Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko And Dave Berke #23: Critical Advice for Getting Promoted Above Your Peers

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

One day you're a team member, and the next day you are the supervisor. How do you handle that position?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko debrief sitting here with Dave Burke and me Jock Willink. Dave, let's do a little debrief. We work with companies through our company, Eschlon Front, and we work with a lot of of a wide variety of companies. We help them with their leadership. Leadership is the solution to all problems, and we help them solve their problems through leadership. We do, just FYI, change the characters and the backgrounds and the industry so we're not burning or putting on display the problems of companies that we work with. It's all classified

as far as we're concerned. So we do talk through what we see so that we can help everybody learn. So what do we got, Dave? When you get promoted above your peers, the best thing you can do is lead them. Okay, well, that's an interesting thing to start off with. Let's make sure that when we say that, we also put the caveat on there that this doesn't mean you go turn into office Rambo and now, oh, you've been promoted. Now I'm in charge. I'm going to run everything. That's not what we're talking about. That's cool because now I can cross out one of the verbatim lines that what's something you don't want to do when you're in charge.

So the situation for this, and look, you're obviously right. there's a lot to think about in the situation that we're talking about right now as a client who was an individual contributor. He's part of a five-person team. And his boss got promoted up, which left a gap in who was going to lead this team. And he got selected to be the supervisor of this group. So he went from being one of five peers to now being the supervisor of four subordinates that he's been working with for a while.

This company, it's a cool company. They do like data collection for health care. And so there's a lot of time working as a team pulling through data, a lot of time behind a computer. And he had been working well with these four guys, wanted to get promoted. But once he got promoted, his boss, who is now a manager, had been noticing he was shying away from some of the responsibility of that supervisory role. And he had talked to him and kind of what came out was this person was struggling with wanting to promote, wanted to be in a leadership role. but I think he used a phrase he wants to be one of the guys, wants to be part of the team still. And when he was getting tasks that kind of required him to function in that leadership role,

he was shying away for some of those tasks. So that's kind of the situation we're talking to. How do you get someone who is a former peer now leading the teams? What does he need to do to be successful in that role? Yeah. You know, right out of the gate on this, there's an interesting way to look at leadership. And one interesting way to look at leadership, if you have a, this mindset, let's hear you're trapped in this mindset of like, hey, I was one of the guys and

all of a sudden I got promoted. I, you know, I still want to be one of the guys. I don't want to feel like I'm, you know, talking down to them. Like you can have that. You can get caught in that mindset. And one way to kind of help you get through that mindset is by looking at leadership as a job. Meaning, hey, you know, the five of us working together, okay, Dave, we're all doing computer, what did you say? Data collection, data entry, data analytics. Cool. we're all doing that and then one day I get promoted and now I go oh wait now I'm supposed to be telling Dave what to do instead of me thinking I'm telling Dave what to do I think oh my new job is to make sure that the task get assigned out correctly my new job is to make sure that I get the

information that we need from the boss to make sure that gets passed down to the team oh my job is to make sure that everyone gets the equal amount of work so no one gets over over task that's my job so you know we we say all the time leadership is a skill Well, on top of that, leadership is a job. And there's tasks that when you're in a leadership position that you actually have to do. If you're in a seal platoon, right? You might think, hey, oh, the guys are out building a pallet to, you know, get the pallet prepared to load on an aircraft. I should go out there and help them.

I'm the platoon commander. Well, actually, there's something else that you should be doing. You should be setting up to make sure that the aircraft is on time. You should be making sure that the guys are getting their, uh, their, their, their per dieum for the trip. whatever it is you're going to be. You have a job that you need to do. Now, does this mean you can never go out and get in, you know, get your hands dirty? No, obviously doesn't mean that.

But you do have a job when you're in a leadership position. Everyone has roles and responsibilities. So your roles and responsibilities have changed. It doesn't mean you're barking orders at people. It means you have a job and you need to get it done. Yeah. Dude, that's awesome. And I think that really gets to the core of what he's struggling with in this particular case too is

that leadership, that role that you just talked about, it's much more about the actions you have to take and the things you have to do than the title that you have. And inside there, too, I think something you said that's important is if you, if Dave gets promoted and my first thought is, I don't have to do that anymore. Now I'm way on the other side of that spectrum of that's not what it means either. It doesn't mean I thank God I don't have to ever build a pal again. That's for those losers over there. Now, that's not what he's struggling with, but it really gets to the larger point that you're getting at. because there's a balance that you have to strike in there, which is if you say,

hey, I know I'm in charge, but I'm going to keep doing the exact same things. I'm going to go build that palette. I'm going to keep behaving the same way and not actually fulfill those responsibilities in that role. You're actually going to hurt the team because you're going to miss some of those key explanations from key leadership.

You're going to miss some of those deadlines. You're going to miss those things you just described because you're going to spend so much time being one of the guys that you don't actually do the job that you need to do And what's going to happen is the team is going to suffer. One of the things we talked about is one of the things that he was worried about was being resented. And I think you've talked about this too, is this idea of. I've definitely talked about resentment.

Yeah, yeah. Because resentment is brutal. It drives all kinds of horrific behaviors from people. And one of the biggest problems with resentment is that it doesn't matter where it comes from. like this force of resentment is almost like a spontaneous combustion, right? It just appears, right? Oh, Dave got credit and I did it. You can feel this spontaneous combustion of this fire.

And then I need somewhere to direct this heat, direct this negative energy. And of course, I'm going to direct it at you. In this case, you know, because you're the guy that got credit when I was the one that did most of the work and I resent it. And instead of me just saying something like, hey, Dave, man, it's kind of jacked up. You got all the credit for this. And you could say like, well, you know, do you want to talk to the boss? Do you want to figure out how we can give you more credit? And maybe you're a jerk and maybe we shouldn't get along.

And maybe you're like, oh, what do you mean? I did all the work. I don't know. But the worst thing I can do. And that's where I think negative feelings turn into actual resentment is when I keep them inside and I don't let them out. And I don't. Look, this doesn't mean I go direct, you know, VFR direct on Dave. Like, hey, you got credit and I deserved it.

No. But hey, Dave, you know, I noticed that you got the full commitment. on that and I did a bunch of the work do you do you think that does that make sense to you and then we can have a discussion about it and maybe we have to elevate it up the chain of command or whatever but when I just shit on it and it just starts to burn that's when the resentment comes out and resentment is a really destructive and horrible force and like I said a lot of times Dave didn't have anything to do with it it just so happens that you know this corger my my client didn't need to extend

their contract and your client did and this happens to be when the quarterly uh when the annual newspaper newsletter comes out about our company and you've got this multi-million dollar contract and i don't have one and now you're getting all this there's nothing to do with you yeah but man i'm burning up because i didn't get the credit that i deserved that turns into resentment and people do i mean it's cane and able right it's cane and able cane is they cane and able both all offer sacrifices to God. For whatever reason, God prefers Abel's sacrifice. And that makes Kane so mad that he kills his brother.

He kills his brother. That's through pure resentment. So you got to not let this happen. I think it's actually, it's interesting that God doesn't explain why. He doesn't say, you know what? Abel's gift was a little bit better. He put a little bit more time and effort into. He didn't say anything like that.

He just liked this one better. And that may, that's it. No reason. And that's an important part of that story is, hey, things are going to happen that are bad luck for you. And if you let that eat you up, you might end up killing your brother. Yeah. Which is crazy. The summary on that whole thought is it's a crazy thing, what it will drive some people to do.

And it's an interesting part of the discussion, too, is one of the things I was talking to him about in this leadership role is, on one hand, and there's a balance, but on one hand, you don't want to be too consumed with the idea that all my team now is going to hate me. Because that's actually probably not going to happen. First of all, he had a good relation with most of these guys. He was one of the guys. He was well respected. He did a good job. He earned that position.

And so part of it was, listen, don't think that just because now you've been elevated, all of a sudden, all that work you've done, all those relationships you've built, that they're all of a sudden going to turn on you. But the other side of it is I kind of shared a story with him was, what you just described is also a thing that you've got to be aware of. And it reminded me when I was in my first fleet squadron, I was about two years into my four-year time in my fleet squadron, about the time where the commanding officer was going to pick who was going to go to Top Gun. And there's eight guys that were peers, we're all equals. And two of us got picked.

It was one other guy and me. And I was kind of stoked. I was thinking these are all my bros that are going to be stoked too. and most of them more, but not everybody was. And one guy actually pulled me aside and said, you should not have been selected. Now, it was a little bit less about me. He wasn't quite saying I didn't deserve it.

What he was saying was, you shouldn't have been selected. It makes other people are being overlooked, and that's not fair to them. Like, okay. And it was kind of one of those things that didn't really matter. The CEO had made his choice.

I was going to go. But it revealed to me, like, you can't pretend like this is, also isn't a thing. So if you're going to be in a leadership role and you're going to elevate above your peers, don't ignore that exact story that you had. Yeah.

Which is that resentment that could, especially have gone unaddressed and ignored, can lead to bad things. Yeah, I was talking about this yesterday in the podcast. Look, we, we, you got to detach for your emotions. Great. Yes, please do that. This doesn't mean don't have emotions.

And more important, you need to put the emotions of yourself and whoever you're working with into the calculus to get the answer. Yes. So when you interact with the people that you just got promoted above, you need to put the into the calculus that, yeah, some people are going to be stoked for me. Yeah, cool.

Some people are really stoked. You're going to top gun. And there's going to be some people that are not stoked. And you have to think about that when you interact with people. You've got to put it in the calculus if you're going to get the right answer. Emotions are part of the calculus. 100%. And leadership strategy and tactics has.

Kind of a you talk about in the book, but we've talked about it just in general a couple of different examples that you gave from some earlier Paltunes about guys on your team that got promoted and how they went about Responding to that promotion and you kind of had two contrasting examples and of course there's a whole myriad of examples, but the contrast you gave was the one guy who was like well, you know, I guess I'm in charge and whatever and really kind of He's sort of downplays it and diminishes it with I think the intent of hey, I'm still one of the guys. I'm still part of the team and the other guy who was like like, hey, listen, fellas, you probably got the word, you know, came down. I'm promoting up to this new position. Here's a couple things that the boss needs to get done. You know, A, B, and C, let's go make this things happen. And for the most part, for the most part, guys, like, cool, no factor.

And that's really what the point was, is, hey, if you're in a leadership role, you need to lead. Now, leadership doesn't mean, hey, guess what? I'm in charge. I'm sure you saw the announcement. Well, things are going to change. And all of a sudden, you take that and you have to be kind of large and in charge and be the one in charge. But I thought you described it really well, which is the best thing you can do is just do that job, fill that role and be in a position where you might have a couple people that resent you. Maybe a couple of people kind of feel like maybe they got overlooked.

And maybe they should have been the ones to do it. And they're going to have some extra scrutiny. And if you do that job really well and support them and give them what they need and continue the good relationship, you have a much better chance of actually helping that person be successful than if you're like, well, I don't want Jocker to be mad at me because I got promoted. So I'm going to not do that thing and be, and we're going to still be bros or still be buddies. Once you're in that position, you are in that position.

The best thing you can do is follow through on that position. Yeah. Isn't it an interesting that, let's say I get promoted above you, Dave. And I say, I open up leadership strategy and tactics and it says, you know, hey, be humble, listen to people. And I go, hey, Dave, you know, we got this project coming up. I've never led a project like that before. How do you think we should do it? Now, depending on Dave, Dave might be like, wow, Jocco's humble.

He's ready to listen. I'm looking forward to this. I'm glad he got this promotion after all. Or Dave could be like, you see, Jock, do you know how to do this. This should have been me. So you have to put that in the calculus as well. This is what we have to watch out for. Human beings are all crazy, including you.

So we have to watch out for that. And that's why when you approach these things, you've got to really do your best to understand what Dave's perspective is. What's the best way to understand Dave's perspective? Ask Dave Ernest questions. And that's what you got to work with. And sometimes you might have to make some micro adjustments. You know, you might have to say, ooh, I can see Dave doesn't think I know what I'm doing.

And I've given. him a little bit too much and maybe I got to pull some of that back or maybe Dave's like excited about it. Oh, cool. Great. He's not resentful and I can move forward with it. Yeah. And that kind of leads towards the, you know, I talk and I often talk about, hey, what's what's the prognosis? What's the outcome going to be? And I would put this one in the squarely we'll see category because what you're describing, that can be hard when you are the one dealing with that other crazy person. You talk about, hey, we're all different and we're all crazy. And there's no question that's the case.

And in that leadership role, it's one thing to kind of talk about how you want to handle it. It's another thing to have the other person staring you in the face or saying the things that they're saying or interacting with you as a real person. And we will see how this goes. But elevating above your peers and in that leadership role, that can be a challenge,

especially if you don't accept the responsibility like you just described is you actually have, you have to do this as a job, these actions you have to take. And your responses of that for your team are not going to be universal. You're not going to get the same response from all your people. Yeah. What can scare people is even the terminology that you just used elevating above, right?

That's a, if I'm already feeling a little bit uncomfortable, and that's why I like the idea of, hey, listen, here's your new roles and responsibilities. You're in charge of making sure everyone's, uh, gets the right assignments. You're in charge of making sure the boss gets in for me. Do the job. And then you can work from there, but it's a great baseline to start. What are my roles and responsibilities? And I'm going to tackle those roles and responsibilities.

Good way to move forward. Chuck. All right. Is that the end of that one? That's how I got. Okay. We got another one, though. Let's hear it.

Talking about relationships. And relationships can be a lot stronger if you actually know how to build a relationship. True. So just kind of generically, the situation is we've got two team leaders. They work together. They both have different tasks of this company. One kind of builds this basic product they build. It's kind of a software project, actually.

And this other team customizes that product to the individual clients. So everything is about 80% the same, but they customize certain details for each client that comes in. And these two teams have to work together to make sure this customized product gets to the client the way that they want. Teams work together pretty well. The company is doing very well. The question that came up or the situation that came up was one of the team leads, the customized team lead had noticed lately that the other team and him weren't getting along or I shouldn't say that they weren't coordinating as well and so they were getting a little behind some deliveries they had some customer complaints and and they're both doing the same job or in support of each other they are in support of each other their jobs are similar not the same they have to work together to get the final end state of this product to the customer got on time and the simplest way to put it is performance has been going down and The first question I asked is it's almost always the first question I ask, no matter what

the scenario is, no matter what the situation is, or even where in the organization you are. And the question is, hey, how good is the relationship between you and your counterpart or your two teams or these two entities working together? And what was interesting is the answer he gave was the relationship is awesome. So that's kind of where we started was things aren't going well. We're not delivering. Customers aren't happy. We're not meeting our product expectations.

relationship is awesome. Well, if it's so awesome, what's the problem? Because actually, if Jaco and I are working together our relationship is awesome, we're not going to be late. We're not going to under-deliver. We're not going to have these challenges. So there's really inside that there actually is a problem with the relationship.

Where we dug into and where I kind of highlighted this idea of relationships can be much stronger if you know how to build them. One of the things I've discovered, certainly more recently as we've been talking about it, is when you talk about relationships and I ask, hey, Jay, Jocko, what is a relationship? In your mind, you have a pretty good sense of what that is.

You can kind of visualize what a relationship is, but it's sort of hard to explain. And when we talked about, hey, what's a relationship? A lot of times and with this person, too, it was hard to say what it was. Like, well, it's not this that we get along or we like each other. It's a lot more detailed than that. So it led me to have this conversation about,

hey, let's talk about what a relationship is. And as simple as it might be in your head, it's a little more complex than what we think. And we actually go down the path and it really is either this podcast, a debris podcast or some other podcast you and I did where you started talking about initially it was three components. But we talked about the four elements of a relationship, trust, respect, listening, and influence. These are the actual things that make up what a relationship is. But it actually doesn't stop there either.

And we talked a little bit about that is. You have to know how to build trust, how to create respect. And going into the depths of not just what a relationship is, but how do you build those pieces of a relationship? That's a thing that I've seen is a challenge for people to know what to do. And it was a challenge here because there was a problem with the relationship. And the real question was figure out where the gap is. And what do you do to fix that, to build that back up, the part of that relationship,

that's a problem. Yeah. Well, a lot of times when you try and pin something, somebody down like, what is a relationship? And then how do you build it? You know, the relationship, like you said, it's kind of hard to quantify, but okay, well, how are you going to build that? Well, you know, we'll go out for dinner. We'll take them up for lunch. Get him a cup of coffee. That's kind of what people go to and look. I'm all for it, man, go out to dinner, hang out with people, get him a cup of coffee, whatever you're going to do. But the, the trust, respect, listen, and influence, that idea,

when you identify those core elements, then you can actually figure out, okay, well, those are the things I need to build and then it becomes really well it's not so obvious how do you build trust you got to give it how do you build respect or how do you get someone to respect you you got to give them respect how do you get someone to listen to you you have to listen to them those these are also counterintuitive it's really counterintuitive when someone says to me how how do I get this guy to listen to me and I go oh listen to them we know no I want him to listen to me I know cool you want him to listen to you then you need to listen to him you know my but this guy's not treat me with respect well how do I

Get respect from him. Oh, oh, treat him with respect. No, no, I want him to respect me. Yeah, I'm telling you,

treat him with respect, and then they will start to treat you with respect. And same thing with influence. So those are the things we have to do to build a relationship. Now, one of the ways that I always try and portray

the fact that trust, respect, listening, and influence is a relationship, is because when I say to you, okay, if Dave doesn't trust me, do we have a relationship?

No. If Dave doesn't treat me with respect and I don't treat Dave with respect, do we have a relationship? No. If Dave doesn't influence me at all and I don't influence him at all, do we have a relationship? No. And if Dave doesn't listen, so there you go. If those things don't exist, we don't have a relationship. So those are the components that make up a relationship. And in order to get them, you have to give them. Yeah.

And I think that's the key. I wrote down what you said is, and you sort of said it just kind of part of the larger thing is these are the things we have to do. That is a literal thing. So when I talk about trust, when we talk about trust, respect, listening, influence, those are actions. Those are verbs. Those are the things you actually have to do. And so you can even get to a point where you understand a relationship and I can look and go, hey, there's a trust gap.

Okay, Jocko doesn't trust me. Maybe I don't know. Maybe I underdelivered on something or said something and I didn't follow through. If we can even diagnose, oh, I understand what the problem is here. That actually doesn't get to the resolution because I have to do something to build that relationship. And to your point is, if I need you to trust me more, what I have to do is show you more trust. If I want you to listen to me more,

I have to talk less and listen more. And the fact that relationships require work and actions and things that we do, that can be overlooked sometimes. For exactly how you described is when we think about a relationship, like, oh, we get along, we like the same team, or we have the same interest, or we like to do these things together,

again, I don't have a problem with that, but those by themselves don't build the relationship. And if you want to solve a relationship problem, and listen, if your teams are not working well together, there is a component of the relationship that is failing. There's something that needs to get better. I think the trap that this person had fallen into was they had been working well for a long time. And the actions that you take to build the relationship, he had stopped doing those things and taken for granted. Hey, me and Jocko, we get along great. Everything's good. And then some the small things, which is giving you updates, following through, making your, making sure your team got credit, little changes that are coming down the pipe that you should know about.

I'm not telling you those things. And so the things we have to do, he wasn't doing. And as simple as that sounds, if you get complacent inside a relationship and stop doing the actions to build a relationship, that relationship's going to suffer, which is exactly what happened. What was your line of questioning when this guy's like, oh, I have an awesome relationship? It's good to go. Yeah.

The first question I asked him is, hey, so what do you think? the problem is? Why do you think? And what this, what supported is that they had a big client with a deliverable that was late. And I think he said, like, this is the first time we've been late in. He said something like, years. I'm like, he said, what do you think the problem was? And he kind of paused on why they were late. And he said something effective, they didn't have the framework that this client wanted. Something, I'm sort of generalizing. And I said, hey, what does he get that from? He's like, well, he gets that from us. Because he's, this is the, This is the team lead of the customization piece,

and they're the team lead of the framework piece, the baseline piece. And he discovered, he's like, oh, it was that recognition of, I didn't give him a piece that he needed to have for him to deliver what we needed for the customer. And I put in the outcome, I said, humbling encounter. And it was kind of one of those conversations where you have a conversation with someone

and they figure out the answer in the middle of the conversation. You see that look in their face of, And it's the look of, oh, this is my fault. I'm doing this. And these are people that believe in ownership. These are not people trying to shy away from that. This is an actual problem where you look at something and can't diagnose what it is until you look at a couple of things you're not looking at and go, oh, I'm causing, I'm causing this problem.

And what he's causing this problem was for something that he wasn't doing. Not something he was doing, something he wasn't doing. Yeah, that's the line of questioning is always interesting. as you as you start to dive into what's going on in someone's world and you you ask the earnest questions you know earnest questions and you very quickly oftentimes get to that point where people have the self-discovery that oh this is a problem that I have created and the self-discovery is the best way it's so much better than telling somebody something and then instead of them throughout themselves that's 100% true yeah all right what is it my turn now it's your turn all right so from my turn today, I wanted to talk about the MVP, the MVP, the minimally viable plan. And the minimally viable plan is an amazing tool for you to have as a leader. Because for me, it's what I'm looking for. And there's some perfectionists out there, some people are going to get a little bit crazy when I say that, right?

The minimally viable plan is what I'm looking for. So let's start with my subordinates. My subordinate presents me with a plan. Guess what I'm looking for in that plan? Minimally viable. Is it going to get the job done? Is your plan good enough to get the job done? Okay, it is.

Cool. Is it the most efficient way? Don't care. Is it the fastest way? Don't care. Is it the cheapest way? Don't care. Now look, is it overboard expensive?

Is it overboard inefficient? then we can, then it's not really a viable plan, right? Is there some crazy risk involved that's unacceptable? Okay, then that's not a viable plan. So if it's way too much, if it's way too inefficient, if it's way too risky, then those aren't viable plans actually. But if it'll get the job done and there's not some crazy risk and it's not some crazy cost,

that's what I'm looking for. A minimally viable plan. And you know, even if there's a little tactical risk, A little tactical risk like we might take a little digger over here might not work out perfectly. I'm fine with that. Look, if it's a strategic risk, cool. That's not a viable plan. But as long as somebody brings me a minimally viable plan, I'm not going to argue with my subordinate about their plan.

It's going to work. Now, might I ask some earnest questions? Sure. But am I going to dig in and battle against their plan? No. Not at all. Now, like I said, if it's unacceptable risk, if it's unacceptable cost, if it's unacceptable inefficiency, cool.

That's not a minimally viable plan. It's not a viable plan. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask them some questions about those problem areas and they see it and they go, ooh, that is a huge risk. We don't want to do that. Let me go back to you. Let me go back to the drawing board, which is fine. They go back and rework the plan and they come up with a better plan and, oh, now they bring

me another plan and now it's, they've. They've eliminated that risk. They've cut that cost out. We've got a viable plan. Cool. I'm happy. I'm going with it. And if I get in a habit of doing that, we are going to save so much time.

We're going to save time arguing, right? It allows me to be more detached. It gives them ownership. All these things come into play. And they're all very important parts of a team and leaders leading a team. Like you and I debating. for an hour and a half about plan A or plan B is totally worthless. Me trying to dig in and come up with a plan myself, that's worthless.

Now I'm not detached. Now I can't see what problems there are on the plan. Me dictating a plan to you, we know that's bad because now you don't have ownership of a plan. So the best way to do is let you come up with a minimally viable plan and present it to me. And if it's a minimally viable plan, good. We're going with it. So from a leadership perspective, a minimally viable plan is a very powerful.

powerful tool. Now, from a operational perspective, from a decision-making process, it's also a very viable plan. It's also a very viable way to do business. It's a very viable way to operate, is to look for minimally viable plan. Because in most cases, and you can, you can, I'm going to say seven out of ten. 70% of the time it's better to take action than to not take action. Okay. Now, look, two out of ten is almost too much right because there's sometimes where you a tactical pause is the right thing to do you know give it a minute to develop those things happen and you need to you need to check yourself on that you need to make sure that you're not just hey well I'm default aggressive I'm just going no default aggressive is only default the default can be over overridden you have to do that in an aircraft yeah sometimes what do you have to override um there are times that uh the way the system uh is designed uh is designed to will limit how fast you could do something or how hard you can pull or how many you can do at a certain time. And there are literal overrides built in, which is the engineer saying there are times you're not going to want to do the default. Now, you have to take specific steps to do that.

The override just doesn't happen on its own, but it is built into the machine that allows you to override it when you think is required. Yep. And so it's the same thing with being default aggressive. Most of the time you're going to do, oh, the planes tell me to do this. Cool. I'm hitting that limit should stick with it. Yep. Sometimes got to do the override.

Yeah. So that's why it's called a default. aggressive mindset. So most of the time doing something is better than not doing something. Taking action is better than not taking action. Because listen, at a minimum, you get to see a new angle, you get to see a new perspective, you're going to get some feedback on what your action was. So most of the time, taking action is better. But a lot of time, people don't take action. And one of the things that prevents them from taking action is trying to find a perfect plan, trying to analyze all the data points that are coming in. I sent you a text. We haven't even talked about this yet.

I sent you a text the other day. Uh, man, I'm going to have to research it. I sent you a text. You said, what are you talking about? It was like data correlate the data. Correlate the data. Right. Correlate the data. Well, this is what I'm talking about. When you're in a leadership position, you're getting all this data that's coming into you. It could be, you know, you're getting input from this person over here that's telling you one thing. You're getting input from some other person that's telling you you're getting actual data that's coming. You're getting actual data that's in you know results from the the numbers of whatever it is that you're doing all this data is coming in you as a leader got to correlate that data and figure out

what we're going to do next that's that's actually what your job is is to take a bunch of data points from a bunch of different people and a different bunch of different sources and correlate that data into a picture that you can go okay now I can see what we're supposed to do now if you're too close to the data it's like those old paintings where you walk up close to the painting and it just looks like a bunch of dots you can't see anything you can't figure out what the pictures you got to take a step back from the painting you look at the data and you go oh now I start to see a picture now I can figure out what to do

so that's what we have to do as leaders you're constantly trying to pull yourself back away from that image or not from the image you're you're pulling yourself far enough back from that data that it actually makes sense when you see it together because if Dave's telling me one thing J P's telling me something else Lave's giving me some other piece of data Steve's telling me like I got all these people telling me things if I'm too close to them I can't even put them together I've got to step back so I can have a better picture of of what I'm looking at so this is a problem that data coming in is something that I can get so wrapped

around that now I'm not moving forward I'm I'm spending all my time and they have a name for it they get for free you know when something gets a name you know it's a problem right analysis paralysis and sure it's cute because it rhymes or whatever but it's not just something that is just just used because it rhymes. It really happens. We see it in business. We saw it on the battlefield.

People just sitting there not wanting to make a decision, not wanting to do anything. And part of what they're trying to do is they're trying to take the data that they do have and they're trying to correlate it together. And then they're trying to predict what's going to happen in the future, which, by the way, is impossible to do with 100% accuracy. Now, look, if there's some decision that you have such incredibly solid data and the decisions and the variables have been eliminated where it's an actual, you know, 99% possibility.

Well, guess what? We're not even talking about that decision. Who cares? We're doing what obviously the data leads us to. So it's easy to make a decision when we've got 99% of the data and it's all aimed in the same direction. It all correlates with each other and all corroborates with each other. This is easy. This isn't leadership.

This is just following the obvious trail. We don't, you normally have to be. have that luxury or we often don't have the luxury of having perfect data, complete data, all data, and it's all, all the data happens to be pointing in the same direction. That doesn't happen very often. So what we end up with is people that get caught up trying to figure out what their perfect plan is going to be or arguing or debating or analyzing. And so this is another time where you as a leader can can vote for the MVP, the minimum. viable plan and and it will help your decision-making process because it's like a little

threshold it's a little threshold that that you can have as a leader of of okay you know what this i don't know if this going to work i don't know if this going to work oh you know what that's going to work we can execute it it's that it's a nice little threshold to think to yourself all right is this going to work yes or no right is this going to work yes or no it will this I know it's not going to be perfect. I know there's going to be flaws in it, but will it work? And part of when I say the word work,

and this is important, will it improve our position in some way? Is it going to just improve our position? If it's going to at least improve where we're at, and you know what? Maybe all it does is give us information, a little bit more information. Maybe if we go, hey, should we go left or right?

Well, I'm not really sure. Left seems like a good call. At least when we go left, we know, oh, we maybe it was the wrong way. Okay, at least we know that now. So we learned something. And you can see where this is very clearly connected to iterative decision making. If you think of iterative decision making, and you've heard me say a thousand times that I cheat when it comes to making decisions because I'm just going to make really small decisions very quickly. Well, one thing that allows me to do that is I'm not looking for a perfect plan to move a short decision. I'm looking for a minimally viable plan. And that's what I'm going to do.

So I have this very low threshold for taking action. And there's some level of risk. But guess what? Since it's a small action, I'm able to do it. And I'm able to do it quickly. And then, of course, we've got to run the loops. The loops being the Oudaloupe, right? observe,

orient, decide, and act. Well, you decided to make this minimally viable plan. You decide to do that. Cool. Then you act. You execute the plan. And then you got to run the feedback loop.

Okay, what is it telling us? Same thing with the EO leadership loop, which you covered on here. You got to get the feedback. Once you make a decision, then you got to get the feedback, make adjustments. And that will get you where you need to be

with a minimally viable plan. What do you do? think. That's awesome, man. It's listening to it. It's crazy how how quickly you tied it back, even to the previous scenario, we just discussed and to use that word self-discovery. And I wrote down in the different examples of what you do with this minimum viable plan, minimally viable plan, both versions of what you do get to the same place. One is I'm like, okay, cool, let's do it. And so your plan, we get to go do it. So what you want to, you've figured that on your own. I didn't impose it on you. I didn't make you do it. I didn't tell you to do it. It's yours. You discover it. We go

execute it. Or I go, hmm. Okay. I got to ask a couple of questions. And then I ask those questions and you discover for yourself and you can either go, oh, good question, Dave. Let me make a couple of changes. Or, oh, I'm glad you asked that. Here's the answer to that. Either way, it gets to the same thing and how that is so much more powerful than me telling you or imposing her, even even teaching you, which I'm not saying that's a bad thing. And yes, we want to do that. But how do I really want you to learn? And if you can discover it for yourself,

that is a lesson and the method to get that lesson. And I just wrote down the other thing is when I think about the MVP, when I think about the idea of getting that minimum viable plan and you discovering for yourself, the biggest barrier that I see is my ego that tells me my plan is better than yours. Yeah. So you know what I'm going to do?

We're going to fight. And maybe it's a subtle fight, maybe it's a big fight. But either way, we are going to, we are going to wrestle over whose plan. Instead of the threshold, and they wrote that down, the threshold of me going, can I just look at that and go, I wouldn't have done it like that. It's not what I would do. But you know what? It improves our position. It's viable.

And if that's the case, the answer is, just go do it. But my ego tells me no. Yeah. You know what you said, you mentioned about, I always, maybe you didn't use the exact words that I use, but I want. I don't want to tell you the truth. I want you to, the truth to be revealed to you by you. Not only is it more acceptable to your ego. In fact, it's like, it's ego champion, right?

You get to say, you know, Jaco, I've fought through this. Yeah. And actually, we want to, we want to attack this target from the West because there's some, there's some defenses over there on the east. So I've changed my plan. I go, oh, thank you. And you're actually, you're up ego from that. It's a positive thing.

But then you use the word. teach and I thought about that and I don't know if you've been through you must have been through this stage with your kids when it comes to teaching them the times tables which as we know way the warrior kid I like the times tables I like the flashcards one of the things if you want to teach someone is you have to let them figure it out that's why even in in warrior kid mark has to make the flash cards He has to figure it out. The first time you figure out that four times four equals 16, when you figure it out,

if I just tell you, okay, Dave, write down four times four equals 16 and you go, cool, and you write it down. And then I go, okay, four times five equals 20, write it down. If I'm doing that, I'm removing the most powerful step of learning, which is you figuring it out, you wiring your brain. And I'm sure there's some neurological process that's taking. taking place. But when you go, wait a second, four times four, okay, I know four plus four is eight. I know four plus four is eight. And eight plus eight is 16. So four fours four is 16. Okay,

go. And next time I ask you this, you know it. You know it. So not only is it more comforting to your ego when you are able to discover the truth, it's a more powerful teaching mechanism. And this is like, I'm sure you could say this about Top Gun. This is definitely true in training young seals, just telling them, hey, you want to hit the target from over here? It doesn't leave a mark. If you say, hey, why are you going to hit the target from over there? And they start to look at the terrain. They say, well, you know, because the terrain is, oh, actually, oh, you know what? I didn't do a good terrain study. You know what? I'm actually going to adjust my plan. That leaves a mark. They say, from now on, I better do a better terrain study. That's what we want to do. And that's

going to be much more helpful in educating your team leaders on how to actually lead. Anything else, man? No. Right on. All right. Good place to stop. If you want to dig deeper to any aspect of leadership, we're talking about these subjects all the time.

Actually, live, we have pre-recorded training. Is that even the right word pre-record? I guess it is pre-recorded. But we have courses that you can go through extreme ownership.com. It's an online academy talking about how to live better. How to live better. If you're out there interacting with another human being, you're in a leadership position. If you're interacting with your spouse, if you're interacting with your kids, if you're

interacting with your peers, if you're a brand new guy at your company and you're not in charge of anybody, you're still in a leadership position because you have to lead your peers and you have to lead your boss in the right direction. How much of your time, how much of your career, Dave Burke, did you spend leading your superiors? A good amount. I mean, the chances that my boss had the perfect plan were next to none. We're going to, you're going to have to lead your bosses.

So no matter what you're doing, you're in a leadership position. Come and check it out, Extreme Ownership.com. Check out the academy. If you want our help inside your organization, we have a whole leadership consultant. So you go to echelonfront.com. You can pick up any of the books that are written about leadership. You can listen to my other podcast, which is called Jocko Podcast. We have the unraveling, Jocko unraveling podcast, and also for the kids out there, the warrior kids.

Get that warrior kid podcast together. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, go to jocco store.com, go to origin USA.com. Or go to joccofuel.com and get yourself some gear. That's all we got for today. Thanks for listening to The Debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.