The Jordan Harbinger Show - 276: Admiral James Stavridis | The Voyage of Character

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

James Stavridis (@stavridisj) is a retired United States Navy admiral, operating executive with The Carlyle Group, and author. His latest book, Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character, is out now. What We Discuss with James Stavridis: What Admiral Stavridis means when he says we're "overweight in thinking about leadership and underweight in thinking about character." Why creativity and innovation are important for leaders -- and the roadblocks that tend to smother these qualities as we achieve in our lives and careers. Principles followed when top brass make decisions that put people in harm's way. The winners and losers in the recent decision to pull US troops from Syria and what this means for our former allies in the region. Meditations on single malt scotch whisky and the dangers of bringing alcohol to sea on a US Navy ship. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/276 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! On Morning Brew's Business Casual, Kinsey Grant sits down with the biggest names in business to talk about the biggest stories in business. This week, they're tackling the streaming wars with none other than Matthew Ball. Subscribe to Business Casual here or wherever you listen to podcasts! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. I want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and how they behave. I want you to become a better thinker. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for things like negotiation. public speaking, body language, persuasion. So if you're smart and you like to learn and improve, well, you'll be right at home here with us. Today on the show, Admiral James DeVridis,

he was the first four-star Navy Admiral ever to serve as the Supreme Allied commander of NATO. This guy's such a warrior scholar. He's got an unbelievable depth of knowledge and education. He said, we're overweight in thinking about leadership and underweight in thinking about character. So rather than just another leadership podcast here, we discuss some of the deeper issues of what makes up character, as well as some practices that

Admiral Stavridis brings into his own life to make sure he's reflecting upon what's important so he can improve and move forward as a leader and as an individual. We also discuss why creativity and innovation are important for leaders and some roadblocks that tend to smother this as we achieve more in our lives and in our careers. And of course what we can do about it to remove those roadblocks, and something I ask all the top military brass when they come on the show, namely how they make decisions that might put people in danger. These are high-stakes decisions. What principles does Admiral Stavritas try to follow when he weighs the component factors?

All that and more here today on the show. And if you're wondering how I get people like this, what on earth do you get a Dutch of Admiral Stavridis in the first place? Well, I'm teaching you how to do that. Six-minute networking. It'll bring amazing people into your life for personal or professional reasons. You don't have to be doing a podcast. In fact, I hope you're not doing a podcast.

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they actually subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us, and you'll be in great company. In the meantime, here's Admiral Stavridis. Enjoy. You write a lot about character in the book, and I want to get into that in a little bit, First, you were the first Supreme Allied commander of NATO that wasn't a, I don't know what you'd say, ground force warrior. I don't even know what the title is or general. I think the right way to say it is I was the first admiral to command NATO to be the Supreme Allied commander. I was the 16th. The first one was General Dwight David Eisenhower and all of my predecessors were generals. I was the first admiral.

And you kind of got hoodwinked by the Secretary of Defense. It wasn't a job you actually wanted. What happened there? I always wanted to go to the Pacific and be the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, which is where all good admirals go. It's our tradition for a Navy admiral becoming commander of the Pacific is like slipping into a jacuzzi. But Secretary Gates had other ideas. He wanted me to go to NATO. I wasn't enthusiastic. And I told him with great respect, you know, it's been great, but I think it might be time for me to take my shot at civilian life. He said, well, we really want you to do it. We went back and forth a few times and he said, look, it's okay. You can turn down these orders, but first you have to tell President Obama. So I said, fine, I'll go tell President Obama. Secretary Gates and I went over there and walked into the Oval, and President Obama got up, got a big smile on his face, stuck his hand out and said, congratulations, Jim, thank you for agreeing to be our next Supreme Allied commander of NATO. And I caved. I so caved. It's hard to be around a president, particularly somebody I really admire like President Obama, and see that he really wants you to do the job.

And I said, thank you, Mr. President. I look forward to the challenge. So that's how I got the job. Yeah, right, out of the jacuzzi and into the, I don't know, administrative offices of NATO. Into the boiling pot of NATO. Yeah, yeah, which seems like herding cats kind of. I mean, I mean, no disrespect, but it's you're not really like, you can't boss everyone around. Not at all. And you cannot think that just because you're the American in the room that everyone's going to fall in line, you haven't really had to work a room till you are walking up to the Bulgarian ambassador to NATO or the chief of defense of Romania and convincing them to come with us into Afghanistan. We think it's a stretch for us. But of course, the 9-11 attacks came from Afghanistan. They are there, those Europeans, because of our alliance. And you

got to understand their situation as you try and convince them to sail alongside us. I would imagine that Bulgaria and Romania were kind of, I mean, as former Soviet satellite states, we're kind of like, hey, we were pretty close to the last disaster that was Afghanistan. How sure are you that you want to go there and get mixed up in that? Yeah, it's funny you say that the closer you get geographically to the Russian Federation within NATO. So as you get to Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the former Warsaw Pax states, they, know that history very well of Russia in the graveyard of empires in Afghanistan. And they were skeptical. But again, the point I want to underline Jordan is at the end of the day, they came with us. They came and fought

alongside us. They lost troops there. And they did it because they believed in the NATO alliance. It must be hard to sell to your people that you lose troops in Afghanistan. And they're like, what is this, 1973? Like, what's going on over here? Exactly. Exactly right. And it is a testament to the persuasiveness of the leadership in those countries that they were able to come alongside. And, of course, it's not just Eastern Europe. The Brits, the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Danes, the Italians, the Germans, they all took significant combat losses. And it is a tough sell. Just like it is here in the States, let's face it, we do want to get out of these forever wars, but we've got to do it in a smart way. So your grandfather fled

Turkey in a pogrom against Greeks, which is something I didn't even know about until I started reading your stuff. I mean, you never really think of Greeks as being an oppressed minority, but they definitely were in the Ottoman or after the Ottoman Empire. And then he came to America and then nearly a hundred years later, you, his grandson, returned to the same city in Turkey in command of a billion dollar worship. And you're more professional than me. I think I might have sailed into port standing on the bow with my middle finger held high, but that's probably not great diplomacy. I tried to really take the high road on that episode, and you've got the history right. This is the city today. It's called Izmir back in 1922. It was called Smyrna. And the Greeks were pushed onto Quaywalls down by the port. And my grandmother was rescued by Greek fishermen carried away. And it was about a hundred years later I came back. And I refrained from any overt demonstrations. But when the Turkish liaison officer came aboard and with his clipboard and said, well, Captain Stavridis, Stavrides, well, you must be Greek. Is that a Greek name? And I said, well, actually, my grandparents were citizens of the Ottoman Empire, which they were because they lived there until they were invited to leave. So I have a great deal of empathy for refugees around the world. And I watch what has happened in Syria or 14 million. Syrians out of a pre-war population of 21 million have been pushed out of their homes. And now, frankly, Jordan, you watch what's happening to the Kurds,

and 300,000 Kurds are effectively walking into the desert pushed by Turkey out of their homes in Syria. And here's a news flash, winter is coming, both literally and figuratively in that region. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I sort of had it safe for the end, but right now we might as well. What do you think about the U.S. pulling out of Syria and essentially leaving the Kurds in the lurch. It really sounds like Greeks, circa, I don't know, 20 or whenever that was that your grandfather got pushed out of Turkey? Very much a similar feeling. And look, there are four big winners on the table here, and none of them are the United States of America. Turkey is a winner in a certain sense because they are getting what they want, which is this border security and safety zone. Russia is a big winner here because Vladimir Putin is effectively peeling Turkey away from NATO. We're going to see Turkey and Russia conducting joint patrols together.

That's unsettling to say the least. The third winner here is Iran, which now has effectively a clear path from Tehran through Baghdad, through Damascus, to the Mediterranean Sea. This is now just a devoid of U.S. influence. So Iran is a winner. finally, the Islamic State. And they are going to surge back as a result to this. I think they are not going to be held in these prisons. And unfortunately, all of that is a result of a what appears to be a single impulsive conversation by President Trump with President Erdogan of Turkey. There are a lot of outcomes here that are not favorable for U.S. diplomacy. So if the U.S. pulls out, how come like Germany or another

powerful state, the UK doesn't go, you know what, you guys are idiots, we're not going to let this fall into chaos. Let's go there instead. How come they can't do it? I think they can do it. And here's the way to approach it. It is to try and turn this into a NATO mission. And here you'd have 29 nations collectively with 52% of the world's GDP, 3 million men and women underarms, almost all volunteers, 24,000 military aircraft, 800 ocean-going ships to back them up from the sea. NATO can do this. Let's take this thing out of the Russia-Turkey channel and let's make it a NATO mission. Or here's another idea. Make it a United Nations peacekeeping mission. There are several of those quite effectively around the world. Or here's another idea, a little edgier would be make it a joint NATO-Russia

mission. We've actually done that before. We did it in the Balkans during some periods of turbulence there. What I hate to see is Turkey being peeled away from the NATO alliance. That's very concerning to me. Yeah, I think that that's Turkey being sort of a strategic player as it is, especially right now. It's really bad for them to be moving further towards alliances that are hostile effectively towards the rest, or just out for their own. I mean, Erdogan doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's really thinking, how do I become a player in the international stage where everybody gets along well and likes me? That's exactly right. And by the way, there's another kind of pernicious knock-on effect here, which is, and you kind of alluded to it, let's say you are a South Korean,

and you are looking at this massive North Korean army across the DMZ at their nuclear weapons. And right now there are 26,000 U.S. troops in Korea. But if you're South Korean, you've got to be scratching your head and asking yourself, well, if the U.S. really, really wants to get out of the Middle East, maybe they're going to want to really, really get out of South Korea. Oh, yeah. Or if you're an Estonian and you're part of NATO even, but you look at Russia, which considers Estonia part of greater Russia, and you've got to be asking yourself. if the Russians start rolling tanks in here, like they did into Ukraine, are the Americans really going to be here for us? When you hear President Trump say recently, we're done fighting in these blood-stained sands, okay, I get it. We all want to get out of these, quote, endless wars, unquote. On the other hand, it's going to have a knock-on effect in the confidence of other nations about our alliance systems, Jordan. I know that you actually almost became an attorney,

much like myself. I actually went through law school and finished it, but I thought this was an interesting little side path. Well, little side path. You became an admiral instead. Not quite what I meant to say, but this is one of those little linchpin decisions in life that take you in another direction. And I would say you obviously did pretty well for yourself not going to law school. Well, you're very kind. What happened was I graduated from Annapolis. I went out for five extremely arduous years of sea duty. I was assigned to a destroyer, an aircraft carrier, Pacific, Atlanta, Mediterranean was gone, gone, gone. And I thought, you know, that was fun. That was challenging, but now I want to go to law school. So I sent in a letter of resignation. And my human resources

professional called me up and said, you know, Stavridis, you got a pretty good record here. What would it take to keep you in the Navy? And I said, well, I'm getting out to go to law school. If the Navy would pay for my law school, I would consider additional obligation to the Navy. I'd be like a JAG officer. And he scratched his head and didn't sound enthusiastic, but he said, I'll check on a, you know. So a day and a half later, he calls me back and says, Stavridas, I got great news. I got money for you to go to law school. And I thought, wow, this is pretty good. And I said, how would this work? I've been accepted at Yale law school. Would you just pay Yale? Or would you give me the money and I would pay them? What are the mechanics?

And he said, we were on the phone. And I heard papers kind of shuff. on his desk while he looked for the appropriate paper. And he said, yeah, actually, I don't have money for you to go to Yale Law School, but I do have money to go to something called, and he read the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. And I said, well, that's not actually a law school. That's a graduate school of international relations at Tufts University. And Long Poss. And he said, kind of annoyed, look, it's got law in the title and I've got money for you to go there. Do you want to go or not? It was just kind of one of these little hinge moments. And, you know, I'd just gotten married and I was trying to scramble to figure out how to pay for law school.

Here was a bird in the hand, not exactly what I wanted, but it was graduate school. It was international relations. It was fascinate me. So I walked down that path and ended up with a PhD from the Fletcher school and was able to use that many times in my career. Small moments. Yeah, small moments. And you're still working off that student loan payment. Exactly.

So Sailing True North of your newest book, there's 2,500 years of history in the book. And I was pretty surprised by that because a lot of times when you read leadership books or anything written by any sort of leader or even military, usually the history goes back maybe a century or two, usually not 2,500 years. Yeah, I felt this subject needed that great sweep of history. And I want to make a point about the book that's important. It's really not so much a leadership book. It's a book about character. And a way to think about this is leadership is how we influence others. It's that big door swinging that causes you to make other people want to follow you. That's leadership. But that big door of leadership, Jordan, swings on the small hinge of character that's buried in your heart. And I wanted to tell some stories that illustrated characters who were good leaders, certainly. Every one of the admirals in this book is a good leader. People follow him or her. But what I wanted to talk about was not the voyage of leadership that's external, not that big swinging door. I wanted to talk about that small hinge in the human heart. And to find 10 good stories, it took me 2,500 years of looking

at different admirals. Yeah, maritime commanders in the book kind of as a, I don't know if metaphor is quite the right word. Metaphor for personal development or as a parable. Not quite. A parallel maybe anyway for personal development. Why do you think seafaring is a good way to teach values, leadership, personal growth, character? First of all, my primary advice to anyone who's a writer, this is my ninth book. I've written hundreds of articles.

I love to write. I was that geeky kid who was the editor of the high school newspaper. I just like writing. But my advice for any writer is write about, what you know. I don't know about business leadership. I don't know about leadership in the medical world. I know a little bit about political leadership like any citizen, but I haven't served in Congress. I know the sea. I know admirals. I know what it is like to be on a ship on the deep ocean, out of sight of land, with responsibility for hundreds and thousands of men and women.

I know that world. So first answer to the question, why admirals, is because that's the milieu that I truly understood. And the second answer is, I think the sea itself and sailing and being at sea, and pretty much everybody has at least gone out once or twice, out of side of land, I think. It is a contemplative world out there. You go on the deck of a ship and you look at that horizon where the sea and the sky come together and you know what you're looking at? You're looking at eternity. And it causes you to stop and think and reflect. And so I believe that Those who follow the sea spend time because they have time to consider character in that inner voyage that can be vastly harder than the external voyage of leadership.

You've said, I think we're overweight and thinking about leadership and underweight and thinking about character. And you kind of brought that up earlier as well, how this isn't a leadership book, but a book about character. What do you mean by overweight and leadership, underweight in character? Well, first and most prosaically, walk into the bookstore in the airport, and you will find typically like 25 books that are all about how to be a better leader, the leadership secrets of Abraham Lincoln, how Genghis Khan was a better leader, why Donald Trump is a good

leader, why Barack Obama is a bad leader, or the reverse. There are a million books about leadership because I think it's easier to write about leadership. It's external. It's out there. It's visible. You will be hard pressed to find a book that deals with character. I'll give you one that was kind of rattling around my head when I wrote this, and it's David Brooks's very fine book, The Road to Character. As I read that, I thought, you know, this is a subject that just needs more exposition. So first answer is prosaic. And then secondly, when I say we're overweight in leadership and underweight in character, think about this modern world, Jordan, where we are inundated constantly with efforts to lead us. When we look at social media and radio and thousands of

different cable channels and hundreds of books published every day. We're awash in efforts to influence us and to lead us in some direction to shape our thoughts and ideas. But very few and far between are books that say, what do you think in the small hours of the night when you're contemplating how your day went? Did you say the right thing at this moment? Did you spend enough time with your children or did you spend less time with your workplace or and should you reverse that? And what are the traits of character that make you a successful human being? And here I mean successful, not in dust off my resume and how many degrees I have and how much money I made and what positions I held. I'm talking about the values you hope people talk about when they mention

your name after you're gone. What are they saying at your wake? Were you a good five? a good mother, were you a good son or daughter, were you a friend when it was hard to be a friend for someone? We don't talk or think or write enough about that. That's why I did the book. You mentioned that we overshare publicly and there's a lack of self-reflection in private. Is that kind of what you mean? We're like sharing our breakfast on social media, but maybe we're not taking time out at night to ask the questions you just mentioned. That's precisely what I mean. And certainly I am as guilty as anyone. You know, I have a Twitter account and I do a lot of media and I think that the things I talk about are important. But one of the things I talk about is

not all of that external world. It's really about that inner voyage of character trying to convince others to pause and think. How do you measure the value of your life? And frankly, at the end of the day, it's not going to be in dollar terms or offices you were elected to or military positions you held or corporations you led. In the end, I think for most of us, we'll measure our lives by the quality of our relationships, by the books we've read, by the stories we've told. In that sense, we certainly overshare on all the public things and the accomplishments, none of which are bad, but we underappreciate the degree to which contemplating character and what the moral and ethical decisions we make amount to. And I think this book is a small effort to move the conversation

in that direction. Do you have a practice for this? Do you come home? And I mean, meditation is trendy right now, for example, but do you come home or do you spend five minutes at the end of the day in your office thinking about the day at all? I have a technique that revolves around single malt scotch. Do you know what that is? I do. I think I'm familiar with that. Yes. So in all seriousness, I will come home at the end of the day. And I don't sort of consciously stop. and lock the door and stare at the wall and, you know, try and settle my heartbeat. But I very much stop what I'm doing. I put down books and turn off the television set and just spend a moment sort of collecting my thoughts. And then I will walk down. I'm very lucky in my life. I'm married to

an absolutely wonderful woman, Laura, who I've been married to for 35 plus years. We've known each other since I was eight years old and she was three years old. So we really are childhood. sweethearts, and we, you know, not to go all Jerry McGuire on you, but we do complete each other in a lot of wonderful ways. So I'm lucky. And we will settle down in the winter with a single malt scotch or maybe in the summer we'll have a vodka gimlet and have a conversation. And it'll range widely over both current events and what's happening with our two daughters and what's happening in the world. And that's my sounding board. That's my true north. And not everybody has a wonderful relationship like that. But even so, and even if you want to leave aside the vodka gimlets and the

single malt scotches, it is not a bad idea. At the end of the day, don't come home and flip on the cable news and ramp up with which side of the political argument you're on. Stop and take a minute and just think about the events of the day. And if I can push you one step further, instead of diving into a great streaming series on Netflix, which we ought to do from time to time, but also mix it up with read a good novel, read a good work of nonfiction, let that filter into your thinking as well. All of that helps the voyage of character. What kind of scotch do you drink? So I like peaty, smoky. You know, I like something a little bit on the heavier side. I also like a good lagovulin. We could really turn this particular conversation very seriously into this.

I have probably 50 different single malts in my scotch bin. Nice. I assume your office has a bunch of them. It seems like they'd be hard to keep on a ship because they would fall off the shelf. Well, they would be really hard to keep on a ship because if you had a single malt scotch on a U.S. Navy ship, you would be fired. You'd be cashiered. We don't allow alcohol in our ships.

We are the only Navy of all the global navies that do not allow alcohol. And I'll tell you why. One word, prohibition. Back in the 1920s, it became illegal in the states to have alcohol, and obviously the U.S. Navy was going to follow that. So we did. But then the Secretary of the Navy at the time, a man named Josephus Daniels, he thought, you know what, we took alcohol off the ships. That prohibition, not a bad idea. It's actually more professional not to have alcohol while you're driving ships around. So he decreed Secretary of the Navy that we were not allowed to bring alcohol back. in. And this is where you get the expression, a cup of Joe, Josephus Daniels, because sailors couldn't have their rum anymore. They had coffee. That's where a cup of Joe comes from. I never knew that. And that seems, it seems like a good idea. I figured it was because, I mean, you don't really need any help driving a ship and doing something bad with it. In fact, I hate to embarrass you, but in the Panama Canal, you almost ran the ship aground, which seems like something

you shouldn't do if you want to succeed. It was you got the story right, the canal slightly off. It was the Suez Canal. I actually made it through the Panama Canal without doing too much damage. But in the Suez Canal between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, I did almost run the ship of ground. I was saved by one of my junior officers who recognized that the captain, me, was making a bad navigational choice.

And he stood up and said, Captain, I've got this. and anchored the ship. And I initially was, you know, pretty upset. And then we put a boat in the water and measured the water where I was driving the ship under the advice of an Egyptian pilot. Turns out he was entirely correct to stop the ship where he did. By the way, last thought, this young officer, he was a lieutenant at the time, is now a one-star admiral and a very successful one. I'm very proud of him. His name is Rob Chadwick. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Admiral James DeVritus. We'll be right back.

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If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Admiral Stavridis. How often does it happen where a junior officer says I'm taking over because you're making a massive mistake and it's going to be a huge problem? Almost never. Never happened anywhere else in my career.

It was a pretty dramatic moment on the bridge. If I had overruled him again, the crew would have done exactly what I said. but because he kind of had the guts to say, this is the navigator, I have the con, all engines back. At that moment, if I had overruled him and continued on, we would have gone aground. I recognized in him such determination and such certainty about his position that it caused me as the leader on that bridge to think again. And thus, it was quite effective on his part. And I respect him deeply for doing so. Yeah, that must have been an interesting moment because. Well, as we see, said in Top Gun, gutsy move Maverick, because if I had overruled him and I had been right,

that would have been a very dark day in his career. So again, deep respect for him. Yeah, it seems like you had to both stop, then question your, first thing, you've got to question your ego and make sure that you're not just trying to be right at the expense of a billion dollar or whatever worship. And then also, it's got to be a little embarrassing, because if that's coming over the radio or the communication system, can't a bunch of people hear that besides your two? Absolutely. And by the way, the bridge of a Navy ship is not like two people up there. There's like 25 people. Several officers, not only a navigator, but an officer of the deck, a junior officer of the deck, lookouts, boasts and mate, navigators. It's a packed classroom. Everyone was quite

shock, but at the same time, I looked over and said, okay, Rob, if you're sure, let's back it down. We did it. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think people respected Rob for his determination, and I think they respected the captain for backing up his very determined navigator. I'm sure. I think it says a lot about both of you, although I would imagine anybody standing there was like, nice knowing you, Rob. Exactly. And by the way, just to give you another little little denouement to that story. So this is in 19, I don't know, 1994, 95. So flash forward about 15 years, it's September 11th, 2001. Rob and I are in the Pentagon. We're on two completely different assignments. I'm a one-star admiral at this point. Rob is, I think he's a lieutenant commander at

this point. I called him up just on that morning, September 11, before anything fell apart. He was down in the Navy Intelligence Center. I said, hey, Rob, why don't you come up for? a cup of coffee because we've obviously maintained very close touch over the years. He said, sure, Captain. He always called me captain, even though I was an admiral at this point. He said, sure, Captain, I'll be up in a few minutes. So he came up to see me just as the airplane hit the Pentagon, he was arriving in my office. And because he came to my office and we were about 150, 200 feet away from the impact point, we were still on the side of the Pentagon where the airplane hit, the airplane hit the second deck and went like a laser beam into the Navy intelligence center

where Rob Chadwick was working. If he had not come up to have that cup of coffee with me, if I'd not randomly picked up the phone and called him, there would be no Rob Chadwick. There'd be no Admiral Chadwick. So our little joke is, it's not that funny, but is that Rob Chadwick saved my career in the Suez Canal and I saved his life in the Pentagon. So we called it even. Wow. That is a, it's very strange to think about those little things. I mean, he could have said, hang on, I need 10 more minutes or, you know. Exactly. And to this day, every year on September 11th, we connect and have a conversation and just catch up. And I couldn't be prouder of it. This is a lesson in putting ego aside and trusting your junior officers. There's a whole lot here. I mean, I think a lot of people

might be thinking cute story, but really, there's a lot here. It's a lot for me, for example, and it's not nearly the same gravity of the situation, but to listen to my, producer when he says, this is not going to work. This sounds terrible. And it's like, well, you know, they're telling me for a reason because these guys don't pull the fire alarm for no reason, ever. That's so right. And at the end of the day, as I look at the 10 admirals in Sailing True North that we profile, the ones who succeed are the ones who have the ability to sublimate their ego. And the greatest tool of character is maybe the simplest. And it's the act of listening, listening to others with real empathy, with real humility. That also is the gateway to humor. And all of those, I think, are just at the heart of human character.

Creativity and innovation as a leader can be stifled by success. Because as you get more successful, you're more afraid to fail once you've been successful. So this kind of parallels, you know, being the captain of a ship, which, by the way, I think I just realized from your story that captain is a position and not a rank, right? You are exactly right. Every individual who is in charge of a ship is called by tradition captain, but we have lieutenants who are in charge of ships. We call them captain. We have lieutenant commanders on minesweepers who are in charge of the ship. We call them captain. At that time, I was a commander in charge of this destroyer. I was called captain. When you're in charge of a cruiser, you actually are a captain's job. But everyone in charge of a captain's job. But everyone in charge of ship is called captain. And by the way, in some old sort of World War II movies, occasionally, you think of this old TV series, McAil's Navy. They called the captain of the ship Skipper.

We never do that. Yeah, that sounds really informal and goofy, kind of. It is. I'll tell you who uses it. Occasionally, I've heard naval aviators use it and talking about whoever is in charge of the squadron. Sometimes you hear them called Skipper. You'll never hear that in the surface Navy. Creativity and innovation as a leader, going back to this, as you move up in the ranks, or as you move up in success, and this doesn't necessarily have to just be on ships. I mean, it can be in any endeavor. You've got this sort of sunk cost that comes along with respect to reputation, right? Like, you don't want to be wrong. You don't want to take risk. How do you mitigate that? Let's say someone listening to this is mid-career. They're afraid to take a risk because they're worried that maybe it'll

torpedo their chances at a promotion. And all my nautical puns are unintended. I promise. They're well taken. And let me put a fact underneath it to emphasize your point. Chief of Naval Operations is the person in charge of the whole Navy. Some years ago, our chief of naval operations brought in a consulting firm to survey all the admirals in the Navy, right? So we surveyed about 200 admirals total. What we discovered was our admirals were excellent at decisiveness. They were excellent at taking care of their people. They were excellent at strategic planning. They had all these great skill sets where they were in kind of the upper quadrant when measured against business people anywhere else. Our admirals were in the bottom quadrant in terms of taking bureaucratic risk.

They were afraid, to your point, to take an action that might make them stand out in a little way. And the irony of this occurred to me, which is that every one of these, you know, These admirals came through a career of real danger, was in combat, was willing to fly an airplane in the middle of the night and landed on an aircraft carrier on a pitching deck or take a destroyer alongside in a combat situation. They had all the physical courage in the world. They were willing to take risks with their lives operationally. But you put them behind a desk in a bureaucracy and they become the most conservative group out there because militaries are inherently hironser. hierarchical, their tradition bound, and success has often equated to slowly, surely,

foot by foot, putting yourself on the ladder to success. So there are built-in impediments in the military system. So, Jordan, you asked, how do you overcome that? I think that's really the salient point. And I'll give you three answers. One is it's a leadership requirement to find and promote innovators. And Admiral Clark, the chief of naval operations I was describing who commissioned this survey, insisted after it came out that we started assessing officers on their report of fitness every year for innovation. So you've got to kind of push the innovators. Second is the organization needs to tell the stories of boldness and taking chances. And that can be both operational, John Paul Jones bringing his ship alongside, but also those bureaucratic.

successes where someone has said, you know, we've got to reorganize the entire Navy staff and change the way we're doing business, procuring aircraft. It doesn't sound real glamorous, but it required real courage to do that. And then third and finally, we have to create pipelines to the top leaders that are kind of red cells, that are small, talented groups of people who have direct pipelines into our leaders to act as a spur. I formed such groups, both as Supreme Allied commander at NATO and as commander U.S. Southern Command and as a strike group commander, you got to rely on those junior officers who are not so hidebound to help you and give you those good ideas. So there's three approaches. Yeah, this all makes sense because I think it's easy to

say, hey, don't get caught up and being conservative or not wanting to take risks. And it's another thing to say, well, the last guy before me, you know, he got reamed out for doing something that I would have probably done. So I'm just going to err on the side of caution and never step outside of my comfort zone. That's exactly right. And another way to think of this is when people fail, you have to give them second chances. And I've certainly failed multiple times. I'll give you a practical example when I was commander of U.S. Southern Command in charge of looking south, all military operations south of the United States. And it occurred to me. I think it's still correct. We're not going to go to war in Latin America. We're not going to invade a country in

Latin America. We were sort of done with that Bay of Pigs mentality from the 60s. what we are going to do is medical diplomacy. We're going to do counter-narcotics. We're going to do clinics, schools, and wells. We're going to do all the soft power kinds of things. And so I reshaped the staff at U.S. Southern Command, big staff, about a thousand people on the staff, overseeing tens of thousands of people in the South. We reshape the staff very dramatically into one that would be focused not on war fighting, but on the soft power kinds of things I just mentioned. Well, it was a failure, and it was a failure for a number of reasons we don't have to delve into, but I could easily at that point, my career could have been ended because I took a big chance.

I thought it was right to try and do this. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, great boss, one of the best bosses I ever had, was willing to say, hey, you gave it a good try, didn't work, it was a good effort. He protected me. You've got to do that at every level as well. Yeah, I know you are strong, you do strongly believe we need to create security. by building bridges like education, humanitarian efforts. I think during one of your talks, you showed a huge hospital ship and said we have more than

one of those, which is great to see. We're not just shooting at things. We're also giving people their sight back. Yeah, and I wouldn't want to overstate it. Another way to think of this is soft power without the ability to deliver hard power is no power. In other words, you need both. And the fallacy is often this discussion turns into. on and off switch, like a light switch. And people think, okay, you got a choice here. Either you're

going to be the soft power folks with the medical diplomacy, literacy training, hospital ships, clinic schools and wells, rule of law, soft power, or you're just going to be hard power and you're going to launch Tomahawk missiles all day long. No, it's not an on and off switch. It's a rea stat. It's like the dimmer in your dining room. You've got to kind of dial it in. And there are times when you need hard power, we're not going to negotiate a solution with the Islamic State. We're going to find them and imprison them. But so often the long game requires more than a little bit of the soft power side, little bit of the hard power. When you combine those two together, now you're creating something that some have called smart power. It's that combination. That's where I've tried

to drive the problem in many cases. I know you've said the skill of being a great ship handler is never getting into a situation, which requires great ship handling. On the other hand, you sometimes have to get into those situations, take risks that maybe lead you into those situations. Otherwise, you might never learn how to handle the ship in the first place. Exactly right. The quote, by the way, is from Admiral Ernest King, who is this crusty World War II Admiral. He was an admiral that I considered putting into sailing true north. Didn't end up with Admiral King, But I'll tell you an admiral who I think really personified that willingness to go into uncharted waters, relatively modern, late 20th century admiral named Elmo Zumwalt. And he became the chief of naval operations, the head of the Navy in the early 70s, mid-70s, when we were coming out of Vietnam. And there was great, you'll recall, there was great racial unrest in the United States at the time that became part of the armed services, all the protests against the war in Vietnam. Listen, and those. And those, you'll recall, there was great racial unrest in the United States at the time that became part of the armed services, days, people didn't walk up to servicemen and say, thank you for your service. They walked up to

servicemen and said, why did you go to Vietnam? It was a very different era. And Admiral Zumwalt, to his everlasting credit, tried to bring the Navy more in line with the society. And I think he largely succeeded in improving race relations, improving gender balance in the Navy. He really addressed those issues. He was handling the ship there in a way that was very difficult and challenging, and if he had played it completely safe and had never put the ship into that situation, would still be far behind in the armed forces. How was being essentially in the line of fire in the Pentagon on September 11th, how has that shaped your career philosophically and in terms of how you think about conflict?

Two reactions to it. And again, as I was talking, it was a beautiful morning and we were all just kind of having a relatively quiet September day before, really turning to the work. you'll recall, this was all quite early in the morning. And I was in a position where I actually glimpsed the airplane as it came hurtling in kind of off to my right side. I was on the outer so-called e-ring of the Pentagon and caught a glimpse of it as it came in. Huge smashing, crushing sound, instant fire, smoke. In the military, we're all kind of trained as firefighters and rescue people. So we all kind of went toward the disaster zone, but it was clear this was an out of

of control situation. So we evacuated the building. And here's the point. As I stumbled out of the Pentagon, I looked back at the Pentagon on fire, a huge chunk torn out of the center of it. What occurred to me was the irony of that moment as follows. I'd seen my share of combat in my, at that point, 30 plus years in the military. And yet the most dangerous moment of my life had just happened in the Pentagon, where I was surrounded by powerful concrete walls. I was guarded by the strongest military on Earth. I was in the capital of the richest country on the planet. Was I safe? No. And what I took away from it was walls in the end are not going to be a guarantee of safety. We have to think the way our enemies do. They are going to be a network. We have to create a network to combat them.

And above all, Jordan, I recognized then at that moment how there would be surprising twists and turns that we could not predict. And so those are the two things that then guided the last 10 years of my career as I went on to very senior positions, this sense of don't be surprised that you're going to be surprised. And the other is that don't put too much reliance on big static defense systems. you've got to think like a network to defeat a network. A lot of the commanders and admirals that you profile in the book, especially some of these ancient ones like Themistocles and in his battle against the Persians, a lot of these guys had some pretty dark sides, right? Whether it was an unmeasured courage like Sir Francis Drake,

who kind of like his courage went up to 11 and took him over the deep end, or a lot of these guys, you know, they just smoked themselves or like had crazy ambition and or with a bunch of different women and ruin their marriages. I mean, it really seems like these guys weren't really balanced, a lot of them. I tried very hard to show in these 10 admirals in Sailing Tree North that there's a wide spectrum to the human character and that you can be both heroic and deeply flawed and that the degree to which you achieve better character is the degree to which you evince some of the traits I talk about on the positive side. But yeah, you're right to put your finger

on Sir Francis Drake, who is saves England leading the British fleet against the Spanish Armada, but is known throughout Latin America as someone who killed, maimed, tortured, executed crew members, was a slaver. In fact, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World is a highly sanitized version of what Drake did in every port he went into. Rapes, burning, stealing, looting, very dark side to his character. In a modern context, somebody like Admiral Rickover, Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy. He was highly capable, decisive, technologically brilliant, but he was incredibly difficult to work for. He was angry. He was constantly driving his staff. Today, we'd call him a kind of a toxic leader. I don't think he was at that level.

And again, in both those men, there's a lot to admire, but there are also character lessons we should take away of things we want to avoid. And that is why. again, there's just such a wide spectrum in the characters in sailing true north. I know you've got a sign, or I've heard actually that you've got a sign. Is it in your office that says nothing important happens here? Yeah, that's, I had that sign when I was the captain of a destroyer for the very first time. And, you know, it's kind of a slightly tongue-in-cheek point because, you know, a destroyer is important. You've got tomahawk missiles and guns and 400 sailors and it's a billion dollar ship and you're on national missions.

On the other hand, I put the sign there to remind me that, you know, I'm 36 years old, I'm a captain for the first time, I'm going to make mistakes, I need to be able to laugh at myself, I need to be able to tell my boss when I've got a failure. I need to keep things in perspective. And I think there's a great lesson in that. And I've tried, there are times when I failed, but I've tried to maintain that sense that nothing truly important is going to happen here that you can't have an influence on, that you can't engage with acts of good character. And again, back to the sea and why this book is framed with these

admirals, every one of these admirals at one time or another and many times over for some of them would walk up to the deck of a ship with a huge problem on their mind and look out there at that horizon. Again, where the sea meets the sky, you are looking at eternity. And in the long, throw of your life, the long throw of your career, don't get wrapped around the axle, as we say in the Navy. Keep your balance. How do you make decisions that might put people in danger, right? These very high-stakes decisions, what principles do you try to follow when you weigh the component factors? I begin always with clear-eyed assessment of my capabilities. You know, let's kind of do this from the inside out. So that's assessing my own personal ability to make the decision. Do I really understand?

understand the facts here, or do I need more advice? Expand that circle. Those around me, how confident am I in their abilities to assess? Expand the circle. What resources are at my disposal as I make this decision? Maybe I'm the captain of a destroyer. Maybe I am the commander of NATO with three million troops to draw on. What are the resources? Where are they? Where are they positioned? So you're expanding that circle out from the innermost point of yourself, that's kind of step one. Step two is look across at what's the problem and make sure you understand it clearly and make sure you've done the research and the understanding of the culture. Take the South China Sea. China claims it as a territorial sea. Why is that? We have to understand that if we're going to

go interact with the Chinese Navy in the South China Sea. So you have to look at your opponent. And then third and finally, Jordan, as you prepare to make a decision, understand the temporal context. What is the timing? And so often our character does us a disservice here at times when some people's character is timid and they will wait for the next fact and the next fact and the next fact. And some people are too impulsive, too decisive. They lunge at the ball far too early in the process. So I'd say the third thing I try and keep in mind is, what's my timeline? Do I have to make this decision now? Do I have another day? Do I have another year? Put it in a temporal context. I think when you put those three things together, what's on your side of the decision pattern, what is on the problem side of the

decision pattern, and then lay it against a temporal context, that is where you. you can make, I think, the best set of decisions. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Admiral James DeVritus. We'll be right back after this. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. If you're listening to us on the Overcast player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Admiral James DeVridis. It sounds in part what you wrote about Themistocles, where he says you've got to take a motion out of the equation. You've got to look at the facts kind of as they exist. And that's got to be tricky.

And I would say in particular another admiral who personifies that is Admiral Nimitz, Chester Nimitz. Actually, Fleet Admiral, five-star Admiral. We only do that in times of global war. He was a five-star admiral who took command of the Pacific Fleet as it literally lay smoking after Pearl Harbor. He takes command a couple days later. He doesn't get to stand on the deck of a beautiful battleship in his choker whites, his beautiful white uniform. Why? Because the USS Arizona is at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. They are taking bodies out of it. Cordite is the predominant smell in the air. He takes command standing on the deck of a diesel submarine, a tiny little diesel submarine, and yet he squares his shoulders, your point, he looks with clear-eyed vision at the facts at what does he have? His battleships are destroyed. He still has carriers. He's got diesel submarines.

What does he have? He looks at the problem, the Japanese Empire. What are their capabilities? What are their weaknesses long-term? Lack of fuel strung out defending a huge ocean space with all these islands. and then he looks at a temporal aspect of this. Do I need to act immediately? For some things, yes. What needs to happen in a year, two years, three years. That kind of analysis, Themistocles, did that very well. Alfred Thayer Mahan did that very well. Nimitz was renowned for this. Grace Hopper, who brought the Navy into the computer age, could do all three of those things to create new technologies for the Navy.

That is a great skill set and one that we try and illustrate in sailing true. You've got this picture of the Maine, or you had at least this picture of the Maine, which was sunk in Havana Harbor, supposedly by Spanish terrorists in Cuba, and this kind of epitomizes or embodies get the facts before you act. What does remember the Maine mean to you? Yeah. Every office I've ever had from about the time I was a commander in my first command on the bury, I always had a picture of the USS Maine. It was sunk in Havana Harbor, as he said, February. 15th, 1898, blown up. We immediately accused Spain and Spanish terrorists of blowing up the Maine. And so we launched ourselves. We flung ourselves into the Spanish-American War. This is what Teddy Roosevelt and the rough riders were saying as they went up San Juan Hill, remember the Maine. We were going to take out those terrible Spanish terrorists. Well, 50 years after 1898, after World War II, we went down to Havana and we finally got around to

salvaging the ship and truly understanding what happened. It blew up because of an internal boiler explosion, possibly an ammo explosion, but you can tell when an explosion comes from the inside the ship, not the outside of the ship. So it was clear that it was not Spanish terrorists putting a mine on the side of the ship. This was an internal accident, yet we launched ourselves into war. So the lesson of the main, and what I remember the main, is remember not. to launch a war to take a precipitous decision before you have all the facts. I remember the main as in remember to honestly assess and not indulge yourself with propaganda. And I remember the main lastly, and I have a kind of a slight smile on my face here, remember, Admiral,

your ship can blow up underneath you at any minute. So have a plan B. So yeah, that's why Maine is on my wall even today in my office. In 2012, there was this anonymous complaint that had you under investigation for allegedly using your office for personal gain, and then they investigated it, turned out to be a complete BS. You're found to be a model officer. How do you maintain composure when your integrity is under fire? Like, I would have been so pissed off. Yeah, and anybody in that situation becomes very angry, and you have to very consciously steady yourself and say, look, somebody turned in this anonymous complaint, presumably because they believed there was malfeasance here. Let's investigate it. I gathered my staff immediately and said, I don't want anybody getting angry here.

I don't want anybody trying to retaliate. We're going to lay out the facts. And I had the advantage of I knew I had done nothing wrong. The trip in question was one where I went for official business to a gathering of 600 Frenchmen. I gave a speech in French, in uniform, about NATO. and then immediately got on a jet and flew back to my headquarters. There was no question in my mind that this was entirely legitimate. But the wheels of these kind of investigations grind slowly. They look at everything. And so it's really a matter of self-control and telling yourself that this is an example of the greater good. And if you know you're in the right, you can work your way through it. Why do you think that happened? Do you think somebody had an honest grievance or was it kind of like, I want this guy's job? Let me see what I can do about that.

I think it's, I'd be speculating, but I'll speculate for a minute. I think it could be a little bit of both. This was a period of time when there was a lot of jockeying about who was going to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who was going to be the next chief of naval operations. None of the individuals who are under consideration would have done this, obviously, but maybe someone who worked for them who thought, you know, my boss would be really good in this job. And, you know, that Stavridis. You know, he's a contender. And you know what? I heard this about that trip or I've heard this and so I'm just going to throw in an anonymous complaint. I'd say that's a possibility and it is entirely possible as well, Jordan, that it was simply a well-meaning individual who felt that the trip was inappropriate for some particular reason,

probably because they didn't really understand the importance of why a NATO commander would go to France. And the reason is because we were trying to convince the French to come with us and send more troops into Afghanistan. I went to that dinner specifically so I could sit next to the chief of the French defense forces who, after the dinner sent an additional 400 troops to Afghanistan force. But there's no way if you're a junior enlisted person just seeing that a trip on the schedule, you might think, that doesn't look good to me. And so entirely possible, it was completely pure. Either way, in the end, I'm glad it happened. It absolutely came out right for me. Secretary of the Navy at the time said, as you quoted, Admiral Stabredis is a model naval officer

who never used his office for personal gain. I know that was true. Now others know it's true as well. It dispels any fog of suspicion, and I'm glad it happened. Yeah, you've got an even cleaner record now because somebody went through it with a fine-tooth comb. I know you're not supposed to get angry and you told everybody not to get angry, but there had to be a moment where you just went to your office and like smashed a coffee mug or something. I don't know. How does someone, you're someone in your position blow off steam when you can't let anyone else see you do that. Yeah, I think it's back to single malt scotch. If you go home, you give your wife a hug. And I'll tell you, the hero of this story is not grizzled old Admiral Jim Stavridis. It is Laura Stavridis, my wife, who had to deal with all the uncertainty that comes with that and her knowledge that I'd done nothing wrong, but then watching me get dragged through this experience.

And I would come home and pull out a nice bottle of here's another good single malt second tip, Ardbeg, and I have a very smoky scotch and tell Laura, hey, balance, it's going to come out okay. And in the end it does. But that's where having a family, that's where having close friends, that's where having deep peer relationships can also help you out because several of my four-star peers were at pains to tell me, look, I know this is BS. you're a good guy. This is going to come out okay. Those peers, friends, family, crucial to

developing character as we talk about in sailing true north. In naval warfare, how much have tactics changed in the past because of a specific technology? And I'm wondering what that technology might be that's really revolutionized everything because boats still float, but now we can reach them from anywhere with missiles, we can see them with satellites, we can track them with GPS. I think there are probably three big tactical shifts in maritime history. One is pretty obvious. It's the shift from sail first to coal and then to liquid fuel and then to nuclear power. So it's propulsion, which becomes the ability to go anywhere you want, regardless of how the winds are blowing. You can refuel. Nuclear ships don't even need to refuel. So mastery of

the 70% of the ocean surface, that is, the oceans first was that shift away from sail, which had been predominant for 2,000 years, to propulsion system. So that's one. The second, The second great shift, I would say, was the advent of undersea warfare, the development of these lethal machines of death that prowled the bottom of the ocean, nuclear submarines. They have changed the tactics. They've made it far less safe for our aircraft carriers. This is why battleships are gone today. The advent of submarines, the third great shift, I would argue, is happening right now in front of us. And it is the advent you mentioned it a moment ago of hypersonic cruise missiles, missiles that go five to seven to ten times the speed of sound. There's

no real defense for them. And that combined with cyber and cyber attacks, I think, are again changing maritime warfare. So that's the story of warfare. It's a constant struggle between offense and defense. There will be new technologies. You will get surprised, like when the main blows up or when 9-11 happens. There'll be surprises ahead. I would predict they will come from cyber and from hypersonic cruise missiles. Interesting. Yeah, that's fascinating. I know you're kind of into the tech stuff. I know I think I saw this in a talk that you're interested in synthetic biology and how it affects foreign affairs. It seems like an unusual point of interest for a surface warfare officer. Yeah, I often say three big muscle movements in this 21st century, that if you're a

historian 300 years from now and you're writing the history of the 21st century, one is going to be biology. And it's human performance enhancement, human life extension, energy from biomass, new materials. There'll be changes we don't yet see. And I think those will start to happen in a very serious way in the 10-year future. And thus, there's a lot of runway in the 21st century, which will focus on biology. Second big one is geopolitical. And it's fashionable to say this will be the century about the rise of China. To some degree it will be. I think more. More so, this will be a century about the rise of India because of demographics, because it's a democracy, because it has English norms built into its laws and its structures. Look, India has many problems with education, sanitation, infrastructure, corruption. But there's a lot of 21st century to go watch India demographics. And third and finally, I think maybe the most important muscle movement in this century is going to be not the rise of China.

and not the rise of India, maybe not even synthetic biology. I think it's going to be the rise of women. I think that if you look at the acceleration and the position of women in our societies, it's gaining speed. That's a good thing because right now we have a trillions of dollars of human capital parked on the sidelines. We're better in some societies than in others. But over the course of this century, I think you'll see women go into positions of leadership. They'll go on many, many corporate boards, they'll be elected to even more offices, they'll run more and bigger companies. I think all of that will be very salutary and it'll be a big part of this century as well. That's interesting. Yeah, that's something you don't hear very often from people,

usually people talk about China, maybe sometimes India, usually internet 5G or something like that. But yeah, rarely do we talk about the human capital of women or of anybody. And that is really at the heart of the book is this idea that for us to move forward on this voyage of all of us together in this global society, we have got to harness both technology, geopolitical realities, women and human capital, all of that is part of character. And that, again, is part of the heart of the book. A lot of the admirals you profile on sailing true north, once they retired, if they actually made it that far, they kind of smoked themselves to death, they didn't make it too long afterward. Maybe they lacked purpose.

in some way and you're partially retired now. I mean, you seem to be keeping really busy, but do you worry about that at all? Maybe that's why you're popping out all these books. Well, first of all, I'm actually not, I wouldn't say even partially retired. I finished up as dean of the Fletcher School. I think last time I was on with you, Jordan, about a year ago, and now I have a position in private equity, international finance, working with the Carlisle Group. And that's been very fulfilling, kind of a distinct Act 3, Act 1, my long, misspent youth in the Navy, Act 2, higher education. I just want to do something completely different, and now I do international finance and private equity, and I'm enjoying it. I, for one, believe you got to keep sailing. The minute you

drop your anchor, the minute you take down the sale, the quality of your life diminishes, the size and scale of your life diminishes. And I still enjoy getting on an airplane and flying up to New York where I'm sitting right now and jumping over to NBC Studio where I'm chief international analyst doing commentary. I enjoy jumping on the radio with great shows like yours. I enjoy the travel that comes with working in private equity, looking at different companies around the world. I still very much am engaged and I won't write off the potential of eventually going back into government and a senior job. I've always been in government as a military officer. I'd be open to the challenge of coming into government, not as an elected official, but as an

appointed position to support a president in some important endeavor in the future. Well, thank you so much, Admiral, for joining us today. And thank you for your service to the nation. It's been an honor speaking with you. Thank you, Jordan. It's my honor as well. And I want to close with one last thought, which is, I appreciate it always when people say thank you for your service. It means the world to military people. Listen, there are so many ways to serve this country. Our military, certainly, our diplomats, our CIA officers, our police, our firemen, are EMTs, nurses in inner city clinics, school teachers in rural South Carolina making $27,000 a year teaching a pack classroom. You think they're serving the country? I do. Peace Corps volunteers.

How about our journalists who take a flip phone and put on a badly fitted helmet and a flack jacket that isn't going to work and go into combat like my friend Richard Engel at NBC News? You think they're serving the country? I do. And there are a lot of ways. to serve the country. So, Jordan, thank you for thanking me for my service, but I just want to take a moment to all who are serving the country in some way across all the spectrum I mentioned. And many I don't have time. Thank you for your service as well. Admiral James Stavridis, thank you so much. This is really fun conversation. I really, really did enjoy it. And I actually did an episode a few weeks ago on synthetic biology, how we can print DNA and how that might end up printing diseases and kill everyone. Maybe I'll shoot that over to Pauline if you, I know you have plenty of things to do. No, no, I would love to listen to that. And also, I hope somewhere in there, they have figured out how people like me with male pattern baldness can recover our hair lines. That's going to be one of the great achievements of the 21st century. Yeah, we'll print you some hair as soon as we can. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Big thank you to Admiral James Stavridis.

The book is called Sailing True North. Links to his books and everything else will be in the show notes. There are also worksheets for each episode, including this one, so you can review what you've learned from Admiral Stavritas. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com in the show notes. We've also got transcripts for each episode, and those can be found in the show notes as well. We're teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at six-minute networking. That's our free networking class. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And don't wait.

Don't try to do it later. You've got to dig the well before you get thirsty. Once you need relationships and you're trying to leverage them, then you're too late to create them. Don't procrastinate. Don't stagnate. Just get it done. It's a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago.

This is not fluff. It is crucial. Don't wait until you get your website done, your business plan done. None of that is first. The networking stuff is first. It takes freaking six minutes a day. Do it all for free. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course.

And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us and you'll be in smart company. Speaking of building relationships, you can always reach out and follow me on social. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. This show is created in association with Podcast One. This episode is produced by Jen Harbinger, Jason DeFilippo, and edited by Jace Sanderson. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own, and yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, to do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time.

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