Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko And Dave Berke #24: Don't Be The Easy Button and Keep Your Opinions to Yourself

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Jocko and Dave Berke breakdown challenges of companies and solutions from Echelon Front.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko debrief podcast. Episode 24 with Dave Burke, me, Jock Willing. Dave, what's going on? Let's debrief. What's happening? What do we got? I always like to start these off like a little, like a little phrase that helps me think about the shortest way to describe what's going on. Okay.

What did you pick for this time? Don't be the easy button and keep your opinions to yourself. Okay. So don't be the easy button, very cliche, even though we use it. And it's cliche for a reason because there's, it's a good piece of advice to give to people, but keep your opinions to yourself. A lot of times people don't want to hear that. A lot of times they need to hear that. There's some true benefits to keeping your opinion to yourself. I know in the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics I talked about don't give up your

position, right? We don't announce to the enemy where we're going to attack from. We don't put a flag up while we're on reconnaissance, right, to tell, hey, we're here. Why would you do that? So there's a one aspect of keeping your opinions to yourself and of course right now as we say that there's at least at least well let's just say 50 percent it could be 70 it could be 30 there's a large percentage of people that go that's crap yeah what do you got an opinion you need to voice it you need to let people know what you're thinking that's what needs to happen so you people that it that your hair stood up when Dave said keep your opinion to yourself. If your hair stood up a little bit, if you thought, you know what, I'm going to go listen

to a different podcast now. Then that's actually, you maybe should be listening to this. Okay. So what's the, what's the scenario? Yeah. And the whole point behind that is just like you described is, yeah, there's always truth of the way we explain this, but there's much more to it than just that phrase of keep your opinion to yourself.

There's certainly times to share your opinion. Of course. But in this, it sort of summarizes this particular case. So I've got this company where we've been working. with for a while. The person individual, the individual working at this is the CEO. She started this company. Her company founded it from the get-go. She does like marketing and design. She works with a bunch of bigger companies. She started as a one-person show, and now she's got 20 plus people at her company. She's doing really great. Her frustration of what she's saying

to me is she's working through this is, hey, I'm frustrated with my team and my subordinates keep coming to me with questions that they can answer for themselves. How do I get them to stop coming to me for every little thing. So she's in charge. She's got a bunch of people working for her, good people. Her frustration is they seem to be coming to her for everything. And she wants them to be making decisions on their own. So my immediate thought is,

hey, I want to make sure we're not talking about an easy button scenario, which, again, is a cliche, like you said. But people come to you, and if you solve their problems for them, over time, you become the easy button. In fact, if you can solve my problems and, like, you're helpful to me, I'm going to come to you and go, hey, I've got this problem. Can you fix it? And if you fix it, that will become a habit.

Yeah, right. We got Pavlov's dogs here, right? So every time Dave comes to me and says, hey, Jockle, what should I do here? And I tell them exactly what to do. And it gets the problem solved. Eventually, Dave gets trained to not think for himself, but to come and press the easy button, which is me with this solution. Yes. So you wanted to make sure that that this wasn't the scenario? Yeah. I want to kind of explore that because if you are the easy button like you described, that's the predicament you'll find yourself in is people keep coming to me to solve their problems. So I solve them and they keep coming back. And if you're in charge of the company, the CEO, like, you don't want to be solving all these problems.

You want them out there operating independently because you need some free time and some bandwidth to do some other things. Well, not only that. If you want to develop the people below you in the chain of command, then you need to let them do that. And if you think that while the person is at a sales meeting, 250 miles away in a different time zone, and now it's after work hours and they're calling you and your kids' rehearsal and they can't make any decisions. That's a problem. Yeah. So we want to build decentralized command with insider organizations that we can operate more effectively and more efficiently. And if we're the only person that can solve problems, we're not going to have that.

Yeah. And it's super inefficient, especially if you come to me and I'm going to solve it. I got to ask you a whole bunch of questions that you actually already know the answer to. So it takes a lot of time to get to a solution, just like you described. So start with that. It's always important to look at the different reasons why. The thing that was interesting about this one is I know a lot of this team. we've been working with them for a while.

So these people she's talking about, her downstream leaders, and there's, you know, a couple layers in there. Some are relatively new, but they've been around for a while. We know these people. And these are like smart, talented people. These aren't people that you would think habitually want other people to solve their problems or that they're not capable of doing it. So you put that in the category of, I got smart people, they're capable.

This one is probably not just her tendency to like to solve problems. And the fact that she's frustrated led me to just talk to some, other situation, talk more about the situation, kind of find what's going on. So I asked her, I'm like, hey, walk me through, like, what are these conversations like? How does this happen where somebody comes to you and they say, hey, can you solve this problem for me? And her version of the story is they want to have this discussion around ideas. And so you'll come to me. I'm the CEO. You come to me and we've got this strategy we want to apply or this product we want to put together or this thing we want to, we want to kind of solve.

And the way that she has it in her mind is what she wants to do is create what she called, she uses this phrase, the best idea wins scenario. You come with your ideas? I come with my ideas. And four or five us will sit down and we'll collaborate. And in the end, we'll all agree on what the best idea is. And so the concept of the best idea scenario sounds really cool. But there's a little bit of a problem with that.

And there's a little bit of a problem in this one is that she was really vocal about her opinions. And what she would do is advocate for the way she wanted it. kind of aggressively. And in theory, that's fine. But if you're the CEO and the founder of a company and you want things done a certain way, and I tell you down to the detail how I want things done, eventually what you're going to do is acquiesce. Or there's a very high risk that what you're going to do is acquiesce.

And General Meade Battle of Gettysburg. He's the guy that ran the Northern Union troops. and we talk about this when we go to Gettysburg. The way he would run his meetings, when he'd ask for opinions, start with a junior man to prevent exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. Right? So I'm the CEO and I say, hey, let's, how do you guys want to do this mission?

This is what I think. At least half the team goes, okay, well, I'm on board of that. Sounds good. I'm not going to, I'm not going to voice my opinion right now. I'm just going to keep it to myself. So that's a good way to defeat that people being hesitant and people being too influenced by you when you're in a leadership position. So General Mead would say, all right, I want to know what you guys think.

Start with the junior guy. Yeah. And as I think about that and the connection you make to that, if I'm in a leadership role and we start with a junior guy, you talked about a concept called the minimally viable plan. Oh, yes. That's all I'm looking for. Yeah. All I'm looking for.

The cool thing is if you start down like you said with the junior guy, if he comes up with the MVP, the minimum viable plan, you actually don't even know. go, need to go that high. What you actually want to avoid, and that really is what came out in this case is that's a great technique, especially if you can avoid getting up to your level where you have to then say what you think. One of the worst things you can do is, oh, hey, Jocko, I'd love to hear what you think about this. Here's what I think we should do, because you're going to be very inclined to go, oh, Dave, why don't we do it your way? And if you started to talk to some of the other folks, the way they felt about it, it wasn't an open form of ideas to come up with the best idea wins.

it was she has opinions about everything down to the details and I don't think she trusts me to solve this on my own so what they started doing is kind of behind her back like hey she's just going to push back anyway let's just go to her out of the gate because what was happening is they were formulating these plans putting these ideas together putting some pieces into place presenting them as part of this best idea wins and they were losing every one of the conversations so what they started to do the habit started to be created is that they stopped doing that They stopped doing that work. They stopped putting in the thought behind it.

They stopped thinking about their way of doing it because they knew then in the end they were going to lose the best idea debate. First of all, this is look, is this critical? No, it's not critical. But think about the framing of best idea wins. Because now it's your idea against my idea. We're in a competition and I want to win and you want to win and I'm the CEO and I'm going to win. So framing something as the best idea wins that's probably a bad idea out of the gate because it's going to put everyone anyone that has any competitive nature whatsoever is going to go in there with this idea The other thing is you might if you again if we're engaged in competition to see who's got the best idea

That means and look a woman any leader woman man whoever that's the CEO of a company They're a competitive person by nature. Yeah So there's a decent chance that if you work for For me, Dave, there's a decent chance that maybe there's some info I hold out on you. Maybe there's some techniques that I could have taught you that I didn't. Maybe there's some information that I could have given you that I didn't. And now all of a sudden I'm able to win all the time. Well, that's because I'm withholding information or I'm not training you correctly.

I am actually depressed and saddened if my subordinate can't come up with a freaking plan that's that's usable. That's that's pretty damn good. And it doesn't take, usually doesn't take that long before the person that works for you. Now they're in the field. They're doing this all the time where they go, hey, boss, and their plan is either equivalent to or possibly better than what you would have come up with. Now listen, you will have the advantage when you're in a leadership position. If you do it correctly, you'll have the advantage of being detached.

So when Dave, you know, you're a platoon commander and you're running a mission and you run another mission and you run another mission. And all of a sudden you get really good at planning those things. And if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm detached and I go, hey, let me look at your plan and maybe one out of every three plans, I go, hey, Dave, you got to remember that there's a piece of terrain feature over here. That's going to be a problem. So I should still be able to be a little bit of a tactical genius. But for the most part, I should get to a point where Dave, the plan that you come up with is not just a minimally viable plan, which is where we may have

started six months ago or three months ago. Now your plans are actually totally legit. And the only thing I'm doing is I'm just giving them a strategic sort of 40,000 foot view to make sure that nothing got missed, you know, make sure that you didn't get too close to the planning where you might have missed some bigger picture stuff. So that's, those are some things to work out as well and to think about is number one, do we really want to frame our planning sessions as people winning versus people losing? And listen, I've known thousands. Have I known thousands? I won't put a number of. I've known many, many, many people that they, relish winning with their idea. They relish when their idea is, is the winning idea, when they frame it that way as a victory. And look, we could probably do a whole other podcast about how do you contend with people like that, that they've got the winning idea. And there's, I mean, it's pretty obvious what you're going to take the indirect approach. You're going to ask her in this questions. You're going to make them think that your idea is their idea. And then they think that they're the greatest thing ever. And so their idea won, they don't know that it was your idea. We're all good with that. But those are just some things to watch out for, watch out how you frame things.

Look, if you frame with you, if I told you and Laif and Jamie, hey, listen, I want each of you to come up with a plan on how to execute with this client and whoever comes up with the best plan wins. That's not a great environment to go into. Yeah. It also, it also, it also mitigates the idea of the collaboration of ideas, right? Because you're part of your idea is good, but part of my idea is good. And we take them both and mosh them together and all of a sudden we got a really good plan. as opposed to 100% me or 100% of you. I don't want 100% of your plan

because you miss some things. I don't want 100% of my plan because I miss some things. So open your mind, everybody. Open your mind. I can't think of a time where I've come back to you with a plan I've had about whatever it is

that I want to do at Echon Front that hasn't included inputs from Jamie. I haven't talked to JP and go, hey, I got to, you know, Jock was asking about this. Here's some thoughts I had. I can't think of a time where I've come back to you

about something that really affects the company, something we really wanted to do from a planning standpoint that didn't include a bunch of other people anyway. And I think to your point, the only way I'm going to be comfortable with that collaboration is if I don't feel like I'm competing and you're not tracking wins and losses of your subordinate leaders, like, oh, Dave got the W on this one and Jamie lost or vice versa. So another thing that's going on is once I put myself into the category where I'm competing for best idea against you and I'm the boss and I'm competing against you and I'm competing against JP and I'm competing against Jamie, you're going to follow up at that point.

Yeah, well, not only are going to follow up with it, but you know, Jamie pointed we had an Academy call today and I was talking about being self-aware and when I got done talking about, one of the things that I talked about was, hey, listen, you are either talking or you're listening. It's very difficult to do both those things at the same time. And if you really want to know what's, if you really want to understand what's happening in a situation, if you're talking, you're not absorbing information. You're not collecting information. You're not processing what's really going on. You're not listening to other people. So talk less. Shut your mouth.

Listen to what other people have to say. And when I got done with that, Jamie pointed out, you know, when we have meetings at Eshlam Front, she's like, she pointed out to everyone like, hey, Jock doesn't really talk. He might say something at the end. He might chime in after all the arguments have been laid on the table by Jamie, by Laif, by Dave, by JP. Everyone's put their word out. And I have not.

tried to formulate my own plan. Because as soon as I start trying to formulate my own plan, all of a sudden I'm in the weeds. And I don't want to be in the weeds. And it's the same thing with, you know, tactical operations. I wouldn't look at a target. Now listen,

I'd look at a target and you know the deal. I mean, if you had to figure out how to do a strike on a surface to air, you know, what do you call it? Ayat's for you guys. Something different for you guys. Was it same for?

Integrated air defense system. Okay. So you guys, that's ay ads for you guys. For me, it's immediate action drills. So I ads for you guys was an integrated air defense systems. So if you had to look at a coastline, you could look at it and be like, okay, here's the general plan. You could figure that out in 30 seconds because you do that for your whole life.

But as soon as you start committing and like, okay, what's the altitude of this one and where's this one array? Now of a sudden you're getting in the weeds. It's better to say, all right, where's the lie lieutenants? Have the lie lie lieutenants come up with a plan. They come up with a plan to attack, to do a strike mission on these integrated air. defense systems and then you get to look at it with a second set of eyes and you're going to be infinitely better at catching any issues that might be there so as soon as this CEO is presenting her ideas she's already taken herself out of the

altitude out of the command position where she can see the most and she's in the weeds with everybody else and slinging it out for the for the victory of the idea all right well you've you've already hit both directly and in your directly. This is all about detachment. And one of the things I've discovered, the more I've done this, when I'm dealing with, we deal with layers of leadership at every level, every level of leader, from CEOs to the most junior frontline leader. When you're dealing with founders, people have literally, this is an idea that they've had in their mind that came up with on their own. I have noticed that detaching for them can be harder. And you understand this, having

founded, you know, multiple companies. And also, I know you've worked with companies that's led by the founder and CEO, the ability to detach sometimes can be harder for them. Well, this is the absolute analogy to that is people ask me, what's the difference between leading a team and leading a business and leading a family? And the thing is in your family, it's your family. So it's much, much harder to detach and be unemotional because it's your kids and you care about them. And you can't fire your kids. They're going to be with you. You can't fire your wife or your husband. They're going to be with you. And that's the way it is. So it's very difficult to detach.

So that's why oftentimes when we have to deal with this situation, what we say is, hey, it's your baby. I get it. Yeah. No one wants to say their baby's ugly. No one wants to say their baby needs some help in something. No one wants to say their baby needs to move in a different direction because they were actually wrong about these various factors. So yes, it's very difficult for whether someone's the, whether it's the founder of a company, sure. That's one thing.

But when it's like I have my idea that idea is my baby, it's hard for me to. say that actually, you know what, I'm going to, you know, leave this baby out in the woods because it's not going to make it. It's very difficult for people to do that. Yeah. And that kind of covers it is that that was the connection I was making from detachment as a founder. It's really hard to detach from that thing that you literally gave birth to sometimes. And the same thing is if you foster this culture of competing so much so that I win and you lose rather than we come up with the best idea for the company to help our clients, I'm going to have a hard time detaching from my plan because I'm going, Jocco's plan is better than mine, but I don't want anybody to know that.

So I will dig deeper into my plan, makes it even harder to attach. So you covered all those things. These are all conversations we had. And listen, it's important to say all the things that she's doing were for all the right reasons. It's all the right reasons. It's not a nefarious plan to make your team feel like they don't trust you or that you don't trust them and to make them miserable.

It's also not an nefarious plan to waste your time, which is a lot of it was her time was being wasted because she felt like she was answering questions that she shouldn't have had to answer, all stemming from that same thing there. So if you're going to build a team, don't build a team where the best idea wins. Build a team as often as you can where their idea wins. And let them come up with a plan, that minimally viable plan. And then just like you described, it puts you in a great position to ask a couple of earnest questions to help them see something maybe they didn't see. But in the end, as often as possible, let them come up and go with their plan.

And sometimes you can do that by keeping your opinions to yourself. Yeah, it's funny that one of the, I like to have, you know, my default settings and my, you've got a bunch of different default settings. But one of the default settings that I have is like, I'm going with your plan. Now, here's the cool thing about your plan. I don't care if you're my boss. I don't care if you're my peer. I don't care if you're my subordinate.

If I have the opportunity and you come up with a minimally viable plan, regardless if you're my boss, you're my subordinate or you're my peer, we're going with it. Sounds good. So, Dave, you work for me. and we got a project that we need to do and you come to me and say hey jocco here's how I think we should do the project I'm gonna look at you and go it's actually viable okay cool let's go with it if you're my peer and you come to me and say hey jocco here's how I think we should do this I'm gonna say oh okay that looks good and if you're my boss and you come to me say hey jaco

here's the project here's how I think you should do it and it's a viable plan cool we're going with it what a beautiful thing what a beautiful thing it saves so much uh what's the word brain damage It saves brain damage. The minute you say, you know what, your plan is pretty good. That's gonna work. And by the way, you gain so much leadership capital. And by the way, you don't know what's gonna happen in the future. So when Dave comes to me with his minimally viable plan

to prepare a brief about reducing cost for this client. And I think, no, I don't think we should talk about reducing costs. I think we should talk about streamlining. And he goes, well, I think we should do cutting costs. And I think we should present streamlining. And we get in a fight about it and finally say, you know what? You work for me. We're doing streamlining.

And then we get to the client and they go, we're really interested in cost cutting. Right. So now I look like an idiot because you know what? I can't predict the future. So why did I put all my money on this bet that it was going to be about streamlining? I'm an idiot. That's why. So you don't know what's going to be in the future.

So let's just come up with, let's use your plan. And that's such a black belt move. It really is such a black belt move. Let's use their idea. Peer, subordinate, superior, you're going to be, it's going to save so much brain damage. And look, we want to get influence with people. So the minute Dave presents a plan to me and I say yes, all of a sudden I am able to influence him more on everything. Even if Dave's plan was a little bit off and you're my boss and your plan's a little bit off and I said, Dave, your plan is off for the following reasons.

Well, now all of a sudden you're going to be much more apt to force that thing down my throat. As opposed to me say, okay, got it, boss. Let me take a look at it and I'll come back to you and show you how we're going to execute your vision. Oh, thanks, Jocko. Great. Jocco is such a good guy. You just take stuff and runs with it. Next day I come back, hey, boss, really like the plan you put together.

Vision looks great. A couple little adjustments I want to talk to you about. You know, I'm not sure I did a good job telling you about this and this other thing over here. I want to make these adjustments. Does that make sense? Dave's like, yeah, sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, go ahead.

As long as you got that vision. Yeah, I definitely. Thank you. So that's what we're doing, man. So did you when you talk to the CEO how did she take it? Did she understand? Was it hard for understand? Did you give her any protocols to follow? Did you tell her to keep her mouth shut for you know Hey, when you go into the meeting? Listen because that's a good protocol. There's a we were talking today again on the academy and somebody asked about if you've got TBI What protocols can you take and I said these are physical protocols keeping your mouth shut is a physical program like you will be able to see and hear and understand so much more if you go into a meeting you keep your mouth shut yeah did you give her some protocols like that so I got to be really careful when I say this and I'll explain it

but this was kind of an easy one and here's let me explain why and it's funny because it's same you you you talked about this on the Academy as well about a totally different conversation you were having with a couple people and you have that moment where you look at somebody and you see them make the connection of oh is this what I've been doing and she kind of put her hands in her face a little bit and it was her way, what I'm seeing is her way of going, oh. And honestly, especially when you're the CEO and the founder, it's so easy to not talk. It's so easy to just sit there and listen. This is not going to be some big hurdle for her if she can just go, hey, you know what,

team, you guys have great ideas. I have not done a really good job of just hearing what I have to say. And so when she had that recognition, and I think that came from me saying, what are these conversations like? And as she's explaining it, and I'm kind of pulling the threat of, wait, And so do you tell them what you want? And so when she had that moment of I realize what I'm doing, it's going to make it so, it's going to make it so much easier for her to not keep doing that. So I'll be cautious by saying this is an easy one.

This stuff is hard to do. But she had that recognition and it was written all over her face. She put her head down. She's like, I think I know what I'm doing here. That, no, I know she's much closer on the path. And you had a conversation today where you had a couple people on a Zoom. And because there's only two people, you can see their faces on the screen. She's like, oh, I got it.

I'm an idiot. I actually opened up my computer today. I had been writing yesterday. I had opened my computer day and my thesaurus. I have the little thesaurus, you know. And so I was writing and finished writing yesterday and I had a couple windows open, whatever, three, four windows open, website, this, that, the other thing, email. And I started closing windows and I got down to my thesaurus window, which was open.

And I was looking for other words for the word idiot. So that shows you a good sign. That shows you that I'm going deep, really trying to help someone out, returning an email or something like that, saying and wanting to figure out a different way to tell someone that they're an idiot. Or maybe I was off to go back and do a word search

and figure out what I used and why I was using it. That's awesome. If you can figure out that you're an idiot, it makes it a lot easier to solve these problems. And I think she came to the conclusion. I'm like, oh, I see what I'm doing. I'm going to stop doing that. Yeah.

And this is where to tell, this back together, this is where the keeping your opinion to yourself is powerful. And the minute that you put your opinion out there, your influence, everything that's going on especially, well, leadership position or not. Listen, this is the thing. Leadership position or not, because if Dave, if I'm working for you and I roll in and say, hey Dave, here's what we got asked to do by the client, this is what I think we should do.

I've already altered the playing field a little bit. of how and you and I are about to interact. Because if you think my idea is really dumb, you're immediately like, Jocko doesn't get this, I've got to overcome some obstacles here. Whereas if I go, hey, you know,

hey, Dave, here's this project we've got tasked with. Can you give me some thoughts on a good direction? Head, all of a sudden, you've got a blank canvas. I'm not messing with it at all.

And there's nothing better than that. There's nothing better than that. And the reason is because I can't control what's going on in your head. I can only control what's going on in my head. I can't control what, when I say something stupid or I put a stake in the ground on something, that's done. And I can't do anything to take it back.

It's out there. Whereas if I give you a blank canvas and let your thoughts flow, now I can adjust the way I interpret them. I can adjust the way I react to them. I can adjust the way I interpret them. I can adjust the way I readdress them with you. All those things are things that I control now. Whereas when I go and put a stake in the ground, I might have offended you.

I might have come at a totally different angle. I might have come at it at an angle that's fine, but it obscured your vision of another angle that you would have seen had I kept my freaking mouth shut in the beginning. So it's this idea of keeping your opinions yourself. This isn't an idea of, of, hey, you need to subdue your thoughts. No, it's actually a way to free your mind.

It's actually a way to free your mind because now you're going to have more mobility with the people you're interacting with. And if you can utilize the indirect approach and you can now infuse your ideas with their ideas, all of a sudden it can stay their idea. It just has a little infusion of a little jocco in it. And we got to now we have the best idea. Yeah. Which is what we want.

That's right. So there you go. Keep some of those opinions to yourself as long as you can. As long as you can. All right. Is it my turn now? It's your turn. Okay.

So similar, I'll try and give you a statement for the that encompasses this a little bit. If you're not getting pushback, you're probably wrong. Well, you could be wrong on many different counts. If you're not getting pushback from your team, this is very, aligns very well with what we just talked about. So if I'm the CEO and I'm rolling in, I'm presenting my ideas and I'm basically getting in one son that says that sounds great, then there's probably an issue. with them offering up their ideas. There's probably an issue with the way that I speak to them. There's probably an issue with our relationships.

So we want to have pushback. Now, that being said, we can get into a scenario where the pushback that we're getting starts to get to a point where it's pushing us over. And that might scare some people, might really scare some people. Because what's really going to hit the ground when your when your idea gets pushed over the thing that's going to fall is your ego So I was out at FTCX our field training exercise and I and I came up with a tool that I think is a very helpful tool That can help everybody. It's a it's a it's a gauge You know you flew airplanes you get various gauges right what gauges you got fuel gauge

Altitude gauge what else speed speed gauge g gauge G gauge Lots of gauges. Lots of gauges. So here's a gauge that I want you to put into your brain, if you're out there listening to this. It's the explanation effort meter, the EEM, the EEM, the explanation effort meter, which means if you are trying to convince or you're trying to persuade or you're trying to prove a point to someone on your team, up or down the chain of command, pay attention. to the amount of effort that you are putting into your explanation. Check the EEM. Check the explanation effort meter.

Because, look, there is a chance that the person you are trying to convince is just a block-headed, half-witted, smooth-brained idiot. Or some other word for idiot. chance right there's a chance that you've you know you've gone out you've hired and this person has gone through the schooling that they've gone through and they've been promoted the position that but that they've done all that but they're still got a smooth their brain is smooth as a bowling ball right that's possible it's possible they're just not they just don't have the cognitive capacity to see the

brilliance of your ideas or there's a chance that if it takes so much effort for you to explain something to someone there's a chance that you might be wrong and I know it's highly unlikely, but you just might be wrong about something. So as you are trying to explain to them over and over and over again, instead, once that meter goes into the red, why don't you stop talking and start listening, stop talking and start listening. I said on an early podcast that I have a limit for beating my head against the wall, it's 47 times. So if I bang my head against the wall 47 times, if you don't go 40, you don't go 40,

47's the max like you're trying to get something done you're trying to beat your head against the wall you're trying to convince my Don't go 48 times keep it up 47. This is the same thing like How frustrated how annoyed how irritated should you get Trying to explain your brilliant plan To your boss to your peer to your subordinate to your wife to your wife? I to your husband to your kid you actually shouldn't get that frustrated the the the EEM alarm should go off well before you lose your mind well before you lose your temper well before you you've wasted an epic amount of leadership capital you

you you should stop because if I have a freaking brilliant idea Dave on how to do something and I can't convey it to you in a rational amount of time with a rational amount of words without acting irrationally, there's a problem most likely with my idea. Sure, like I said, there's a chance that you're some undercover agent from another company or you have some alignment with evil that you're trying to carry out. That is possible, right? It's possible that it is possible that you actually are getting paid by a competitor and you're trying to bring my company down, right? That's possible. I, you know, right? It is possible. But chances are 99.999% that you actually see something that I don't see or you

understanding something that I don't understand or my idea doesn't make sense for any multitude of reasons. So by the way, this doesn't only apply to you and I in business or someone in business. This applies to like having a conversation with another human being. And this is very prevalent in this day and age, right? having a when you get into a vigorous debate here's a good little catch word for you this will help you out if you get into a vigorous debate I recommend vigorous listening I actually recommend you listen to what the other person is saying

and then I I recommend you ask earnest questions once you understand what they're saying I recommend that your default mode here's another default setting my default setting you and I are arguing about something my default setting is where are you right and I'm wrong that's my default setting Not where am I wrong right and you're wrong. It's not what I'm looking to proof. I actually want to know Where the common ground is. That's what I want to have. I want to find that I recently had a client senior position was complaining that you're running a project and they were complaining about

And this is just classic. You know it's really hard when you're leading a bunch of chiefs too many chiefs not enough Indians right Everyone's got their own ideas. Notice my frustration. You could actually, I got some quotes written down here like, they want to run things themselves. They think they're in charge, right? So if I say it with that voice, it's totally negative. If I say that, man, everyone has their own ideas.

Like we've got a bunch of people on the team that have ideas about stuff. I'm overjoyed. Or everybody wants to run things. Is that exactly what we want? We literally say when we talk about. decentralized command it means everybody leads that's what we want and now we're complaining that everybody wants to run things if I got people my team they want to run things I am jumping for joy that's my goal they thought they were in charge no

oh they all think they're in charge yes praise be to the gods of business because now I've got a bunch of people that actually want to be in charge and they push back on everything good you know in a about face that's one of the things that Colonel Hackworth said about the draftees. Everyone hated the draftees. Oh, actually, no, everyone didn't hate the draftees. What did he like about the draftees? He liked about the draftees. They pushed back. They called out his dumb ideas because they weren't getting promoted. They didn't care if they were getting out of the army and, you know, whatever it was, 214 more days or 172 more days or 19 more days. They didn't give a shit about the army. So when

they, when he was coming up with a dumb plan, they're like, hey, Colonel, that's a dumb. We shouldn't do that. He's like, okay, thank you. He didn't say shut up and do what I told you. He said, oh, these guys might have a point. So I want my people to push back. That's actually what I'm looking forward to. That's why when I started this thing off, I'm like, if you're getting put,

if you're not getting any push back, you're wrong. So I want people to push back. I want them to come up with ideas and run with them and I want them to take charge. That's exactly what I want. And if you're in a situation where people don't, And here's another piece of corporate jargon or leadership jargon. If people don't get on board, if people don't get on board no matter how hard you explain things, like I said, there's a chance that every person on your team is a cotton-headed ninny mugging, right? There's a chance of that.

Reference elf. Thank you. There's a chance that everyone is smooth-brained and they don't understand. because they're all stupid. You have a whole team of people that do this for a living, that make money, that were educated in whatever subject this is, but they all don't get it. When that happens, when people aren't on board, I recommend you check your explanation effort meter because it's probably pinned in the red.

And your plan isn't as good as you think it is, and you aren't explaining it clearly, and you're not listening to what they say. So take a step back. and listen to what they have to say. And that is my recommendation. And I think it will make your life much easier. Probably a good place to stop. Anything else, Dave, what I miss?

I like it. What about with kids? Well, I was just, I'm always taking notes when you're writing. I wrote down counterintuitive. Some notes to myself of things that I'm thinking about as you're talking. And this is the counterintuitive nature of leadership. and everybody loves a story about how hard you worked to get something done. It's a cool story.

I worked so hard. But I couldn't help but think the entire time is something I've heard you say. If you're so smart, if you're so smart, why aren't you winning more? If your plan is so good, if your ideas are so good, why is it so hard for you to convince anybody else? meaning if you're putting out so much effort and yeah I guess by your math point zero zero zero zero one percent of the time it actually is them fair and the rest of the time is man the harder I'm working the more I need to stop what I'm doing and that counterintuitive component like if this actually is as good as you think

this shouldn't be this hard and how powerful the ego that that voice convincing you and, you know, go harder. So the counterintuitive nature of that of what we are inclined to do. And if we can take a step back, I'm like, hey, Dave, if your plan is so brilliant, why doesn't anybody else understand it? Why are you working so hard to convince them? Maybe it's not so brilliant. There's a direct correlation to jiu-jitsu where you're trying to get this move on someone. And it's, you have to work so hard.

You have to use so much strength and power. to make it work, you're not doing it right. When you're sweeping a good thing that I do, other instructors do it too, but like let's say I'm sweeping you, which is a movement that takes, let's say, two and a half to three seconds. And I'll talk while I'm doing it. I'll say, okay, as you can see right now, I'm doing the sweep. Dave is falling over and yet my voice is not moving. I'm not straining.

And now you're on your back. As opposed to like, okay, now watch me do this moving again. There you go. It worked, right? I had to use all this strength. I'm doing it wrong. I'm missing something that's the same that's the effort meter is pegged which means you're not doing it work It means it's not going to work against a stronger person for sure and that's what we're doing we're trying to force our ideas down the down people's throat if your ideas are good

They shouldn't really need to get forced yeah so there you go right Good place to stop if you guys want to dig deeper into this stuff you can join Dave me Leif J P Jamie, Steve, Cody, Sean, who am I missing? Corey. Carlos, Carlos, okay, we got a bunch of people. We got a whole team of people. This is what we do. Extreme Ownership Academy, Extreme Ownership.com. If you got questions, you will come on there and ask.

We also have, we just put up some free courses. Our mission at Escalon Front is to teach these lessons to as many people as we can. And so we just put up a couple free courses, Extreme Ownership.com. Well, the first course is, it's you and I did the first course, the framework of extreme ownership. And it's pretty pragmatic. Hey, how do I take ownership in tough situations? Literally, what words do I say? How do I set this up?

So we go through that. And then Jamie and I did a course, which is called the barriers to extreme ownership, which there is a lot. That's why a lot of people have a hard time with it. A lot of people have a hard time taking owner. And they don't they can't overcome those barriers and therefore if you can't take extreme ownership of what's going on in your world You're not going to improve anything because it's not your fault It's someone else's fault. It's the market's fault. It's the weather's fault. It's your employees fault. It's your boss's fault. It's fault. It's your husband's fault. It's your kids. It's everyone else's fault but yours so there's nothing you can do different now not the way it works Overcome those barriers go check out this course barriers to extreme ownership

Extreme Ownership.com and then we have a bunch of other courses on there's we'll get an assessment too that you that you'll get an assessment too that you You can take it. Anyways, go to check it out, Extreme Ownership.com. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, come check out our leadership consultancy, Eshlamfront.com. And I've also written a bunch of books about leadership. Extreme Ownership, dichotomy leadership, leadership strategy and tactics. We wrote the code as well. Got some other podcasts. Just put up two new Warrior Kid, three new Warrior Kid podcast.

So if you haven't checked that out, check that out. Got Jocko Podcasts and Jockle unraveling. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, you can get some gear at jocco store.com, originusa.com, or you can get some fuel for your system at joccofuel.com. And thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out.