Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 3: Jocko & Echo (The Last Hundred Yards [book], Jiu Jitsu, Bosses, Failure)

Episode Date: December 31, 2015

0:00:00 - 1:09:19  >  "The Last Hundred Yards" Book concepts review and relevance. 1:09:19 - 1:48:24  >  Internet Questions and concepts.   Jiu Jitsu: Gi?  Or No Gi?  Micromanagers?  Friends and Family?  Inept Bosses?  Failure and how to deal with it.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number three with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. So, last show we dug into the book about face by Colonel David Hackworth. And today we're going to dive into another book that was very influential to me. And it's called The Last Hundred Yards. Now, this book is very different from Aboutface in many ways. Number one, it was not a New York Times bestseller. It was probably never on any kind of list of any kind. It's a legit tactical guidebook for people in the military.

That's what it is. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about the author right now, guy named H.J. Poole, who retired from the Marines. Corps in 1993. When he was on active duty, he studied small unit tactics for nine years. Six months at the basic school in Quantico, seven months as a platoon commander in Vietnam, three months as a rifle company commander at Camp Pendleton in 1967, five months as a regimental headquarters company commander in Vietnam in 1968, eight months as a rifle company commander

in Vietnam, 1968 to 1969. Five and a half years as an instructor with advanced infantry training down at Camp LaJune. While he was at that advanced infantry training company, he developed taught, refined courses of instruction on maneuver warfare, land navigation, fire support coordination, call for fire, adjust fire, close air support, 203 grenade launcher, movement to contact, daylight attack, night attack, infiltration, defense, offensive military operations in urban terrain, defensive military operations in urban terrain, NBC defense, and leadership. So the guy has some good background. And this book was very influential to me when I was coming up. And again, just like with About Face, as I was thinking about what I was going to say about it. And I wanted to talk about when I got it.

And I couldn't remember when I got About Face. it just kind of came into my life at some point, and it's the same thing with the last 100 yards. And I don't really know 100% when I got it or who told me to get it. It's one of those things that just became so ingrained with me that now I don't even remember when it happened. So one of the key kind of components or the basis of the book that I kind of have to introduce you to.

is it talks about something called maneuver warfare. And maneuver warfare is a, obviously, a type of warfare. It's a type of technique. And it's counter to something that's called attrition warfare. Now, you could probably guess what attrition warfare is. Attrition warfare is we're going to go against the enemy. We're going to stand toe to toe and we're going to punch each other in the face until one of us goes down. Now, when you add bombs and bullets into that scenario, it means we're going to stand across from each other from the enemy, and we're going to shoot each other and bomb each other until one of us breaks.

And that's a very American way of fighting, is to start this attrition warfare, because why? We've got massive supplies. We've got awesome industry, and we can get away with that. maneuver warfare is is very different and to go into the book a little bit in talking about maneuver warfare this is what maneuver warfare is in maneuver warfare the emphasis is on maneuver fire power is considered important only to the extent that it facilitates maneuver. The overall offensive mission is to win decisively by getting the enemy to surrender. So it's very different. In that definition, they're not even looking to kill the person, the enemy. They're looking to make them surrender

because it's in some ways easier if the enemy surrenders. You don't have to kill them all. Now, to go on, the focus is outward on the enemy again. This is a lot. This is a lot of the enemy. This is this is maneuver warfare. The focus is outward on the enemy. And a few mistakes like outdistance one's logistical support or shooting in a friendly unit are acceptable and unavoidable. So that's kind of crazy, right? That you actually, you take these risks in maneuver warfare

where you might engage friendly forces, you might get so separated that you end up in a bad situation, but it's because you're pushing the pace. Control is decentralized and every subunit or individual is encouraged to display the initiative needed to react successfully to the local threat. And this is the biggest distinguisher between attrition warfare and the way it's run and maneuver warfare, decentralized command. And that is a chapter in the book Extreme Ownership that Laif and I wrote.

It's that's one of the laws of combat that we talk about is decentralized command is that everybody that's out on the battlefield, every individual unit leader can make decisions on their own and they can make something happen. They can react and they can execute without having to run it up the chain of command. That's maneuver warfare. Very, very different. And these days where we see the big difference, you know, you see a big bureaucratic company. Now that we're working with businesses, we see a big bureaucratic company. They become very centralized in their control. And they fight attrition warfare against other companies because they're bigger and they have more resources.

Whereas you see the young startups, what are they doing? They're doing maneuver warfare. They've got decentralized command. They've got people taking chances. They're taking risks. And they've got different leaders out there on the battlefield that are trying to make things happen. The emphasis is on training personnel. and this is back to the book.

The emphasis is on training personnel well enough ahead of time that they can follow their commander's intent in combat after only receiving broad guidance. Of course, subunit must still keep their commanders informed of any actions that might affect adjacent units. So you end up with a situation where the commander is not telling you exactly what to do. They're giving you broad guidance.

Hey, this is the end state of the mission that I want to have accomplished. And they're not telling you exactly how to accomplish it. They're just telling you what they want done. So that's a difference between the two. Now, there's a piece that's very different as well, or maybe not different, but another key element of maneuver warfare and decentralized command versus attrition warfare and centralized command.

So if you don't, if you're listening and you haven't been to the military before, the military is separated into two groups of people, officers and enlisted people. The officers are sort of the senior leaders who are, you know, strategic planners and they're the broader, higher up, higher ranking leaders. And then the enlisted are the tacticians, the folks that are, you know, shooting the machine guns, throwing their grenades, making things happen. And they do have, you know, the enlisted servicemen also have their non-commissioned officers, which are the senior ranking enlisted guys, which are usually the expert tacticians.

But it's interesting. So this is going back to the book now. In the average platoon, the NCOs provide most of the collective experience. So again, you see this sometimes in the movies where they, They get the young officer and they're green and they don't really know what's going on. And then you get the salty old, you know, badass that's played by a salty old, you know, Clint Eastwood and he's that older guy with all the experience. That's what that's saying.

The NCOs provide most of the collective experience. For this reason, they should participate in most of the tactical decisions. That absolutely makes sense. This should in no way challenge the authority of the office. officers. Okay, that's sensible. After all, commissioned and non-commissioned officers share the same responsibilities in combat. If the lieutenant, which is the officer, is wounded, the platoon sergeant takes over. When they both, this is key, when they both work together, better decisions result. Obviously, you've got two minds instead of one. This brain trust can be further enhanced by including

squad leaders. So they're saying let's bring in more minds, more of these junior enlisted guys. Let's find out what they think. The enduring satisfaction that comes from making a situationally correct decision and then having that decision fully supported during execution far outweighs the temporary insecurity that may come from soliciting the advice of subordinates. I love that quote. I love that. I'm going to say it again. So it's saying that the decision and the execution, doing that well, far outweighs the temporary insecurity that may come from soliciting the advice of subordinates. So, and I used to see this with these young junior officers. If they're insecure with their leadership, they don't want to take advice and they definitely don't want to ask for advice because they feel like that makes them look weak.

Right, right. Or they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know what they're talking about. Oh, they're going to lose respect. That's all their ego talking. and is their insecurity talking. Whereas you get a young officer that's smart and that's confident, he has no problem looking at the gunnery sergeant

or looking at the platoon chief and saying, hey chief, how do you think we should do this? Hey, chief, I've never even seen this type of operation before. Can you give me some help or can you take lead on this? And that is the way a real leader operates. You don't always see that, unfortunately. Same thing with the mistakes too, right, when you say, oh man, I made that mistake.

Oh, exactly. It's hard to do that a lot of the time because he think, oh, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah. He obviously made a mistake. He even admitted it kind of thing. Yeah. And what the reality is people don't actually think that.

They don't think, oh, he just admitted his mistake. He really doesn't know what he's doing. No, they go, okay. Well, at least he's aware of his mistake. Right. Unless everything they do is a mistake, then that's different. On the other hand, it is courting disaster to rely on one's personal impressions to provide the solution to complex scenario and then not consider whether one's

subordinates have the skills to execute that solution. So don't sit there stuck in your own brain, afraid to ask anybody else, or you're going to lose. Now, as we push through this, we can get pretty deep. To you, this is going back to the book again, to a U.S. infantryman actively engaged in a losing effort, this shortage of reference material can be quite unsettling. And what this is talking about previously to this sentence is saying that although there's all kinds of books and manuals in the military, this detailed reference material of exactly how to do the front line. What does that point man do? What does that machine gunner do?

How do they actually do it? That information can get lost because it's more past word of mouth than anything else. And it goes into talking about, believe it or not, Hackworth, where the combat. Commission from Korea, Lieutenant Colonel David Hackworth, was no stranger to war when he was called to serve in Vietnam. After two tours, he pointed out that the U.S. knowledge on small unit infantry tactics had not been significantly enhanced by the longest war in U.S. history, meaning Vietnam. And here's what, here's what Hackworth said. Almost 15 years since the tragic, inevitable fall of Saigon, and this is, so he's saying this 15 years after the end of

Vietnam War. Almost 15 years. since the tragic inevitable fall of Saigon, there's been no major, honest post-mortem of the war. There have been critiques dealing with the big picture, but none has addressed the lessons learned the hard way at the fighting level where people died and the war was in fact lost. So all those lessons learned

and all those, no one ever made an honest critique and dug down onto the battlefield to see what these guys could do. And I know I talked about this last time as well, is that when I first got in the SEAL teams, there was guys from Vietnam. And when those guys spoke, you absolutely listened because you were hearing knowledge, knowledge. And that, if I didn't experience that, if I didn't meet those guys, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't hurt it. It wasn't written down anywhere. And so you've got to always remember when you do learn stuff, you got to write it.

down. And, you know, Leif and I talk about that, the fact that when we got back from Ramadi, you know, I started teaching at trade at what's called training detachment. And he started teaching the seals that were coming out of, uh, the new guys that were coming out of the seal training. And that's where we were, had the opportunity to really capture a lot of this information that we learned in Ramadi and we were able to pass it on. And ultimately, those lessons learned are what became the book. So that being said, you start talking about doctrine. And I can tell you that doctrine is not everything.

In fact, and you'll hear me talk about people, people's biggest strengths are often their biggest weaknesses. So if you have someone that's super aggressive and they're aggressive in the business world, they're making things happen, and that's a real advantage for them, but they can get overaggressive and then they end up doing stupid things and they fail.

That's one example of how your biggest strength can be your biggest weaknesses. in the sealed teams we really didn't have we had very limited doctrine and it was a real big weakness for us because if you had never run a certain type of operation before you couldn't refer back to something and say okay here's the method or the the written documentation of how you're supposed to do it so that's that's pretty weak that's pretty horrible it's a big weakness but at the same time it was a strength because as the back Battlefield changed as we started getting tasked with missions that we had never done before that no one had ever done before

We were very adaptable because we were used to trying to figure things out so it's a strength and weakness That being said and although we did capture much of our lessons learned This is going back to the book here basic field manual talking about all these manuals that Capture the doctrine knowledge is fine but it is useless without common sense common sense is of greater value than all the words in the book. And this is another thing. They will stereotypically put in Hollywood movies about cops or about soldiers.

You know, you've got some guy that's by the book, buy the book, buy the book. And you can see this is calling it out. This is Colonel Armour R Sims, a guy that was in the Marine Corps on Guadalcanal. and he said that common sense was more important than anything in the field manuals, which is something I completely agree with. And to carry that point a little bit further, back to the book,

and here's a quote from Major General Fuller, the central ideas of an army is known as its doctrine, which to be sound must be based on principles of war, and which to be effective must be elastic enough to admit of mutation in accordance with change and circumstance. So again, all these

people that really understand war, they know that this doctrine is something that needs to be written. It needs to exist, but it needs to be adapted to. And common sense is the superior rank over doctrine. And another thing,

and this is a comment on training because it becomes very difficult when you think about training people for situations that are unknown. It's easy to train people for something that they know is going to happen, but it's a lot more difficult to train people for something that is unknown. How do you do that? As we get into the discussion of training a little bit, the small unit into the book here, the small unit that too faithfully follows the method in the book will eventually attempt it under the wrong conditions. Furthermore, the unit may have difficulty surprising any enemy who has read their book. That makes sense, right? The enemy is going to know your play. And by the way, all these military manuals can all be found online. They're online. They're on the internet. So the enemy definitely reads what we have. On the other hand, the unit that doesn't prepare for any particular scenario will take too long to decide what to do,

automatically sacrificing surprise and momentum, and then not have the teamwork to execute what it does decide to do. So there's two ends of the spectrum. You know, we talk about the dichotomy of leadership and how you're constantly going against opposing forces. Well, here's, you know, you can train so hard and so specifically to what, to doctrine, that it eliminates your flexibility, the other end of the spectrum. is to not train at all, and then you can't execute anything.

And Rommel, Rommel said, the ordinary soldier has a surprisingly good nose for what is true and what is false. And that's not just soldiers. I talked about that before, that people know, even if they don't know what the truth is,

they know you're not telling them it. They might not know what the actual truth is. And then going back to training, in actuality, back to training and back to the book, in actuality, most small scale combat is one or lost months before the battle during training.

And that's something that people say all the time about much martial arts as well. You know, it's during that training as you prepare, that's what wins the battle. It's the fight camp. And it's the same thing with military maneuvers. So as we continue on here, as expected, battlefield conditions change.

So too must learning. over reliance on book solutions in itself constitute a short fallen training because it minimizes the importance of the unique aspects of each situation. Blind faith in standard operating procedures doesn't even constitute being well trained. This is something that when I was running training, we caused complete mayhem on the guys that were going through training. And anybody that went through training when I was running it right now has a smile on their face because they know, that they were put into scenarios that were completely confusing, distracting, disturbing, mayhem, chaos. It was just crazy.

And the reason we did that is because we wanted to test their minds, not their standard operating procedures, not their shooting capabilities. We wanted to test the minds of the leaders. Could the leaders be in that chaos step back from that chaos, either physically or mentally or both, get an assessment of everything that was happening and then say, okay, this is what we need to do to get out of the situation or improve the situation or win the situation. What the other thing that it requires, not only is that the leaders step back and have the ability to step back, but the NCOs, again, these non-commissioned officers must love. initiative and must hold what ground they have to the utmost. It often happens that a sergeant or even a corporal made aside a battle by boldness with which he seizes a bit of ground and holds it. So we tried to inspire the younger guys, the new guys, a guy that had no experience in the SEAL teams, but we wanted

that guy to go, you know what, I'm going to get in this room, I'm going to take this building, I'm to get to this rooftop, I'm going to get this good position. And not to do it as a road element, but within the confines of what the strategy was and what the plan was. And that's where you end up with a unit that works together very well. And, you know, one of the things that I remember of where people get locked into these, you can see it sometimes in MMA fights, you'll see a fighter that's got a good, you know, ground game or he's, and all he's trying to do is take the person down, take the person down, using all their energy, just keeps trying to clinch, keep shooting shots,

and they're getting their shot stuffed, but they can't adapt. They don't have the skills or they don't have the mindset to adapt. I remember one scenario where we had what's called a bunkered machine gun position. This is in a training event. So there's a long hallway. This is in an urban environment. There's a big giant building. This is all fake, by the way.

but there's a big giant building. And in the end of the hallway, we've got a bad guy who's in a bunkered position. So he's in behind tables and drawers and concrete. And he's got a fully automatic paintball gun. And the seals are trying to go down the hallway to get him. And they're shooting at him,

but this guy's in a bunkered position. They can't hit him. He's hidden. And so every time they come out in the hallway to try and move towards him, he just mows him down. And first it's one guy. Then it's another guy. Then three guys.

Then it's six guys. Then it's eight guys are laying in the hallway. You know, because every time they get shot with paintball, if they get shot a few times, we're putting them down. Like, okay, you're dead. Just lay down. Stay there, you're dead. Stay there, you're dead. Okay, you're, oh, you're dead too.

They can't move until the end of the train. They just got to lay there. Yeah, yeah. So I go to the guy that's running it. And it was a platoon chief. And I walked over and I said, hey, chief, you know, How's this going to work out? And he said, we just got to, I got to get these guys moving down this hallway.

And I said, do you think there might be another way? And he kind of looked at me. And he realized that, yeah, there's another way. He sent a couple guys back out of the building. They walked down the outside of the building to the window where the guy was bunkered in, threw a couple grenades in there, jumped in, killed the guy. but the mindset wasn't there to have the flexibility to do that and that's what we were training because I never wanted to see guys get locked into a situation right that's why training all training

needs to expand your brain it needs to expand your mind and so it shouldn't constrain shouldn't constrain your ideas yeah it almost seems like that would be a different type of training even almost like you could like if someone's forcing the double leg or something they're forcing they're not getting it they're not getting it he should have been trained in other takedowns if in fact taking the guy down was a strategy he should be trained in other stuff Yeah, maybe some judo stuff. Yeah, no doubt about it and this is one one thing that's interesting I think that's the the evolution is you're hearing you know about Connor McGregor right now and I hate to jump on the bandwagon But you know you see him doing like this movement

Type drills which is really good because what is that doing that's training you for these weird situations You know, and that's another, like with training jiu-jitsu with Jeff Glover. He puts himself in these weird positions and does these crazy things that when it happens to him, he just has better reaction because he's used to being in these strange positions. Yeah. And when we work with corporations and work with companies, we'll do role playing with these CEOs or mid-level managers and we'll play, you know, Laif and I, will play the unruly old, you know,

uh, job site foreman. Yeah. That knows more than you do and how are you going to deal with them. And we put them in these hostile situations and do things and say things. And that, that throw them for a loop that make them uncomfortable, that, that they don't know the solution to and they have to think on their feet. And that's,

that's one of the, you know, one of the pieces of training that I always like to go back to is how can we, how can we do things that surprise people in training so that we exercise their brain? Not what they know. We got to get what you know. You got to train what you know. You got to practice what you know.

How do we train what you don't know, what you don't expect? Yeah, it's like a deeper, it's like almost like a level deeper in the training. Like it's real beneficial. I think Henner guys talk about this, training jiu-jitsu, a good way to train for, self-defense is train with a real athletic guy who's a white belt so he won't do predictable things

that you've been training every day he'll do unpredictable things where you you know won't be super easy um and at the same time it won't be something that you have full knowledge of and full experience if you get the 280 pound powerhouse that shows up to the gym that's never trained before the first time you train with them it's going to be harder to catch him then it will three months later. No, maybe three months it'll be about the same.

But like a month into it where he kind of knows what he's supposed to try and do but you know exactly what he's going to do, then it's easy to catch him. It's easier. So you're right. It definitely is a transitional time

and it is good to train with people that you have no idea what they're going to do. Yeah, and it's not even to say that, and it does, it gives you experience with these unorthodox things for sure, but that's not what you're talking about

as far as what's being trained. What's being trained? trained is not to be so dogmatic in your actions and your, you know, your plan is to, this sounds really cliche. It's to expect the unexpected. Yeah.

Right. But it trains you to think that way. Well, it's true. And I don't know if this is cliche or not. I'm pretty sure it is. But I say this and people kind of freak out when I say it because I'm like a, a structured discipline person.

But I say it all the time, free your mind. You got to free your mind. That's what, when I talk about, this stuff. I hate when I find myself in a situation where my mind is not free to see what's going on and I can't detach from what's known and go and enter the unknown and deal with the unknown. Yeah.

You know, another thing that can affect this is our ego and how our ego can prevent us from learning or listening to other people or other schools or other martial arts or other gyms or other perspectives. So in this book, the last 100 yards, he talks about that. Even giving a sister organization with the same manuals credit for knowing anything can be difficult. Pride in one's unit can help to build cohesion, but it can also stand in the way of learning. Learning must always take priority over pride.

How readily a military organization can assimilate new information establishes how easily its component elements can acquire new knowledge. The Germans of World War I are generally credited with developing the application parameters that define modern infantry tactics. Here's how they did it. The German army of 1914 was the most decentralized in Europe. free from all but the most general supervision and relieved by a promotion system

that based strictly on seniority of the need to constantly please superiors the German battalion or company commander was free to train his troops according to his own lights. So the way they advanced people is just how it wasn't based on how well you did on this particular thing.

So they weren't kissing ass the whole time. It was just oh, you were in rank, now you get promoted. So they were free to kind of operate do the best they could and that had a big, big impact. For example, by 1918, the Germans had line infantry squads that could penetrate allied defense lines almost at will, as opposed to, you know, the allies who would always try and coordinate these big, giant massive attacks at the same time, and you have to get everyone

aligned and you have to execute perfectly with thousands of people. That's obviously very challenging, rather than just saying, okay, our goal is to break through the lines, go and figure it out. Think of all the different creative ways that go to figure that out. And it's crazy. And that's why it was so successful.

Now, the Germans lost. They obviously made some mistakes on the strategic level. And as a matter of national policy, they made some pretty big mistakes too. But that's kind of a whole other story. Most military leaders agree that doing nothing to prepare an infantry squad for combat

also does little to enhance its chances for success. Most can also agree that providing guidance that is too restrictive may cause the squad to disregard unforeseen circumstances. The answer to it must lie somewhere in between. That's what we've been talking about. And you see this with fighters as well. And you see fighters that prepare for a specific attack from somebody.

But then that other somebody decides to mix it up and comes out and does something that's happened to me when I was cornering fighters before where I've gone out and said oh I didn't expect that Right here we go this guy just took you know John Bones just took down DC you know like where'd that come from? Right Why did he do that? So we see that kind of that that Mentality that throws things off and it puts people in a in a predicament Yeah and you mentioned John Jones he he actually even admitted that some of the stuff that he does he just he's never trained for. He just did it.

But it's, man, it's that different, that separate element of your mind or training. I don't know if you had training doing that or just a creative person or whatever. Just that separate element, it's a whole different part of the strategy, you know? Yeah. Another asset. Yeah.

And also, you can see that he's encouraged by Greg Jackson. He's encouraged and he does things, you know, he has an open mind. Right. He's got a free mind. And that goes a long way. For your mind. That is kind of a cliche, by the way.

There's a song. Is it? Free your mind and the rest will follow it. Or something else will fall out in other words. I'm not familiar with that. Let's not sing it. So finally to talk about decentralized command and what I would see happen with decentralized command, as I tell some junior leader, okay, you know, you need a decentralized command.

You need to let your guys go out and do what they need to do. And they go out on the battlefield and this is, you know, getting in training. where no one's going to die, they'd go out and all the little leaders would get their own ID and they'd go and try and make all the stuff that happened and the commander would lose control and everyone would get crushed and shot up with paintball and the whole nine yards.

And they'd come back and they'd say, oh, you know, I did decentralized command. It doesn't work, see? And I would say no. You did decentralized command, but you missed the key part of decentralized command, which is guidance. parameters, understanding of the mission, commanders intent, standard operating procedures,

limits of advance, all these nice little restrictions that you put on the guys. Now, they're wide restrictions. I shouldn't have said little. They're wide restrictions. They give them a lot of mobility, but they understand what the objective is, what the end state is, what their parameters are, how far they can maneuver. Like, they can know they can, hey, if you can't go past this. building. You can't go past this road. You can't go wherever. You draw those lines so that they can

operate freely within those lines. And that's how you maintain control with decentralized command. Would you call them like guidelines? Because when you say operate within those lines, is it pretty encouraged to stay within those lines with their creativity? Or does the creativity, is that allowed to kind of overflow? Like if you say, you know how far you can engage, are you saying there are no exceptions? No, there can be exceptions. You know, if I call you up and say, Echo, I'm at Building 14 right now,

we see enemy moving to Building 27. I want to push down this road. Are we good to do that? And you say, all right, let me check the map. Let me check where my other forces are at. Yep, you're good to go. You can move. So there are times where I have to check back with you

to make sure we're good to go and make sure that you understand, but I'm going beyond what parameters were set, and that's why I have to communicate you. But I went all the way up to that point. I maneuvered on the battlefield for, you know, three, four, five, six hours. Maybe it was a day. Maybe it was two days without having to say, Echo, I need some guidance here.

Echo, I'm going to push beyond what you told me. Yeah, so these guidelines are kind of you go in with the knowledge that there are exceptions as long as they're responsible. Yes. Or as long as what you do, you'd be responsible about making those exceptions. And communicating. That's when bad things happen. When bad things happen is when you go outside the limitations that you're supposed to be in and you don't tell anybody. That's very, very problematic.

Now, um, when we, when we talk about why it's so, why you have to maintain that flexibility, the reason is because combat is infinitely complex.

And it's one of those dichotomies, because it's infinitely simple, but it's infinitely complex. And believe me, the complexity of it got me, got the best of me on many occasions. Where I was, where I lost it, I did not, could not follow the complexity situation. I had to, bad things happened. I had to regroup.

I had to try and figure them out. Had to assemble these thoughts in my head as all this thing, all these things are happening. Go into the book. As it relates to combat, the term situation encompasses many variables. Mission, enemy, terrain, weather, troops and fire support, time, space, logistics. Each category has many facets. disregarding a seemingly inconsequential circumstance can invalidate an otherwise logical solution. One must continually study the possibilities, continually study the possibilities.

And I've seen that where one little problem can escalate into all kinds of problems. that's something that whether it's a unit that we did just what we just talked about which is you know you get a unit that goes where they weren't supposed to be and they didn't tell anybody that can become very problematic as you can imagine because all of a sudden you know you've got people shooting from a building where there's not supposed to be any friendlies well guess what you're going to shoot back at them right so that's a horrible situation things with communication where you know some radio frequencies go down or for for whatever reason you lose communications with people And all of a sudden you're in a black hole and you don't know what's happening. That's another situation where one little tiny piece can really throw massive complexities into this situation. Going back to Rommel and back to training, the best form of welfare for the troops is first class training. This saves unnecessary casualties. And I think I did talk about this before, but taking care of your people, you know, and how taking care of your people. it can mean,

A, that means we're going to cut them loose early because that means you're taking care of them. But the reality is the way you take care of them is to train them hard and be disciplined. So I will never lose sight of that one. This is skipping around a little bit, but I wanted to throw this in there because of the fight we had in Ramadi.

And it's just talking about how the fighting in the urban environment is so challenging. And it says in the book, Built up areas, meaning cities, should be bypassed wherever possible. In urban terrain, the attacker may need as much as a 10 to one manpower advantage. And Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War, the worst policy is to attack cities. And if troops are attacking cities, their strength will be exhausted. That's just a, for time immortal.

Trying to fight in cities is absolutely the most challenging of all environments. Why? Because they're dug in and their little strategy kind of is established. They're dug in. They are 360 degrees around you. Oh, yeah. They are above you. They are to the left, to the right, in front of you.

They're behind you. And they're beneath you. They're in the sewage systems. They're in the basements. So you're in this 360 degree fire zone. And on top of that, just about every building is a hardened fighting position. Oh, right. Yeah.

So all you have to do is enter a building and you've got a pillbox. You've got a bunker. And so therefore, it's very, very challenging. And I just talked about having an enemy machine gun in a bunkered fighting position. That's a nightmare. It's a little less of a nightmare when you have tanks to come. and blast them. Sure.

So God bless the tankers. I love those guys. We worked side by side with those guys. 1-1-A-D. Guys crushed it for us and we appreciated it. Respect for one's enemy is crucial to success on the battlefield. He is not a coward. He is not stupid.

And he probably has comparable weaponry. That's from the book, how to focus on the enemy and make sure that you are respecting the enemy. Flexibility to a changing situation again in the book. Having the ability to detect and then react to a changing situation can have great value in war. What manuals contain is mostly technique, not doctrine. This technique is merely a framework around which to build common sense solutions.

And what that translates to is discipline equals freedom. You have these standard operating procedures. You work them. You refine them. You practice them. You get good at them. But you don't get stuck with them. You free your mind by having discipline.

And it means that you can adapt these strict standard operating procedures. You can adapt them instantaneously and do something else with them because you're a maestro. And you can make that happen. Now, we get into this and this is going a little bit deep. But we start talking about something called mission type orders. And that is different from, let's say, what would be called a directive, where I say, Echo, you're going to move down this street, you're going to take this building number 27,

you're going to set security in there, and you're going to hold that position. That's different because now I've told you exactly what to do. I've said, okay, Echo, you're going to move down this street. So I'm telling you which way you're going to go. I'm going to tell you exactly which building you're going to take down, and I'm telling you to set security in there. Now, what I really want to say is,

that means you have to do what I just told you. Right. Because you have no choice. I mean, I didn't give you any other options. I told you exactly what to do. Now, what if I were to say, Echo, we think the enemy is over in this area. We want to be able to hold security on them from an elevated position.

find a building down there and make that happen. So now you've got all kinds of freedom. You might pick 27 because maybe it was the best building, but maybe 36 was or maybe 32 was. Maybe 27 was hardened. Maybe it wasn't tall enough. But you have this organic flexibility in your mind because you've been given a goal of why you're doing the mission,

not just what to do. So it's very important when you're dealing with people, you know, in any walk of life, that you tell them not just, what they're trying to do, what to do, but what they're trying to accomplish, what the mission is, why they are doing it.

And that is incredibly important. Just like aggressiveness is important in going back to the book, from General Howland Mad Smith. Since I joined the Marines, I have advocated aggressiveness in the field and constant offensive action, Hit quickly, hit hard, and keep right on hitting.

Give the enemy no rest, no opportunity to consolidate his forces, and hit back at you. This is the shortest road to victory. Do I need to even expand on that? I mean, I think Howl and Mad Smith just hit the nail on the head. Next point. Controlling subordinates only to the extent that surprise momentum are not sacrificed. personnel should become so familiar with their leader's intent that they can be trusted to act on their own initiative. They should never be required to ask permission to respond to crisis situation.

Seconds count in close combat. Subordinates must be trusted to act appropriately and only required to inform their leaders of decisions that might affect others. That's it. That's decentralized command. Now, you're going to think at first that this is a little bit of a stretch. but it's not. So controlling subordinates only the extent

that surprise and momentum are not sacrificed, I'm going to relate that to jujitsu, believe it or not. In jujitsu and in any sport,

you have to train your standard operating procedures so that your body can execute them without directives, right? If you have an instinct to defend the arm lock,

you will escape the arm lock. If you do not have that instinct because you haven't trained it enough, you will get caught in the arm lock. If you have to think about the move, it is too late. And that's exactly what decentralized command is. If Echoes out on the battlefield and he gets flanked and he has to ask me what to do, he's going to get killed. If Echoes on the mat with me and I slap a Kimura on him and he has to think about the defense, it's too late. He's already tapping. Whereas if I go for the Camira and his instinct moves him out of that position, then you survive.

The one more thing that I, when I think about that type of training is something we used to do was called blender drills. When you take your seal squad or your seal platoon and you start making calls on them, flank left, you know, push right, strong right, center peel. you just do the most random calls. What I mean calls? You're making tactical calls. You've got 16 guys that are called immediate action drills. And for instance, if you're patrolling through the desert and you start getting shot at from the front,

then you do a what's called a contact drill. You're going to react to that contact. The contact is the enemy. You're going to do a maneuver as a group. And they're all kind of choreographed maneuvers where squad one goes. over here, squad two goes over here, we lay down a base of fire, you start to move, cover and move out. But what we would do is we would mix up those calls. In the middle of one maneuver, we'd

call for another maneuver. And in the middle of that one, we'd call for another one. And in the middle of that one, we'd call for another one. And what it did was it trained the mind. It trained the minds of the leaders and of the guys to expect the unexpected, as you said earlier in that cliched way, but something that's completely necessary, trained them to be reactive and open-minded to things that we're going to happen. Now, when we talk about learning, and this is the title of this chapter in the book, The Last Hundred Yards,

it's called Old Habits May Get in the Way. And I think it's pretty obvious what that means. Adults learn, here it is, adults learn within the context of what they already know, ideas that are too far removed from their personal frames of reference are hard for them to accept. How often do we see that? We see it in life. We see it in the business world. We see it in combat. We see it in training. Ideas that are too far removed from people's personal frame of reference are hard for them to accept. Unfortunately, when one gets

dropped into a hot landing zone on his first day in combat, it's often too late for him to learn anymore. For this reason, infantry must continually reassess and expand their frames of reference. Boom. Hello, life. For this reason, infantrymen and everybody else in the world must continually reassess and expand their frames of reference. Everybody. When one survival is at stake, the other way can hold as much appeal as the established way. So, clearly, We see people in the business world stuck in that rut all the time. We see people in their personal lives. They get stuck in a rut all the time.

So everybody has got to continually reassess and expand their frame of reference. Going back to the book. What adults know comes primarily from two sources, what they have been told and what they have experienced personally. Okay, that's pretty clear, right? I think that's pretty obvious. But this is when it gets pretty cool. They sometimes have difficulty keeping the two sense of ideas separated, becoming convinced that what they have been told is true, even though they have never personally experienced it.

And that is something that you see in the military. You see in the military where guys kind of, they hear something, they make it into something that they think that they've experienced. I know it sounds crazy, but they do it. And it's dangerous. It's dangerous. And I never, when I realized that that happened, when I realized that that was going on, I was very suspect of everything that got said.

You know, I was very suspect and said, well, let's make sure that we confirm these ideas before we just run out and do them. Is that kind of like those martial arts demonstrations, right? Exactly. Exactly. And you can imagine that before the UFC and before you actually putting two

humans in a cage to brawl, it was all theoretical. Right. And if someone said, you know what? If you strike the person here in the neck, they will fall down. Right. And this is,

people legitimately believe that. Hey, if you hit the person in the neck, there's a brachial nerve and it'll go down to scler, and they will immediately fall down. And people believe that, but they never tried it, but they believed it.

And there was, a lot of the times, those stories were mixed, in with someone that had been told that they'd seen it one time or they'd experienced it or whatever. And so that's a good point. And this is when you get into people that are not telling the whole story. And this is something I'm very careful of is when I know something, like, I never claim to know anything 100%.

And I will always caveat everything with, you know, like a 99.9%. Right. But there's sometimes where I'm giving information. And I'm saying, look, this is not 100%. I don't know this for sure. But this is what I've seen and this is what I've experienced. Sometimes I'm like, hey, listen, I know this and I have experienced it. And this is what will work.

And I definitely, when I was instructing in the SEAL teams, I was very clear when I was saying, hey, I have not done that type of mission before or I have not done this in combat or I have not seen how this would really work. but here's what I think, because that's a lot different than this is what you need to do because I have seen it, I have done it, and I do know confidently that, barring the common sense, this is how you should execute this.

So sources, back to the book, sources have many reasons for not disclosing every facet of an issue. One is to propound more convincingly their perspective. Infantrymen can't afford to harbor points of view that aren't well-founded. They need continually to reassess their viewpoint and expand their frames of reference to encompass infantry knowledge from around the world and across centuries. Awesome.

Free your mind. Is that kind of like looking something up on Google or on the internet? And then the difference between just going with that first answer and going with a, you know, a bunch of results, a bunch of websites. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Same thing. and people that see something on the internet and then talk about it as if they know it firsthand.

Right. When they read it on that first result, they got, they clicked on it. Boom, there's your answer. Yeah. Those people out there, we don't like you. You're clouding the truth. Okay, getting into some leadership and really life choices. And you can apply these to life.

You can apply these to business. Here are some choices that humans have to make. protect the status quo or take risks necessary to win decisively. That speaks on its own. Protecting the status quo can be easier than changing it to take action, one risks making a mistake. So that's a choice. And it's not a black and white choice. There's a lot of shades of gray in there.

And how can you modulate that choice, but it is a choice that you have to be aware of. focus inwards to prevent mistakes or on the enemy to keep pace with a changing situation. This is an interesting professional professionals of all types try to minimize errors. Unfortunately, trying to do, trying too hard to do so in the military profession has some serious tradeoffs. Initiative, ability to surprise one adversary, perspective on the overall picture, and learning, just to name a few. And I would say that those are the exact same in any profession. That when you are only focused on not making mistakes, how are you going to make any risks? Jiu-Jitsu.

The minute that you're just like, hey, I'm going to go with what I know, and I am so guilty of this. I am the guiltiest of all in that I'm very set in my ways in the moves that I do. I do four submissions, maybe even two. But they're like what I'm good at, so I do them a lot. And I go through phases. I shouldn't even say it's phases. I go through days where I take a lot of risks and I learn more. And then I go through days where I'm just there because I have to train and I'm going to do what I do.

I'm going to do what I do well. But that's not when I learn. That's not when I get better. I get better when I'm trying something new. And that applies to everything in life. Key to an infantry man's ability to react to whatever confronts him is his authority to exercise some initiative. You've got to give your people the freedom to maneuver. You have to.

In combat, the leader must personally supervise only those actions that jeopardize the overall mission and then allow subordinates to exercise initiative and make a few mistakes on everything else. those subordinates must be able to identify mistakes as they happen without fear of punishment or the same mistakes will happen again. This is making mistakes without fear of punishment. You know, Dean, our buddy Dean Lister, he does these drills that he calls consequence-free drills where he just says, okay, you're going to start, you know, that someone's going to be on your back and you're going to try to escape, but it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what happens. If they submit you, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. Consequence-free drills. It's just to take chances because all of us, you know, we all hate getting tapped out. We all hate giving up position. So you do these consequence-free drills. You go, okay, I look at the guy and I'm like, okay, you're going to tap me out.

It's no big deal. You know, so do, I'm going to try crazy stuff. And that's what they're saying here. You've got to give people the chances to make mistakes. Yeah. And that's actually an important one because how that applies. to life, that applies to life right when you're born. When you're, like, if you're, let's say your parenting style, if you have that parenting

style where a kid makes a mistake, he spills his milk, or he's trying something new, he makes a mistake, and he gets punished for it. And that's how he's raised. When he grows up, he's going to be very reluctant to try new things in life or explore certain, you know, aspects of creativity, namely, like, starting his own business. That's why most people don't start their own business, because they've lived that kind of, I think most of us have lived that kind of life where if you make a mistake when you're a kid, you get punished for it, even in school. When you make a mistake on your test, you get that red X on the thing,

you got five wrong out of 10, you got a 50 pre-e. You got an F? There's your punishment. You're F. Oh, wait, I don't know these five things. Can I learn? I'll take the test again and show you that I don't know. No. No. You got a nap. There's your punishment. Repeat the grade. That sucks. There's your problem. So you don't even want to make any mistakes.

You don't want to try anything new. You don't want to, and you just have that mindset. And that's why most people are like that. There is, however, a point where people, you know, you could be raised in a way where you're not responsible for your own actions because there's no consequences to what you do. So if you don't study and you get the red X's all over your tests and you don't receive any punishment for it, then you will never learn. Because only he who suffers remembers. Right, but there's a difference in me. I know it always comes back to that dichotomy that you talk about,

where it's really in the middle area. So I think that it has to be leading towards that, what you were saying, let them, give them freedom to operate. If you make a mistake, but they're putting effort into it, that should be commended. don't if you get one wrong two wrong don't give them this trophy that says hey congratulations you failed a failure should should be i mean the goal right is to to make successful people i will i will despite what i said or in in conjunction with what i said about their needing to be consequences

i agree that the correct answer or the correct reaction would not be you failed you're horrible but you failed. What did you learn? How can we improve? Yes, exactly, exactly right. So you notice that was exactly, exactly, exactly. Double exactly right. Yes, for sure.

So yeah, they kind of get the best of both worlds. Where they get that, that the fact that they failed, they understand that. And of course, no one's just like no one's goal is to fail. So they know that they failed. They understand that they failed, but encouraged to improve. encouraged to understand. But I think in a lot of ways, people don't get that. And you definitely don't see it when in businesses.

You definitely don't see it in the military. And so, yeah, you're right. You've got to encourage that. Yeah, and I think it could get, and this is just me speaking from zero experience, but I would imagine that it would get really rigid in the military because the stakes are a lot higher. Well, that's why this is talking about training. Yes. You don't want to let people make those kind of mistakes.

in combat. You won't give them that much rope where they can get somebody killed in combat. Yeah. Yeah, in a training in life, in a learning situation or a developing phase, which in life really is your whole life. But so. Always learning. Always learning. So I think to stick to that, I don't know, format, whatever you want to call it, to stick to that where understanding your mistakes, don't like a mistake, a legitimate mistake. The point, the point. The point. The point. The Punishment should not be the significant part of that experience. The learning should be. And, hey, look, I understand there's different philosophies.

No, there's got to be some consequence. Some people don't learn without consequences. You see that these days with these sum of the new generation, which you might even be a part of. But the new generation that grows up consequence for you and they don't take any responsibility for their actions. They don't take ownership of anything that goes wrong because they've been raised in a way where failure doesn't matter. and there's no consequences to their actions. Yeah. So.

Absolutely true. Not to beat a dead horse on this subject. I had some notes in here around this from the book. Trying too hard to follow the book while solving battlefield situations makes one fairly predictable, even to enemies who haven't read the book. These don't, so you have to make some changes. And back to the book, these don't have to be drastically different from what's in the book. Often it's enough just a very amount of speed.

stealth or deception with which the standard method is executed. Standardizing what subordinates practice in peacetime may make those subordinates easier to control, but does not help them learn the alternative techniques needed to develop momentum in battle. So that actually supports your last statement. Standardizing what subordinates practice in peacetime may make those subordinates easier to control. So if you're trying to control someone by beating them down and saying you failed, you need to do it this way and it's the only way, you're going to get more control of them, but you're going to not allow them to operate in a real world where they have to think of new ideas and think they have to free their mind. Yeah. And in a way you might, I would hypothesize you might not even get the best out of them.

Really? I believe you are correct. They would get that rigid standard of output and that's kind of it. And going to a quote from the book, supporting your hypothesis, from Colonel Merritt A. Edson, he goes on about how you need to fight the Japanese, and he closes with,

encourage your individuals and bring them out. Which is just a beautiful statement. Now, this is kind of to close out this section here. We are talking about, and this definitely applies to life. Human beings are always trying to structure the chaos of battle and that may be the root of the problem. Human beings, human beings want to have structure.

They want things to be orderly and combat is not orderly, nor is life, nor are relationships, nor are business deals, nor is the chain of command. nor our personalities and egos and everything that we try and do to control this chaos the idea that we can control it is false

what you have to do is you have to deal with it you have to let that thing squirm underneath you have to let it move and see where its weaknesses are and grab hold of what you can and let go of what you can't it's kind of like you know those physio balls they're kind of

they're not rigid or nothing well I always talk about when I'm training with someone that's bigger than me you get on top you can't hold them down you have to let them move underneath you

yes yes and that's what this reminds me of yeah I'll add this to your list of things that aren't controllable all of existence that's why like you think of a leaf or a you know okay

consider something that's control like a that's why we invent rulers that's why we invent thermometers, you know. Temperature is so dynamic. I can walk right five feet away. The temperature, when you really come down to, the temperature is going to be different. There's no set, controlled anything. Everything's so ambiguous and slippery and wiggily. So you're saying everything. Everything, all of existence. But like how you said, where people try to control,

I think that's in our nature, though. That's why you come up with rulers and mile markers and it is. And it can drive you crazy. And if you try and control the chaos of common, You're going to get destroyed and if you try and control everything in your life things that are not controllable Then you're going to destroy it if you try and control the relationship Yeah, and aspects of relationship that are not controllable You know what you control in the relationship? You control you yourself in a real ambiguous way by the way Because you're always adapting ideally from an ideal standpoint. You're always adapting as well. So yes Yes and this kind of and you know what? You try and control the relationship by control the other person when reality you need to control your

yourself. Yeah, yeah. Because most people don't do that. Most people don't exercise the beauty of mind control, that they can control your mind. You can think what you want to think. You can put those thoughts into your head. You can eliminate the bad ones. Right, right.

You can bring forth the good ones with mind control. Yeah. premature during what is usually an inaccurate assessment of the situation. So when you're looking at something and you're going, okay, here's the plan, here's what we're going to do. At best, that's premature and inaccurate, what your plan is. So when you're trying to figure out what you're going to do with that business deal and you're trying to create this very detailed plan around it, at best it's premature and inaccurate. At best, it's premature and accurate. So don't get locked around.

You're going to make these plans. They're going to be rigid. and here's the way we're going to do it, at best, it's premature and accurate. So think about what you can control and what you can't and move forward from there. A good example of recognizing or a good way to recognize if you're not practicing these types of thoughts or ways of looking at things is when you make a plan and the plant and it doesn't go according to plan and you get mad about it, that should be a right. Red flag.

A red flag right there. That is a red flag. Yeah. And when your relationship isn't going the way you wanted to be, it's because you, it should be a newsflash that you can't control this other human being. Yeah. You can only control you. So don't. And this goes back to what we talked about on the last show when we talked about, you know, your family and your close friends.

And, you know, we kind of got to the point where I think I was saying, hey, you can't worry about that. And you said the same thing. And I think this is a little bit more clarity on that point is you cannot control them. Right. So you need to grab what you can, you know, keep it as under control as you can, but you're not going to get the solid control that you want to think you, that you desire. Yeah. It's kind of like if you have this big, like, trash can lid and then you have this blob of like mercury,

you're trying to keep it in the center, but don't try to like squeeze it with your hand or something because it's going to come out of your fingers, you know? Yeah. And that, what if your co-host of a show comes up with examples like a trash can lid and mercury? You can't control that. All you can do is listen, nod your head and say, good point. It's more of it.

It was an analogy, you know? It's like this comparison of, you know, using metaphors. Check. So moving on, moving on to some questions that we've got. got from Twitter, from Facebook. Got some really good questions. And as a matter of fact, these are a continuation of questions. I didn't even ask this time because we didn't get through many of them from the last time I asked for input.

So these are a continuation, which means I apologize. Once again, I don't have the names collected of who gave these questions. So my fault, I apologize. If we answer your question, we appreciate you giving us the question so that we could answer it. First one. Let's get down to it. So in regards to jujitsu, this is kind of a common question, but your input, ghee or no ghee? Do you train both? Et cetera? The answer is ghee and no ghee. I definitely train both. I like to train both. I don't care which one. They're both fun to me. Just as we've been talking about a lot tonight through the book, the last 100 yards,

I want my training to be different and surprising and be uncontrollable. And when you change, it definitely affects you when you change from ghee. And then all of a sudden you take off your ghee and you're sliding all over the place, you have to be a better grappler to be able to deal with that. So I want to be a better grappler. So I do that. And, you know, there's something else that's in between ghee and no ghee. You put MMA gloves on.

You put MMA gloves on, and it is somewhere in between ghee and no ghee, because you can get legitimate risk control. It's hard to sneak in a choke on somebody when they're wearing gloves. So there's benefits to them all, and I try and do them all. Yeah. Do you find any benefit to doing one and or the other? You know, like if you train in the ghee, there's certain benefits in training with a ghee. I think if you train with a ghee,

your defense has to be better because there's more friction. And so if you're going to escape an arm lock with the gea on, you have to do it very well. If you're going to escape a knee lock with the geon, there's a lot of friction. It's a lot harder to get out, so your defense has to be better. With no ghee, your offense has to be better

because there are no handles to grab. It's slippery. People can slide out of the exact opposite reasons. So I think you improve. your offense more. And I will say this, my game is compatible with both, where I don't do a lot of crazy lapel weaving in between your legs, then up over your back, and then back over your right armpit and around your neck. I don't do a lot of that. I don't disagree with it. I think it's fine, but I like to, most of the moves that I do are compatible with both, or there's very small

differences between the way I have the games set up. Yeah. Yeah, and Dean originally told me that same thing where when you train in the ghee, your defense starts to develop a little bit more because you've got to like arm lock. You're in the arm lock. You can't just spazz out of an arm lock is easy. And even more important, actually, is not just the submission, but a cross side or mount. When someone's a cross side on you with a guy on, they've got those.

handles and it's very difficult to get out. Or posture control, risk control, all that stuff. And it's easier to hold them down. Yeah. So if you train no ghee and you're trying to hold some down with no ghee, it actually takes more technique to hold somebody down with no ghee than it does with ghee. Even though sometimes I hear people say that ghee is more technical. Right. I don't actually agree with that. I think they're both technical in their own aspect. Yeah. So and even and holding someone down, that's more of an offensive move. Yes. Right. So if you're being held down with the you got to understand the concept in those techniques to get out or whether it be being held down or submission or whatever you have to understand those concepts and when you understand the concepts then

you can be successful as opposed to like a nogi situation you don't necessarily i mean you should understand the concept for sure but you don't necessarily have to because you could just spazz out of it or like an arm lock you could if you're sweaty you could spaz out of an arm lock with little technique you know if you're strong um with the gee it's going to be way harder to do that so you'll you'll kind of in a way learn more and flip-flop when you go offense to defense the same kind of thing with the no gee offensive stuff you got to understand where you got to control his shoulder otherwise he's going to you know have enough room to slide it out so you have to have that perfect control to execute a good submission if the guy's good so um and i think you know with life what i do in life is i try and put

myself in tough situations so i'm practicing them so i'm used to him and you know that's what that's what the physical aspect of life is in order to improve, you got to challenge yourself and put yourself in the worst scenarios and go and try and get through them. You know, whether that's a weight room with a squat rack or whether that's a run or whether that's a swim or whatever that physical challenge is, you want to make it as difficult as possible. Or putting yourself out there. Or putting yourself out there as I have challenged myself to be outside my comfort zone

into the world of humans. Multimedia. Yes. They say, or I've heard, that public speaking is the number one fear of people.

I have heard that as well. And I, it's hard for me relate to, I have no, I'm not afraid of getting up and talking in front of people. Like, it doesn't, I don't understand that. I don't understand what that must feel like. Right.

You know, so. You understand why, though. It's really hard for me understand. Right. It's hard for you to relate, right? Well, because, man, it's... Do you get nervous talking in front of people? Yeah, yeah.

To a degree, I mean, obviously it depends on the mood. Depends on the people. Right. But, yeah, yeah, I think I'm really no different than most people in that regard, for sure. But, yeah, there's a reason for that. I think it's because it's almost like this subconscious feeling that everyone's judging every little thing that comes out of your mouth, every little thing that you do movement-wise.

You know, so your whole being is being judged by all kinds of different people with all kinds of different standards, yeah. And when you care about that or when you've paid the price for that, maybe, I think because when you get raised, I think you pay the price for that if you say the wrong thing, if you do the wrong thing.

And I think in a way, ridiculed or whatever, whatever that looks for you, you've paid the price for you. for growing up or And now you don't want it on a large scale. Yeah, and that's exactly what you got. You're in a situation where that's all kind of coming, you're coming into your brain where you fear that price that you're going to pay

and it's times a thousand because there's a thousand people there. And I think it's kind of subconscious. All you're left with consciously is this just anxiety. That's how we feel. Free your mind, Echo. No, you got to put yourself in those bad situations. You have to, you know, put your, if you're going to public speak or if you're afraid of public speaking, book a small thing or, I don't know, do something to put yourself in that situation. And if you don't want to go from zero to ten, do a small one, you know, do something like with low consequences, you know, or less impactful consequences and just start small and go up.

That's probably what you did. So next question. Next question. So, okay, micromanagers. How do you deal with micromanagers? Okay. So if you worked for me and you were super squared away, then I was a great boss and totally left you alone.

If you worked for me and you were not squared away, I was a complete micromanager. So that's a little indicator. Now, I have worked for micromanagers before. Everyone does. You run into them in the world. And the way, the best way I've figured to get out from under the, the draconian thumb of the micromanager is to try and gain their trust.

And what you want to do is you want to be ahead of them. You want to. And actually, this is something that I, when I was on the Tim Ferriss program, I talked about how when I told my dad, I was joining the military. And I was this rebellious kind of crazy kid. And he said, oh, you're going to hate it because you hate authority. And I did it anyways. And when I got in, I was like, damn, my dad was right.

I do hate authority. I don't like listening to people. And now I have to listen to them all the time. And then I realized very quickly when I was in my first seal platoon, I didn't want anyone to tell me what to do. And I was in charge of the radios. I was a radio man. And what I did was, you know, if the radios had to be. be ready, I knew they had to be ready, I just got them ready. I got them ready ahead of a time. I

did everything before anyone could tell me to do it. I would come into work to be ready before anyone could tell me what to do. So I basically was completely psychotically proactive and just was ahead of the power curve on every little thing that I could be ahead of the power curve on. And eventually it didn't take long, the people that micromanaged me all of a sudden, like, hey, I'm not going to bother with this guy anymore. He's already done it. Because every time they say, hey, do you have this? It's already done. Hey, did you start preparing? They already did him this morning. And eventually they say, oh, okay, this guy knows what he's doing. And what you're trying to do is build up the trust.

Because that's what it is. It's a little lack of trust that people have, that things are going to go the way. And they've probably learned that somewhere. So don't hold it against them. But it's your job to create a relationship with them of trust where they stop micromanaging you and move on to somebody else that needs to be micromanaged. Next. Okay, so what about family and people who are close to you? Are they all the same?

And if not, how do you deal with it? So this is the trials and tribulations of the alpha personality. And you're always trying to go hard and go fast and make things happen. And how do you deal with this is someone that's asking this? And whoever you are, thank you for asking. in this question, people are people like me, are the same? And if not, how do I deal with it? Well, first of all, no, there's not too many people like me. And as a matter of fact, there's not too many people like you, echo. And people that are listening to this, there's not too many people like

you either. People are unique. And I'm not trying to make people like me or make them do the things that I do. I'm over that phase. You know, I've talked about this before. Like, there was a time where I would try and convince people about things. And I don't try and do it anymore. I'll discuss them, but I'm not here to win an argument. I'm not that concerned about you. I'm not that concerned about what you think.

Again, if you're someone that I'm friends with and I'm trying to help, yeah, I'm concerned, but I'm not trying to change people's minds. But it's interesting because what I'm really trying to do is I'm trying to appreciate people's perspectives. I'm trying to learn from other people.

And I thought this was actually speaking of Twitter. On Twitter the other day, I posted a little paragraph, and it's by a guy named Mark Ripito, who's a coach. He's written probably one of the best books about weightlifting that you can get. It's called Starting Strength, Basic Barbell Training. Mark Ripeto, but the opening of it is freaking awesome. And I brought it with me so I could read it to you. So here's this opening to this book about weightlifting.

Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence. but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate

and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals. Our physical existence is in the final analysis the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as the same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructed to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.

now that's freaking epic right that is an epic callout to the passion that coach ripatel has right that's just awesome so i put that on twitter i was fired up you know and because somebody mentioned starting strength and i said yeah of course you know this is a a classic and uh some somebody on Twitter, wrote back and it said, I disagree. I will avoid reading things like this. And I wrote back, and again, I'm not trying to argue with anybody. I just wrote back, hey, when I don't agree with people on a subject, I don't avoid it. I just try and learn from it. And the fact of the matter is, even though I think what coach wrote is awesome, I actually don't agree. agree with it. I don't think that strength is the most important thing in life. I think knowledge is

more powerful. I think respect and loyalty and honor and treating people well. I think all those things are more important in strength. And there's been people that were incredibly weak in the world that have done amazing things and were powerful leaders and were incredible human beings. So I don't actually, you know, believe that strength is literally the most important thing. Now, that being said, if you are smart, if you are an intellectual, then you realize that you should use that knowledge to be strong so you can not be physically bullied, so you can be healthy, so you can protect yourself, so you can be self-reliant. I mean, there's no doubt that strength is a powerful force. But like I said, there's many other things that I think are more important. Now, but what I like about it is that hearing this opinion broadens my mind.

It makes me smarter. It makes me understand how important strength is to some people. And maybe that it should be more important in my head. Because honestly, when I read that for the first time years ago, I was like, oh, you know what? That's awesome. And I should always keep somewhere in my mind that being strong is important and being strong is good. And, you know, in this day and age, people actually, I think, believe that being strong is bad. As crazy as that might sound.

There's nothing wrong with being strong. You know, being strong is good. Never mind, nothing wrong. It's a good thing to be strong. I wish I was stronger. I try and get stronger. And I'm not a naturally strong person. I'm just kind of an average person that works out a lot.

So my point there is, number one, when you get people that are different than you, I don't try and change them. I try and keep an open mind. I try and learn from them. I'm trying to talk about this earlier tonight. People have strengths and people have weaknesses. and if people have strengths, I'm going to try and learn from their strengths. And some people have more weaknesses.

And I try and learn from them as well. You get someone that's an addict. You get someone that's a sociopath. Or you get someone that's a real giver or someone that helps. There's people that one thing that I don't feel like I help people enough. And so I always look at people that are very helpful. And I say, okay, what can I do? What can I take away from their perspective?

But, you know, if I meet someone that's an addict, I learn from them. They teach me very important lessons. People that are winners, people that are losers, I'm going to learn from both of them. Now, back to the original question of how do you deal with it? Because I'm inferring from the question that this person that asked it gets frustrated that others are not living up to their expectations. Now, this is going to sound bad when I say this initially, is that I actually have relatively,

or I shouldn't say I have, I keep relatively low expectations of humans. Meaning when I meet someone, I don't expect to get a lot out of them. I expect to be let down. I expect people, as I talked about the other day, people are crazy. And I expect that. I expect people to do irrational things.

So that's kind of my baseline. And then what's beautiful about it is I'm surprised and happy and pleasantly surprised when people are supportive, when people are reliable, when people are good people, when they make sense, when they're not crazy. And so I think setting the right level of expectations is important to keep yourself from going crazy trying to change people. And the other thing I like about this, attitude,

is I'm not sitting there blaming other people around me. I'm not blaming whether it's my family, whether it's my team, whether it's my people I work with. I'm not blaming them for being unmotivated or blaming them for not trying hard or blaming them for whatever. I'm just taking responsibility for what's happening in my, for me. I'm taking responsibility. If they're not motivated, I need to try and motivate me if I care about them.

If they're dragging me down, whose fault is that? That's not their fault. I'm letting them drag me down. So I'm taking responsibility of my interactions with people to make sure I move it in the right direction. And as a leader, it's my job to get the most out of people. I mean, I always talked about that. You're going to have, your whole team is not going to be studs. You're going to have people on your team that are weak.

And it's your job to get what you can out of that person. Take advantage of whatever strengths they might have. Cover for their weaknesses where you can. That's what you're doing as a leader. And you're leading, whether that's leading in business or your team or your group of friends or whatever. You're taking a leadership position and you're getting what you can out of people. And that's how I deal with. people that are close to me that are not the same as me don't want to hang around with a bunch

well i don't mind hang around people that are like me field teams is pretty the seal teams has a lot of people with the similar you know they're like got some similar uh personalities in there which is always fun attitudes yeah yeah for sure um are there is so you say you have um low expectations Isn't that sound bad? I apologize to people of the world right now. Yeah. That when I look at you, I have low expectations. Don't think of it that way.

Yeah. I'm saying in my own mind, I'm just setting low expectations on people. Or you just don't expect a lot. You know? Yes, that's the low expectations. Like you don't expect shittiness. You expect, you just don't expect a lot. Yes.

Yeah. So if someone's making this, you know, tall claim, you don't expect that claim to be fulfilled 100% or, you know, or whatever. I set low expectations and I look to be pleasantly surprised by those people in the world, the people that are listening to this podcast, you all out there, you're going to fire me up. You know, but, but really, that's, you know, most people that you meet, you can't rely on. Right.

And that's why it's important to find people that are like-minded and link arms with them and go forward into the fray. Yeah, and it's not like people are unreliable specifically. It's just that if you set your own specific expectations on people, because everyone's different, you're different. Like how are you saying? So if you set your specific expectations, which I think most of us do that in one way or another. We expect certain things. All the way down to the language we use. Some people, you know, some people don't like if they're called boss.

You know, you're like, hey, boss, what's up boss? Let me be honest, I don't really like that when someone calls me boss. You know, if you don't know your name, you know, hey, bro, same thing, boss. But they meant it in a good way. Right. You know, but I expect, yeah, I expect you never to use that word when you address me kind of thing. I mean, it's not that serious. But anyway, that's just a small example.

So if you start setting your own expectations, your specific own expectations consciously and subconsciously, yeah, you'll probably get let down. And guess what? Who's fault is that? It's your fault. And you know what's a good tie into this is, and I run in this with business leaders where they, know they're super overachievers and they expect that level of performance out of everyone and they're not going to get it. And the way I explain it to him, I say, listen, I understand what you want to have happen. But just because as a leader, the lead, the platoon commander is able to carry

a hundred pound rucksack, 10 kilometers into the target, hit the target and walk back out another 10 kilometers doesn't mean that everybody else in the platoon can do it. And therefore, he cannot plan that mission. Right. And I would usually get through to them on that because they do realize that they're high performers and that they're overachievers and that they're not going to get. So how are you going to set the expectations so that you're, you've got people that can actually achieve the expectations you've set for them?

So that's right on point, boss. Sorry. Yeah. I dig it, man. Set those look kind of low expectations. I know. That sounds horrible. And let them be there.

But let them be them. Yeah. You know? And that way, when you get let, if you get let down, actually you probably have a less chance of getting let down. So it's essentially you're minimizing the downside, maximizing the upside in your relationships. That's a very positive way of putting it.

Yes, you are correct. Thank you for making me, give me a positive spin to my negative attitude. I think I understand what you mean. I think so. Part of it is denial, by the way, because I don't want it. ever admit or think that you had some low expectations of me and my functionality. Okay, we'll go next question.

Okay, what are the top three, the top three to ten business problems you're asked to solve? Good question. Interesting question, because why would you say top three to ten? Who wrote that? That's crazy. You'd say three or four or three to five, maybe, but three to ten? No, no, this actually should be top three. Well, we'll go for it.

That being said, here's the problem. Here's the problem that we come up against in Laif and I deal with on a regular basis is we get called in due to either a lack of execution or desire to improve execution. And this is the same thing we dealt with with working with leadership in the SEAL teams. You get teams that are not executing correctly. That's the problem that we come in to solve. Now, that execution could be production, that execution could be sales, that execution could be manufacturing. It could be anything, that execution. So that's what we always get asked to solve. That being said, why is there a problem in execution? And the problems, these are where

you get like the, okay, five to seven kind of common problems that we deal with. We address most of them. In fact, we address all the major ones in the book. There's a few nuanced ones, but you know the generally the issues are like oh you can't get people to buy in we always hear that our folks aren't buying in buying into what buying into the plan the philosophy the strategy whatever people don't understand what's happening they don't they don't understand the vision and we go back and we say okay do they understand the why are they is how is the vision being communicated how is the vision being translated up and down the chain of command because you go down from the CEO who has a vision and the way he would speak to that vision is a lot different than the way a

frontline equipment operator is going to want to understand that vision. So is the strategy simple and understandable through the chain of command that can cause a lack of execution? Are there silos? Are there different elements within the company that are not helping each other and supporting each other with a good cover and move. Is there micromanagement going on? We have talked about micromanagement. Micromanagement can cause legitimate problems of execution. Is there unclear guidance?

That can cause problems. Is there ego interfering? That can cause problem. Is there ego driving process instead of the best methodology driving process? Sometimes it's ego driving process. So it's all these and there's just these problems. and we've seen them all. I don't think I've seen a new problem yet in quite some time

where I've said, oh, I've never seen this before. And they're always, these problems of execution are leadership problems, and we've seen the same thing in some way in the SEAL teams. So I think that's why we've been successful as a company going in and getting people to execute better because we've seen it, we know how to fix it, and that's what we do.

all right next question is how do you handle a boss that doesn't know as much as you and they don't understand what you do but they're bossy but they bossy okay so this is actually a normal situation this is not abnormal bosses often don't know as much as the front line troops i can tell you right now. I was the boss of 35 or 40 seals when I was attasking to commander. And I didn't know as much as they knew about their jobs. I didn't know what the snipers knew about sniping. I didn't know everything that the radio men about knew about the radios. I didn't know like Leif, Leif was working with the Iraqis every day. I didn't know about his Iraqi soldiers and what they were like. I couldn't pretend to know that stuff. But

I was actually secure in that fact. I was okay with that. And that's what I recognized that that wasn't my job. And I was okay with it. So the question is, how do you deal with someone like that? Well, let's first recognize the fact that they are insecure in their job. So the reason I was able to let my guys run stuff is because I was secure with myself as a leader and in my position. when you're dealing with someone that's still bossy,

they're trying to impose upon you how to do things. And that is because the root of that is likely, I don't want to call it out as 100%, but the root of that is likely insecurity. He is insecure about his authority, insecure about his leadership, insecure about his position. So when you want to deal with it, how do you deal with it?

Your job becomes in this situation to make your boss feel secure in their position. That's what your goal becomes. That means, and yes, you know what that means? It means nodding your head and giving them credit where they might not deserve it. And inflating their ego or not inflating, but must. massaging their ego a little bit. And you know what that means? The hardest part of that isn't massaging their ego.

The hardest part of is checking your own ego. The hardest part of that is saying is you want to prove to them that you know more than they do. And that just bubbles up and over and it will ruin your relationship. And it will ruin the job that you're trying to do of make them feel secure. Because you're like, hey, boss, actually you're wrong. It's this. Well, your ego feels good. But guess what?

You just hurt his ego. Now is what they're going to do? they're going to try and pose more will upon you. So you've actually gone backwards. You win the battle, you lose the war. So what you need to do is make that boss feel secure, massage their ego. Don't try and prove that you know more. Try and prove that you're there to support and help.

And in the long run, that will be the beneficial way to improve that relationship. Let them recognize or let them feel secure with, what they're at, where they're at, and then they won't impose, try and impose their will on you as the boss man. Yeah, that, I'm going to add, kind of what you were saying, I think, last time, it's a small, tiny side note, but I think it's really important. When you try, when you're doing that, when you're convincing or making them feel more secure as a boss, be sure to come off genuine and consistent.

Remember how we were talking about that? Yeah. Because a lot of people, they'll be like, okay, that's what I'm going to. I'm going to do and then they overtly want to show that that's what they're doing. Whether it be to other people, because, you know, maybe they got scolded or whatever in front of other people. And then so they overtly do it and it doesn't come off as genuine. Then it's counterproductive, you know.

Yes. This is called, well, this is what I used to call in the field team's classic overcorrection. And classic over correction, you know, we'd see guys go too far in one direction because we're always talking about the dichotomy of leadership. And I'd say to a guy, oh, you're doing, you're doing too much. you're not doing enough decentralized command and they do classic overcorrection and they would lose control of everything

or if we told them everyone was too wild and they didn't have control of anything they'd go into level 9 micro-management and just lock everyone down. So yeah, you don't want to do a classic overcorrection you want to moderate and modulate your efforts to make the person feel secure. No doubt about it.

Can you apply extreme ownership at mid-level management versus the C-suite level. Well, this is absolutely true. Can you apply extreme ownership or the leadership principles that we talk about in extreme ownership? Can you apply them at mid-level management versus the executive level of the C-suite folks? And the answer is absolutely yes.

And not only that, but extreme ownership applies through the entire chain of command. The principles are meant for everyone inside the general. chain of command because as we talk about all the time, the leadership just doesn't mean the actual designated leaders. Every person on a team needs to be a leader. And while that may sound cliche, it is actually true. So not only that, but the senior executives at a company, the CEO, they work for somebody. Whether they work for a board, whether it's Steve Jobs in charge of Apple, Well, guess what? He's reporting to shareholders. So everyone has some kind of boss.

Everyone's working for somebody and everybody needs to use these principles all the way up and down the chain of command. The principles of leadership don't change no matter where you are in the chain of command or what situation you're in. And that's why we're getting, we get called in to help every level of the chain of command from the front line troops, from literally from the frontline troops, the equipment operators, the operators in the field, the sales. people on the front lines, we work with them

all the way up to the C-suite and above. Yeah, just like how you're saying it applies to everybody and in every situation, it's absolutely true. Like, in life, in a relationship with your husband or wife, and in the relationship with your kids,

same exact thing. Like if you're taking responsibility for everything you did wrong and right, right? I would imagine you take responsibility for the right things he did, but if you're taking responsibility, responsibility, I think that's when you can eventually function the way that you hope that you'll be able to function.

You are correct. Just to be clear, though, when you do do something right, and you are in a leadership position, you actually don't take responsibility for it. You push that praise of accomplishment to the team. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You never want to absorb that. Dang, that's advanced, bro.

That's actually white belt material. Last question, I think. How do you deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeat, or other disasters? How do I deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeat, or other disasters? I actually have a fairly simple way of dealing with these situations. It is actually one word. to deal with all those situations. And that is good.

And this is actually something that one of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me pointed out to me. And he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he'd say, boss, we got this and that and the other thing. And I'd look at him and I'd say, good. And finally one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having some problem and he said i already know what you're going to say

and i said well what am i going to say he said you're going to say good he said that's what you always say when something is wrong and going bad you always just look at me and say good and i said well yeah and and i mean it and that is how i feel when things are going bad there's going to be some good that's going to come from it and oh mission got can canceled? Good. We can focus on another one. Didn't get the new high speed gear we wanted. Good. We can keep it simple. Didn't get promoted. Good. More time to get better. Didn't get funded. Good. We own more of the company. Didn't get the job you wanted. Good. You can get more experience and build a better resume. Got injured. Got injured. Got injured. Spraying my ankle.

Good. I needed a break from training. Got tapped out? Good. It's better to tap in training than a tap out on the street. Got beat? Good. You learned.

Unexpected problems? Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution. And that's it. That's it. When things are going bad, don't get all bummed out don't get startled don't get frustrated

no you just look at the issue and you say good and I don't mean to say something that's all cliche and I don't mean to sound like Mr. positive find a positive but do that focus on the good

take that issue take that problem and make it something good it'll bring that attitude to your team too you go forward And lastly, like to close this out, if you can say the word good, guess what? It means you're still alive. It means you're still breathing.

And if you're still breathing, well, then hell. You still got some fight left in you. So get up, dust off, reload, recalibrate, re-engage. and go out on the attack. And that right there is about as good as it gets. And that's all I got for today. So everyone that's been listening, thank you for your patience.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for spreading the word. And most of all, to everyone listening to the Jocko podcast. Thank you for getting after it.