Sea Control - Sea Control 586: What Moral Leadership Looks Like with William Spears

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Links1. "What Moral Leadership Looks Like," by William Spears, CIMSEC, July 16, 2025. 2. Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy: Insights on the Morality of Military Service, by William Spears, Casemate, 2025.3. William Spears website.

Oh, I shipmates and welcome back aboard sea control. I'm your co-host Brian Kirk and our guest today is Commander William Spears of the United States Navy. We'll be discussing his recent article, What Moral Leadership Looks Like, which was published with CIMSEC on 16 July 2025. As a reminder, all views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or any other organization with which we are affiliated. Will, welcome aboard Sea Control. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional background? Yeah, thanks, Brian. First, I'll say just I'm really grateful to be here. I always love any opportunity to talk about these topics that are, I think, very important. I am an active

submarine officer. I am in between sea tours right now. My most recent sea tour was as the executive officer of the ballistic missile submarine, Henry M. Jackson. Before that, I was the weapons officer in an attack submarine, Columbia and city of Corpus Christi. All of my tours have been out of the Western Pacific. And, you know, I did various shore duties in between there. At the moment, I'm at OSD in the Pentagon, pushing spreadsheets around and looking at how expensive ships are. And I'll hopefully be back into sea duty about a year from now. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're winning the war one spreadsheet at a time. But it's always good to have a submariner on the show, even if we're going to discuss something that is perhaps

far afield from your general area of expertise, but one that is close to the heart of perhaps most of the listeners of the show, which accords with not just leadership, but moral leadership. So let's point the content back to your article. Can you walk us through the big blue arrows on your article's core thesis? What is your elevator pitch? Yeah, sure. So at the top, the article is a tribute to Vice Admiral Stockdale. And he was kind of a hero of mine while I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy as kind of a lost midshipman. And you very quickly get lost in the pantheon of heroes and find your favorites. And he was definitely mine, a deeply philosophical and brilliant, brilliant moral thinker, but also the right guy for the right, right problem at the right time during the Vietnam War, whenever he was captured by enemy forces and became the ranking officer of the prisoners of war and was in that position for seven years. um he is today uh it it's hard to imagine that anyone might be in in the uh the naval services and not know who he is as much as he is celebrated you've got the stockdale center at the naval

academy and the stockdale chair of ethics at the naval war college and uh you know the stockdale award for leadership which within the navy is kind of the uh the the most respected you know award for a, you know, a commanding officer might receive. So he's very, very highly celebrated within the, the Naval services, uh, for his example, but kind of one of the things I argue about in the article is that his example isn't really fully understood or the depth of it. If, if I ask a average officer today, Hey, what, tell me about who, who was, who was vice Admiral Stockdale? Why was he a big deal? And I was like, Oh, he's the POW guy. You know, they might, They might know that he attempted suicide while he was in prison and kind of forced a stop to the torture regime that was happening in North Vietnam, but they generally won't know that much more than that or kind of understand what was really going on and what he was really facing there and why he was behaving the way he did and why he did what he did.

And so the article and I try to try to keep it short, but in as few words as possible, try to kind of get at that at the depth beneath what what he was doing and what his significance was. That was something I found really compelling about your article was the relationship between Stockdale, the philosophical underpinnings that informed much of his action. and then yes what was the the context behind it and what was the further so what which really you know means that this conversation has to some degree be about philosophy so before we get too deep into the story of stockdale in north vietnam let's set some of that philosophical context in the article you mentioned some key terms morale morality and telos can you explain these and why they matter to the story? Yeah. First of all, I'll, I'll, I'll say that morality is not something that people generally, it's not generally at the top of the list of anything anyone wants to talk

about. Uh, you know, especially, especially young guys that need to be reading articles like this. Um, the, the, the, I, the idea is it just makes people think of, of something that they learned in childhood. They think, Oh, you know, morality sharing is caring, you know, helping little old ladies across the street and all these nice soft things. But, but if, if, if I'm a, if I'm a young warfighter, I don't want to be that. I want to be a hard ass. You know, if I, I'm going to, if I go and publish a book about how to be disciplined, how to be resilient, how to be self-controlled, those are the things that people want to hear about. They want to be industrious. They want to be bad-asses, right? They don't want to, they, they are, they, they got the morality thing as,

uh, as children, they don't need to regress to that nursery rhyme stuff, you know, but these things, the resilience and discipline, uh, you know, all, all those things are moral factors. And I think that that is what's often lost and often overlooked, uh, courage, you know, fortitude, all those things are the, you know, the traditional old, old, old, old philosophical concept of morality uh it captures all of those notions so what does that have to do with the concept of morale what is a connection between morale and morality well uh they're connected through this concept of telos you know which or telos honestly it can't be pronounced either way you know uh but the that is what the ancient philosophers you know that's the word they used

for what we would today use call as the mission or purpose of something um and as a you know when used in when you use the term mission for this that's not to be confused with like a individual tasking such as go here and do this thing that that's not the kind of mission i'm talking about the mission i'm talking about is why do we exist why does my unit exist why does my ship exist the mission of a 688 class submarine is to destroy hostile ships the mission of the naval academy is to develop midshipmen morally mentally and physically these are things i had to memorize you know so the mission of a human being is what and that is something that philosophers have been grappling with for a very long time so how does that connect to morale why why do those words

sound similar? Well, there's an etymological connection. It goes back to Latin and Morse and Moralis, which refers to custom, expectation, kind of what is expected, what is something supposed to be. And morale refers to that for a group. So if I ask a sailor today, you know, hey, what does morale mean to you? Do you have morale? What would help your morale? They're going to say something like, okay, well, I'm happy, you know, chief doesn't yell at me whenever I come to work and, uh, you know, maybe we, you know, we do, uh, uh, command football game on, on Fridays or something. That's, that's going to be the stuff that helps morale and all that stuff is, is, is part of it, but morale is not just happiness of a group. Okay. Uh, and it's definitely

a collective quality. It's not something an individual can have, you know, no, no individual has morale. But importantly, the group needs to be successful in its purpose. It needs to be achieving its purpose if it's going to have morale. No losing team has high morale. They might have something if they appear happy, but morale isn't it. And so morale is inherently connected to that group's ability to achieve its telos or its purpose or for why it exists as a group or as a as a command uh just like morality connects to that telos for an individual that's all really fascinating stuff and i think what will resonate with a lot of listeners is how you broke out the the deeper meaning of morale uh beyond the perhaps uh too too simplistic understanding

that many of us have. I would offer, for me, when I traditionally think of morale, I thought of it in the way that you described as like, hey, do I feel good or not? Am I happy? Are spirits high or spirits low? And I would have differentiated that from discipline, which is pursuing your purpose regardless of how you feel. But the way you described it, and again, I'm not a philosopher and perhaps I'm butchering the read back here, but what I understand is morale, purpose, mission, et cetera, those are all directly linked to what I would have traditionally understood as discipline in terms of making sure you do the thing no matter how you feel and all those things being bound up. So that was one of the things I found really compelling about your article. So let's go back

to what that means for Stockdale. So we just described a really good philosophical contextual background to the piece, and then Stockdale putting that in action. And maybe we're looking at how, you know, that purpose, that telos, that mission changes when you are a ranking officer in this circumstance. So the North Vietnamese re-education program, right, it was designed to psychologically isolate prisoners and break their will. That was a place in which Stockdale found himself as a leader. How did Stockdale's philosophical grounding equip him and his fellow POWs to endure this psychological torture. Yeah, it's really quite amazing when you look at the fact that he was the guy that was in that position at that time. You talk about the right

guy at the right time. It's just amazing, the historical serendipity of that, because it happens to that before that tour, he became very well read in classical moral philosophy, uh specifically that of the stoics but not just the the stoics uh you know the aristotelians the you know a lot of the the hellenistic stuff uh and and whenever he later on far later on in life whenever he was the president of the naval war college he would he would talk about all this stuff and and and teach it himself but the the philosophical grounding that those those things invested in him with were an extreme sense of moral autonomy and freedom where uh freedom is basically found in isolating your self-concept from external factors to uh to your situation

recognizing that what i am is my own moral agency i'm not even you know i'm not my uniform i'm not my position i'm not my my rank i'm not even my physical body i am my own moral agency and my own sense of will uh so what i am is completely beyond the reach of any antagonist or oppressor you can you can imprison my body uh if you want uh but you're not going to reach me you can put a chain on my leg but you're you can't you can't affect who i am and what my moral worth is uh that's independent of of your reach it's beyond your reach as an antagonist and so that put him in a position to never really give way to the enemy and and that were the the torturers the interrogators and as opposed to as well as the the guys who would play the good cop and and try to be

the uh the the special favors guys that that would manipulate the prisoners and offer them some kind a special deal or perhaps early release. And he was impervious to all of that because of his philosophical grounding. So that right guy for the right job, but also being in command, I think is very, very important here. So it's good that he had that tool set, but it would have been perhaps less useful or not useful if he was not able to share that with his fellow POWs. And so here, we're going to pivot to a discussion of what you described as leader imprinting in your article and we're going to connect it to your own experience uh having observed this uh with nuclear submarine crews so can you discuss how this applied uh outside of the crew environment and how it applied

in stockdale's case yeah so this is this is something that i'm sure you're you've seen i think i think we all see uh and and you know i i don't the the term leader imprinting is is you know neither here nor there that's that that and terms like organizational culture and all the that's what happens when academics try to contend with these principles that are they're kind of intuitive and and people who lead human beings just just know this but the people who lead human beings recognize that groups model their leaders groups take on a group personality that inevitably ends up looking something like the personality of whoever's in charge and you know it takes time and it's not perfect. And, and it's, it's always just in broad motions and broad strokes that you see

this, but you do see it and it is undeniable. So it's, uh, something that I observed firsthand. Uh, I just had the remarkable fortune, uh, for one of my shore duties in between my department head and my XO tour, I was, uh, served on an inspection team for, for submarines where we would, uh, it was, uh, it was called the combat readiness evaluation team at the time. And, And, you know, what we would do is we would come visit a submarine and basically impose this simulated wartime environment and watch them react. And, you know, they don't know what's coming. We run all kinds of drills on them and we run combat scenarios on them. And I just get to sit there with my clipboard and just judge the hell out of all these poor bastards, you know.

And, I mean, it was a remarkable tour from a professional development standpoint. I still feel bad about the dirty tricks I played on people. If any of y'all are listening, I'm really sorry, but I thought you did a great job. But one of the things that, you know, being on that side of the curtain in the inspection team environment that, you know, I got to go from boat to boat to boat and see all these different submarine crews in this high stress environment. And you really get to see that groups model their leaders principle just in very, very vivid detail where the crew is inevitably going to take on the personality traits of its captain. And I can tell a lot about what the captain is going to be like as soon as I step on board. You know, if the crew has this personality type where they're not really forthcoming with problems and they tend to sweep stuff under the rug or things like that, then I'm probably going to find a captain at the top that is preoccupied with reputation, you know. Or if the crew seems to be kind of beaten down and victimized and just always, always on the defensive from, from whatever bad guy from outside of the, the, the ship or outside of the pressure hole is, is, you know, if they've got this victim thing, then you're probably going to have a kind of victim mentality in the captain at some point.

And it's going to transmit through the crew. On the other hand, if the crew has, you know, this just kind of indomitable warrior spirit or, you know, a very tight professional way of interacting that is tight and clean and disciplined, you know, you're going to find a captain that acts like that at the top. And it's just going to trickle through the crew and all these kinds of intangible ways. And that is, that's just something that, that has been intuitively recognized since ships were powered by oars. You know, that's, that's just something that, that, that leaders do. What leaders do is they convert that individual quality of morality to that collective quality of morale. Uh, and that, that's, you know, it's extremely significant and it's an extreme responsibility. And that leadership transmission, the transmission of those traits, uh, that perspective, that worldview, those habits, uh, is certainly something that Stockdale, when he was in command of the other POWs that were there with him, uh, certainly demonstrated. And you articulate that well, uh, in the article.

And one of the things that I thought was very interesting that you remarked upon was the reconciliation between, or within the almost impossible situation, which so many of those POWs were, which is they were human beings that were charged to uphold a code and to not divulge secrets, even under duress, even under torture. And then you tell the story of the phrase where when somebody says, hey, there are no virgins here. And that led to the development of a certain code. So the no virgins here code, that was a very powerful example of creating a psychological permission structure in which the POWs could in fact survive their circumstances and maintain their sense of self, their sense of agency. Can you discuss that line between acknowledging the

human fallibility and maintaining a standard of resistance in such extreme circumstances and how Stockdale and his POWs Navigated this Yeah it was an extremely difficult Position to be in So Stockdale's crew Was the POW colony You know and he didn't

He didn't ask for that position He didn't ask to be the ranking officer there He just was and it was his responsibility To hold everyone together Even though he was the Candidate number one to torture And to try to break into Submission

But the telos of that crew, of that POW colony was the survival of its members, and this is something that – this is what placed Stockdale in such a dilemma is that moral survival was key to physical survival. If someone would be broken, would come back broken and feel like a traitor and withdraw from the American communication – and what's really remarkable about this is all the communication that they did was by tapped codes through prison cells, prison walls. They were and they couldn't be caught communicating. That was a big deal if they got caught communicating. But they had this code and they would communicate with one another and they all got very good at it and could communicate very well. Well, whenever someone would come back from a torture session, they would inevitably have been tortured into giving up secrets or getting on camera and decrying the criminality of the American war effort or something like that. And basically, you know, get on camera and say, yes, we're all war criminals. And that was all part of this propaganda machine. Well, that broken prisoner would come back and they would feel like a total traitor that, you know, and they someone would tap and like, hey, hey, buddy, how you doing? you know uh because they they knew they knew what was going on and immediately the prisoners would would say would come back hey you don't want to talk to me you know i'm i'm a traitor and the reply would always need to be hey snap out of it you know this is that we we've all gone through

this with this we've all done this and and everybody breaks like that's just no so the dilemma here is that you can't let people be morally broken you have to offer them absolution and forgiveness and that that absolution has to be in the hands of americans in the arms of your countrymen not the enemy because that's how they get broken is they they get that stockholm syndrome they start to sympathize with the enemy you have a a flawed and ambiguous war effort and that just uh contributes to you know contributes to this air of ambiguity so but how do we do this how do we create this environment where uh the the broken prisoner comes back and is and is forgiven without just allowing or basically creating this permissive structure just like well you're going

to be broken anyway so just you might as well just give it all up you know and so the answer was that instead of just saying this and that behavior is forbidden what stockdale did was said this and that behavior is something for which you must accept torture to do and so that that little switch uh basically creates this environment where being tortured into being you know revealing a secret or whatever is itself an active agency and an active defiance and when someone does that they you know can hold their head high to the extent that they they're able to hold their head anything when they come back from that and know that they did what they were supposed to do and what they they did what they could do and it prevented allowing that that

relationship to form between the the prison authority it prevented the stockholm syndrome it's like an inoculation against that you don't you don't level with your torturer you know you don't sympathize with them they are your enemy your friends are the americans and you're going to come back to them and they're going to forgive you for whatever you do while you're being tortured and that prevents that moral death uh where someone would come back completely broken and would just isolate themselves and not communicate anymore because those are the guys who died and so that is that that is how you created a survival mechanism for the prisoners but also it created this uh state of resistance and agency that kind of rippled through the prison

colony and the the prison authority found it completely incomprehensible it was just bizarre they did not understand at all the american prisoners were completely unreasonable why would they behave this way why would anyone behave this way why would anyone demand to be tortured for anything for any reason like this just doesn't make sense uh and and that that is that is the basic idea and so you know he had there were specific behaviors that were not supposed you weren't supposed to do you were never supposed to bow in public you were never supposed to go on the air uh you're supposed to you know stay off the radio don't be exploited in that way and whenever you're released you don't kiss them goodbye uh but most importantly you whatever you did had to

be in the context of of the group and upholding the group and uh that was codified in unity over self uh that the unity of the group was the most important thing what i find so compelling about what you just talked about was the way to gain and maintain agency in an impossible situation Truly, the prisoners, they have no freedom. But with the context you provided about the fact of you still have your agency, your will, despite the fact that you might be a prisoner within your own body and that body instead of a prison camp, you can still exert will. And in this particular way, this unique way, it's almost like, by the way, I mean, you have to accept torture before you divulge anything. It's akin to I am completely surrounded. I'm completely outmatched. I'm going to lose this fight.

There's no way to win, but I'm still going to make you fight me. And in the context of spreading morale and spirit and resilience, which can then lead to survival, the moral survival leading to physical survival, that really brings it all together. That was really, really fascinating to me. So going back to Stockdale, we talked about before about his own individual actions, about how he upheld that code. He damaged his own face so that he could not be used in propaganda efforts. He attempted suicide to otherwise discourage further torture toward his fellow prisoners. Lots of specific actions for which Stockdale is rightfully praised. but that also is undergirded not just by some of the philosophical tenets we discussed but

you know a broader approach from his own philosophical training so beyond those specific actions can you describe where there are other particular philosophical tenets or teachings that you think were most central to Stockdale's resilience and his moral clarity and outside of god forbid one of us finding ourselves in a POW camp how might today's service members apply those to our own lives. Yeah. I think the, uh, the over-focus on the POW camps piece of it, which, I mean, you can't talk about Stockdale without it being about the POW camp, but the, the danger with that is that, uh, us youngins, we, we see that and, and we hear that and we're, we think, well, that'll be really useful if I'm ever captured as a POW. Now let me

tell you, as a, as a submariner, if I'm ever in a POW camp, we have screwed up. So it, I would say that that is very unlikely that I will ever apply Stockdale's POW camp lessons, but the concept of moral autonomy, the concept that I am a, you know, a reasoning human being above all, above every other role that I might play, I am a reasoning human being. And that with that confers a responsibility to inherit virtue in my actions and in my thoughts is extremely powerful and it resonates through everything that I do or I hope that it does. It certainly can and it certainly should. And so it's a good testament to why we study these things, why it's still valuable to look into the ancient philosophy what that could possibly have to offer us today because i think

if i go read modern philosophers i'm gonna get some kind of defensive pedophilia or something weird like that like they just talk about or they're going to debate whether chairs really exist like there's just a bunch of weird useless crap out there but when we go back to the really old stuff the stuff that they talked about you know 2 000 years ago the reason we still talk about it is because it gets at the core of of what it means to be a human being and that's that's why it's survivorship bias it's the same reason that you know classic rock songs are still good it's because all the crappy songs you don't listen to anymore we forgot about them we just we only remember the good stuff you know it's the same way with philosophy that the classic stuff uh is the

stuff that really resonates independent of any time or period and and it's just the same reason And we still read Shakespeare. The concept of virtue specifically is really worth digging in on and that the the Stoics that Stockdale was read in were really into this idea. But they got it from Plato. And then you see it reflected in all kinds of other parts of our society. But the idea that I find very resonant is the cardinal virtues, which are specifically wisdom, courage, moderation, or temperance, which is basically self-control and justice or being just, justness. Those are the four qualities that the ancient philosophers would say make up an ideal human being. and any, and they work like the primary colors where any other quality that you want, such as generosity or an industriousness or, you know, magnanimity, whatever is good about a human being is some derivative of those four qualities, but you can't really break those up further.

And, uh, I think that that is a very powerful concept that, uh, is, is very good in capturing what is an ideal human being. And so back to that idea of, we don't really want to talk about morality, we want to talk about being a badass. Well, you know, all those things that I just described are what make up an ideal human being, and especially an ideal warfighter. I appreciate you turning the conversation to virtue, and the idea of making that ideal warfighter and using virtue as a way to get there, which, you know, makes some other questions come to mind. So let's jump to the conclusion of your article, and then we'll get back to what I'm driving toward, you conclude by stating that Stockdale, quote, serves as the ultimate benchmark

for what we should expect from leaders and what we should value when selecting them, clarifying the ideal leader is always and everywhere an ideal human, end quote. So what practical steps can organizations like a Navy or Marine Corps or any service take to identify and cultivate those ideal humans who possess or could be taught these Stockdale-esque qualities? Or put another way, how do we train our people in applied virtue? Well, the first thing to recognize is that it can be trained. And that is a contentious topic, right? That's controversial, and it has been controversial for a hot minute.

And I mean, this is a debate that goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle and those guys. But they generally agreed – they came to an agreement generally that virtue can be taught, and that ended up being a deep underpinning of a lot of other implications of what an ideal society should be. And you see this in Plato's Republic. The idea is that virtue can be taught, and it's incumbent upon the society to teach it. What does that mean to the military? Okay, so virtue can be taught. How do we teach it? I think that the first thing to do is to recognize, you say, well, how do we identify those ideal humans? Well, there are no ideal humans. Okay, recognize we're all imperfect, and we're tragically imperfect. And so the curriculum to train them is going to be equally imperfect. So the question isn't, is it perfect, you know, or is this person ideal? The question is, you know, is this person capable? And as to the curriculum, are we altered in a good way when we experience it? uh, whenever we learn anything, you know, whenever I eat a hamburger, I'm, I'm altered as a human being. When I learned something, I'm altered in a, in a more profound way. Am I altered in a good

way? Whenever I experience a training curriculum or a command environment or command culture, does that make me a better or a worse person? So that's a good way to kind of measure it. So how do we do it? I think the first thing we do it is to define it, define what virtue is, identify those qualities that that we value in a human being and it's more than just helping little old ladies across the street and sharing you know it's all those things that we value all those things that we desire we desire to be a badass because we think it's desired of us we think that that's something that we're supposed to be as human beings and as war fighters so let's identify let's identify those qualities uh integrity and and honor what do those things

mean? They mean a lot. Make it clear, make it clear that it's cool and desirable to be virtuous. It's not just what we teach children. And then what do we do after that? We study the heroes. That was a great cap off to the article. And to your point, Stockdale is certainly one of those heroes that we study and we continue to because of the legacy and because of the value we see and his ability to teach us that same virtue you just described so article aside there's another big announcement right you've got a book coming out on this very topic and i would be remiss if i did not give you the chance to plug it here so please plug away and tell us a bit more about what it's about i i appreciate it it's not exactly on this topic but it it's much broader it's the the

name of the book is called stoicism as a warrior philosophy and you never really appreciate how defiant of a of an elevator pitch the concept of stoicism is until you're sitting across the table from an admiral and he says you wrote a book on what so stoicism is is the philosophy that the particular philosophy that stockdale was very much into and there is now a popular movement that did not exist at any point that Stockdale was alive but now and it's purely a function of of the online internet age and I argue also it's a function of several ales of our society and especially the mental health crisis that we're experiencing right now stoicism a lot of people have found that it helps keep them sane there's a lot of academic literature on why that

is, but the punchline of it is that the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, all the people who developed the therapy, whenever you send a sailor to the doctor to go see a therapist, what they're going to do is cognitive behavioral therapy. Well, those principles were actually the people who developed those techniques were deeply read in Stoic philosophy, and they got them from the Stoics. What therapists think are, you know, therapeutic techniques, the Stoics basically thought were just how you should think about things. And so I argue that the existence of a popular Stoicism movement is largely a function of the current mental health crisis that we're experiencing. All that being said, what's the book about? The book, it basically is a deep

dive into stoic philosophy what did the stoics actually believe and write and think and is it compatible with military service and so that's a very deep question and it gets into just war theory and so uh kind of you know five-sixths of the book is basically laying out uh stoic philosophy and then the final six chapters basically fusing it with just war theory and it's the book is written for warfighters uh it is it is written for people in the military uh by someone who is in the military who just happens to be a huge philosophy nerd uh and and i'm just one of those guys i have to write about stuff uh i've been working on this one for a long time uh it is not an easy read it's it's kind of dense but uh it's very very

deeply researched because i i you know had to basically make my argument uh very academically to to make my case and so i'm citing all the uh all the sources there's like over 500 citations in the thing uh and that just comes from you know i'm a nuke so that means that you know if we're going to debate about something if we're going to argue about a topic then we first need to know what the book says and what does the reference say and so that was kind of my approach to this is like okay let's go dig deeply into these books and see what these guys actually said and actually thought. And that's kind of what the book's about. So if someone's interested in what is this Stoicism thing and how does it apply to the military service, that is what the book is about.

It's called Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy. It releases in the UK in September and in the US in November. Well, that sounds like an absolutely fascinating book. I'll definitely be on the lookout for it i encourage the listeners to be on the look for it as well as described uh again my own reflections as a leader sounds exactly how i would have expected marines my marines to embrace their own reality and accept some of those things that they cannot change and see the things that they can uh and see reality as it is um and i appreciate the discussion as well on the modern application of cognitive behavioral therapy uh because to your point it's it's truly like using principles of stoic philosophy to see the world a certain way and move forward smartly, which is

just part and parcel of what we've done from probably day one of both of our own experiences in the military. So seeing the philosophical and academic framework for it and building a more rigorous case vice just, well, this is what I learned at Parris Island when I was a recruit and it's worked, right? And it worked for the Marines before me, or it worked for the sailors before you, uh, definitely much more, uh, richer, more riveting case, uh, that will allow us to bring the value proposition across the organization in a clearer way. So I'm definitely looking forward to that book. So finally, well, where can listeners find you online and what else are you working on? Uh, I, the, the book is, is consuming everything right now and just get,

getting that thing stood up, um, is, is, is everything. I've got a website. We can throw it in a link in the show notes and you know i i'm mainly on linkedin is the main place i'm active i'm happy to you know add add any listeners this connection please hit me up and uh we'll just we'll just throw it in the show notes all right well will thank you again so much for joining us good luck at your current assignment fair winds and following seas you to listeners bravo zulu for tuning in and we'll see you next time There I met with Greasy Annie. So help me, Bob-I, put in the alley.

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