The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot’s Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions by Hasard Lee

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot's Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions by Hasard Lee https://amzn.to/3QvmUQy THE #2 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER Based on a career of making high-stakes, split-second decisions as a U.S. fighter pilot, The Art of Clear Thinking teaches readers to apply Hasard Lee's combat-tested techniques in everyday life. The training to become a fighter pilot is among the most competitive and difficult in the world with fewer than one in a thousand succeeding. Pushing a cutting-edge jet to its limits at over 1,000 mph means that every split-second decision can have catastrophic consequences. This extreme environment has forged a group of warriors who for the last fifty years have been considered at the apex of decision-making theory and practice. In The Art of Clear Thinking, Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft. With gripping firsthand accounts from his time as a fighter pilot and fascinating turning points throughout history, Hasard reveals powerful decision-making principles that can be used in business and in life, including: • HOW TO LEARN BETTER AND FASTER • CULTIVATING MENTAL TOUGHNESS • DEVELOPING THE SKILLS TO QUICKLY ASSESS, CHOOSE, AND EXECUTE • AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Hasard has used and taught these techniques across the full spectrum of human endeavors and proven their effectiveness in both the cockpit and the boardroom. Those who have already benefited include CEO’s, astronauts, CIA agents, students, parents, and many others. The Art of Clear Thinking is a book that will change how you interact with the world around you. About the Author HASARD LEE is a U.S Air Force fighter pilot who began his career flying the F-16 Viper. As a flight commander he led his pilots into combat during one of the most intense periods during the War in Afghanistan. There he flew over 80 combat missions and became the only fighter pilot to ever fly two different types of jets into combat on the same day while supporting troops under fire. Hasard was selected as the Top Instructor Pilot of the year for the largest F-16 base in the world. Hasard was then hand-picked to fly the F-35--the most advanced and expensive weapon’s system in history--which was still in development at the time. During his last role on Active-Duty, Hasard became the Chief of Training Systems for the largest training base in the world, leading the development of new technology and teaching methods to train future fighter pilots. Hasard speaks and consults for organizations. His social media accounts reach over 290 million people annually. The Art of Clear Thinking is his first book.

Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. I hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurs,

podcasting, corporate stuff, with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as CEO. And be sure to check out chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com Now back to the show. The one thing I love about the book is you had play-by-play, minute-by-minute, microsecond-by-microsecond.

You talk about how you make decisions. 1,500 episodes now. I feel like sometimes I'm in that fog of war that I'm trying to make decisions and stuff. But you guys are making millisecond. We have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's got a brilliant YouTube channel. He's with the Air Force. decisions and stuff. But you guys are making like millisecond decisions. He's got a brilliant YouTube channel. He's with the Air Force. He's written his latest book.

It just came out May 23rd. It explains what's going on in Afghanistan and dogfighting or some sort of operation that's going on. And then you're translating that into a business where we can be talking to us about his latest books. And what's great is he's translated the brilliance of being a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot into

business. Because I loved it. And then, of course, the minute by minute. And the high risk, too. Tell us about some of that. He's a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who began his career flying the F-16. As a flight commander, he led his pilots into combat during one of the most intense periods during the war in Afghanistan. There he flew

over 80 combat missions if you want to. Well, thank you. That's a great compliment reading the whole book in one day. So, you know, that's amazing to hear. I really wanted to write it in a way that people would be engaged because I think that's how we learn as humans

and that's something that I had a chance to be a part of when I helped develop the F-35. And his latest role in active duty, he became chief of training systems for the largest training base in the world. Being the developer of new technology and teaching methods would all have six facts and be a billionaire. So you really have to learn through your own experiences

and stories. So that's the way I framed it. I really like authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Drew Gwanda that have these interwoven stories that expand multiple subjects. That's a brilliant intro. Let's see. Thanks for having me. Thank you. It's an honor to have you.

We've had many of the military gentlemen and folks on the show. I've always been amazed at, and I shouldn't be, because there's a brilliance to our military and how we build leaders and how we archetype our tiers. If you've ever been in a roller coaster that does 3G, that does a loop, pushes your head down, that's about 3Gs. Formula 1 car is about 5Gs. We're calling 9Gs. It's almost like your arms are made of lead. Each arm weighs about 250 pounds.

My body weighs over 2,000 pounds. And it's some fun videos out there. Out of your brain. There you go. Yeah, the videos are fun. So after I fly, it looks like I have chickenpox on my arms. Because that's the blood pressurizing. There's something fascinating about the spring of flight.

And the work that you guys do. So this is your first book. What motivated you to write this book? So it's like a bruise goes away after a couple of days. the spring of light for me and the work that you guys do so this is your first thing is though i mean it's not that's not too bad so you know what goes away after a couple of days and it was pretty um pretty difficult pretty intense period like you talk about you lose enough there and so i was just kind of writing down some notes you pass out at the speeds we're flying you'll impact the ground in about 20 seconds a few months until i start flying it fully wake up so i started writing down some of those notes just more as a uh and so over the last 30 years, we've lost about one pilot unit to this GED.

So we do a lot with the human performance aspect of staying in good physical shape, nutrition, all that stuff. There you go. And talk about some of the different decision-making aspects that you use. I'm a little bit foggy on them, but there were different things you talked about during fast-forward casting. You know, it really resonated with people. There was a teacher in the crowd who wanted me to come speak at her school. And so I started speaking at her school. You know, there's one more story in the book about how you're trying to decide if you should land at the base or you should go for a refill tanker.

So I started a podcast. And I interviewed a bunch of different people on there, special forces soldiers, astronauts, and people really started wanting me to write a book. I had written some of those stories from Afghanistan and so I kind of was able to massage it eventually into the book you see in front of you. I wrote it down in a certain time. It was a six-year process. So assess, choose, execute, and it's cyclical.

So after the execute, you want to be able to assess again. But you're always having second and third order effects to every decision. So it's not going to be able to write that thing and to pare it down. So it went through nine iterations. If you're not able to assess the problem from you, you're never going to be able to consistently make good decisions. You may get lucky every once in a while, but you're not going to be able to consistently make a good decision maker.

Now, so I went to an air show when I was five years old and saw Thunderbird fly. I saw Blue Angels fly, which was back in the days when you could sit in a cockpit of a jet. I don't think you can really do that anymore, but hop in the cockpit of an F-16

was just blown away by hundreds of buttons and just a five-year-old kid. So spinning that assessment phase, breaking down the problem, and really understanding it is key. That's true. If you have a three or four seconds to make a decision, or if you have a couple years to make a decision, there's not a lot of evidence for that when you're a kid. If you want to be an NFL player and play sports,

you have to make split-second decisions. For me, I just memorized all the facts about planes. I watched all the movies. Of course, the mission planning process wars that are years in the future so this mission planning process is a lot like project management that a civilian fly for the first time that was in a power laws and being able to understand

the few key variables it's pretty much just a flying lawnmower with wings so I was focusing on the few key variables at the time pretty hot place right now with the role kind of in the movie that just came out. It's like

an exponential growth. People are familiar with that with compound interest. It's built into a mountain. There's a runway there that's on the top of a plateau. As soon as you take off, your gains are going to start to decrease.

That's why a few shows on Netflix do better than everything else combined. And that's also where Pareto's BD20 principle comes in. So if you can identify those power laws, which is the single best tool for that, do something together, and it really clicked. So if you can graph the data

that you're looking at, you can pretty easily see if it adheres to one of these parallels. And then you can focus on that for optimizing what choice you're going to pick. So next, after an assessment phase, is choosing the correct solutions for you. Good luck with your endeavors. As fighter pilots, we have tactics that are like NFL playbooks that we have thousands of tactics that we can choose. But sometimes we're developing these custom tactics. And so I talk about the story and just end up

right behind effects-based planning and really separating. I thought the dream was over there. And a few weeks later, I got another letter saying that I've been right on the edge of getting accepted. I went to this other school called New Mexico Military Institute.

And it sends out planes. And it sends out tanks. And send out planes. And it sends out tanks. You send out tanks. And that's more of a nutrition mindset. So I spent a year there. Met one of the best instructors. In the early 90s. Culminating with a desert storm.

Actually got a chance to get my private pilot's license. Before I went to the Air Force Academy. What is the effect you're trying to drive? Usually that's taking out the energy grid. Or taking out the leadership. And doing everything to enable that effect. So that's where you see a lot of the shock and awe campaigns that have

pretty much in every war sense. And then last, another thing with choosing, it really comes down to finding the expected value. Really? So the expected value is what is this good that's going to happen? How good is it? What is the probability of that happening? Minus the risk. value really choice so the expected value is what is this really busy focus on the mission and so you see all kinds of random things as we're seeing now with all the weather balloons

and things like that what's the probability so happening decision making is really just I don't know about any into that if you can solve that equation let us know if you can consistently make it that'll be that'll be good to see so you know what's the percentage you're you know how much does it weigh in. That's pretty challenging. A lot of people don't like to kind of guesstimate or forecast what it's going to be. They like to have, I call it the three Cs. You have consultants, you have computer programmers, and you have committees that make decisions for you.

People get a little averse to owning decisions. They like to outsource it and have somebody else make decisions for you. People get a little averse to phony decisions. They like to outsource it and whittle down. So I think about one in 10 people make it into the Air Force Academy. People need to come up with that expected value on their own, pilot qualified, so they have expertise. Hold yourselves accountable because then you can bring in those outside tools and you can either physically qualify to fly. So about half of people aren't

qualified to fly versus them or if you are wrong you can see why you're probably wrong and then understand how to get better in the future so finding that expected value through fast forecasting essentially just guesstimating this big flight physical because they know they have you

and then lastly being able to execute being able to go out there and execute on your decision is difficult. We have the same. You don't rise to the level of your expectation and you fall to the level of your preparation. So we go out and do a lot of training. We do a lot of

debriefing and that's a whole discussion. We can have that. But then you go to what's called the lessons learned, the principles for how to get better. And so you're just flying like little Cessnas. My understanding is we've got another Air Force author's book

that's interviewed in the pilot training. You guys do a lot of your degree things to really focus on self-accountability and take apart and deconstruct what went good or what went wrong on a mission, right? And I remember the first day they had a pep talk by the base commander. He came in. He said, I want you to all close your eyes. Correct. Yeah.

When we fly, we'll go out and we'll fly for about an hour and a half in a training environment. That's all the fuel we have. And I hope to come back in combat. He said, it can be five, even ten hours, sometimes even longer. So training, going out, flying just for a little bit. We come back and we'll spend two to six hours debriefing other types of aircraft, other than fighters. And he said, good luck. And after that, it was game on the next time. And, you know, you want to be helpful to your classmates. So, it's kind of an odd dynamic because you're being

great at it and being helpful. But at the end of the day, you know that only a few people are going to get fighters. And so I think out of 30 people, you're just sending out four F-18s and they're going to take them too. But it's really one of my favorites. It's like a P-51 all at the same time, but a modern version of it. So all the aircraft are different and have different

capabilities. And it's what we call multi-domain. So you have assets there on the ground you have assets in the ocean people got selected to fly the t-38 so those are the people that are on the potential fighter tracks the rest went to t1 which is kind of like a business jet puzzle that and so of those seven now you're flying the supersonic like what we call red flag supersonic trainer everybody together even international partners flying long dart and we will really talk about the sorties one of the toughest uh still that i've

ever flown so we'll usually do two i think i think like three of us got selected to fly the f-16 but you're not done yet so the night bowl after that you go to midnight other school call introduction to flight fundamentals and you've made it until about you know i got selected to fly the f-16 my number one choice is there's no windows in these debrief facilities. We've spent that entire time debriefing and sort of breaking it down, figuring out all the way up to that point.

The thing about the debrief failout is it's really not as stable. You also have to go to the center of people where they spin you around really, really fast and you get blamed for things naturally. There are always a few guys that end up washing out there and having to go fly other types of aircraft. So then you finally make it to F-16

school to say what they did wrong and then everybody else will slowly start to follow. But it just takes one person at least back then. And everybody starts planning up and doing that. So we have a couple best practices for that. We maintain a nameless, rankless debrief.

Yeah, well, congratulations. It's quite the gauntlet. You really have to be the ultimate individual. They rejected me because I was kind of ugly. I've been flying for 30 years. I don't think I've seen that happen. But I did have those good looks. Sterile, nobody's trying to

insult people's character. That's the goal. So let me ask me ask you what is the juice for you in flying for the air force what is the juice what do you get off on what is the walk around with a small black notebook and i write down what i did wrong and then uh first and foremost this was my dream so i'll read the first time i left after that, I don't make a mistake. I mean, just the smile on my face. I knew I had accomplished this 20-year goal. And just feel the thrust in your chest as you're accelerating down the runway.

Because it's unlike anything that you experience in your normal life. You are an edge of a roller coaster that you control. And where you're just like, well, you know, that was a big deal. We'll just put that behind us. You you're sitting on top of 40,000 pounds of rust. So it's just kind of a mind-bending experience that you can't experience anywhere else. So part of it is being able to do that. Part of it is getting a chance to serve my country and why in Afghanistan we were doing a lot of close air support. So supporting the troops on the ground. But the same is true for business.

We were there during a pivotal time when ISIS was starting to take hold. Afghanistan, we were doing a lot of close air support. So supporting the troops on the ground. But you know, the same is true for business. It's life or death of a business company. One thing that draw me about the book, I love strategy. When I was younger, I used to play a lot of strategy and some other forces. They were doing a lot of high risk clearing operations. They would get into firefights and you would be able to have a significant

effect on that strategy. The history would be just two of us significant effect on that firefight history. One thing that you guys talked about in your book was just that calm, what I perceived as calm, was being able to make so many decisions and the balancing and weighing of so many different things. We had Fred Haste, the pilot of Apollo 13 on the show, and he talked about his book. And it's a line that I really love. Never panic early. instruct future pilots. And so there's definitely an enjoyment to being able to pass along the lessons that I've learned to them and hopefully they'll be able to go out there and use those skills

to protect the country and to preserve our way of life. So I think there's a whole range of reasons why I do it. We have, you know, are people being attacked? How can we retaliate? This is going on, that's going on.

And then, of course, you're flying, I don't know, a multi-billion dollar war machine that you just can't just eject. Then there's danger if you eject too in certain situations. And so the whole thing was enthralling. And, of course, you're going through this chess game in your head in like milliseconds. And I think I just fell in love with i was just like holy shit this is uh this is like it was just great juice to read well i really appreciate that and yeah staying staying calm under pressure is one of the most important

things to be able to to think clearly and that's why the book is titled the art of clear thinking because that's the ultimate compliment, professional compliment that you can give somebody that they are a clear thinker, not necessarily smart. Like we all know people that have a lot of information just kind of rolling around in their brain, but they're not necessarily, you know, clear thinkers making good decisions. And so that's, that's my job as a fighter pilot, when you boil everything down is to be a good decision maker. And a big aspect of that is staying calm under pressure. We have another saying that you lose 20 IQ points as soon as you put on your helmet.

And that's because what looks easy right now at one G we're not moving at all. It's really difficult when you're in the heat of the moment and it's physically hot. Like if you're, uh, you know, in the, in the desert and it's physically hot. Like if you're, uh, you know, in the, in the desert, it's, it's like 120 degrees as soon as you open up the cockpit and the cooling all goes to the radar, not you. So you're drenched in sweat and you lose about five to 10 pounds every sortie, but more, more on point, you know, the heat of the moment when things are busy, when people are counting on you, when you show up to those firefights, you need to be able to detach and you have a wide vision. So I'm talking about physically pushing out your vision because as we, uh, the stress starts to increase, we start making

mistakes, our vision starts to shrink. So you want to really push that vision out. We have, uh, you know, the most important thing is preparation, but we do have some other things, tools to help us breathing exercises, box breathing, five seconds in, hold five seconds, five seconds out, hold five seconds, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, things like that. Those are, you know, the cherry on top that can help your performance by maybe five, 10%. Number one thing is going to be preparation, but there are things you can do to help you detach and to be able to have that wide vision, that understanding of what's going on below you. There you go. And you talk about the mental toughness in the book too. Let's touch on that before we go out. Yeah. Mental toughness is important. So that's something that the Air Force has really pushed the last five years is being able to stay in the

present moment, visualization, self-talk, all those kind of squishy things. And of course, like I said, it comes down to preparation. You can't just shortcut that. So as long as you have the preparation down, now we're talking about small gains, 2%, 5% gains, which is still important. We'll spend all that time debriefing just to get 1 percent better. So, yeah, I think the self-talk, being able to coach yourself, being able to maintain your confidence is important. And that's kind of my job as an instructor. We get some really talented pilots here, but a lot of times they'll they'll choke. So they'll be flying. They'll make a mistake with something stupid that they know how to do better. And they'll start thinking about that and it'll spiral.

And so they'll make another mistake and another mistake. And the speeds were flying within a couple of seconds. What went from a good sortie will all of a sudden become dangerous. And so it's part of my job to be able to help them, coach them through. And to stay in the present moment, don't worry about mistakes you're making right now. There's a set aside time to debrief. So that's another plug for the debrief to have a scheduled time for it. And if you don't have it scheduled, you probably won't do it. And if it's scheduled for 30 minutes, it'll probably be five minutes. So at least have like a 30 minute chunk of time scheduled after every important project or any project,

but at least do the important ones. So you can say when you make a mistake, I'll worry about that later. I don't need to worry about now. That allows you to use your full mental bandwidth to get yourself out of the problem that you're in now. So there's a lot of little tools and tricks like that. There you go. And I loved them. And they translate so well into business because you can be in business and maybe you can have a PR crisis and suddenly, you know, the whole world, you know, some videos gone viral and the whole world is after your company and as a CEO, you've got to step up and decide how to deal with it. And you sometimes get lost in that fog of war or whatever. And like you mentioned, once you start, if you make a mistake, it can start compounding. But I love these self-accountability principles too, because sitting down, so many companies will get into blame games. I've seen companies that have reached a point where they're just doing emails and keeping documentation about how it wasn't my fault in case that it comes up. And

you just sit up with these blame game corporations uh and so it translates really well into business and and how things do you know the one thing i've always been amazed at i mean we've had uh we've had great instructors from west point on the show uh and and military uh from across the the thing i'm always so uh amazed uh at how great our military is at building leadership structure teaching leaders uh you know you see the failure of leadership in the Ukraine and Russia war and how their tiers of leadership work in their military in Russia. And you see the difference it makes in the battlefield. And so I just, I think more people need to realize that people in our military have really been trained for leaders, leadership, and they're used to working with very expensive equipment too and taking care of it. And people should really,

they should be really moved into more management position, leadership positions in my mind, I think. Well, you're tested a lot. So you go out there in combat and in training, and you get a chance to test yourself and test your theories, and they don't always work. And so you have to go back to the drawing board and refine it. I think one aspect of this book is decision-making is universal. We're all reliant in how successful we are dependent on the decisions that we make. And I don't know about you, but I was never taught a decision-making framework until I joined the Air Force and became a fighter pilot. And I think there's a lot of similarities in what I do with what people are doing in the business world in that when I'm flying,

I'm in charge of this piece of equipment. And we really call it, we're strapping the jet on our back because you really become one with the F-16 or the F-35. It feels like you're in this floating seat and you can go wherever you want. And it allows me to be, I can fly a hundred times faster than I could run. I can carry a hundred times more. I can see out to the horizon. I can be thousands of times more capable than I could be just on my own. And I think we're all experiencing that. So the phone you have in your pocket, the computer you have, your car you have, it all allows you to be able to have more leverage to the decisions you're making. One example in the book is the average human only burns 90 watts of electricity, and yet we consume 12,000 watts. That energy goes to the technology that's leveraging

the decisions we're making. So there's never been a time in history where decisions are more impactful and important than now, especially with the rise of AI. So there are reports out of Silicon Valley now that the next billion dollar company will be run by three or fewer people, which is crazy. I mean, just a hundred years ago, that would have required a hundred thousand people. A few years ago, it would have required thousands. Now, three people will be in charge of a billion-dollar company. Each of those founders' decisions will be extremely highly leveraged by AI. So I think there's a lot of similarities out there. Yeah, craziness.

We just had an earlier interview on the show today of someone that they're in the medical field. They've been in for a while. They created an AI system where it's going to hopefully shorten the time that it takes to develop drugs to help people with whatever their ailments are, prescription drugs, and maybe make things cheaper. So some real great real life applications there. So I know we had to reschedule because you're a new father for a second time. Congratulations on that uh how well does the lessons from the air force the book and everything you talk about clear thinking handle with you know losing sleep and toddlers and juggling the the things of

fatherhood so this is number two so it's not nearly you know as as life-changing as the first one but you know what i think a lot of the principles apply. So you're trying to make decisions. Actually, the book really was popular on Father's Day. And if you think about it, you know, you're kind of in the fog of war right there. You're making tough decisions. There's people's lives on the line.

So it's, you know, just making good decisions, being able to take care of yourself, being able to take care of others. I think it's all kind of in the theme of the book. So, you know, it's been great. Having kids is amazing. They're, you know, definitely it's amazing what they can get into. And it's amazing what they can teach you as well.

It's probably like flying at 9G sometimes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you're pushed to the limit. There you go. Well, congratulations and congratulations on the success of the new book. I loved it. I highly recommend it, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you're pushed to the limit. There you go. Well, congratulations and congratulations on the success of the new book. I loved it. I highly recommend it, everybody. Give us any final thoughts you want as we go out, sir. No, this is great. Really appreciate what you're doing. And take care. Stay safe.

There you go. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. And thanks, Hazard, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. There you go. The Art of Clear Thinking, a Stealth Fighter Pilot's Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions. Available March 23rd, 23rd. I love this book. I ate it up. Like I said,

I think I listened like three or four hours at the gym when I was at the gym and I just burned through the book. But it kept me on the edge of my seat like a lot of the times. and of course the lessons I learned, uh, thanks for tuning in, be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have a sound. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you