Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #4: When The Boss's Boss Skips Down The Chain for All The Info

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Jocko and Good Deal Dave Analyze some issues and look for solutions.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Jocko debrief podcast, episode four with David Burke and me, Jocko Willink. Dave, let's debrief. What do you got? All right, I got one. We've got the boss's boss skipping the chain of command and coming straight to one of the key leaders in the team. So what's happening is you've got this person we're working with, cool company that's in the sales side. And the head of sales, the VP of sales works for. the chief revenue officer.
Starting point is 00:00:32 So the chief revenue officer is the boss's boss? No, the chief revenue officer is the boss. Okay. So the VP of sales works for the CRO. Okay. The CRO works for the CEO. Got it. The CEO is the boss's boss.
Starting point is 00:00:46 The boss's boss is coming straight to the head of sales on a pretty regular basis, kind of talking about problems, some misalignments. So the company is doing fine, actually. But as you might guess, with COVID, all their 20, 20 projections kind of got reestablished. So they have new monthly sales baselines, which are lower than what they expected. And so they're not meeting their numbers, but they're going to be okay. But the CEO's frustrated. And when the CEO is frustrated with how the team is performing, instead of going to the CRO, he's skipping over the CRO, going straight to the head of sales, the VP of sales,
Starting point is 00:01:21 to ask questions. And at first, it wasn't a big deal. As it's been happening more and more regularly, the conversation, the reason he called me to ask to talk about it, you know, to kind of talk to the scenario is that he was starting to get upset. And it was coming through when the CEO was coming down, he was sort of expressing that frustration and making it clear like, hey, you know, you should. The CRO was getting mad? No, CRO is out of the loop. Okay. The VP of Sales was basically telling the CEO, hey, don't come to me, go to my boss. Okay. And interesting.
Starting point is 00:01:59 Yes, interesting. And it was, hey, what was bothering the individual about that? The biggest issue was he felt like his boss was being kept out of loop and he had to go do the whole, he had to go smooth things over with his boss because the CEO was going straight to him. Okay. Which actually was happening. He was creating friction. The CEO was creating friction for the head of sales because the CEO, the head of sales at the end of those conversations, how to go to the boss to say, hey, the CEO's coming
Starting point is 00:02:27 straight to me. He's upset about these things. These are some problems. Hey, what do you think I should do? How do how do I handle this? I'm starting to get frustrated with the boss with the CEO. Okay. Make sense? Yes. It makes sense. It makes sense that that could be interpreted as an issue that needs to be discussed. Yes. I should say, this is the scenario makes sense. Yes. I mean, the answer so I mean because and I guess why we're why I'm chuckling is because this is not this does not seem like a type of problem that we're getting very super concerned about because it doesn't sound like a isn't a huge threat to really anybody that's right this is actually not a big deal that's that's that's kind of the crux of this debrief what do you think I should do and my answer was first don't get
Starting point is 00:03:20 Matt. There's there's nothing to be mad about. The reason the CEO is coming to you is that the company's underperforming a little right now. It was a tough time. There's a lot on his mind. But I wanted to talk a little bit. I wanted there to be more to other than, hey, just stay detached, which you need to be detached. Don't get frustrated and push that frustration back on the CEO of all people. But I wanted there to be more reasons. What I wanted to uncover was, hey, let's think about why this is happening. Why is the CEO coming straight to you? And the way we kind of talked about it is there's kind of two scenarios that you could play out. I don't know which is which yet. Let's kind of, let's figure them out. One could be actually a really good thing. CEO's got a lot of trust in you,
Starting point is 00:04:02 understands that you're close to the front lines, sees you as a person who can solve problems, sees you in a position that can shorten the amount of time he can get straight answers that he needs on problems that he thinks are important to the company. The other side of it could be maybe the CEO has lost the confidence of the CRO, the intermediate leader that works for him that's in between in skipping this person coming to you because doesn't think the CRO is doing a very good job. And that's not a good, you don't want, you don't want your boss to be misaligned with the big boss. So there's kind of two different things to think about. The first and most important thing that we talked about was, hey, if the boss is coming to you
Starting point is 00:04:42 with questions, that's okay. He can skip the chain. He can kind of do the ones. there's nothing to get fresh, but just answer the questions. Just give me the information that you wants. And then you most certainly want to stay aligned with your boss. So when the CEO is done and goes back to his office, go to the CRO and say, hey, wanted to give you heads up.
Starting point is 00:05:01 CEO came down to me. These are the questions he asked. And then the most important thing there is you and the CRO need to get aligned. You need to kind of figure out what's going here. What are the frustrations from the CEO? Why is this keep happening? And what can you do to A, if your leadership, is having problems, how do you help them? But more importantly, how do you give the CEO what he needs
Starting point is 00:05:22 before he has to come down and find you? And really what it boiled down to is he wanted projections, more accurate and more up-to-date projections on how far below the line they were going to fall this month. Because what the CEO is doing, he's looking six, eight, 12 months down the road is, hey, our revenue projections are lower than we thought because of COVID. How long can I keep this trend before we have to start taking other actions? And the person who's most aware of that is the person in charge of the sales team where all the revenue is generated. So it was actually a relatively short conversation. Some of it was just in the vein of just, hey, staying detached. But the biggest thing, too, is if you got your boss or anybody coming to you asking you from information, that's a red
Starting point is 00:06:02 flag that you're not giving them the information they need well before that happened. So that's, that's kind of the larger scenario and how we kind of talked about what this real issue was. Yeah, so that was. So the solution was you just said, yep. And so. the questions and go inform your immediate boss of what's happening and then start to try and do a better job to get ahead of it giving your boss more detail so that your boss can answer these questions for the CEO. Yeah. And help your boss understand what the concern is. Right. And you said there was two scenarios that could be happening. One is that he didn't trust and one is that he just wanted information direct from the front lines. Yeah. What I like about
Starting point is 00:06:46 this, and this has been happening to me quite often lately, is the solution is actually universal. So the solution that you proposed, which I agree with, regardless of which one of these two scenarios is unfolding, the best thing you can do is, yes, give the CEO the answers that he wants, and then provide that information of the conversation and the questions and the answers to those questions to your chain of command, and then try and preload them for future. situations. So really, multiple possible causes only one nice solution. I like it. Yeah, and it wasn't that complex. It was one of those at the end of the conversation was like, yeah, that makes sense. It wasn't, yeah. Check. All right. Record. Record time for that solution. Boom. Under eight minutes.
Starting point is 00:07:42 What do you got? We're working with the company. We've been with them for a while. good things happen inside there. We had a, we've got, it's a tech company. So one of the teams inside this tech company is called data collection. The head of data collection recently got promoted. So she moved up to become the chief technical officer, the CTO. So she's kind of in charge of data collection, everything on the tech side. And that promotion left up a gap in leadership in the data collection team. And someone from the data collection team got elevated to be the head of the data collection team. So we've got two new leaders,
Starting point is 00:08:20 but they've both been part of this company for a while. So the data collection team leader got promoted to CTO. One of the data collection team members got promoted to head of data collection team. Okay, tracking. This data collection team, what they do is they aggregate data. They kind of put together this package and delivered to their clients. The way that process works is the data collection team manager shows the CTO. This is the monthly product we're about to put out, gets the thumbs up,
Starting point is 00:08:46 and then they push it out to their clients. And the CTO doesn't like the new format of the aggregate data collection package that the new manager is putting together. Okay. So the person that has become the data team manager said, cool, I'm in charge now. I'm going to reformat this thing and then push it up the chain of command to the person that I used to work for at this level. Now they're the CTO. And the CTO obviously thinks, well, the way I always did it. It was pretty damn good.
Starting point is 00:09:17 That's right. So I don't really want to. Okay. So, and then, and then what is the, so what's the problem? So the problem that, the, what's obvious on the outside is the problem is it. So you're now, you're my boss. I give you this thing. You don't like it.
Starting point is 00:09:34 And you come back to me and go, hey, Dave, I don't like this format. I want you to use the old format. I've been using that format for years. It works. Clients are happy. Just stick to the old format. And I can't really do that. I just can't.
Starting point is 00:09:46 bring myself to do what you're saying. The underlying problem was that I kind of look at you a little bit as a, you're a little bit of a dinosaur. Things have changed a lot. What's going on in this world is changing rapidly. We have some really smart people down here, some really good ideas. And actually, this way I think is actually better. It covers what you're saying, but it's really more of what our clients want. And I'm going to kind of convince you. I'm going to convince you that this new product is really the way we should do it. And we kind of know. we live in this world, you're up in this bigger world and kind of lost track of some of these things. So there's this kind of ongoing friction. So the first call I get is from this new data
Starting point is 00:10:25 manager saying, hey, my boss, the CTO, every month is telling me she doesn't like the way I'm delivering this package. What should I do? I have to convince her. I got to find a way to explain her now this new format is the right new format. And it's awesome because I think you're reaching for but I said, hey, here's my first thought. If my boss comes to me and said, this is the format that I want you to deliver this document to me in, you know what I'm going to do? Exactly what she says. You know how I'm going to do that?
Starting point is 00:11:03 Long enough until she realizes, oh, Dave totally gives me what I want. It's exactly how I want it. It's good to go. It meets all my expectations. Dave's got things covered to the point that there's no question in her mind that I, I'm her best subordinate. This data management data collection is the best team. I don't even worry about them.
Starting point is 00:11:20 And then all of a sudden, I've been a little bit of goodwill, a little bit of trust and confidence. And if I feel like I want to adjust over time and go, hey, boss, this thing's been working well. A client's been happy. We've gotten some feedback over here that maybe there's some gaps.
Starting point is 00:11:30 Our team came up a couple of new ways to maybe adjust us a little bit that we think might be better. What do you think? So the short answer was, listen, if your boss isn't happy with the work that you're giving, do what makes your boss happy.
Starting point is 00:11:44 Because the real problem here, is that if the thing actually does need to evolve, if this product needs to get better, you got to find a way to convince the boss, hey, boss, we're seeing some real gaps in this product here, and we want to be able to make the change in this product to fill in those gaps. You have to have the credibility and the trust from your boss
Starting point is 00:12:00 to be able to do that. And the way you do that isn't on day one saying the way you did it has been wrong for the last four and a half years. Here's your answer. Yeah, and definitely the way that you don't do it is just by submitting the first report up the chain of command,
Starting point is 00:12:13 which is different than the way that the person that just had that job did it for the last X number of years. Yeah, the idea of performance as a way to build a relationship is a very solid. It's a very, very solid way to build relationships. I used to do that all the time with my bosses. I would just win, win, deliver trophies to my boss. Hey, yep, we won again. Here you go.
Starting point is 00:12:37 Here's another trophy. And then eventually you say, oh, by the way, if I'm going to keep winning these trophies, I need to make a small adjustment over there. Oh, yeah, you do whatever you want, Jocko. It's all good. Yeah. That is a, yeah, and the thing, if people are listening to this, the thing I was reaching for was the book leadership strategies and leadership strategy and tactic, which I wrote, which has a big section about this exact thing because this does happen. And clearly there's a, there's a little ego thing that we have to pay attention to here.
Starting point is 00:13:08 You know, on a most recent Jocko podcast, we talked about some things to think about. as you're deciding how you're going to execute. And there's some cornerstone things that lead you in the right direction. One of them is being able to detach. One of them is keeping your ego in check. One of them is seeing other people's perspective. And then the last thing you have to watch out for an underlying thing is that you're just not getting complacent. So, you know, when you pull your ego out of it, your ego is probably the thing that's saying, hey, my way is better.
Starting point is 00:13:41 which is the quote that you used, my way is better. When you're not detached, well, then you might not understand what the strategic vision is from up the chain of command. You might not see that your ego is out of control. And in the perspective,
Starting point is 00:13:56 what's the perspective of my boss? And why am I not seeing it? Does my boss want us to deliver a horrible product? No, but there's some reason. And so let's figure those things out. And if we can figure those things out, we have a better understanding.
Starting point is 00:14:10 if we have a better understanding, we make better decisions. Yeah, this was a, hey, what you've done now is put yourself in a position where you've got all her attention. She's micromanaging or she's pushing back and everything you're doing. This is your problem. This is an easy fix. Take a step back. Give her what she wants. Build some credibility.
Starting point is 00:14:29 And over time, just like you said, you're going to have the space that you need to do it. Did you do any role playing with it? We absolutely. We did. We role played the entire conversation. And the best part about it. Did you get to play an evil dinosaur? that says that your way is terrible.
Starting point is 00:14:44 Yeah. Oh, you mean the way I've been doing it for four and a few years that got me to this position is now automatically overnight no longer the right way to do it. And the cool thing about role play is when you role play for them
Starting point is 00:14:56 how their boss is going to react or whoever it is in the situation, the question I ask all the time is, hey, how do you think that's going to go over? And when you ask them like that, they always know the answer, oh, that's not going to go over well at all. She's going to be completely upset
Starting point is 00:15:08 if I say that. I'm like, exactly. So the role play, and we do role play all the time with our clients all the time, even short, 30 seconds, one or two rounds of it, and it makes a huge difference. Little rehearsal goes a long way. It does.
Starting point is 00:15:21 All right, let's get one more in. The cool thing about this one more is the exact same scenario because this company, we have an awesome. Same company as well? Same company, same people. Oh, dang. This was one that I kind of saw coming. We've been working with these folks for a while.
Starting point is 00:15:34 There's an awesome company. And when this new manager... By the way, if you're listening, you're trying to figure out what company these are, And if you're trying to figure out if this company is you, we maneuver things around so that it's actually not you. If you think it's you, it's not. And it's pretty unfair for me to say this is an awesome company because every company we work with is awesome and we have an awesome time with them. So this was one that I saw coming a mile away as soon as this leader called me and was describing the problem with his boss.
Starting point is 00:16:05 The next day, the boss called me and said, hey, I'm having a problem with one of my subordinates. So this, okay, so now the CTO is called us. CTO calls me, say, hey, you know, about six months ago, I elevated this position. I'm having a really hard time getting this one team leader to give me this really simple product that I've been doing for years the way that I want it. Every month, I come back, I give him a debrief, I explain what it's, what's not right about it. I show him what I want and I simply cannot get through to him and get him to do what I want. And I told her the exact same thing. You're the problem here.
Starting point is 00:16:39 And so this is the cool thing about it is I had a lot of the context and we're talking. And look, the nuances, there are some, you're in a different position in the organization. I said, but hey, what do you think that manager is thinking when he's giving you a new product? Do you think he's thinking, you're all screwed up, you're a problem, you're a dinosaur? Or is he thinking, hey, I've got these awesome ideas that I've been thinking about. I've got this great opportunity. I think I'm going to give you something that's going to make what you've done even better. Which are the two approaches do you think your subordinate is taking with you?
Starting point is 00:17:09 He wants to shove it in your face and tell you you're wrong, or he's trying to make things better. And we asked that question. It's like, well, no, he's awesome. That's why I promoted him to be the manager. Clearly what he's trying to do is give me something that's even better. So look, if he's got some ideas, the first thing you want to do is realize maybe him and his young team that has a slightly different viewpoint actually has a better way of doing it.
Starting point is 00:17:32 And the best thing you can do is say, listen, I've been doing this for a while. I think I know what works, but you know what? tell me what you're seeing. Tell me why you want to make these changes and help me better understand how this product will help our clients better. And if it makes sense, let's go ahead and do it. You do a quick roleplay of, hey, what you're seeing
Starting point is 00:17:53 turns out that as we dissected this, some of the ideas from that manager call it over actually pretty good and some weren't so great. And she was really quickly with me. And I'm not nearly as smart on this officer. She was able to explain, hey, you know what? This idea is actually pretty good. and this one's terrible, and let me tell you why.
Starting point is 00:18:10 And it was really easy for her to tell me a complete layman why this was good and why this didn't make any sense. I said, well, if you can explain it to me, do you think you could have the same conversation with your support and have them go, yeah, you know what, that's a great point. We'll do this, but you're right, that's not really helpful. We're going to take that out of the product. It's like, yeah, that would be easy. Okay, let's roll play that conversation.
Starting point is 00:18:29 We do it for four minutes. The beautiful thing about this outcome is that before they called, you got two people looking at the problem, and both of them were. 100% sure the other person was the issue. And at the end of those two calls, you got two people, the exact same problem, and they were both convinced they were the problem. So by definition, that problem's going away. I talked about this on EF online the other day.
Starting point is 00:18:54 This is a little something that we like to call overlapping fields of extreme ownership, meaning people that are working together that if they both think it's their fault, they both try to solve the problem from their position. And what you, so on the battlefield, it means, you know, if Dave and I have certain corridors of fire, certain fields of fire, we want them to overlap because we want to make sure that there's not a gap in between what you can see and what I can see because then an enemy could sneak in there. So that means we set up our fields of fire so that they overlap.
Starting point is 00:19:35 So there's no one going to be able to sneak through. And that's what happens in with extreme ownership is Dave solves the problem from his position. I solve it from my position. And that means this problem is not going to get through. It's not going to get through. So that's a positive thing. And the opposite is when we're blaming each other. Well, now there's no overlap.
Starting point is 00:20:01 And as a matter of fact, the problem is there. And it's not going to get solved. I don't know. I haven't quite figured out if there's an in. between. I guess the in between is if I take ownership of the problem and you don't. Yeah. Look, I have a pretty good chance of getting it solved, but I'd rather we both are taking ownership, right? So if it's just one member taking ownership, look, I'm probably going to get the problem solved. But there's a chance that I can't quite reach the end of, you know, I can't quite cover the whole problem. So ideally, we both take ownership. And what happens is when I start to take ownership of the problem and say, do you know what, Dave, this is my fault. What do you do? You know, Dave? This is my fault. What do you do? You say, actually, there's some things that I could do different. So we end up with the overlapping. And then clearly, the opposite of that is when I say, Dave, this is your fault.
Starting point is 00:20:46 You go, hell no, it's not my fault. And now we do no solving of the problem. And that's the good thing is when I say, hey, Dave, this is my fault. And Dave says, yeah, I know. I say, great. That's why I'm going to do these things to solve this problem. And then you say, well, okay, I'm glad you're getting it taken care of. But you also want a little credit for that.
Starting point is 00:21:05 So you go, well, there's some adjustments I'm going to make. And we end up with this nice overlapping fields of extreme ownership. So sometimes people, sometimes people get worried that, you know, well, who's really going to take the fault? We all are. Yeah. We all are. We all can make changes to make things better. And for whatever risk of, hey, me telling you, hey, this is on me, Jocko.
Starting point is 00:21:25 I made these mistakes. I'm going to fix this. Is there a risk that you're going to go, yeah, Dave, you're all screwed up. You need to fix this? Yeah, that could happen. That's a possibility. I can't tell you how many companies we work with. I can't tell me how many different sectors we've worked with.
Starting point is 00:21:37 they're almost all the same. 95% of the people these companies are just good, motivated, hardworking people. The likelihood that you're going to say, yeah, you're all screwed up. It's so low. Nine times out of 10,
Starting point is 00:21:50 99 times out of 100. I take ownership and you go, dude, look, man, I can make these simple changes. No factor our team can fix us. That overlap happens almost automatically. And if it doesn't, it's okay.
Starting point is 00:22:01 No factor. But if you're worried at the risk. You still get the problem solved. Exactly. Because if it doesn't happen, I'm still doing everything I can to cover. that problem.
Starting point is 00:22:08 That's right. That's what generally happens. But it doesn't happen all the time. And that's, we get that. But what are my alternatives? Are my alternatives to say, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:19 when I say, hey, Dave, this was my fault and you say, I know it was. And I say, just kidding. I only said that so that you would start
Starting point is 00:22:27 to take ownership. No, that's not the way it works. When I tell you that it's my fault, I'm telling you that because I actually believe that it's my fault and there's something I could do to solve the problem.
Starting point is 00:22:35 That's what I'm telling you that for. What's awesome about the relationships we have and the position that we're in, you talked about a little bit earlier about that being detached, because we at Eschlon Front are de facto detached. We can tell the other people, hey, what we're seeing and they listen. They go, hey, listen, this is on you. And they go, you know what? You're right. And they come to that conclusion so much easier than if you're inside the organization, you're subordinate says, you're the problem here. It's almost immediate pushback.
Starting point is 00:23:03 But working with us, one of the cool things about us, we get. to be detached from all this and be able to see it from a different perspective and help them see that perspective so they can come to the right conclusion. And if you are paying attention in there, if you're paying attention, then you realize, which by the way, you don't have to be, you, you have to be paying attention, yes, but we're actually going to tell you, hey, the reason we're seeing this right now is because we're detached. And as a matter of fact, I was, I was going over something with a client today. There's an issue happening and the one individual is not behaving in a good way, right?
Starting point is 00:23:38 So saying the wrong things, I should be promoted, one of those situations, right? Dave, if you thought that you should get promoted and then you didn't, and then you came to me and said, hey, Jocko, that decision you made was wrong. I'm absolutely better than that guy.
Starting point is 00:23:53 You should promote me. I think this is crap. This is ridiculous. I'm going to start shopping my resume around to other people. What do I think? Yeah. What do I think? And it's so, now if you came to me and said, hey, Janko, look, I know, I know that you selected the other person.
Starting point is 00:24:09 And I think that's a great call. What I was wondering is if there's anything that I could do, look, I really want to step up into a leadership position. And obviously, I must not be ready for it right now, but I want to be ready the next time an opportunity comes. Do you think you could, I know this is a big ask, but do you think that you could, number one, kind of debrief me on how you made that selection? Number two, maybe start to coach me so that my leadership improved so that next time, this opportunity comes, I'm the guy. Which one of those two people?
Starting point is 00:24:39 I mean, if you came to me and said that, the guy that I selected didn't have that attitude. I'm actually, you know, I'm rethinking this right now. When you, so when you explain that to someone. So if, if you were the guy that came to me and did that, and then I said, hey, hold a second. Let me tell you about a situation I'm dealing with over here. And I explained that exact situation that you just did to me and changed the names,
Starting point is 00:25:01 you'd say, oh, dude, you should definitely take the guy with the good. attitude that wants to learn and I'd say okay great so you what you're saying is you don't want to get promoted because that's what you just did to me so that de facto detachment all you have to do is flip around the story and and take that person and change their name and change the business and you explain the story and nine times out of ten the person knows the right answer but they don't behave that way and the reason that they don't behave that way is because they don't detach they let their ego get in the way and
Starting point is 00:25:34 And they don't understand their perspective. Yep. Because when you're wrapped up in things, you can't see. You need, you know, go, when we went to Gettysburg for EF Battlefield, where there was several locations where you could get on the high ground, literally. And that high ground has multiple meanings. One is, hey, I'm above, I'm in a visual place where I can see more, right? That's the definition of detachment.
Starting point is 00:26:02 I'm in an elevated position. I'm not receiving freaking musket fire. I mean, this is before smokeless, smokeless ammo, so you had, or smokeless gunpowder, so you had the battlefields filled with smoke. You can't see anything down there. So you get into the high ground, into the elevated position. When you're on the Gettysburg battlefield and you get up to these elevated positions on little roundtop, and you look and you can see almost the,
Starting point is 00:26:32 entire battlefield. And you think, wow. Imagine trying, and then 10 minutes later, you're on the ground and you think to yourself, how could I possibly direct a battle when I can see 100 yards to this next tree line and that's it. And meanwhile, 10 minutes of walking up the hill and you can see the entire battlefield. That is detachment. And when you can detach from your emotions, it gives you that much power.
Starting point is 00:27:00 When you can detach from your ego, it gives you that much power. When you can see from a different perspective, it gives you that much power. And yet we fail to do it all the time. The other part of the high ground that's important to remember is the high ground on the battlefield is something that you do not want to give up. It gives you such a clear advantage that when you give it up, you're giving it up at your peril, especially if you allow the other person to get the high ground. But even if you don't do that, if there is someone in the low ground and you decide,
Starting point is 00:27:39 you know what, I'm going to go down there with them, at a minimum you've given up at your advantage. At worst case, they've taken the high ground and now you're completely destroyed. So how does that translate to the business world? Well, here's how it translates to the business world and to life and to being a leader.
Starting point is 00:27:55 There are certain principles that you have. and I shouldn't say there shouldn't be a lot. There likely is not a lot of principles that are as solid as high ground. In other words, you know what? There is a line that I am not crossing. I will not give up my high ground. So if you want me to overcharge a client, we're not doing that. That is not happening.
Starting point is 00:28:26 If you want me whatever you know think whatever immoral illegal unethical thing and and and You know you could also say Anything that you don't want to print in the newspaper about what the company did right? What what my company did? So there you go that those are things and and look we've been working together for quite a while now What percentage of things am I rigid and unmovable on right? There's a very tiny percentage. That's what the high ground is. The high ground is, look, these are things that I'm not going to give up, not going to do it. And so then you take those things that you're not going to give up and maybe those are, maybe those are principles. Maybe those are operating functions that you have that you're just not going to change because it's it's a principle that you have to adhere to. And then you get into the ethical high ground, which is, you know, now you want me to do something or you do something that you shouldn't do. If I accept that or I participate that in any way, I can't, I can't, I can't, it's,
Starting point is 00:29:40 I shouldn't say I can't. It is almost impossible for me to get the high ground back. So as you go through life, when you give up the high ground, it's, it's very challenging to try and get that high ground back. You can do it, but it might take a very long time. If you break someone's trust, right? If you lose trust with someone, you kind of gave up the high ground.
Starting point is 00:30:07 Now look, you can try and get it back, but it is going to be a fight. You've got gravity against you. You've got the angles against you. It's a horrible situation to be in and it's going to be a fight. So that's why when we talk about keeping the high ground, it covers all these different bases
Starting point is 00:30:29 and it's something that you should think about before you make a move. Just, you know when you're doing land navigation? When you're doing land navigation, this is another time you want to keep the high ground. You don't, guess what happens when you go downhill? You have to go uphill again. I'm not talking about you're under attack.
Starting point is 00:30:48 I'm just talking about you're moving through the woods or through the mountains. When you're on the high ground, you want to stay there. Because every time you take a step down, at some point, you're going to have to step back up. So pay attention to your altitude when you go through life, when you take a step, when you move, ask yourself, am I taking a step down? Am I losing altitude right now? And pay attention to that.
Starting point is 00:31:20 Because if you pay attention to each and every step that you take, you'll find, you'll find, that you won't look up and all of a sudden, and here's what's scary. You don't want to pay attention when you're going downhill because it's a little bit easier. It's a little bit easier. And it's just a little bit easier
Starting point is 00:31:41 so your mind's telling you, hey, you know, it's okay. We can get that back later. You don't want to do it. You want to get the high ground and you want to maintain the high ground. And that's probably a good place to stop for today. 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 team at eFonline.com where we solve problems through leadership. If you want guidance inside your organization, if you want the team to come out and work with you, you can check with our leadership consultancy at echelonfront.com.
Starting point is 00:32:22 I've also written a bunch of books on the subject of leadership, extreme ownership, the dichotomy of leadership, and leadership strategy and tactics. Got some other podcasts. One is called Jocko podcast. One is called Jocko Unravelling. One is called Grounded and one is called the Warrior Kid podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jocco store.com or from origin, mane.com. Thanks for listening to the debrief.
Starting point is 00:32:53 Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out. Thank you.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.