Jocko Podcast - The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #6: Iterative Decision Making. Making Small Moves, Rather Than Big Moves

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

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

This is the Jocko debrief podcast, episode six with Dave Burke and me, Jock Willink. So Dave, we got some more debriefing to do. We didn't get through my Gettysburg debriefs that I had for you. So if you haven't listened to those yet, go back to episode five. But moving into some of the other things that I had on my list that I texted to you and said, I got some debrief points for you. So the next one that I wanted to cover is, again, this is something that's in leadership strategy and tactics.

And I believe it's fairly well spelled out. And I've been briefing this a lot lately in the current environment that we're in. It's 2020 right now. There's a virus that currently seems like a, it's a world, a world impacting virus. And so we've all been dealing with it. And I've been helping people make decisions and maneuver their companies. And one of the things that I've been talking a lot about is iterative decision making, which is a good way to lead in unknown circumstances.

And what you do is you basically make a small decision and then you take a small step in that direction. And what I realized during this Gettysburg, during this Gettysburg battlefield walk that we did, discussing the various leadership decisions that were made, was there was certain situations where leaders on the battlefield could have made small moves instead of big ones. And in no case, did they do that? I mean, I'm sure I'll find some eventually, but in the major movements that were made, especially the major mistakes that were made, there was no time where someone made a small decision and made a small step in that direction. So what I was saying, and again, I'm there with almost the entire, well, with a bunch of people from Ashlawn Front, it's me, it's Laif, it's Mike Sorrelli, it's, who else was there?

Oh, Steve Ward, Jason Gardner, and Jamie. So like, we've got this big crew there. And I started talking through one of the things that could have solved one of these major problems. And that is when, when General Longstreet didn't like a plan that General Lee had come up with. And he dragged his feet for an extended period of time and it ended up being a total disaster. And I said, hey, you know, everyone's kind of going on. What would you have done? What would you have done?

What would you have done? If you're either person, what would you have done? And you know, it's, hey, I'll draw a line in the sand. I would never do this. I don't agree with it. I would have ordered him to do it. I would have fired him. It went through all those things.

And I said, well, hey, here's what I would have done. If I was either person, if I was generally or General Longstreet, I would have done iterative decision making and therefore iterative execution. And I think that there's just a gap, and I want to explain that gap. Interative decision making is not just making decision. It's the execution of that small decision. So, Dave, if I tell you,

hey, I want you to assault that hill. And you say, I don't think that's a good idea. And I say, well, we need to get it done. And you say, well, I don't think it's going to be worth. the effort and the casualties that we could take. Okay, so there's where we're at. There's our line in the sand. Either one of us at this point, I can say, well, I'll tell you what, why don't you

move another hundred yards forward and push a couple point men up and see what they can see and see if they start taking fire, see if there's any cover you could get on the way there. How does that sound? And you go, that actually makes sense. Or you could also say that to me. You know what, Jocko, I don't know about assaulting that hill. Here's why don't we start with this. I'll move 100 meters closer.

I'll send a couple scouts up. We'll see if there's any cover that we could get. If it looks like we are taking fire, I can pull them back. If we're not taking fire and we find good cover, I'll proceed a little further. That's it. That's iterative decision making. And it includes iterative execution. And what you find is that when you make a small decision and then you take a small step,

When you make that small step, you learn more. When you learn more, you can make a decision on which direction to go now. So that's fairly straightforward. The next note that I had is that iterative decisions are actually aggressive. You can make aggressive, much more aggressive moves when they are small. So I've been telling a lot of clients that I had a reputation in the SEAL teams of being very, very decisive. But I was cheating. I was cheating because I wouldn't make decisive, massive moves.

I would make many small moves very rapidly. So if we started taking fire, I didn't say, oh, everyone assault now. Because I don't even know where we're taking fire from or how many people there are or what the situation is. So I'm not going to say everyone assault now. And I'm not going to say everyone run away. We're taking fire. No, that's a big decision. I don't take that bulldack.

What I say is, hey, two people go up to the roof. Dave, Dave, Dave and Mike, go up to the roof, tell me what you say. Everyone thinks I just made a power decision. There's absolutely no risk. We're in a building that we already own. You have cover up on the roof? Cool. That is being aggressive.

So, iterative decisions where some people, where some people might think, well, that's kind of weak, right? What are you doing? That's weak. You're just taking small steps. I'm taking small steps rapidly, and that is the best way. to be aggressive. Look, caveat,

sometimes do you have to make a bowl decision that's big? Yes, you do. Absolutely. Should happen very seldomly. It should happen very seldomly. And hopefully it doesn't happen at all. Yeah.

One of the reasons why you and the team we've been talking about interred decision making so much more recently is because of what you just described. I wrote down at the very beginning, I wrote down the word unknown. Of course, you're talking about it. And it's, it's, we all understand.

that this is kind of a period of unknown. Nobody was, nobody had a playbook for COVID. Nobody saw this thing coming. So part of the reason why we have been talking about iterative decision making and several fast, short movements is how you maneuver in this unknown environment. And it makes sense. And to what we should be talking about. The other side of that, though, when you talk about iterative decision making is if you

kind of take this whole situation out, let's go back a year where things were just kind of jamming, everything was going really well, it was actually, there's actually a lot of unknown there too. And the thing that complacency creeps in when you think you've got the whole situation, you've got the whole way of the land, you think you know what's going on, and you start to make these bigger, longer, less iterative decisions. If you're not complacent, even if you think you know everything, you've got all this information, you still get, you know what, there's things out there we don't know. I've got all the intel.

I've seen this 50 times. I've done it throughout my entire career. Everything is the ways if you keep that mindset of, you know what, there is something out there maybe we don't know. You're actually going to end up doing the exact same decision-making process now that you would a year ago or a year from now. And this idea of iterative decisions isn't just because we know there's unknowns. It's because there's always unknowns.

It may be really obvious now, and it is. It's glaringly obvious that we don't know what's going on sometimes. But the truth of the matter is, is that if you're really obvious, you're really obvious. a leadership role, it's always like that. And if you think you've got this whole thing figured out, we can go, hey, Jocco, just take your team, go 10 miles down the road and plant the flag on that hill. If you think you know between here and there, you're going to set yourself up, you need to make those same decision-making approach, that same iterative decision-making, no matter what the situation is. And if it turns they get there, hey, no factor, cool,

keep moving. You can do it quickly. But you don't not do that just because you think you've got the situation understood. You know, as we've been, as I've been explaining this to clients. I've been doing a little setup with them. I'll say, I'll say, what you want to do as a leader in this position is you want to take a guess on what to do next. And then I say,

I say, nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that the leader is taking a guess as to what to do next. But guess what? In any situation, if you're in a leadership position, the number of times that you're going to have

100% accurate information spoon fed to you and you're going to be able to line up that and come up with a person, decision is never. So if you're in a leadership position, guess what? You are making guesses. That's what you're doing. That's what leaders do. How do we mitigate the risk of the guess? We take a little tiny step. Yeah. So you have to guess. So don't commit all your forces or all your resources or all your assets to a guess. Commit just a little tiny bit of them and then do an assessment to see if it was the right move or not. And it costs you so little. And even that guess,

There's nothing wrong with me admitting as a leader. Hey, you know what? I don't have all the answers here. As a matter of fact, when you give me those orders, go take that hill. And I'm thinking, this is a terrible idea. I'm not doing that. Why would I come back and go, hey, that's a terrible idea. We're not going to do that.

How about I go, hey, boss, I think you hear what you're saying. Look, I don't have a good recon between here. Let me take my team on to push them out. Give me about an hour. I'll radio back what you see. We're going to take this first move and set out some scouts. I don't need to dig into my position. I need to go, okay, cool, I can make that happen.

And I apply the same thing. But if I come in and go, this is a terrible idea, we shouldn't do this. And it turns out, I go out there and like, wow, this is actually really easy. Now I had a call back like, hey, you were right. And I got to, there is no reason not to just say, I actually don't know. And the best way for us to know is we're going to go out and start to move in this direction. Yeah, that's the other thing I've been telling all my clients is after you make that guess. And it turns out your guess is wrong.

What do you do then? You tell everyone, hey, I guessed a little bit wrong. I assess this wrong. Here's some things that changed. Here's a different view. Now that we see this part of the market or this. part of the battlefield, here's the adjustments we're going to make. You have to be humble enough to make adjustments. But doesn't it make you look really dumb and weak when you get something

wrong? And that goes back to, you know, your perspective, your ego, being able to detach because everybody knows that if I stand up and say, listen, I know we're meeting more resistance that we thought, but we're going for it anyways. Everyone looks at me and goes, you're a freaking idiot. It's crazy. Yeah. All right. Next. The last one of these debrief podcast that we did, we were talking a lot about intent and implied intent, meaning just through my attitude, you know what I want. Then there's actual verbal or written commander's intent. Here's what I want you to do. Here's my overall intent. And then there's culture and there's values and you stack all these things together. And we have, we should have a situation that if you take

my verbal commander's intent or my written commander's intent, like, hey, this is what I want you to do. the implied intent, the values, the culture, you should be able to make 99.9% of decisions without having to talk to me at all if you're working for me. That's the way it should be. How do I know that? Well, here's a little drill that I can run through with you to see if you understand these various forms of my intent, and that is discussing contingencies. because if I say, hey Dave, what will you do if you get into an enemy contact before you get to the target?

And you say, if we take enemy contact, we're going full auto and we're going to assault from wherever we are. And what I actually wanted you to do was not reveal your position. Well, guess what? I've obviously not explained any level of these intents to you. So if you're in a leadership position and you want to understand if people, look, and if I say, hey, Dave, the commander's intent for tonight is you get in and out without being compromised. And you say, got it, boss. And I go, okay, read back to me what the intent is.

And you say, it's getting in and out without being compromised. Okay, cool, got it. This only means that you could repeat the words that I said. So then I say, okay, let me run through some scenarios with you. Here's a contingency. You roll up, you get out of your vehicles, and all of a sudden there's dogs barking, and lights start coming on inside the village. What are you going to do?

And you're like, shoot the dogs. Right. Assault the building, yeah. Right. So that's what I'm saying. It's really simple. It's a really simple thing. But if you talk through contingencies with people, you find out what they're thinking,

and it reveals whether they understand your intent or not. Yeah. As, so we didn't, we didn't rehearse any of this. me this text last week and I'm like, cool, I wonder what this is. And we're talking about it now. And as I read this bullet, you know, the contingencies reveal understanding of your intent. It took me a minute to kind of understand the context and as you're describing it. And then same thing I always do is I put myself in a position of being a subordinate. And everybody should understand, and this is true for you, you and I, despite the fact that we've commanded teams and

we've always also been subordinates. I've been a subordinate. my entire career, I was never not without a boss in the military. So the role of being a subordinate is something I'm very familiar with, even when I was a commander. I was a subordinate to some other senior commander. The question of just, hey, what would you do here? Sometimes when, like, my boss would ask me that, I would feel like, is he questioning? Is he questioning me? but really what a good boss is doing there is actually evaluating how good of a job he has done

to prepare me to handle which he absolutely knows it's going to happen, which is a contingency. Contingency is always happened. Nothing ever happens the way you plan. And as a leader, when you're saying, hey, okay, Jock, walk me through this scenario, you got my intent, but this happens, what are you going to do? That's not me testing you. That's me testing me. Have I explained myself well?

And so as you're explaining, I'm picturing again. you know what, how many times did I hear my boss run me through a contingency scenario? I'm thinking, what the hell's wrong with this guy? Why is he asking me all these questions, questioning whether I know what I'm doing? I know what I'm doing. It's like, no, he's actually measuring himself. Did he explain it well enough to set me up to be successful when he knows full well? There are going to be problems as I go execute because he knows what's out there waiting for me.

The understanding of the intent, I mean, how critical is that that I know your intent as a leader so I can do something in real time and get it right. You know what else is interesting? I had this conversation with Jamie the other day. And, you know, Jamie has been participating more and more and answering questions and stuff. And she goes, you know, she's like, I'm starting to feel like I am doing a better job answering questions.

I'm like, you knock it out of the park. And she says, yeah, you know, I'm just kind of answering the way I would answer a client when they asked me a question. and and of course I know I make everyone nervous you're like everyone wants to say the right thing and she kind of alluded to that she's like you know sometimes when I know you're on the on the EF online and I know that if I say something

I want to get it right and it makes me trip up and I don't want to do that anymore and I go Jamie trust me you nail these questions and then I told her look this used to happen when I was running training for the seals You'd get these young seal leaders, and I'd put them in some pressure situation, and I would be looking at them, and they would do something really stupid. And I'd go, I'd go, why did you do that? And they were like, I thought you'd want me to be aggressive, or I thought you'd want me to be, whatever, I thought you'd want me to take the high grounder.

And I'd go, bro, don't do what you think I want you to do. Don't try and interpret what you think I might want you. Do what you think you should do right then. That's what you need to do. So that's another thing that walking through contingencies reveals. Look, I don't want someone in the field that is going to make a decision based on what they think I might want them to do if I was there. I want them to actually do what makes sense in that situation. So let's go through some contingencies so we can remove that.

And then we truly understand if they know what the intent is. And again, now we've got multiple levels of intent to try and comprehend. and they should obviously they're all aligned but they all hit a different specter or a spectrum and they're all important and by the way do you have your pen ready by the way there's a hierarchy of these intents so if i've told you you know that hey you're going you know we i want you to avoid you know getting an enemy contact tonight but something happens where your troops are in danger. Yeah.

Right? There's a hierarchy of intents, which we actually need to have understanding of. Now, look, most of the time they're aligned. I mean, I want you to complete the mission. I want you. Most of the time they're aligned, but there can be nuanced scenarios

where a leader is going to have to say, look, I know the intent that Jocco told me was to, was to make sure we make money on this deal. But right now, the only way we make money on this deal is by me screwing over this client. Yeah. I know there's a hierarchy of intents here, and I know that I'm not supposed to do that.

So not only do we have multiple intents, they should be aligned, but there is a hierarchy. That makes sense. And it's, it's, if you understand the strategy, if you understand what. you really want us to do in the long run, it makes it easier to do that. You've used an example like this before too, which was you could say, hey, Dave, my intent is actually don't give away your position, keep very low profile, and if there's any risk of that, I want you to withdraw and back up. That's what I want you to do.

But there are times that that might actually put me at more risk. And the last, you don't want me to come back. Hey, we lost two guys, but I followed what I thought you wanted me to do, which was backup. And that's the thing you're talking about is don't do what you think I want you to do. When we all first joined our salon front and you started talking and training us about how to do Q&A and hey, how do we answer clients' questions? The goal that you said was, I want you to answer the question in the way that you would actually solve that problem. So if you have a question, you think about what you would do. And if you have the humility to say, this is what I do and it turns out that's wrong.

Now we can actually have a debrief. You can go, hey, Dave, let me talk to you why maybe this wouldn't work, and I can learn from that and get better at that. But I'm spending all my time thinking about what you would say. And I know what Jamie's talking about. We all know. And it's like to have Jock on a gig with us. Like, God, he's watching me answer. If I can have the humility to just do what I think I should do, I'll actually learn more and get better at it than trying to calculate, what would Jocko saying?

How would Jock? And that's just doing nothing but causing problems for me. And you actually don't want me doing that anyway. You want me to do what I think I should do. And if it's right, great. And if it's wrong, then we can debrief it and learn from it and get better. Yep. There's a, there's a level of detachment and reflection that goes on there too.

Because saying, here's a classic example. I've seen guys get caught in. And it's a straight up, well, what would Jock do, right? What would Jock do? Well, they have, this is why this is so scary, they have their implied intent that they've received. Is it possible that the implied intent that someone has received from me, is not accurate. Yes, it's absolutely possible because Jock was aggressive and he makes things happen.

And so what do I think when I get asked a question, you know, what should I do in my subordinate just says, hey, this sounds like a horrible plan and we're not doing it. And the thought is, well, Jock was default aggressive. You know what? You shut up and do what I told you to do. And so here's what I tell people. Actually ask yourself if you could picture me doing that. Actually say wait a second if I was to put Jocko in the situation and I was saying hey I don't want to do your plan

Would Jock say shut up and do it? I told you no actually he wouldn't do that what would he do? He would say Why do you what is it that you don't like about the plan and do you have a different idea So there's a whole There's a whole level and what this comes down to is these really good conversations that you can have based on contingency Contingencies and how people are going to act in certain situations and then you take this higher hierarchy of intent that we're we're now exposing to the world because it exists. Yeah.

And by the way, if my implied intent is received in an inaccurate way, that's a horrible thing. And that's why we need to pay attention to it. And there's plenty of leaders that don't pay attention to it. They don't understand it. They don't know that it exists. They've got this implied intent that is, don't ask me any questions. Don't ask me any questions. Do what I tell you to do.

That's an implied intent. And they actually, some people kind of like that implied intent. You shut up and don't ask me any questions, do what I told you to do. Yeah. All right. The next thing. This one should be relatively simple. What winning looks like to you versus what winning looks like to the troops.

So this is, again, this is aligned with intent, but you have to make sure that what winning looks like to me is what winning looks like to, if you're working for me, not not actually you're not working for me but if you're on the front lines and I'm the boss I have to make sure that winning looks the same to both of us because if winning to you looks like closing a deal and it doesn't matter if we ever do anything with this you know if you're a car salesman and you're you want to close that deal and make as much money as you possibly can and get that person out the door and you don't care that it's a lemon and they're going to complain about it on yelp that's a win for you it's a loss for me you're a loss for me. So what do I need to do? I need to make sure that winning for you looks the same as winning for me. And if I do a good job of setting up my compensations and the missions and the way we're doing things, I can make sure that those are aligned. But oftentimes you see situations where, hey, what the frontline troop thinks is winning is not aligned with what the senior leadership thinks winning is.

So we have to be careful of that. as I'm thinking about what you're just saying and then think about things that you said in before and kind of piecing together a lot of conversations we have, one of the easiest ways to make sure that what winning looks like for me, I'm now the big boss, whatever, I'm in charge the whole thing, you're four levels down, you're a front line guy selling cars or whatever that scenario was.

One of the best ways for me as a leader to make sure winning to me and winning to you look the same is I actually have to care about you more than me. I have to really believe that you being successful is what this is all about, that this team that I'm in charge of or responsible for or task to lead, whatever that is. And you have said that so many times. And you really have to think about what that means is that when you as a task unit commander made decisions,

and you talk about the challenge of like understanding that you're putting your men at risk and knowing what you, what really was out potentially out there for them. that you cared about them more than yourself, how much easier it is to align them winning with you winning than if you actually are in it for you and how destructive that is in the long run for an organization when you as a leader

see your own success as as kind of like the secret, that goal that you really want at the expense of your team? and how simple it sounds to say put your people before you and and and all the military stores of of taking care of your people if you don't actually believe that it's going to be really hard for winning to be the same for you and for them yeah yeah we did that podcast not too long ago and the I forget the quote I wish I could remember it off the top of my head but it was something like if you if you provide evidence of you caring about your troops,

you don't even have to worry about morale. They will fight. They will fight. I think it was, I think it was the Jocko Podcast 245. Yeah. And it was, yeah, provide evidence. Let your people believe that you could show them that you actually believe about that more

and all the other problems take care of themselves because they'll go fight. Yeah. Next thing. There's some really dumb things that happened. in the Battle of Gettysburg. Some people did some really, really dumb things. And there's a bunch of reasons why.

There's a bunch of things that could have helped that, mostly being relationships. If I have a relationship with you, Dave, look, if I have a relationship with you, I at least have a dumb detector. And I can say, you know what? Dave is going to, he has propensity to do some dumb stuff. I'm going to keep them in my back pocket.

I'm going to keep an eye on him. I'm not going to give them the mission that's going to take a lot of decision-making. But if I don't have a relationship with you, then I don't know how dumb you could be. And there's a chance that you could do things that are so dumb that I really didn't even conceive of a contingency where you could be this stupid. So what you have to do is you have to think about the parameters wrapping some wide parameters around stupidity in situations where you don't know somebody well enough. And I'll tell you, even when you do know people well, the first time you put them into combat or the first time they get put under stress or the first time that they're in an unknown.

There's situations where even someone you know and trust, You might need to throw some parameters around the most outlandish things that people could do So what that is this is this is extreme ownership right listen if Dave does something if I'm in charge and Dave does something that is so Stupid that is my fault because I didn't put the parameters in place I didn't know well enough I didn't I didn't I didn't anticipate this level of And you know what that makes me? Stupid. So this is, I, I, you know, you start to hear people saying, you know, well, that person did that.

That was just absolutely ridiculous. How could, you know, that's just so dumb. It's like, yep, you got to remember people are going to do dumb things. Put some parameters in place to prevent really dumb things from happening. And by the way, when they do happen, okay, you let it happen. Go, go clean it up. And the reason I hate is because I know that I screwed up. I know that I screwed up.

Here's a question. Was it a good move or not? Was that call a good move or a bad call? And where this comes into play in the Battle of Gettysburg and elsewhere, but where it really comes into play is we want our people to be default aggressive. We want our subordinate leaders to have a bias for action. We want them to step up and make things happen. We want to have decentralized command. All those things are good.

Well, guess what? Dave, if you're in the field and I'm in charge, you could show initiative. You could maneuver your troops to beyond the limit of advance because you saw an opportunity or you saw a situation that needed to be dealt with immediately. And that could cost us the battle. It might have been the wrong move and it cost us the battle. it might have been the right move. And it won us the battle.

There's situations that happen to Gettysburg and there's situations that have happened throughout battles throughout history. And there's situations that happen in business where somebody makes a move, somebody does something, it destroys the whole business. Somebody makes a gamble.

Somebody throws out a product that they should have. There's just all these things that happen. Was it a good move or not? So you can sit back from hindsight is 2020. perspective and say, well, how do we know if something was a good move or not? Right. How do we know if something was a good move or not? Well, what we have to do is we have to look at the fundamental principles that we are

operating within and what that. So a cover move is a good example. Cover and move, you could take that as implied intent from me. If you worked for me and you weren't covering and moving, look, I said it to you, but you better freaking just know it as well. Cover moves the way it is. It's a principle that doesn't change. So if you came back to me, if you came back to me, you said, hey, Jocko, here's what I did.

This element was moving. I moved to a position where I could better cover for them. They were able to move, but then I got flanked and I had to retreat and then they retreated. And that's why we had to fail the mission. Was it a good move or not? Did you violate cover move? Nope, you didn't. So I can look at that and say, you know what?

You didn't get the result you wanted. You failed the mission, but at least you didn't violate the principles. If you came back and said, hey, you know what, Jocko? I saw an opportunity. I started flanking. I lost contact with the element that was supporting us. I got, let's, I'm trying to drive us in a good way. What really happened, you got target fixated.

You moved too far and now all of a sudden you're out of supporting distance and they can't help you anymore. Now you can't cover and move for each other. And that's when they got ambushed. And there was no support for them. And that's why we took casualties. But I was just being aggressive. Actually, bro, you violated a principle. You violated cover and move.

So now, if we want to stack things up, we get these, we go back to this idea of implied intent, commander's intent, values, culture. We stack all those things up. and if we start violating these things, now we can look back and we can objectively say this was a bad move. It didn't support the intent. It didn't support the implied intent. It didn't support the commander's intent.

All those things are bad. Now where I have a problem is, I can't count on you. I can't hold you accountable for understanding my implied intent if I never talk about it with you, right? It can be a reason, but unless I turn that implied intent into a value of culture and a commander's intent, then it doesn't help me. So those are some ways if you think about situations and you want to debrief your people properly.

And you say, well, Dave, we've talked about cover and move since day one. I've seen you rehearse it and practice it, and you got out there, and you're wondering why I'm thinking that you made a bad move? It's because you violated the only principle that I told you never to violate. Because that's where we're at as a leader. We've got people that are going to do things

that we have to be able to explain to them why it was right or why it was wrong. Because we want initiative. And all this comes back to decentralized command because we want people to have initiative. But so, so where this is all going is the parameters that we allow people to operate within, right? The parameters that we allow people to operate within, we have to make sure that they understand them. Goes back to revealing intent through contingencies.

All these things stack up. And if we want to be able to debrief someone properly and say, hey, here's why this was a bad. move and here's why you can't do it again because it violated this it violated this and by the way it revealed to me that I've given you an implied intent that you didn't understand you know you thought I always thought go and I don't think that and I gave you that impression that's my fault so look and when you make a bad move it's absolutely I'm not saying it's your fault but I've got to be able to explain to you why it was a bad move yeah

So good things to think about. When somebody makes a move, when they do something and you want to explain to them why it was wrong, you have to have, you have to be able to display to them what they violated so that you can explain to them in a more clear manner what the violation was and why it can't happen again. This one's pretty simple and straightforward. There's heroic activities at the Battle of Gettysburg. And I just got to thinking, what is the, how is it that we as human beings can look at someone and say that was heroic? Why is that? Why is this heroic? Why is what this person did heroic?

And why what somebody else did not heroic? What is the, and it took me 20 seconds of thinking about it. what makes something a heroic act and it's so blatantly obvious when somebody does something heroic they do it not for themselves but for others and like i said i'm gonna cover the battle of gettysburg and probably multiple podcasts but you know this guy joshua lawrence chamberlain who was in charge of the 20th main and and he just made a heroic effort of leadership and and and personal fortitude at the moment of truth. And it's awesome. But as I looked at all these different things as they unfolded, and you also see other things that happen in the Battle of Gettysburg,

where you think, well, that was a move, but we're not looking at it as heroic. Why? Well, it's because it wasn't done. It was done really for personal glory. Or at least there was elements of personal glory in there. And as a matter of fact, what's interesting is when you start looking at the personalities, you start getting these caricatures of personalities at the Battle

of Gettysburg. And just one, you know, you'll hear the word like, oh, this guy was flamboyant. And it's really hard to then take that person who's flamboyant and start applying the heroic to them because you feel, well, they're flamboyant and they made sacrifices. But you get that. And look, look, I'm not being critical. I'm just saying that you get this, you get this team. of oh this person was flamboyant and all of a sudden you think well you know but you see someone that's not flamboyant someone that was a former freaking school teacher like like like Colonel Chamberlain and you think yep he's doing this not for himself not for any level of glory whatsoever he's doing this to help to sacrifice and to help others that's what he's doing

And then you take all that and this whole experience at Gettysburg, you know, you're basically hearing this incredible story. And since you're on the hollowed ground itself, and it's something that I've said on this podcast since day one, you know, I would, I used to do it more often, but I would say, hey, as I'm reading this, I want you to remember that this isn't a character and a story. this isn't a person, this isn't an actor playing a role in a movie. This is a person. They did this.

And as I was at Gettysburg and you feel very, you can feel the gravity and the weight of, of the battlefield, you can feel it. And I know some of it is because, you know, we have been to war. And so we all kind of have some taste. in our mouth, some memory of loss and of fire and of blood and of fear. And so we know it and you're there. And you hear these stories. And it was very, it was very heavy for me because you start recognizing these stories. And I did a podcast about this with, with Darrell, with Darrell Cooper on unraveling. And we, it's, it's about. the fact that the way human beings absorb stories and how we actually create stories

in order to better understand the world around us like it's a it's not this isn't this isn't hey theoretically this is what we do this is what we do our brain is programmed to do this our brain is programmed to look at a set of circumstances and build a story around it so that we can survive better in the world that's what we actually actually do and you hear these stories of the way things unfolded at Gettysburg and you realize that our current situation it's it's America it's 2020 we don't often tell the right stories or we have a battle of stories and people have opposing stories of the way things are, the way things were, what happened and how things unfolded. And what that all tells me,

it reinforced the fact that stories that truly matter. And so if you're on a team, if your organization, if you're running a business, the story that you elevate has a massive impact on the mindset and the culture of the people that you are leading. So think about that and know that and understand that. I mean, Dave, in the Marine Corps, think about the story of the Marine Corps and then think about the little stories that make up the Marine Corps. It's a religious lore. It's a biblical level.

story and it provides the Marine Corps tying back it provides the Marine Corps with an implied intent with a with a culture and with values that aren't rooted in words they are absolutely rooted in stories and and I've covered a bunch of Marine Corps doctrine they will root their values they root their their statements in stories so that they have meaning. And if you're running an organization, think about that because stories absolutely matter. To have an organization that you can take,

you can take someone like me and have those stories be so powerful that somehow I, I, Dave Burke, feel connected to Smedley Butler or Chesty Puller or people I have never known and will never meet, feel obligated to perform in some way that makes them proud of me being part of that organization. When you talk about culture like that, I haven't thought about the stories in the way that you

describe them and what they mean, but as you're saying it, that's why I became a Marine, was the stories. I didn't know these people. and it wasn't even that I read about these people like in a chronological sense it was that the stories of what these people were and feeling the sense of wanting to be a part of that and feeling obligated to meet some standard that almost seemed impossible the tying in of as you're going from what makes someone heroic to the meaning of stories I mean think about what an organization can do if you can make that connection for your people I mean that's And that's why I became a Marine. That's why I became a Marine. That's why millions of people have become Marines. Totally.

And with that, I think it's a good place to stop for tonight. If you want to dig deeper into these and all other aspects of leadership in any arena, you can join Dave and me and the rest of the Eschelon Front Team live. We are actually there. You want to talk to us? People like, oh, people on social media say, I'd love to meet you someday. Come on to eFonline.com and come and meet me. Meet Dave.

Meet the rest of the team. We're there. We will answer your questions. We will help you solve your problems through leadership. And if you want leadership guidance inside your organization, inside your company, come and check out our leadership consultancy at Eschlonfront.com. It's what we do. I've also written a bunch of books about leadership, extreme ownership, the dichotomy

of leadership, leadership strategy and tactics. I've got some other podcasts. Jocko podcast is my main podcast. I guess that's the root of everything. Jocco unraveling with my friend Daryl Cooper. We talk about very in-depth subjects. We also have grounded, which is pretty much about Jiu-Jitsu and the Warrior Kid podcast

for all the Warrior Kids out there. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jocco store.com or origin, mane.com. That's all we've got for tonight. Thank you for listening to the day. debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.