Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #19: Winning An Argument May Create A Bigger Problem

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Winning an argument about who's plan is better does not guarantee the best plan to be implemented.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko debrief podcast, episode 19 with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. What are we doing here? We're debriefing leadership scenarios that we have with our clients at Eshlam Front. We're debriefing scenarios that we talk about on Extreme Ownership Academy. Then we just try and share. We want people to learn. We don't, look, I hope we don't have a business. in three years.

I hope that everyone says, oh yeah, we know all this now. I hope that's where we're going. I hope that this information just gets disseminated and people grab it and they pass it on. They understand it fluidly

in a short period of time and they just, they just transform their lives and businesses so that we can go out of business. That's what I hope for. My hope is not too strong. I'm not worried about our future at a business. But that's what we're doing here.

So this is us debriefing various topics that we had to contend with for our company, Astonon Front. So let's debrief. What do you got? Winning an argument that your plan is better than someone else's doesn't actually guarantee that the best plan is going to get implemented. And in fact, winning that argument might mean you created a bigger problem. So this comes from a client we're working with.

They're in the tech space. And they've got multiple teams inside this company. It's kind of a smaller company, but they've got different teams that focus on different things. And then these team leads all kind of meet, you know, in a regular basis to discuss. And they kind of debate what they should be working on. So you have someone that as a team leader that works on like the user interface. And that's a huge priority for them. And the resources and time to improve that.

You have another team that maybe works on the code of the product in the background. You've got a team that focuses on the marketing or the sales. And there's different teams. And they get together. and they discuss what should be what should be the focus on but there's also a ton of overlap it's a small company that are all smart folks so you don't just get one task where you just work on this you you can interact with other other people on the team but you've got kind of this focus and the leader of one of these teams who've been working with was discussing how they're he's having a hard time

lately convincing that the other team leaders in this group meeting is convincing them that what they should be working on is what he thinks they should be working on. And so there's kind of this growing friction across the team leads inside this company. And these meetings are starting to become more contentious. They're less cooperative. There's less agreement and there's growing frustration and there's more conflict. So we got these various teams and each one of them is striving to be the focus of the company. Yeah. What we're working, my team should be the focus. So the additional resources or how we prioritize what's getting done. Now, that doesn't mean that you on the code team will have nothing to do with it.

You might even be helping working on this because, again, it's a small team. So there's a ton of overlap. But I'm going to sort of advocate for my team's priority. And I think there's three or four different team leads. It's them and like the CEO. And they have a bunch of subordinate folks that are or that are working as well. But the conversations are, you know, relatively small group. And it's, they're becoming more contentious. And you're pushing back more and you're advocating for your team more. And it actually reminded me of when I was at Top Gun and the time that I spent on the staff there when we were instructors. And we all had these individual assigned areas. We call them SME areas, which you probably heard the term SME subject matter expert.

So I was given a particular subject matter expert that I was individually responsible for. And all the instructors had their own area that it was theirs. But we were also all instructors. So we would all teach the students. We would all do different types of missions. I didn't just focus on that, but when it came to discussing prioritization for those SMI areas, I was the, I guess you would say the advocate for that area because that was my expertise. I, in theory, had more expertise than anybody else because I focused more on that. And you've only got so much time.

You only got so many resources. All the areas are important. There is no one area that's not important, but we might need to decide what we should. should be working on or what we should be applying those resources to. And what I learned at Top Gun, and it took me a little while to figure this out, what I came to discover, and I didn't figure this out right away, but the staff would go in and have these meetings. And they had a group inside the staff where the top most, I say top, it's top by seniority.

The 10 most senior instructors would kind of have these staff meetings, and they were the ones that were doing most of the talking. And the other junior instructors were there to kind of observe and listen, and they can contribute if they wanted to, and they're there to support. But in these meetings, there were people that had a really loud voice. Instructors would go in, and they'd kind of have their story written out, and their idea and their approach to this particular problem. And some instructors would go in, and they'd be literally the loudest voice in there.

They would talk the most. They would be the most forceful. They would sort of advocate the hardest. And at first, if you kind of walk in the very first meeting, you see these people talk, and it's sort of compelling. Like, they're articulate, they're well-spoken, they're forceful, and they, there's a little bit of an appeal to it. But what I came to discover was the more an individual instructor talked, the louder they were, the more forceful they were, the less they were light. The less effective they actually were. the less people would listen to them.

And so over time, I discovered, like, that first meeting, like, that guy had, boy, that was, do you remember that guy said? That was awesome, all that stuff. And I would learn that that was sort of their MO. So every meeting they'd come in and they'd kind of pound their fists on the desk. This is how it should be. This is what we're doing. Here's why.

Here's all the things we're doing. And what I would see is more meetings. I found, A, I found that less appealing. And amazingly, everybody else did too. And so the loudest, most forceful instructors that were at, advocating the most were actually usually the least effective. They were the least effective in getting their porn across and they were least effective in getting the outcome that they wanted. And on the last podcast, I was giving some story and we were kind of role playing an example of me

pushing back and you used, I think you said when I push back or something along those lines, use the phrase I think close-minded. It shows that you don't have an open mind. And it's interesting because the louder you are, the more you talk, the more you reveal to the other people on the staff that you do not have an open mind about their opinion, their priorities, their projects, or whatever they're working on. So I talked to him about, hey,

this idea that you're going into a room and what they want is they want everybody to get in a room and they want the best idea to come out. That's what they want, which is important, which makes sense. Of course I want the best ideas. I want to be on a team where the best idea becomes the plan or becomes the action.

thing that we're going to do. But here's the thing about the best idea. I don't know what the best idea is. I don't know if my idea actually is the best idea. So the two things I think were the biggest takeaways from this conversation is he was starting to see that as time went on, he was becoming less influential. People were listening to him less. And we talked about this.

You talked about this the last time we were recording. And we talk about it all the time is if I want to, if I want to influence you, If I want you to listen to me, I have to listen to you. And I have to let you influence me. I might have to go with your plans. I might have to listen to your ideas and go with them. And this discussion we have about trust, respect, influencing, and listening.

And the most important thing I can do to earn those things is keep my ego and check and trust you and listen to you and influence you. So right away, this idea that if people are listening to me less, if I'm less influential, So the first thing I should do is think about what am I, am I coming into these meetings? Am I talking the most? Am I the loudest? Am I advocating for myself the most?

But this other idea, too, that's connected to that is like, I'm going to go in there and I know my idea is the best idea. And I need to convince you. I need you to see that my idea is the best idea. And again, something you've said is that when you and I get into an argument about what we should do, where we should prioritize, how we should approach this particular issue, you and I are arguing about the unknown. We're arguing about the future. We're arguing about something we actually don't know what will happen. And even the best plan, Dave's plan is the best plan. It's still not a perfect plan.

It's still going to run into problems. And when those plans run up against friction and problems, I'm going to need people other than me, people on this team, to be solving those problems. And so what do I want for them? I want them invested in the plan. So the best plan, if I, and I think the way I describe this, the best plan, if I were to define what the best plan is, the best plan is their plan. It's their plan, whatever that plan is. And if Jacco and I both go in there and Jocko's got an idea about how he wants to do it and I have an idea how I want to do it, we could try to pick it apart and look at every detail then try to come up with some numerical factor of your plan is an 87, mine's an 89.

You know what? Mine's better. Let's do my plan. or I could actually not do that. I could go with your plan. I could listen to your ideas more. I could let you tell me what you want to do and support you more.

And not only does that give me more influence over you over time because I'm listening more, you're more willing to listen to me, when those plans get implemented and we start running into those problems, all that friction, all that resistance that's happening because we're arguing, it's not there.

So when we run into the problems that we will find every single plan, The best plan is not the best plan. The best plan is actually on almost every case, whoever did their plan. And yeah, there's probably a ton of discussion. Can I shape that? Do I want to influence that?

Do I want to help course correct? Yes. And the best way to do that is to have you, trust me, want to listen to me. So the more you walk into those meetings, the more you talk, the more you pine your fist, the more you advocate, exactly what he's seeing is what's going to happen. They're going to start listening less.

They're going to start pushback more. The team's going to start to risk. Different teams are going to start to resist more. going to build those silos and in the end who's going to lose the company the the real team the organization is going to lose yeah what a lot of that is boils down to is leadership capital right every time you open your mouth you're expending leadership capital other than the time when you say hey dave your plan sounds really good i'll support you then i just gained leadership capital so you got the person at top gun that's rolling into everything with an open

Checkbook just throwing freaking you know his credit card down on the bar and saying drink up everybody He's just expending leadership capital all day long and eventually he's in there people know that his credit card isn't even wore he doesn't have anything left in his bank account So now when he has a legitimate idea that is truly impactful to the organization He doesn't have any freaking leadership capital to get it done So we nickel and dime ourselves to death we spend this we spend that you know you're damn right They said we should only debrief for an hour. I said an hour and a half. Now we're doing hour and a half debriefs.

Yeah. And you expended all this leadership capital to. An extra half an hour debrief. Is it really going to change the world? No, it's not. But there's something important that could happen and you won't be there. Now, I got to ask this question the other day. I was talking to a company, a client.

And the question was something along the lines of, and this was a, I really liked this. Something along the lines of, but hey, Jocko. Sometimes don't you have to advocate for yourself? The big fear, right? The big fear in life is, if I don't advocate for myself, then I'm going to get trampled. Now, out of the gate, I can tell you,

for all practical reasons or for all practical occasions, no. Look, could you identify a time when you have to advocate. If you and I sat down and said, okay, let's review, let's talk, let's discuss this and find out, figure out a time when you have to advocate for yourself, I'm sure we could come up with something. I'm sure we could create a situation and create the correct variables where you have to

advocate for yourself. I haven't been thinking about it for two weeks. I haven't been able to come up with one yet, but I'm sure we could. I'm sure we could. I'm sure there's a scenario where you got to advocate. Do you sometimes have to advocate for your team? Yeah, you do sometimes have to advocate for your team. I get that.

Here's the deal. The best way to advocate for your team and the best way to advocate for yourself is to advocate for the mission and the team as a whole. Not just your team, but the whole team. The best way to advocate for yourself and your team is by advocating for the whole mission and the whole team. And by the way, every time you want to talk about expending leadership capital. Every time you advocate for yourself, it's the grossest expenditure of leadership capital you can give. And people never, I see people all the time, they don't even recognize this. They think that, A, no one notice.

They think that people, well, I understand he's got to do that. No, no one thinks, hey, you know what? I understand where Dave's coming. He really needs to look out for himself right now. I've never thought that about anyone that I've heard advocating for themselves. Never. I never think that. I think, oh, Dave's out though.

Dave's looking out for Dave. Cool. Check. That's what I think and his leadership capital goes down and now when he presents something legitimate to the team I'm trying to figure out the angle that he's working to take out to look out for good deal Dave So once again we can sit here and we can we can we can think about arguing now Here's what's beautiful here's why you don't have to advocate for yourself You don't have to advocate for yourself

Well let me rephrase that Here's why you don't have to advocate for yourself in 99.9% of situations. If you are in the 0.1% human, that is your goal is to take care of yourself, it's going to seem like you need to advocate for yourself. And you're going to fail because of it because that's what you're going to do. But check this out. If I am advocating for the team and I'm advocating for the mission and we accomplish the mission and the team does well, what happens to me? What happens to me? My team, oh, my team just did well.

Oh, the entire team did well. And my team was part of the entire team. And that means my team did well. And guess what my boss thinks? Hey, Jocco's team did a good job supporting the overall mission. We won. Wow. Seems like he's a good leader.

Maybe I should promote him. So it's as sad as it sounds. It is self. You are helping yourself when you look out for everybody else. I guess that shouldn't, I shouldn't say sad. It's actually the beautiful thing, right? It's a beautiful thing that if you go and you look out for the team and you go to the mission accomplished, you will get taken care of you don't need to advocate for yourself.

Advocate for the team, advocate for the mission. And you're going to win. But if you sit there and you think, well, I don't know. I better look out for me. Everybody's going to see it. It's not going to help the team. It's not going to help the mission. And ultimately, it is not going to go.

to help you. So if you want to advocate, if you want to, quote, advocate for yourself, the best possible way you can advocate for yourself is by looking out for your team and looking out for the mission. That's what you should do. And that goes to these situations where, hey, Dave's got a division and I've got a division and I sit there and say, well, I'm going to get as much as I can. Actually, Dave, it seems like you've got a project that's way more important than the project.

I'm going to, how can I support you? I'm advocating for you. So be careful. full of that. All right. Got another one? Yes. What do you got?

It's a little similar. This is, I think, we don't always explicitly talk about it, but we know that there's a component of humility and ego underneath everything we're talking about. Almost every situation you can dig

and find, okay, there's what the ego is contributing to this. Oh, you mean like I got to advocate for myself? Right, yeah. So kind of a similar situation. Only this was,

so this is a, financial company that have branches all over the country, branch managers, and they're in region, so these branch managers work for a director. So like a director would have like seven branches. And there's a particular branch manager that we, it's part of a larger project we're working on and sort of advertises himself as a person that's very direct by nature. Kind of explain, hey, I'm just a direct person. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I can't even wrote it. The best way to get to communicate is to get to the point. He got recently in a, in a conversation, got chewed out by his boss in front of other branch

managers, which obviously is not good. So I don't know all the details behind that, you know, is this person sort of routinely a, going to chew out in public, you know, obviously something we, we tried, you're going to give some feedback, negative feedback. Like you don't want to do that in public as often. He doesn't want to yell at your subordinates for other people. What if it's directed to the point, though? You can just tell them the truth.

And there's growing friction between this branch manager and his director. And the conversation was, you probably already know where this is going is, hey, how do we get to the answer without wasting time? And the question of, hey, how do I get to the answer without wasting time? And what was added to that was, I'm not afraid of my boss. So, again, we were kind of dealing with some of the same subjects. but the ego component of that, I think, was stronger, which is thinking about the direct approach from the other person's perspective.

Okay, I'm a direct person. So I'm going to be direct with Jocko. Jocko needs some feedback or he's got questions or whatever it is. I'm a direct guy. Let me think about it from how Jock hears what I'm saying rather than from my own perspective. And so that idea of, can I be humble enough to actually think of it

from a different point of view? Can I detach enough and go, I'm going to think about this less about the one who's communicating, and I want to see what Jocko hears from me when I'm direct. And so I say, hey, when you are direct with your boss, do you think she appreciates it? Well, no, but she does know the information she needs to know, okay? Do you think she wants to hear that information the way that you communicate it? Not necessarily. So what information or what sort of evidence do you have that the way you're communicating the truth of this information is not,

is not effective. She yelled at me in front of my peers on a team's call on the internet, or a virtual team's call last week. So we started talking about the direct approach. The first thing we talked about is, hey, slow down, don't talk.

And if you have to push back, the technique we talk about all the time is when you push back is in the form of questions. And the big part of that, and I think it was the last time we were talking is, When you ask those questions and we say you have to ask Ernest questions, the thing that the ego, the hardest part that your ego will convince you of is that you're asking those questions as a technique as opposed to, I'm going to ask an nurse question. And my boss or my peer or anybody doesn't have to be your boss might give me an answer that was different than mine that might actually be right. and if I ask a question to kind of get a better understanding what's going on,

I have to have the humility to know that this information might be correct. That they might actually be right. And the critique, the immediate feedback, the immediate direct response might actually also make it longer for me to get to the outcome that I want. Which is what's best for the team. Not just this one branch, not just this one person, not just this one person, not just this one part of this director's entire region of responsibility, but the entire team that they are part of. And I said, hey, the biggest issue you've got right now is you have someone, you have a boss that doesn't trust you. You have a boss you don't have a good relationship with. So how do we solve

these other problems? The number of one thing you can do right now is to build a better relationship with your boss. You getting yelled at is a sign that you have a bad relationship. So what are the things we do to build a good relationship? You just talked about leadership capital. We talk about these four things all the time. And we put them all under the umbrella. We talk about cover and move. We talk about teamwork. We talk about relationships. And inside that is this idea of leadership capital and the components of building that capital is trust, respect, influencing, and listening. And part of those I was, I've worked this on like, it's going to sound repetitive. But I don't, it's not repetitive because this is the, these are the things that sit inside these relationships

all the time. The more your boss influences you, the more influence you have over your boss. the more you listen to her, the more she will listen to you. The more respect you show her, the more she will show you respect. And the more you trust her, meaning she says we should do it a certain way. You know what? Maybe she's right. Let's go execute her plan. The more trust you will build overtime.

All of those things, all that leadership capital, what that does is it actually serves to reduce the friction in your relationship because there's less resistance. There's less to push back on. There's less to argue about. and there's actually less reasons for her to chew you out. And all that over time, if you play the slightly longer game, which is not the direct approach,

which I just tell you the truth, it would give you my two cents immediately, is it will help you steer the team to the right outcome, which is what you want. So I guess it's a little bit of repetitive there, but we didn't talk about it. I didn't mention it last time, but the idea that your ego will convince you,

not only that you are right, but the best way to get to the outcome is to tell everybody else that you're right as well. Which we know doesn't work. It doesn't help. It doesn't give you

what you need to help the team be successful. And in the end, what it'll end up getting you is yelled at by your boss on a call, which we don't want because it's bad for her. It's bad for you and it's bad for all the brain. It's bad for everybody.

So this was an indirect approach discussion, but the, real piece of this was the humility to go, hey, you know what, if I talk like this, how does the other person going to take it? And I need to change the way I, I need to change the way I talk, not that they just need to listen to what I'm saying, because this is the answer. Yeah, that's kind of an ironic, proper usage of the word ironic. It's ironic that I just like to be direct, but then when someone's direct with me, I don't like it at all. And I didn't quite have the foresight or the, or the, uh, intro,

To say wait a second I didn't like getting treated that way, but that's what I do to everybody else Which is which is a crazy idea, right? But we make that mistake all the time. We make that mistake all the time where we think it's a little bit different for us Well, I'm sure I'm sure you know Dave likes getting that direct stuff feedback from me. He must like that It's like no think a little bit deeper. You know what's interesting about this? I've been throwing this word around a bit lately when it comes to leadership the word the word is weak weak and people don't it's one of the worst things you can tell a leader right that they're weak you're a weak leader ugh that's like a military i wonder if they say that outside the military hey this person's a weak leader but here's what's interesting what's interesting is what we think is weak

because there's people that we could easily convince. We could easily be convinced and we might even think ourselves that if I listen to Dave, even though he's subordinate to me, I'm weak. Actually, it doesn't matter. He subordinate, peer, superior.

If I listen to him, I'm weak. I'm being weak. If I show him some reverence, if I say, hey, sir, how do you want to do it? I'm being weak.

If I allow Dave to influence. me with his plan I'm being weak if Dave comes up with an idea and I accept that idea over mine I'm being weak you can see where I'm going with us and it's just all ego it's all it's all ego all day long and we can't allow ourselves to to be afraid of appearing weak and here's what's so messed up is what you think makes you look weak actually makes you look strong yeah hard for people to understand that when you say hey That sounds like a good plan man. Why don't we go with your plan?

It actually looks strong. It doesn't look weak at all. Not afraid of my boss. I'm not afraid of my boss. That's the thing, right? That's a strong statement. Yeah. I don't want to appear weak and say,

oh, I'm afraid of my boss. That would be a weak statement. I'm afraid of my boss. That's weak. No, so I'm not afraid of my boss. I'll do whatever I want. Horrible. All right.

Time for my turn? It's your turn. Check. heck so I got asked a question well we're up at the council up in Washington state a couple of the couple of the attendees at the council which is a very small group very intense sessions we had up there for a couple days but a couple of the attendees had heard some of the stories from lay fin andrew and there were stories about me and and and cool stories made me sound pretty cool, right?

Thanks, Leif and Andrew for making me sound cool. But, but, you know, just basic stuff. But then these two attendees kind of, we were talking afterwards, um, um,

and they said, you know, you, you have really good, you have really good intuition. Meaning that I had this sort of instinct of what to do in tough situations. You know,

got this really good, intuition leadership intuition and I kind of you know I was like think yeah I'm right and I kind of told him that like yeah you know and I appreciated it appreciated it appreciated it appreciated Lief and Andrew making me look good and then I appreciated the fact that these guys saw how just an intuitive leader natural leader I was but even as they were saying it to me and I got over the the the the four milliseconds of thinking I was cool and then I thought to myself well that's freaking not cool at all. It's actually not cool at all.

Because if I'm just good at leading because I have good intuition, well, then what good is that? It's good for me, and it's good for my immediate team. But it's not, I can't help anybody else. Right? And like I said, I get where they're coming from. It made sense because I am good at figuring out,

what to do I could see how they came to the conclusion oh here's this story lay's telling a story about this that and the other thing and jaco did this and it's like whoa and then Andrew tells stories oh jaco did this and it like I said makes me look cool whatever but also it makes him think like oh they're well they're listening to these stories and thinking okay well that's freaking pretty impressive how do you do it oh it's because you have good instinct you you kind of knew what to do but if it's just because I have good instinct if that's the reason why I'm able to pull this off Then what good is it for everybody else? What's good for whoever's listening to this right now?

Because what's good is it for people that want to lead better? If it's just, oh, yeah, Jocco's, you know, he's got good instinct. Doesn't help. So I started thinking about that. It's getting a little paranoid. And I'm thinking, well, okay, well, what actually is it? Because I know, well, this is what I had to decipher because I'm sitting there. You know, I got the little boost of ego of like, well, yeah, you know, I've got really good instinct.

But then I'm like, wait a second. I wasn't born. this way wasn't born this way I remember being in the seal platoon and looking around going way it's like what are we supposed to be doing right now I remember that I remember as the quote instinct developed well what wasn't instinct that was developing it was leadership that was developing it's not a it's not a supernatural thing it it's the way you think it's the way that I think it's what my mind does when I have a decision or a problem to solve or a maneuver to direct when I have to lead I'm going to

what is my mind going to do so I okay what is my mind going to do this isn't just instinct this isn't just intuition there is a protocol that is taking place what is it okay you can probably guess the first thing I'm going to do I'm going to detach I'm not just going to detach I'm not just going to take a step back there's more to it because taking a step back Only gives you one perspective one other perspective so I don't just take a step back. I'm going to move around The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to oscillate and I don't know if you have this in the in when you're flying an aircraft Dave When you're diving We we with the type of diving that we do

You're you're trying to stay at 12 feet basically and Certain things can make you go Deeper and as you start to go deeper you start to go deeper you compensate and you compensate and you start to go up but most people overcompensate and so you go 17 feet and you go whoa I'm way too deep and then you go so you make these adjustments to your rig and to the way you're breathing and all of a sudden you're at five feet and go oh my gosh I'm too close to the surface I got to go back down so you so we call it porpoising up and down like a porpoise I don't know if that happens with an aircraft but it does yeah it does and it's not a good thing it's it's not a good thing

we called it PIO which is pilot induced oscillation I love it. So what I want to do when I detach is I want to oscillate. I want to PIO. I want to, and what do I mean by that? I want to go to 20,000 feet, 30,000 feet. But guess what? Then I want to go right back down to four feet.

And I want to look at that problem. Then I want to take a step back out to 12 feet. Then I want to go to 100 feet. So I'm going to oscillate my altitude up down, close, far, close, medium. So I'm going to oscillate. And then I'm not just going to go up. and down an altitude, I'm going to maneuver around. I'm going to look at things from different vantage points. I'm going to see different angles. I'm going to ask more questions. By the way,

everything that I'm talking about physically, this is important. Everything I'm talking about physically doing, I'm not just talking about physically doing it. I'm talking about mentally being able to go to different altitudes, seeing things from different perspectives. I'm going to check my flank. I'm going to check my six to see what I'm missing, which is a habit that I formed. I would check the flank like when I was doing an immediate action drill with a rifle in my hand I would always check the flank It was an instinct and then I would check my six It's an instinct that you get You guys had to have something like that totally absolutely

And you're checking your flank then you're checking your instrument then you're checking this then you're checking that and you're just going through this cycle And then I I'm gonna question if my reality is even correct Because I don't trust myself and not only that in a bad way But I did a podcast with Echo Charles a little while ago. I think it was an underground podcast. I was talking about the fact that we're all crazy. We're all crazy. This is a true statement.

Do you know what? So we're all insane, I think. So the technical definition of insane means that what I think is reality. What I think is reality is not reality. That's someone that's insane. Well, here's what's going on. Check this out. Is the reality that Dave Burke sees the same reality that I say?

Is it? No, there's differences. You see things a little bit differently. And look, we're probably as closely aligned as two humans can get as far as what reality looks like to us. But still my reality looks a little bit different. So therefore, you're a little bit insane and so am I, because neither one of our realities is actual reality. The reality is a little bit different than what you see and what I see.

So everybody's a little bit crazy. So I have that in my mind too. I'm thinking all the time when I think I know reality, I'm thinking to myself, well, I am actually a little bit crazy. And my reality might be different than Dave's. And it might be different than Laf's. And it might be different than whoever else we're working with. So I have that going on. And then on top of all that, I don't find conclusions in my thought patterns.

I don't get to a point where I say, okay, there's the answer right there. I don't find conclusions. I just find a new perspective and I don't think I'm done yet. I don't find a perspective and say, okay, this is reality right here. This is what it looks like. Now I can stop. Once I find a perspective, once I find that little section of reality, I'm immediately looking for another one. And so I'm constantly running that through this loop.

And I know we like running loops. I know we like running the Oodalup, which I'll talk about. But I've also got another loop that I'm running, like a little combat leader. Extreme ownership loop that I'm running. So the Oudaloo is real obvious. I'm running that one. I'm going to observe. And by the way, observe.

What are we talking about? I'm talking about oscillating perspectives. So observe means moving around looking and trying to see other perspectives. That's what observe is. Orient. How am I going to orient in a leadership situation? I'm going to ask questions. That's how I figure out where I am and how all this fits together.

Then I'm going to decide what kind of decision. I'm going to make I'm going to make small decisions because I'm going to make them rapidly and then I'm going to act what I'm going to take I'm going to take action a small action based on a small decision and by the way when I take an action my anticipation is that I'm actually wrong I have at least 50% of my brain that's saying you know what you could be wrong right now you could be wrong right now so you better check yourself and you better you better start running this this loop again immediately I think there's people that make decisions and they think they're going to to be right. 98% of their brain thinks they're going to be right. And I never think that. So that's the first loop that we're on. It's your basic Oodal loop. And then I'm going to run it again.

And I know we don't have to run the whole thing. I know that this is, you can run part of it and you can, you can backfill in other sections. But that's what I'm doing. But then I get this combat leadership, this kind of, this kind of extreme ownership loop that I'm going to run. And it's real. Straightforward. And I got to tell you this. I made one adjustment to this as I was as I was coming here today

This one adjustment because it's a big deal for me The one adjustment that I made is the first thing that I think about The first thing that I think about is time I am acutely aware of time I pay attention to time I am always tracking time because time is the thing that we can't adjust we can't control it we can't get it back if we We don't pay attention to time, it will bite us. So the primary thing that I'm thinking about in my head,

let me rephrase it. The first thing that I'm going to think about, the first little checklist, I'm thinking, okay, how much time do I have? How much time do I have? What is the clock doing? And I have to revisit that all the time. I was thinking, you know, I was brag.

Is that right right word? Yeah, I brag that I was never late in the Navy for 20 years. How come? because I'm always paying attention to time. Always thinking, hey, this is going to take a little bit longer. Hey, I need to move a little bit quicker. Always paying attention to time. So time comes first.

Then guess what comes next? Cover and move. Am I supporting my team and the teams around me? That's a little sanity check. It's a little loop. It's a little check. Am I supporting my team and the teams around me? Am I doing that?

If I'm not doing that, I got a problem. The simple. Can I make this more simple? Can I make this situation that we're in? Can I make it more simple right now? What about right now? Because things are trying to become more complex. That's what's trying to happen.

I'm constantly saying, okay, how can I simplify this? Prioritize next to you. What's the priority right now? Here's a little additional information. What's the priority right now? What was it? And most important, what's it going to be? I'm looking for the, what is going.

I know what the priority is right now. I already told everyone what the priority is, but I'm not thinking about that anymore. Now I'm looking what is the next priority going to be because I got the team when I say hey we need to get in that building Good guys are moving that building I'm not thinking about that anymore. I'm thinking what's the next priority going to be? Decentralized command check this out here's a little here's a little loop to run on yourself What can I task out and to who that's we are in a firefight? We are in a critical situation What can I task out stoner go take that building right there get on the rooftop?

It's done What can I get off my plate? Hey, Dave, take my radio man, go freaking get comms. Cool. That's not on my plate anymore. I'm not worried about it. Is the team going to be able to act without me? Without communicating with me, without asking me for a decision.

If I say, hey, Dave, go make comms with the aircraft. Cool. But did I just empower him to do anything with that? Dave, go make comms of the aircraft. Get the freaking, get the enemy shut out on the west over there. Cool. You don't need to talk to me again because I know what you're going to do. You're going to get bombs on target.

After that, what am I doing? I'm thinking about my ego and I'm thinking about humility. Because wait a second, what role is my ego playing in the decisions that I'm making right now? Am I putting the team before myself? Am I putting the mission before myself? Am I making a mistake? Right? Am I making the mistake?

Am I wrong? What about my emotions? There's a little check. Are my emotions under control? Are my emotions impacting my decision-making process? Have you ever caught yourself in the act of making an emotional decision? Yes, absolutely. I know exactly.

And I'm more than like thinking of the feeling of when you catch yourself. Yeah. I was getting spun up there. We're getting spun up there. Didn't like that. Imagine if you're not running this loop in your head. You just bypass all these things. You're bypassing all these things.

You're not covering move. You're not worried about any of these things. You're not keeping things simple. You're not prioritized next year. You're not decentralized command. You're not paying attention to time. You're not paying attention to your motions. Here's another one, perspective, right?

I'm constantly running my mind thinking, wait a second. What is Dave seeing right now? What is Leif seen right now? What is the enemy seeing right now? Because I know Dave's in that building. I know Laf's over here. But what is, so what does Laf see? What does Dave see?

What is the enemy see right now? Oh, and by the way, is there an easier way to do what we're doing? I'm constantly acting myself that. Asking myself, is there an easier way that we could get this done? Wait, why are we exposing ourselves over here? Why are we pulling our resources over there?

Is there not an easier way to get it done? And then what about this question? And this is one that gets left off the plate all the time when it comes to leadership decision making. This one's so obvious. But let me throw it at you. What's our mission? What's our mission?

What is our long-term strategic mission and does whatever I'm doing right now support it? Because you end up making one small decision, another small decision, another small decision. All of a sudden, you're doing something that has nothing to do with the reason that you're out there. And then guess what? And then I run that loop again. And I think this is the key part of my quote intuition, my leadership intuition. I think the key component of my leadership intuition is, that I don't mentally stagnate.

I don't get caught in a rut of thought. On the battlefield, you have to maneuver if you're gonna win. You have to, you can't stay still. You can't get stagnant. And it's the same in life and business and in your head of making any kind of decision. If you get caught in one channel of thinking, you are going to get crushed.

You are limiting your vision. You are and when you limit your vision you limit your possible solutions you live it limit your possible decisions that you can make to win you get caught in one channel of thinking We when the GPS came out when the GPS came out I don't think I had I didn't have the fur there was one prior one that was issued in the field But I use the GPS system call I think was called a PSN8 PNS 8 PSN8 Satellite navigation something yeah precision navigation system and whatever.

Eight. P and S eight. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. So at the time, I don't know if they had the full satellite, the full, what did they call it? Satellite.

Constellation. They had the constellation of satellites up. I don't know if they had all of them yet. But there was like, there's supposed to be 24 satellites in the constellation. And they only had, maybe they had 15. And each one of those satellites

is on a different frequency. Of megahertz. So when you would turn on the GPS, that initial GPS only got one frequency at a time. And by the way, if you only know where one satellite is, you have no idea where you are. So that GPS, when you turned it on, it would search for a frequency. And it would tune itself to one frequency to listen. And it would wait for 20 minutes before it would shift to the next one. And sometimes, I mean, you couldn't even manually say, hey, here we are.

Where's the satellites? You couldn't do that. It had to find itself. And it would take, sometimes it would take four hours to figure out where it was. Now, once it knew which satellites were up and which ones were in the constellation, then it could start maintaining and keep track. And it would shift as one would fade. It would go to another one.

Now on your phone and my phone, that those things are tracking. As soon they're tracking 24 frequencies is to get, finds itself immediately. I always knows where it is because it's keeping all those channels open. Well, you got to think of your mind like that. If you get stuck on one of these frequencies, if you get stuck on one of these channels, you're not going to know where you are.

And it's not hard. Here's what's scary. It's not hard to get stuck. It's not hard to get stuck just, you know, whether it's your emotions, whether it's you get stuck in one perspective, whether it's you get, you don't pay attention to time.

you get stuck in one of these ruts, one of these channels, and you're not going to be able to make good decisions. So that's the quote intuition. It's not intuition. I'm not, I'm not, I don't have a superpower. I ran this loop. I ran these two loops, basically. And if you run them quick and you don't get stuck in a rut,

you're going to see more and you will be able to lead correctly. What do you got, Dave? I got too much to talk about on this podcast, but I think the note that I wrote down, the biggest thing for me to think about on what you just said when you were talking about oscillations, at the very beginning, you were talking about oscillations. And I said, hey, you know,

there's a version of that in the airplane too, is the difference between the oscillations that we were talking about is, is the one you described the beginning, the one I described with, PIO, those are reactive. Oh, I'm at 12. I'm at 17,

supposed to be a 12 and I'm reacting. You were talking about being proactive with those oscillations. I'm at 12 feet. And if I stay at 12 feet, all I'm going to see is the world at 12 feet. So I am going to move to 17 feet.

And yeah, okay, there's an aviation version. I'm at 10,000, whatever. It doesn't matter. It is this, it is the forcing myself to proactively move to a different point of view to see what the world looks like. And I was thinking about how comfortable it was like, because in my aviation brain is, okay, our plan today is we're going to go from point to point B at 30,000 feet.

Cool, I'm going to do 30,000 feet. And I'm going to stay there. I'm not locking my autopilot and not move one foot off it. And how much of the world I won't see when I, and how comfortable. Actually, is a pilot like, if this is 30,000 and one, I'm like, oh, that's kind of annoying. I want to dial that down to exactly 30,000 feet. when we are landing aboard the aircraft carrier,

we would fly something called the meatball, which is a big yellow light that's sort of oriented to another series of lights that are across a horizon line that are green. And if I put the yellow light in the middle of the green lights, I'm right where I'm supposed to be. And the worst thing you can do when you're landing aboard the carrier

is be reacting to this ball. If I'm low, I'm so behind and I've got to throw a whole bunch of power. And I'm not going to put it right back in the middle. I'm going to end up going super high. And then I've got to pull all this power back off and bring it back down. and I'm just reacting to the position of this light,

which is really the reaction of the position of where I'm supposed to be, which is not on the right path to where I'm supposed to go. But if I'm actually flying and I see what we call a centered ball, which is that's exactly what I'm supposed to be, I don't leave it there. I actually proactively, I'm going to just a little bit of power to push it, just a little bit up and I'll bring power off. So I'm going to control, I'm going to proactively control where I am,

as opposed to being reactive and how easy, it is to get complacent with your position because of the work that it takes to move away from where you are, hey, the company's doing really well here. We're in a really good place, you guys. Let's kind of just ride this for a while. Let's just stay where we are. As opposed to, I guess what it boils down to, certainly when I think of you is the discipline that it takes to force myself to look at other things. When we could just stay here. This is kind of good. Let's just rent and end. the different perspectives that you see when you proactively oscillate as opposed to the reaction,

which is a very different thing that we're talking about of, I'm off, so I'm reacting and I'm behind and I'm just moving around and how different it is to, I can't stay here. I don't see everything. I have to go somewhere else.

And I'm going to directly, I'm going to direct myself to do that, which, and what you're talking about too is there's a physical component, but it's really the brain, is the hardest part of. I'm going to force my brain not to agree that what I see is everything. The conclusion that I've drawn isn't right because there's not enough information. I've got to go somewhere else. Yeah. You want my instinct? That's my instinct. My instinct is I don't have a conclusion

right now. When you're when you're parachuting, if you have a malfunction with your parachute, they give you a lot of warnings and a lot of training that, hey, don't get sucked into that problem Because what you'll do is you'll sit there and try and fix your parachute, fix your parachute, fix your parachute, fix your parachute, fix your parachute, and you hit the ground and you die. What they tell you is check your parachute, check your altimeter, check your parachute, check your altimeter, check your parachute, check your altimeter,

2,500 feet, cut that thing away, get your reserve out. I know that you guys have to have things like that where if you allow yourself to get fixated on any aspect of your or any aspect of the enemy, you're taking that thing into the dirt. Totally. 100%. And there's a whole other segment I wrote down here, and I'll try to do it quickly because I don't want to talk too long because I'm trying to digest in my brain what

you're saying is there's kind of two sides of that. One is we call it fixation. There's target fixation, but, oh, I've got a malfunction on my gauge or whatever. And if I focus on that one thing and a lose side of everything else, I will literally, literally fly into the ground and kill myself. even if it's the altimeter because there's other cues that I can look at when my altimeter isn't working

to make sure I don't hit the ground. There's vertical speed, there's angle, there's a bunch of things. So I can't get fixated on any one thing. But I was thinking even in the terms of the word that you use the very beginning of instinct is if that's the answer, then I can't teach it, which is awful.

But we also know that that's not true. But when we start teaching, and we do this all the way up to, the Top Gun level in the very beginning level is, I need you to learn, you got to check your flanks, and I need you to learn, you got to check your six o'clock. You need to learn that skill. And so what I will do is say,

when you go through an engagement, you push through the engagement, count to 15, look over your right shoulder. Count to 15, look over your left shoulder. And what I do is I sort of, I introduce it through rote mechanics, that you're going to do it at 15 seconds. And what that eventually evolves into is you,

you, I don't look at my watch anymore. I don't have to set, 15 seconds. I don't count in my head. One, two. It becomes instinct. But what you'll find is that if I set, if I go into the debrief and I look at your camera, you'll push through this engagement and I will, in my brain, count to 15. And without a clock, you will do exactly. And people got great instincts. Jocco's got great instincts. Like no, that was taught. That was a skill. And it started with the rudimentary set your clock, look over your shoulder, check behind you. And you do it enough and enough and enough.

And then what will start to happen is you'll start to go, man, I think I've missed this. I have not checked my six and enough, and recently enough, and you'll start to look over your shoulder. And what will come back and do is like, Jocko, it's almost like you knew the enemy was rolling, you know, that they'll attribute it to great instincts. But it's not.

It's your brain saying, dude, you haven't been looking at other places. And so we teach that and it starts with this very rote thing and it turns into instinct. And yes, I guess, look, I would be lying if I didn't say that there are some people, I guess, have some intuition about things. There are people that have some good intuitions about things. But this is 100% teachable, 100% at least in terms of getting people better at doing it. What's crazy is in the aircraft, like I've flown F18 before. Flown in an F18 before?

In an F18. But, you know, it's got all these warnings, these audio warnings, warning, altitude, altitude. And there you go. So even a guy that's been highly trained is going to get can get sucked into and has to have a voice come and tell them to to check your altitude. And guess what? There's no warning lights in leadership that you're going to, there aren't any. So if you just decide to focus and start getting emotional or your perspective gets locked into just what you're seeing or just what your boss is seeing or or you lose track. of what the there's nothing that goes age what's your mission what's your mission

there's nothing that said you're getting emotional you're getting emotional there's nothing that says this is your ego driving this there's nothing that says check the clock you're gonna run out of time think about this is what I'm saying this is what I'm saying this is the loop that my mind is running and it's happening instinctually because I've trained it that way and it all starts and the key component of it is to be able to detach. If you can't detach,

none of this other stuff is going to happen. It's not going to happen. Look, you could actually detach and write these things down on an index card and be like, cool, next time we have a issue at the company, I'm going to pull this out,

and I'm going to, as I'm talking, I'm going to sit there and, and I'm going to go through this checklist and make sure that I'm following this protocol. You could do that, and it would actually be helpful. And if you do that long enough, eventually you'll realize,

Hey, it's gonna seem like instinct, but what you've really done is trained yourself. Oh, you feel your emotion spiking up. Oh, it's my there's my ego. Oh, I'm only looking at one, but I need to check my six right now. I need to understand Dave's perspective. Am I wait, can I simplify this right now? Those are the things. It's a loop and it seems like instinct, but it's habit. It's habit that was formed. Check. All right. Another 57. Seven minute. Be brief. Get some. Good place to stop. Hey, if you want to dig deeper in all aspects of leadership in any area, you can join Dave and myself and the rest of the echelon front team. Extreme Ownership.com, the Extreme Ownership Academy.

This is what we do all the time. By the way, leadership is not like an injection that you get, and now you're good to go. It's more like going to the gym, and you have to work out to stay in shape. So come to the leadership gym and get a leadership workout. Extreme Ownership Academy. And if you want leadership guidance inside your organization, check out at Eshalonfront.com. We've also written a bunch of books.

Extreme ownership, The Dicotomy Leadership, which I wrote with my brother Laif Babin. Also, leadership strategy and tactics. Got some other podcast, Jocko Podcast, Jock Unravelling, Grounded, and the Warrior Kid podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jocco store.com or origin,urusa.com.

or joccofuel.com. Thank you for listening to us. Debrief. Now go and lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.