to say T-shirt club which sounds super wack you can just say we also have the shirt locker where you get a shirt every you can say it in a much cooler way yeah okay you can just exclude the lame things that

sometimes get said yeah like kinsher okay all right well thank you for coaching me up there uh jocko there's the shirt there's the shirt locker where you can get a new cool t-shirt every month high quality, high speed, low drag, as Jocco always says. Either way. You've never actually even heard me say. It's a good thing to check out. It's a good thing to check out. So, hey, man, if you think that's cool, go ahead and do that.

It's at jocco store.com, like I said. You didn't mention the fact that at origin, main.com, you can also get jeans. You can get boots. I did. Did you? Did you? Dave, did he say that? Dude, we could be going two for two here.

I have no recollection of you saying that. Okay. Well, there's jeans and boots. And guess what? They're American made. I said that. true. You definitely didn't say that.

Hey, Ken, so... Review the tapes. No editing. This is going to sound like a dumb question. From you? Yes, sir. Okay. Okay, bear with me.

So the origin boots are those good for snow? Yeah. Not like snow tracking, but like, hey, I'm out. I'm in snow. Yes, if you're out and you're in snow, they're good. If you're going to go on a winter hike in the woods, they're not going to be optimal because they don't have any insulation. Now, if you put on a pair of wool socks and maybe a little polypropylene socks underneath them,

You might be pretty good to go. Plus, if you added a little, you know, waterproofing to it, you know, you've got some oils you can put in there. You'd be good to go. Got it. But if you're going on a trip to the mountains where you're going to be, it's going to be cold and you're going to walk around, you'll be good to go. Normal stuff.

Normal stuff. Yeah. I figured that what, I guess it's not a dumb question, right? I thought it was kind of dumb because, man, they're in Maine. Yeah, norm. It would be a dumb question if you were from Maine. Being that you're from Hawaii, it's actually a totally legit question. Your environment has not taught you lessons that a New Englander would learn or someone from Michigan or Montana would learn.

Wyoming, people wouldn't be asking me that question. No. So it's not common knowledge for people like us. I know. All right, cool. Boom. There it is. Also, subscribe to this podcast if you want and leave a review on your podcast player of choice.

Yeah. And we also have, you can join the, the Jocko Underground. Jocko underground.com. Some people are asking questions, wait a second. What's happening? And I'm like, wait, I explained it. This podcast, Jocko podcast, the goal is to never change this. The goal is to never put this podcast behind a paywall.

That's the goal. We want this to be free. And as long as that is humanly possible, it will be. And the only thing you will have to suffer through is this section that we're listening to right now. If you can bear with that, which you didn't even have to. In fact, I know that there's only four of you listening right now. If you can bear that, you can listen to this for free. And you can also just press stop and didn't have to hear any of this crap.

Thank you. But look, we also set this up as a contingency. So we have an alternative platform that we've built. We don't want to have other sponsors. We don't have somebody cutting in when we're talking about the battle of the bulge to tell you about what kind of underwear you should use. We don't want that to happen. So if you want to help us out with that, you can go and you subscribe to the underground. And in order to give you some benefit, a tangible benefit, we're kind of, we're recording another podcast called the Jocko Underground podcast.

And we just kind of give some other information. They're a little bit shorter. They're just some behind the scenes, some amplifying information about what we talk about, some of where this podcast came from how I thought of doing this, why we're doing this. So if you want, you can do that. You're going to jocco underground.com.

It's $8.18 a month, which is a important number. And look, we're not trying to prevent people from being able to get this information. If you can't afford that, and you still want to listen to the Jocko Underground podcast, it's cool. Send an email to assistants at jocco underground.com

and we will hook you up and you will be able to listen to the Jocko Underground podcast so we have that going on. And well, we also have, what else we have? We've got the unraveling, which actually Daryl and I are in, we are in, we're in deep, got a bunch of stuff that we will have coming your way

for the unraveling podcast. We have the grounded podcast. Podcast, which, we need to do that. And the Warrior Kid podcast, again, I said this the other day, I owe a book on January 31st. And when that's done, my plan is to knock out some Warrior Kid podcasts. We got a YouTube channel where Echo puts up all the videos of this podcast and other videos where he makes a bunch of stuff blow up using CGI because he thinks it's cool. It is cool. It's 100% cool.

Thank you. Well, that's just your opinion. We have an album called Psychological Warfare where I talk about overcoming moments of weakness. Flipside canvas, Dakota Myers Company. A bunch of cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. Leadership strategy and tactics field manual.

Which I pull out to read quotes from all the time when I'm talking to clients. Oh yeah, they ask a question. Oh, yeah, I read about this here. Dave? All the time. All the time.

So if you've got questions about what to actually do as a leader, get leadership strategy and tactics field manual. We also have the code, the evaluations, the protocols. We have Discipline equals Freedom. Field manual. There's a new version now. We have Way of the Warrior Kid for Field Manual. We also have Way of the Warrior Kid one, two, and three.

We have About Face by David Hackworth that I wrote the fore for the new one. Mikey and the Dragons, which a lot of people say is the best picture book ever. A lot of people saying that. Most people are saying that. We have a, and then of course extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. We have echelon front, which is our leadership consultancy. Go to echelonfront.com if you want help in your organization. We solve problems through leadership.

EF online, which is online courses about leadership that you can bring your whole company through. They can do them at their own pace. You can do it as a group. There's all kinds of ways to go through that program. that will get your whole company, your whole team aligned and thinking the same way about leadership. We have a live event that we do a few times of years. 2020, we didn't do any because there was a virus out there.

2021, we're reorganizing our dates. We're planning to do it. Go to Extreme Ownership.com if you want to come to that. EF. Overwatch. We have leaders to place inside your company that have a military background that understand these principles that we talk about. And if you want to help service members active and retired,

their families, gold star families, then check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if the last two hours, you didn't get enough of my dictatorial diatribes or you need more of Echo's bewildered bemoaning.

Or Dave's fanatical phrasing, you can find us on NeunaWeb's, on Twitter, on Instagram, which for those of you that only understand what Echo says, he refers to that as the Graham. I've never done that. And Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Equich Charles. And I'm at Jocco Willink.

And thanks to all the people in uniform, Worldwide doing what you have to do so we can do what we want to do. And the same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. We thank you as well for what you do every day. And to everyone else out there, competition is an enduring condition. It's always happening. It's always happening. And you need to be prepared.

And you need to make sure you are competing for the strategic win, for the long-term win. So pay attention to what you are paying attention to. And then keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out. Thank you.