Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Reasons Your Tactical Moves are Ruining Your Strategy

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

Know the enemies of strategic thinking. Be sure you're thinking strategically.SUBSCRIBE HERE: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-contentSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko underground podcast number five with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is good deal, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. All right. So we've been getting crazy talking about competing. But tonight, the opening of the podcast tonight, I kind of went a little bit deep on thinking strategic versus thinking tactical.

So I was thinking about that and I started thinking about it. Look, it's so obvious, isn't it so obvious that we should be thinking strategic all the time? Isn't it so obvious? It seems so obvious, right? Why isn't it happening? So I started thinking about, okay, what are the enemies? What are the enemies of strategic thinking? What are they?

What can they be? They've got to be out there because otherwise we would just be thinking strategic all the time. But if everyone was thinking strategic all the time, the world would be an entirely different place. And certainly every individual's world would be an entirely different place. So what's causing it? First thing that comes to my mind, ego. Why is that? How does ego drive us to not think strategically?

Well, because our ego is that thing that is not comfortable with giving a time. tactical victory to someone else. I mean, so I would rather win an argument with Dave Burke, hurt our relationship, make him look bad, devolve our business relationship, our personal. I'd rather do all that because I want to win an argument with Dave. Why? Because that's my ego talking. That is such a driver of doing dumb things. You know, what's really crazy is when people do, when people do dumb things based on their ego and it actually it actually can destroy like your whole company right

you can have a whole company that gets destroyed by ego you can do I mean you certainly can have people and there's examples of battles that have taken place where ego caused defeat and cost you know hundreds or thousands of people their lives based just on ego just on hey we can take these I'm not, hey, my plan is going to, like that happens.

That's a real thing. So when we talk about that, I also want to talk about, okay, so how do you, how do you defeat this enemy of, how do you defeat this enemy of strategic thinking? If it's your ego, how do you, how do you do that? Well, to me, you've got to, and this is the answer. I'm going to say this answer over and over again. You got to detach and you got to think about what you're doing, which, you're, What a novel idea to actually detach and think about what you're doing.

And oddly enough, this gives you this massive strategic advantage. If you can take a four inch step backwards, detach from your ego and look at what's actually playing out. If you can do that, you're like infinitely better than you are if your ego is all wrapped up in this decision that you're making. It's crazy that it would come to that. you've ever seen the breakfast club remember that movie? Yes It's old school right

You see now Right that's your jump The Okay remember the part When he was like Hey uh I made We want like

Early quarantine Yeah You know When it was like Well what are we doing You know And the kids were home My daughters were home

For college From college And all that And we're sitting around So we I said okay We're gonna watch Some 80s movies

I went old school Breakfast Club Was on the list It was one of the few that kind of passed muster. Because some of the other movie, I'll tell you, because I have a daughter that,

she was 10 when quarantine kicked off and all that. Have you watched E.T. Like recently? Like 10 years ago, maybe. Wait, what do you mean it passed muster? Like, like, the family was like, oh, yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah, it was okay.

Because now there was a time where there was like, we're not watching anymore, your stupid movies. As a matter of my youngest daughter, When I say, when I say to my younger starter, oh, do you want to watch a movie? She's like, from what year? And E.T. is one of the ones that sort of put the nail in the coffin on 80s movies.

Have you, Dave, have you ever seen? You've seen E.T. I've totally seen E.T. Have you seen it in the last three years, five years? Yes. Did it pass muster? It hasn't been watched since. And as one of those that I, the iTunes scenario, I'm like, I'm just going to buy it.

Because once they see it, they're going to watch it a bunch. Nobody has gone back to it. shot. And I was, I hadn't seen it in probably 20 something years, but I was so sure that I wasn't even to waste my time with a rental. I'm buying it because this is going to be on repeat. Nobody's gone back to that well. That you and I walked into that ambush the exact same way. It's crazy. I 100, because I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, you said you haven't seen it in 20 years. I saw it in the theater. Yeah. So whatever year it came out, 1983. So I was like 12 years old. I went to the theater and watched it. And I remember it being this.

moving story. And I was expecting, and my, my wife, you know, she's a, let's say she will, she's no, she will get emotional during a movie, right? You know, she'll get sad. And my youngest daughter's kind of the same way, you know, you'll see the tears welling up. So I'm thinking, oh, you know, we're taking down this little emotional thing. And I'm kind of thinking, well, you know, I better check myself too, because, you know, when ET's going home, you know, I don't want to be the, I don't want to be the guy that's

breaking. down during E.T. Bro, it was hard. My youngest daughter, it was hard for her to even kind of watch the whole thing. And part of it is the freaking special effects nowadays. I mean, when you see E.T. looking like a, looking like a, someone's like holding it behind and shaking it to make it look like it's walking. Super lame.

Super lame. But what, and that was bad. But then actually, what was weird to me is like the start. wasn't as good as I remember. And that movie was a blockbuster. It was a blockbuster. Why was it a blockbuster? Special effects, allegedly?

Because I mean, damn. Yeah. Standard below. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I got no answer this time. But yeah, the ET, the kids nowadays,

well, my daughter, she's seven, where she'll like, you know, they can, at that age and older, they can identify, Current special effects in old school special effects Well, you make those little movies with your kids in them And so they're like, why are we watching a puppet? Yeah, exactly, right.

Move all super whack. Yeah, yeah. So, E.T. Didn't really pass the muster. Dang. Ferris Bueller's day off didn't really pass muster. And even I was sort of like, wow, I thought that I remember, I remember these things as they were pretty good.

good, right? And breakfast club. And there was a, I'm trying to think there's some other ones that, that we watched,

but, but breakfast club passed muster. Interesting. Past muster. Dang it and not Paris Bueller, huh? Okay.

Yeah, I know. That's weird. Fras Bueller seemed like that was the adventure. Yeah, it did seem that way. So you were referring to breakfast club?

Yeah. Do you even have any idea why you were referring to breakfast club? Yes, I do. It's a very critical point that you brought up actually about how your ego, you can watch as someone's ego just drives their whole interests

into the ground and defeats them, all of them, completely to zero. So Breakfast Club, there was a time where he came and he and, uh, what's the, what's the principal or whatever? The guy's name for Vernon, I think, or something like this, but I, I don't know. He came in and he was like, you know, said his thing and he's like, I don't know, I think he asked you do you have any more questions and he said yeah I have a question he's like this Barry Manilow know that you raided his wardrobe yeah he said I'll give you the answer to that question next Saturday yeah right like you got another Saturday detention and then he kept going with it right like kind of like whatever what I forget

exactly his response to that one was and he's like he's like oh oh no he's like I'm not free or something like that he's like oh I'm free anyway he goes he's like you want to keep going and he's like and he ends up with the horns yeah With the fingers, two months, Bender. Two months, Bender, I got you for two months. To the point where, and like, just like how you said, you can watch people as they just do it. And meanwhile, so the girl, I mean, I was referring to, I was referring to battles where thousands of people would have been killed because of somebody. But Bender did get two months worth of detention.

Same exact deal. Same exact deal. So Molly Ringwald. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, she's straight up sitting there saying, hey, stop. Yeah, yeah. He's like, cut it out.

Dude, I can't watch this anymore. Yeah. And, bro, that's how, right? Everyone's like, can see it. And brother, the guy wasn't detached at all. His ego was just flaring up front lines all day. Two months of detention, man. Two months.

I got you for two months. You mess with a bull. You get the horns. All right. So we got to watch out for our ego. Our ego is a enemy of strategic thinking. You could end up with two months of Saturday detentions. Or what have you.

Or you can end up leaving. people to death in combat. Both of these apparently are big, huge strategic defeats. Another thing that is an enemy of strategic thinking, this one's real obvious, instant gratification. Whatever that instant gratification is, it oddly enough can just crush a long-term strategic victory because you want immediate gratification right now. Donut. That one's such a weird one right there.

No, no, no. No, no. The immediate gratification. Like, you know it. It's like you see it right there in front. You see the whole thing. It's not like something that's going to sneak out of the, and surprise you. You know, you know, straight up.

Yeah. And you just do it like saving money, right? You know that one? You save money. And then you see that thing that you don't even need. Yeah. In Dispink was Freedom Field Manual. The new edition I wrote a little section about getting ambushed by, like,

as if the. Donut ambushes you as if that's what happens as if the alarm clock snooze button somehow so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jocco underground.com and subscribe and we're doing this we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the jocco podcast which will remain as is free for all as long as we can keep it that way but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can

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