Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko And Dave Berke #28: Your People Deviating From The Plan

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

"I'm in the truck. There's a reason for that." People getting the job done, but changing the plan and method of execution. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko debrief podcast episode 28 with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. And we have a leadership consulting company. It's called Escalon Front. And at our company, we do debriefs when we work with clients and help them through their leadership issues. And when we do those debriefs, we learn and we want everyone else to learn as well. So that's what this debrief podcast is. Of course, we change the names that we use and the industries. modify the situations to protect our clients to make sure that their stories don't

leak out there into the world but the leadership issues are what is the topic and they stay the same regardless of how the story changes so with that Dave let's debrief what he got being in charge doesn't make you right accurate accurate and that's that's the that's the topic for this one we're working with the company it's a big irrigation company, big, big, big company. And the foreman I'm working with in this particular case, the type of work they do is really high end, it's high dollar, high pressure. They work with government contracts, pretty stringent and big, big projects. So they've got a foreman, and all throughout the country, but in this particular case, this foreman's responsible for going

around to all the different sites in his area and essentially just making sure the work is done correctly per the contract and getting it done on time. Pretty straightforward. Lately, he's been getting frustrated because as he goes to these individual sites, these individual locations, the things are not getting done the way that he wants them. They're different from the plan that he created. So he's got to plan how this would all work out.

And he doesn't get to spend the whole time there. He's got to rotate through. And so he shows up. And things are getting done on time, but essentially not the way he wants. So as we're talking, the explanation is his frustration is he thinks his ideas are better. He knows the best way to get it done.

And what he's asking about is, getting some friction between me and the site leads, the people in charge of the locations, getting some pushback and what he calls noncompliance. Okay. And what he's saying to them. There's this red flag. Yeah, totally. All over. And and that's what's cool about this podcast is we can talk about things that seem fairly straightforward. But these are real challenges people are having, especially when you're a leader and want things to get done in the right way and it's not happening. People struggle with that. And as I'm asking him, Hey, what are these conversations looking like?

The phrase that came up is, this is him talking to his leads. I'm in the truck. There's a reason for that. Meaning, there's a reason I'm the one going or making it happen and there's a reason you're not. And it really summarized by essentially, I'm the boss and we follow the chain of command.

Meaning, I tell you what to do. You do it and all gets done. Everything is good. But in his defense, he's also struggling. He knows this isn't good. He knows the friction isn't good. and he wants to just get his guys on board with the plan. He just wants them to follow his direction.

So that's the problem. Now, classic, classic problem. Obviously, this came in, being in the military, this obviously is like junior officer in a seal platoon 101. Yeah. This is one of the most common things out there. And quite frankly, it's not just the officer. It's the senior enlisted.

as well the senior enlisted now gets put in charge of a platoon he's the tactical leading the platoon i'm there's a reason i have the anchors on my collar there's a reason so all right what do you got yeah and and really just to add to that too i can empathize with that because a lot of times those leaders and those roles they're getting pressure from upstream hey you got to make sure this happens and it's not some nefarious plot to destroy your subordinates lives it's i got i got to i you know, make sure this gets done. And I know how they should get done. So let's just do it my way.

And that way we all guarantee that it happens that way. And as you know, unfortunately, we're dealing with other human beings. That leads to friction, which is exactly what he's dealing with. Good timing for this guy, because one of the things we had just developed a little while back, we have something called the balance assessment. It's just a tool that we built. Originally, it was designed around the four laws of combat, the things we teach. Are you balanced in cover and move?

Are you balanced in prioritize and execute? And you can be out of balance of those, as we know. You wrote the book Dicotomy Leadership specifically to address that. But another thing we developed is a tool called the balance assessment around the mindsets. And as we say, humility is the most important attribute in a leader. There's a component here of understanding why you or him in this case, why are you so inclined to think? You are right. And we literally had him.

And in a group, he took the balance assessment tool around the mindsets. And I'm going to read, and this is really good because this is him assessing himself. We're talking about humility. We have a tool that helps you evaluate it. And it's pretty straightforward. If you're green, you're good. If you're yellow, you're a little out of balance. And if you're red, you're out of balance.

You're not doing this well. This is what it says for humility in the tool. This is what he evaluated himself. This is a self-assessment. He takes it himself. And he comes back after we, hey, let's go through this tool. Tell me what you think. How are you doing here?

I often believe my ideas and plans are the best. That's what he assessed. If he was perfectly balanced, it would say something like, I'm always open to other ideas and can check my ego. And he's realizing, hey, I can't do that.

I realize, he recognizes he is way out of balance in something as simple as humility, listening to other people's ideas. And there's two things I really think we're worth discussing on this. One is, it's so obvious. Just because we're the boss doesn't mean we're rightly. And we should know that.

And that mindset balance assessment of recognizing it, that's a good thing for him to say, maybe I should be more open to other people's ideas, which of course you should. They're on the site. They have more awareness. If they understand the timing, the requirements, and the objectives need to be met, they're probably likely to be able to come up with ideas on their own relevant to the challenges they're having. And we talked about that, and he was certainly open to that. But one thing I thought was really good is a topic we've talked about, and I don't remember the first time you discussed it,

but it comes up with the idea. We talk about leadership capital. Basically, it's a way to evaluate how credible you are as leader, how well respected you are and what people think of you. It's a way to measure your own leadership ability and leadership capital. Being right comes at a cost. And so often we attribute, if you give me your idea and I give you my idea, and it turns out my idea is better, I'm like, oh, Jocko just understands.

I had a better idea, and he's good with it, and we're going to implement my idea. but that's actually not always the case. Sometimes being right, especially if you're right all the time, over time that actually can hurt you in your relationships. It doesn't make you better. It makes you worse. It doesn't help you.

It hurts you. And that was a topic we spent a little time on. It's like, explain to me why being right costs me. Why does it affect my leadership capital? And in this particular case, what he had is a bunch of folks waiting for him to show up to tell them why they were wrong. which is not good, even if it,

even objectively speaking, your plan is better. Your idea might be a little more efficient. It might meet the specs that you're looking for a little bit more. And I always liked, I remember the first time I'm hearing about it is, I think it was at the muster. Being right costs you leadership capital. Yeah, it does.

This is a, like I said, these are classic scenarios. And it's weird because when you hear me say, oh, these are classic scenarios. And a lot of people when they hear me say, these are classical, classic scenarios, they think, yeah, I've seen this with so many other people. Right? They don't think, oh, he's talking about me.

When our ego gets involved, we feel like we need to impose our plan on other people. And it's the worst, it's one of the worst things you can do. It's just one of the worst things you can do. You should, in all, All situations as much as you possibly can allow your subordinates to come up with the plan period end of story Yeah, it's for all the reasons that you talk about. Yeah, they're close to the problem

Yeah, they understand more what's happening on the ground You're in a truck driving around all day. They're there all day. They're on that site They're doing this for a living. You're a supervisor now you haven't poured concrete or dug an irrigation ditch or whatever for four years There's tools that you didn't have there's oh oh the tools still the same tools well guess what you didn't have the same team there's little idiosyncrasies with the person so there's all these variables that are in play that you don't understand because you're not the one in the job so therefore it's just infinitely better for you to say hey here's what we've got to get done why don't you come up with a plan so that's

the crux of what is going on here for some reason our ego feels like we need to come up with plan and then we need to impose our plan on people and our plan is going to be better than anything that they could have come up with which by the way if you're coming if your team can come up with a better plan than you you're failing them as a leader because you're not raising them right to where they can come up with a plan yeah what kind of platoon commander doesn't have an assistant platoon commander that can come up with a better plan than them you want that you should be working towards that if you're not there yet so that's just the way

it has to go now here's another thing that scares people because you you did I took this note real quick, but you were saying that sometimes you've got to tell someone how to do something and you feel like they're pushing back and they want to know why. And this just leads me to this thought that sometimes you don't know why. Sometimes I'm in charge and I say, hey, Dave, here's what we're doing and you say, hey, why are we doing that? And I don't know why. And I can't explain it to you.

And I get scared of that. I don't want to be lost for answers. I don't want to have Dave think that I'm telling him things and I don't know why. So I, instead of encouraging an environment where people want to know why they're doing what they're doing so they can use decentralized commands, so they can make decisions out in the field. Instead, it just becomes, hey, when I tell you to do something, that's a dictate and you will obey it and you will not ask why, which is absolutely terrible. So to put this in real simple everyday terms, one of the times where this comes up is with your kids. Your kids, you're telling your kids to do something. You don't really, and look, on the surface, it makes sense.

You need to do this thing. Clean your room. Okay. So clean your room. Why do I have to clean my room, dad? And you've got some legit answers, right? Hey, you know, some of the ones that I've sort of fabricated in the past is like, oh, well, you know, if the, if there's a fire in the house and the firemen come into your room to save you, they could trip over these toys on the floor and, and that could be bad, right? So it's a legitimate reason.

It's a little bit of a stretch. Well, you know, you should clean your room so that when you're looking for something you can find it easier. Again, that's a little bit of a stretch. Okay. Well, dad, there's nothing on the floor. I've put everything away, but why do I need to make my bet? Let me narrow this down.

Why do I need to make my bed? Well, because I said so. Because can you give me a legitimate reason why I need to make my bed? If I'm a kid, Dave Burke, is there a reason why you can tell your kid they have to make their bed? Why?

Do you have a reason? Maybe if you can come up with one, good. Probably not one that holds enough water that you'd be like, holy cow, I had no idea the risk that I was embracing by it. Not making my bed. So you have this little moment with your kid where you say, and they say, you say, hey, you need to clean your room.

And they go, why? And you go, well, if there's a fire, people might, the firefighters might trip. And if you're looking for something, it's going to take you too long to find it. Okay. So they clean their room. They get everything put away and there's nothing on the floor. And then you go back and you say, okay, but make your bed. And they say, why?

Why do I need to make my bed? And sure, you could say it's about the discipline. But that's a stretch for us. seven-year-old right so well we we do you don't want to look like a slob how you do anything is how you do everything there's a bunch of little things that you could give but none of them are what I would call a legitimate reason why so you know what's a good call to make in that situation yeah you know what don't worry about the bed don't worry about the bed hey you know what I like to get it you know what

when I when I'm getting ready for bed at night I like to know that I'm gonna get into a nice clean squared away bed If you don't have that feeling, no big deal. You don't have to make your bed. And when you do that, you've allowed them to influence you. You've shown some humility. You've listened to what they had to say. And you're going to get them to listen to you more.

You're going to have influence over them. So the minute we say, well, because I said so, that's just your ego talking. You throw everything out the window. But that's a really good example. And I see this in business all the time. Right? There is a reason why, hey, we need to clean up the job site when we're done at the end of the day. Why?

Well, if someone happens to come in here and they trip over our tools, we'd be liable for a lawsuit. And when people are writing Yelp reviews, if they come into their, you know, house at the end of the day that you're doing a remodel on and stuff is everywhere, they're going to write a bad Yelp review that might. So there's a whole bunch of reasons why they should do that. But then when you take some particular little idiosyncrasy that you have as an individual person and you try and impose that on the team and you say, hey, at the end of the job, when you're done with the job site, you need to. I'm trying to think of something ridiculous. We had a, there was a chief that would make the platoon. It wasn't my chief. Would make the platoon wax the six by trucks.

right so a six-by truck these are old Vietnam 1973 old big trucks they're just you know just trashy military trucks had the guys waxing the trucks you can't give a good reason why so yeah we want the job site cleaned at the end of the day but also at the end of the day I want you to spray air freshener in there like

why are we doing that well because I I just don't want it to smell bad we don't smell bad well I just want you to do it and all of a sudden we're in a situation where I don't really have a good reason why. And the proper thing to do in those situations is be like, you know what? You're right. We don't need to spray air freshener. We're good.

Make sure everything's cleaned up. Make sure it looks professional. And then you can leave. No big deal. Probably not the best example. But my point is when we are asking people to do things, you better have a reason. You better have a reason why. And if you don't have a reason why, that's okay.

Just say, you know what? Didn't think of that. I don't really have a good reason. Let's not do it. It's not that big of a deal. Yeah. And I think the piece, especially if you're hearing this at the beginning, it seems so straightforward.

Don't run around yelling your people telling them what to do and demanding compliance. That may seem obvious. But the comprehension that you have to have in your mind of thinking is me getting them to do what I want, even if it's the right thing to do or the best way to do it, is that in the long run helping me or hurting me. And I think that's the part that I think was so significant

in that conversation of being right costs you leadership capital. So be careful about when you need to be right, especially if it's to feed your own ego. Because every now and then, if you're the foreman, I've got to come and go, hey, Jocko, listen, we can't do it this way. We have to do it this way. Let me tell you why, the contract, whatever it might be. And what I need more than anything is free to go.

Hey boss, no problem. I got you. And if I've spent all my time for months and years running around demanding you do my way, I might not get that. Yeah, that goes back to the little 80% solution thing. You know, this is like if you've come up with an 80% solution plan, go with it. Ex-kego with it. Go with it. Man, you build up so much leadership capital when you do that. Totally. So wait. So how did you close it out with this guy? Well, this is a work in progress. Okay. I think the best part about this was when you give someone this balance assessment tool that we use all the time and they can acknowledge. knowledge, I'm out of balance. You're 90% of the way there. Now there's work. I don't mean to say we're done. If this guy'd come back and's like, I'm perfectly in the green. I'm totally open minded.

Everything's good to go. Then you have a much bigger challenge. The self-awareness, there are still definitely that I know better. I've done it more and I want it done my way. But I think the humility attribute of this has made this problem so much better that it's improving significantly. I don't, I would not say that we are done with this one. The awareness. of I'm out of balance here, I'm not doing this right, is a huge benefit to the solution. You know, another little, a little red flag that pops up. Oh, it's not even a red flag. It's a common objection to this whole conversation is, but I'm right.

But I'm right. And, but my way is better. And they can show you that. They can pull out the documents and say, well, you know, but my way is going to be 20% faster or 7% faster, whatever. But I'm right. But I'm right. But I'm right. Now here's what I would take to that.

Thomas Sowell with his statement that there's no solutions only tradeoffs. So if you're going to be right, there can be a tradeoff. And that's what we're talking about. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you something. So just be very careful about what you're willing to pay and what you're willing to trade for being right and having things done your way. What is it going to cost you? What is it going to cost you, especially from a relationship perspective?

which on the extreme ownership leadership loop, the last thing that I say I consider when I'm making a decision is relationships. It's the last thing. It's also the most heavily weighted thing that I'm going to consider is, hey, if I make this decision, look, it's going to be efficient. It's going to be more efficient. It's going to save us money. It's going to all this thing.

But how is it going to impact my relationships? And that doesn't necessarily mean that I say, Well, you know, Dave's got a plan and it's going to cost the company an extra $7,000 to do. There's somebody sometimes from saying, look, this is going to hurt my relationship a little bit, but we can't afford $7,000. And hopefully when I show you the facts and show you the numbers, you go, yeah, you know what? That makes sense. I didn't see that. Okay, cool.

But oftentimes, like, yeah, it's going to cost us a little more. It's going to cost us an extra $700. But my relationship with Dave, my trust is he's going to trust me more. He's going to listen to me more. Cool. We're good. So think through those things. All right.

My turn? Yep. Default aggressive. This is something that we teach, make things happen, sees the initiative. Very powerful statements. Very powerful statements. There's a reason that we teach these things, and I know it seems a little bit strange, But the reason that the root of default aggressive is because young seal leaders going through my training program would be passive and not take action and not do anything when there was a troubling scenario that was unfolding.

So there'd be some building that in a urban environment that had all kinds of paintball flying around and explosions going off. And instead of going and solving that problem, these young seals would back away and look to see what was happening and see if there's a way they could avoid this problem. And so what I would tell them is no, you need to be default aggressive. You need to get it and make things happen. This is a thing that happens with leaders. I assume it happens in the Marine Corps too because the Marine Corps has to teach something called bias for action, which is the same principle. It's a little bit of a softer principle, but it's the same principle. Hey, listen, young lieutenant infantry Marine Corps.

If there's something going on, your bias should be to take action. It should be to go and seize the initiative. Why does the Marine Corps have to specifically teach that? Because they have the same problem that a young SEAL officer would have, which is a tendency to let inertia drive the situation and not take any action. So we encourage this all the time. Being default aggressive, taking action, making things happen. We also say, hey, it's a default mode.

It's not a mandatory mode. I'm not saying, Dave, you will take it. action it's your default is to take action but defaults can be overridden right you can say oh you know what now's not the best time and that's part of the dichotomy here and I and I wanted to talk about that dichotomy a little bit because sometimes sometimes it is better to sit back and wait a little bit and we actually have a name for that in the SEAL teams as well I don't know if you guys have a name for it the Marine Corps or if you did we would say in the SEAL teams hey

sometimes you need to let the problem develop Let it develop. Did you guys say that? Almost exact same way. Let the problem develop a little bit. Meaning, let the problem reach a point where you can actually tell what the problem is. So if you're receiving some fire, you hear some gunfire, you don't make a big tactical call right then. No, you might want to just take it.

We have another name for it. Tactical pause. Tactical pause is usually a little bit bigger, meaning, hey, we're doing a series of operations. we're not quite sure what the enemy is going to do tomorrow. So we're going to take a tactical pause and see what they do. Whereas let the problem develop is more of an immediate, hey, we want to give them a minute, give them 30 seconds, give them. I mean, a let the problem develop could be seven seconds long.

That you go, oh, I'm not sure where this is coming from. Okay, now I see what's happening. Totally. It's, I mean, I guess a very simplistic example would be like a piece of machinery. you have a car, you're driving your car and it starts making a little bit of a noise, you don't immediately go to the auto store, right? You don't immediately go to the mechanic. You let it develop a little bit.

And like, it goes from ping, pink, pink, pink. Like ping, pink, pink. You drive in there, they can figure out what it is. Or, you know, where things, you heard a little smell. Not sure what it is. I'm not immediately going to the mechanic. Oh, now I see some smoke coming off. Oh, let the problem develop.

Oh, guess what? You need to change out your brake pads. whatever the case may be. So that's what we need to do sometimes. Now, as a junior leader, as a frontline leader, a lot of times you're where that friction is. Your placement is where the friction is. So you can see that heat.

You can feel the heat before there's smoke. Meaning if I'm in charge of six people and there starts to be a little friction between some of the team, I'm right there. I can feel it pretty quick. As you get more senior, you tend to become a little bit more detached,

which means it's a little harder to tell what the problem is without letting it develop a little bit. So you're a little bit detached. You've got to let that problem develop a little bit. And then we get to the key point of, you let it develop as a senior leader, the next part of this is letting your subordinates sort it out. Right?

So now, again, this is a challenge. And it's kind of similar to what we just talked about with the case that you brought up, right? He's saying, I'm going to impose a plan. Well, when there's a problem, we as leaders sometimes have the tendency to say, oh, there's a problem. I'm going to dive in there and I am going to sort everything out. when the reality is in many cases, you shouldn't do that. You should let the team solve the problem. What did you write down?

I wrote down the word vacuum. Okay. Just as a reminder, it's not the exact same thing that connection of you as a more senior leader, more experienced leader might have a sense of how to resolve something more quickly than me. Your instincts are more honed. You've seen it before. You've developed this understanding.

and if your instinct is the second you have that sense of a problem needs to get solved, you fill that void. I never learn that feeling. And you're not saying, wait forever. You're not saying let the problem get catastrophic, but you're saying let that vacuum fill a little bit so the rest of us go, ooh. And you can go, hey, do you remember that feeling? I do remember that feeling.

That's the indicator you need to start to move or at least go down this path. Not the exact same thing, but that sense of me understanding, I need to feel what that void feels like as well and learn that. Yeah, that was probably one of the newest ideas that I wrote about in leadership strategy and tactics, because I went into that whole thing about exactly what you're saying, the leadership vacuum and how if there's a leadership vacuum, my instinct isn't immediately to fill up. The instinct is to let that vacuum sit there. And it could be, you know, case dependent. It could be one second. It could be five seconds.

It could be four days. you know, if you're in a business or administrative environment. But the reasons for that was, number one, I want everyone to feel it. Yeah. Because when people don't know that there's a vacuum, they still have an idea, they still have a plan, they're still, they're still functioning and moving in a certain direction. When that vacuum is there, no one's moving. No one knows where to go.

And so what you don't have to do is you don't have to stop the momentum, pull it back, and then redirect it. You can just start with direction. And that is a huge benefit. So you give that leadership vacuum a moment to let everyone feel it. And this is something that you could just, you could watch this when I was running trade at. You could see it in a platoon. There'd be yelling, there'd be screaming.

There'd be people giving directions. And all of a sudden it would just go quiet. And if there was any noise, it would be some very tactile level guy going like, hey, I need more ammo. But there was no direction. And you'd feel this vacuum. and then give it three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, hopefully one of your subordinates pick up because that's what you're talking about.

What I want is one of my subordinates to go, oh, this is a vacuum. Oh, I need to step up. Cool. Occasionally, they don't. Occasionally, it's just a vacuum. And are there times, yes, when you have to go step in and you have to go help solve the problem and put out the fire?

Yeah, there are. When you do that, by the way, use the minimum force required. You want to be able to step in there and just give a little bit of a nudge to one of your subordinate leaders to go, hey, what do you think we should do? Yep, yep, yep, go do it. You want to use the minimum force. But if you can avoid stepping in, avoid it. This is how you train your people to solve problems. This is also how you stay detached.

If you're running to the fire every single time it starts, you are not, you are de facto, you're not detached anymore. And you're not going to see the real solution. You're going to see a little tactical solution that's going to solve at one time, but you're not going to see a more encompassing solution that'll solve this from occurring in the first place. So by allowing things to unfold, by allowing problems to develop, by taking a tactical, by taking a tactical process, pause, you stay detached. Also, that means you don't have to speak. It means you didn't have to open your mouth. And every time you open your mouth, it costs you leadership capital. Every time you open your mouth, it costs you leadership capital. And every time you open your mouth, you've used up a percentage of the absorption and the willingness of other people to listen

to you. You've used up some of it. There's not a person I've ever worked with in my life that I've hung on every word they said. There's not a person I've ever worked with my life that I had an unlimited depth of desire to hear what they're going to say. No one. And I've worked with some freaking dynamic people in my life. And there's none of them that I ever said,

oh, I hope they talk for the next 45 minutes straight. And a little warning. Most people don't want to hear what you have to say. So when you allow people to solve the problems themselves, gave you another deposit, or at least not an expenditure of having to talk. And that way, when you do talk, they're going to listen. So keep that in mind.

And if you want to dig deeper into all these aspects of leadership, in any arena, you can join Dave and me and the rest of the Eschelon Front Team at the Extreme Ownership Academy, where we teach this stuff all the time. If you want leadership guidance in your organization, come and check out our leadership consultancy at echelonfront.com. Also, I've written a bunch of books about leadership.

Also, there's other podcast, Jocko podcast, Jocko Underground. We got the Warrior Kid podcast out there as well. I know I owe you. I'm sorry, children. If you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jocco store.com or OriginUSA.com or joccofuel.com. Thanks for listening to us debrief.

Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out.