The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Uncover the Civil War's Hidden Leadership Secrets with JD Baker of OMNA International | KEV Talks #17

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

In November 2014, I was fortunate to meet JD Baker on the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg National Military Park. JD walked my fellow Public Safety and Incident Management Team (IMT) members and me through leadership decisions made on the same grounds 151 years earlier. This event was called a "staff ride" and was part of the L-580 Leadership is Action course. L-580 is designed to teach senior IMT leaders historical leadership lessons that can be applied in the modern era. This staff ride has had a lasting impact on me personally and professionally ever since.I'm fortunate to have JD Baker as a guest on this episode as we talk about the leaders, decisions, and actions that shaped the Union and Confederate Armies leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg.Listen to my previous episode on the Battle of Gettysburg at https://kevtalkspod.com/leadership-lessons-from-the-battle-of-gettysburg/Hear JD dive deep into Civil War history with Jocko Willink on the Jocko Podcast at https://jockopodcast.com/2022/12/15/363-the-principle-weapon-is-the-mind-read-study-learn-with-jd-baker/Reserve your spot to hear from JD himself by booking a staff ride to Gettysburg or other pivotal locations in American history with OMNA International at https://theomna.com/Thank you for listening, subscribing, and leaving a review. Remember...Have a plan to keep your teams alignedStay informed with facts, not fear or rumorsGet involved so you can make a differenceGodspeed

L-580 Gettysburg, Leadership is Action, is a continuing education opportunity available to senior leaders. We gather senior incident management team members from around the country and spend two full days studying the decisions and communications of leaders at this 1863 incident. This is the paragraph that confirmed my registration for what was to be one of the most influential experiences of my life as a leader, as a member of an incident management team, responder, and now to this day as a project manager and program manager. It was the Gettysburg staff ride that my teammates and I completed in November of 2014, and it was facilitated by Omna International. You may have heard of Omna International if you're a Jocko podcast fan. In December 2022, Jocko talked with J.D.

Baker, who facilitated my staff ride in 2014. I'm very fortunate to have J.D. on this episode of the KevTalks podcast. In this episode, J.D. walks us through the events that led up to the Battle of Gettysburg, and we talk about modern-day leadership guidance that we can take from leadership decisions in the Civil War era. Thank you for choosing the KevTalks podcast. Let's get logged on and get locked in as we share people's compelling stories, talk about industry leading best practices, and the hope that we can all make progress together. But for now, let's fly back into this episode in three, two, one. Hey everybody, thanks for coming back to the KevTalks podcast. Hey, everybody.

Thanks for coming back to the Cap Talks podcast. Today, I'm lucky to be joined by someone that helped teach me some of the ingrained leadership lessons I learned on a staff ride at Gettysburg National Battlefield in about 2014 when I was part of the Central Virginia All-Hazard Incident Management Team, Judd Baker. Judd, thanks for being here on the Kept Talks podcast. It's great to connect. Yeah, it's great. Thanks for having me on, Kevin. I'm super excited about it. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I mentioned the staff ride that you do and we're getting into OMNA and, you know, all the services they provide. But yeah, for me, when I was in the public safety,

public health sector, part of that team and part of the incident management team and was afforded that opportunity. As you know, many times that, you know, being at the Gettysburg National Battlefield is an experience and not, it's not just a vacation, a visit, a leadership event. You get there and you're kind of awestruck. I know I was. One thing I did after that was kind of write it up, share it with folks. And we'll, you know, maybe touch on some of the key things from there. i think really what i'd like to build off is from gettysburg after we learn a bit a little bit more about you how you got it to do it what you do now um is you know what other key leadership lessons we can provide to folks you know particularly that

kind of path on the east coast that you and i have lived a lot of right um you know and being in virginia and you know being on on the east coast here and just all the relevance again that that i see that i've used now being in healthcare it you know the leadership lessons stick with you they work whether you're riding something that goes woo woo or you're just in a meeting with a powerpoint right the leadership lessons are are great so again you know please share a little bit about yourself and um you know, what took you to start up Omni International and we'll touch on all that kind of stuff that you still do now with your crew. Yeah, well, I served in the Marines for just over 21 years.

I retired out of Quantico, Virginia, just up the road from me, just east of you, probably by about three and a half hours over in Spotsylvania, Virginia, which is right next to the town of Fredericksburg. And, you know, when I retired out, when we look at the experiential, like you said, the term experiential, when you look at it as experiential history or experiential leadership of being able to experience something. When you look at education, on the education aspects of it, this is kind of how we teach and educate folks in the Marines in particular on staff rides, of studying a historical event. Not necessarily, it's great to know the history, but it's taking a look at the individuals of the leaders that are there, but then actually standing in the exact spot where that leader stood.

And then you've got like this vision of what was taking place at that time and then trying to kind of have discussions of what would make an individual make that decision in real time, and then what we can take back from that and learn on our own and instill it with ourselves into integration. And then, like, as you said, when you came back from Gettysburg, you wrote the paper and then you're passing that information on to other folks. And that's what integration is. Hopefully it outlives you you kind of like this podcast. It will be captured for eternity. So that's where, you know, myself, you know, General Al Gray told me, he said, before you decide to do something, decide who you're going to do it with. So, of course, I lean back on the folks that I've served with in the Marines.

And as you can tell from you being up there at Gettysburg with us, all the guys and gals, I mean, they love what they do. So actually teaching and educating is a lot of fun. So then it makes it like it's not work, but it's never ending. You're always studying. You're always learning. It's not like you just study Gettysburg. You go there one time, you're one and done. I've been to Gettysburg hundreds of times and every time I'm there, I learn something new. So, yeah, we started Omni International in 2010 and we're going for 13 years now. Wow. That by anything. Yeah, no doubt. You know, talk about changing.

We touched on this a bit earlier. So we, I think I reached out a little over a year, however long ago it was. But in the past couple of years, things have changed. We're now able to connect, which is great. You know, and we talked about things that will last forever. And I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. I grew up driving down Monument Avenue and won't get into the whole debate. But one thing that seemed like it wouldn't change is all those monuments that were in

the middle of the road right down there that are on probably a lot of tourist things, maybe less of the new ones now. But we touched on kind of a repurposing of those that still benefit leaders to this day, in particular Jackson's monument. Can you touch on kind of how, you know, the decisions were made to move monuments, but then how the monuments are repurposed to still be a positive asset to leaders, you know, now and going forward? Yeah, as we talk about, they've moved the, you know,

the removal of the Jackson monument off of the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. And the first time I went to Lexington, Virginia, I was eight years old. First time I visited VMI, they've got Lee's tomb is there. Jackson's actually buried up there in the cemetery in Lexington, Virginia. And a couple of years ago, when they called for the removal of monuments, they're not calling for the removal of monuments that are on the national military parks, as we talk about with Gettysburg.

Virginia Military Institute and where you grew up down in Richmond on Monument Avenue, obviously you've got Lee, you've got Stewart. Those monuments were placed, they weren't placed by the military. They weren't placed as a military park. So moving monuments or removing those private funded monuments don't necessarily have a place other than being on a military park. And as we talked about, like when you and I were together at Gettysburg just a few years ago,

you know, the military parks, first one was established down in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And, you know, the military, after these battles had taken place, we looked at the military parks, parks the establishment to bring in future military leaders and bring them in and study these battles well with that you have to place monuments when the monuments are placed on the battlefields it's not like if you go to gettysburg and the first thing one of the largest monuments there is the virginia monument so that's for the state of virginia this just happens to have Robert E. Lee sitting on top of it, but it's not a Robert E. Lee monument. It's a Virginia

monument. There's a Mississippi monument. There's a Pennsylvania, there's a Wisconsin, there's a Minnesota. And when they place the monuments there, there's actually, if you pay attention, when you're there, there's two little white markers on each sides of the monuments. And it might be 50 yards. It could be 100 yards. And the monuments are the left and right lateral flanks of that particular unit at the start of the battle. So military folks come up there to do a stab ride and to study the battle and the leadership aspects. Now we can see where each one of these thousands of people, you know, I mean, Kevin, you know, I mean, there's 150,000 people crammed

in a small square radius in Gettysburg. Sure. And so that gives us a starting point to where when we're doing this experiential style leadership, we can see where they started uh at the beginning instead of where they ended up so it gives us a way to kind of walk because it was a three-day battle and you can walk through that and most of all the military parks are set up that way for leadership aspects it's for us to go back and to learn um from our past to carry the nation forward, if you like.

Yeah, which is great. And yeah, to your point, to kind of touch on Gettysburg, like I mentioned, the experience and being there, and it's great. So just to call back, so you just did a great series with Jocko Willink on Jocko Podcasts about Gettysburg. So everybody go listen to that. It's outstanding. It was cool for

me to listen to and go, Oh yeah, I remember that. And picture it in your head because unless you've been there and one, I encourage you to go to Omna, you know, what's your URL, OMNA, your website address, check them out, you know, and do the experience because when you're standing like in that Virginia monument, which of course our team had to get a picture because we're central Virginia and you look across right the field where the charge happened. You're like, that looks awful. And I remember going for a run one morning, not near as fast as you, but and saying, I'm going to run across that field. And it sucked like and I was in tennis shoes and a T-shirt not getting shot at not in wool sweating like crazy in the summer um you know that and the round tops and all that so definitely listen to the podcast episode sign up go there just drive there you know but but experience it because it's it's amazing it's

it's our history right it's it you know changed the course of this country changed you know a whole lot of stuff but but being there and seeing the landscape and just imagining having to do that, you know, for either side, for, for what they believed in. And just, it was a, it was an amazing and an awful experience, but tons of leadership lessons, as you talked about, as, as hopefully I shared, there's an old episode on, on this feed too, you can check out, um, it's leadership lessons from Gettysburg. So I think that's a pivotal leadership thing. But there's a lot more than that. Obviously, you do a bunch of different staff rides, in particular on the East Coast, key battles right in the Civil War that, again, changed the face of this country.

Let's talk about some of those and what you think shaped this country and can help shape leaders now and continue. And some of the key things that you do staff rides to this day and help enable leaders going forward. Yeah. Most of the, if you remember when we were up there on that Wednesday morning with the group that's up there, normally I always ask people, it's like, well,

how did we get to Gettysburg? Because a lot of folks, if you're looking at one piece of dirt in America, that's got more books written about it, it's Gettysburg. Gettysburg has got more books written about. I mean, I'm looking at probably half of my bookshelf is Gettysburg because of all the different leaders and the different perspectives that you can get. You just can't read one book and think that, okay, I got it. Because each one of these leaders have their own different perspective, not only from the officer corps, from the general level, down to the colonel level, to the captain level, down to the sergeant and the private level. Right. So we could all attend the exact same event. You know, we talk about like running. Everybody can go up to Washington, D.C. and run the Marine Corps Marathon with 25,000 other people. And they're all going to come back

with a different story. So you just can't listen to my story of, oh, my God, it's the greatest race known to man. And I'm going to have a perspective. You could go up there and have a terrible experience and have a completely different perspective. So you just can't read the one book. So that's why I'm saying that the education aspect is continuous. So when you look at it,

how did we get to Gettysburg? You got to back up of, okay, well, how did we get to a civil war? And it wasn't like, you know, down in South Carolina, just a bunch of guys decided to get together and say, hey, man, let's let's take some pop shots at a federal fort sitting in the middle of the harbor. There was a chain of events that were taking place in America that even goes all the way back to the liberal north of Henry David Thoreau and some of the folks for coming for the overthrow of the government due to the indian removal act oh wow that took place so you can see the grumblings uh that are happening in america and it's more of the agrarian south that's going to be the one that pulls the trigger uh and then once you pull the trigger uh and then we get this you know you get a new president i mean i couldn't imagine you know getting voted in uh to be president united states and you get to DC, you're ready to go to a party and the next thing you know, half the country leaves.

So you got to kind of look at it as, is it me? Well, yeah, it does have it. And some of your policies, some of your thought, some of your ideals of how to move the country forward. So when you look at it, there's a great book to read. It's called Team of Rivals. It's a really good book. And I know through this,

I'll throw out a whole bunch of books. They're actually on my website as well. We have a nice, we've got a reading list. You can click on the reading tab and it'll have a bunch of the battles. It'll have what books we kind of recommend if you're going to go and visit any of these battles, just so you don't go in blind

and then there's some other just interesting read kind of stuff you know jocko's stream ownership's on there uh we actually like his uh strategies and tactics uh really well uh too so you know when you speak at jocko we did the whole uh well we did a week of podcasting we started at the beginning and we made it all the way to Gettysburg. And that was after five days. Yeah, that's a lot of work. Yeah. So we're going to go back and do and finish out and take it all the way to Appomattox.

You know, Jocko is a huge student of history and of leadership, obviously. And we've been running around together doing staff rides, Gettysburg, Little Bighorn and stuff like that for the past three or four years together. And we finally found time to get together and kind of talk about this. And it's mainly for the education piece. Yeah. So when you look at it on the Eastern seaboard, you know, you've got like just north of me up here,

you've got everybody looks at the first battle of bull run second battle bull run when you're looking at the naming conventions of some of these and you look at like the first big actual battle that took place on the east coast was antietam um but if you read in a southern book they call it sharpsburg so if if i'm on a stack ride and somebody refers to it as Sharpsburg, I kind of know where they're from. Right. You just place yourself. It's like, okay, the Confederacy called it Sharpsburg. You know, the Union, we call it Antietam.

It's the same thing with Bull Run or Manassas. It's the same battle. It's just they named them differently in the battles to the same thing when you look at it, if we're talking about naming conventions, because when you look at the Civil War, sometimes it can become confusing on which army we're talking about, because you've got the Army of the James, you've got the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Mississippi, the Army of the Cumberland tennessee the gulf the union names them after bodies of water rivers the gulf the confederacy names them after the states the

army of northern virginia the army of mississippi that means not the mississippi meaning the river so you can like the army of Mississippi and the army of the Mississippi. You kind of see the difference. So that kind of does get confusing because all the photos are in black and white and you don't know, Hey, is that guy wearing blue or is he wearing gray? Oh yeah. So, you know, it does, but they were in color like me and you are right now. A lot of people, it was like, like man it was just so dreary they lived in black and white yeah jocko would have been right at home yeah they were in full color so uh you know when you look at that when you look at you got to figure out like in leadership

aspects of okay who's going to lead these armies right um and for a lot of people that don't know when Abraham Lincoln and he's got Winfield Scott, which is basically like his joint chiefs guy, his senior military advisor for the president. Winfield Scott was a Virginian and he had he was getting older in his age. And he's also looking at it as if I'm going to pick one person, if there's anything that happens, the United States to lead the army, it's going to be Robert E. Lee. So Robert E. Lee lives in Arlington, Virginia, and he gets called over and they want him to lead this army to take care of this insurgency that's kind of taken place in the Southern states. And Robert E. Lee leaves and decides to go with the Confederacy. And the same thing happens on the naval side for the naval blockade. You know, the guy that's running the Naval Academy at the time, Buchanan, he leaves and goes with Confederacy.

So you're kind of looking at a leadership aspect of like, wow, nobody wants to work for this guy. Well, then this guy's got to pick somebody to run his armies. And when you get up to Antietam, you got a guy named McClellan and General McClellan that's going to run the Army of the Potomac the Army of the Potomac is the when you look at East Coast battles the Army of the Potomac is the most well-equipped well you know they've got all the personnel they've got all the gear but they're also right here close to the flagpole right and you know it makes a difference the closer you are to the flagpole as an organization. So you're going to have a lot of the political aspects that come into

it. And, you know, when you've got a general officer like McClellan and he has political goals, when you look at the beginning of the war, everybody thinks it's going to take like 90 days. So folks come down, it's just going to be 90 days, you know, and then they have what we call a with them. What's in it for me? Okay. If I'm going to sign up and I'm going to go, what's in it for me afterwards? And, you know, I hate to be a spoiler alert, but McClellan ends up running on the 64 ticket. He's running against Lincoln. So when you look at, when you talk about alignment and leadership of being aligned from the top to the bottom, you're already looking at your commander of the army. The Potomac is not aligned

with the commander in chief. Did, did Lincoln have an idea of that knowing like, Hey, you know, one of my key people isn't in the same message as I am, you know, and on the same team necessarily, I guess, you know, as a politician, he has to have that feeling. Right. And kind of, kind of get that idea. Yeah. From, from his actions, McClellan's actions and just the way he made decisions and things. Right. And also don't forget Lincoln's politician. So what politicians concentrate on the next election, the next one. Yeah, true.

Well, he's getting a lot of pressure as well of who you place in charge, who's going to get these certain key billets, who's going to get general officers, who's going to get these. So a lot of these folks and the other thing is a lot of people don't know that maybe not know, not that they don't understand, is that you got to be a West Point grad. So when they're selecting these general officers, they're immediately look because it's just like how the nation has been almost all the way up till after Vietnam. I mean, in our age and time frame and today in 2022, 2023 time timeframe, you know, we've got this department of defense that's massive. Well, you know, before a war, we go into war, we have to recruit, we got to, we build up, we make this massive army. And then after the war is over, we reduce it back down, go back into civilian world. And we just kept doing that. So at the beginning of the Civil War, if you look at it in 1860, there weren't any problems on the East Coast. All the armies, which were very small, were all out West because of the Western expansion and that kind of thing.

So it's not this big army that you're thinking about today. So a lot of these guys that are general officers, they're coming into DC for the union side. They all fought in the Mexican American war together. Then after the Mexican American war is over, they all go back, they go to civilian world, they get a job. And then now this next war opens up and now they all come back in. So you got a guy that was like a captain. So if you look at it on terms, it'd be like being a firefighter, right? Being out of a job for like 20 years and then coming back and you're the chief. Right, right. But you've got 20 year old and you were and not just the fireman.

You didn't work your way. I was right. Not with 20 years of firefighting experience. Right. And then get back down there yeah right so uh when you look at those aspects so he's got mcclellan so he's got to kind of take what you get and make what you want uh kind of like lincoln so he's going to get this and then he's got mcclellan and mcclellan is is very slow to move uh he's very slow he's very methodical

uh and he also you know he starts with the Peninsula campaign that fails. And then he gets pulled back up of the Potomac where they were threatening Richmond. That's when Robert E. Lee came into play. So Robert E. Lee wasn't. You know, when you look at the Army of Northern Virginia at the beginning of the Confederacy, when Jefferson Davis, when they moved it from Montgomery, Alabama, the capital up to Richmond, Robert E. Lee was kind of like his military advisor at the beginning because he was old. Or at least back when I was a kid and eight years old, I thought, man, looking at Robert E. Lee, that dude is old. Now I look at him, he's in his 50s. I'm like, that guy's in the prime of his life. Good to go. Yeah.

Yeah. He's in his 50s. I'm like, that guy's in the prime of his life. Good to go. Yeah. Yeah. He's in his prime. So when Robert E. Lee takes the field after Johnson goes down on the peninsula, that's when Robert E. Lee enters the, you know, taking over the command of the Army of Northern Virginia. And he's going to hold it all the way to Appomattox, as a lot of folks know, on the northern side, they're going to start out at the Battle of Antietam. And you can see that the alignment from the commander in chief down to the commander, they're not aligned. His thought and process of the Civil War, talking about McClellan, McClellan looks at it as just status quo. Let's just let's just let them. Yeah. I mean, so it's status quo, man. You keep doing what you're doing. Let's just put let's just let them. Yeah. I mean, so let's status quo, man, you keep doing what you're doing. Let's just put the United States back together, you know, because the

strategy of Abraham Lincoln was preserve the union. That's all he wanted to do. He wanted to preserve the union and way of preserving the union is let's, Hey, let's just turn our guns in. Let's just let them keep it because it's that western expansion of slavery into the territories which is going to become a problem so and if you look at europe they'd already abolished slavery over there years before before yeah yeah well before we did so when you look at on a leadership aspect of if if you're the if you're the designated leader, you've got to look at your subordinates. Are they aligned with your strategy? Your intent and so, yeah. So that alignment coming in.

And then when you look at it on the Confederate side with Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Lee is going to run two corps. And he's going to have Stonewall Jackson. He's going to have James Longstreet as his two commanders. First corps is going to be Longstreet, and Second Corps is going to be Jackson. Now, you can read through the battles of Antietam that take place up there, but on a leadership aspect, when you also look at Stonewall Jackson, because we kind of talked about how Jackson was and his monument that was removed from VMI. Now it's out at New Market.

They placed it onto an actual battle park and took it off of a, because VMI is a state school. Right. So they moved it off of that park. But when you look at the individuals of Jackson and people are always like, man, why do folks love Jackson?

When Robert E. Lee went north up into Maryland his first time and we get the Battle of Antietam, he was moving with Longstreet. Jackson was down at Harper's Ferry taking that arsenal that was Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Remember, West Virginia didn't come in until 63, so that was all still Virginia. He was there and then he was supposed to move up and link up with Lee to push north into Pennsylvania. And McClellan found the lost orders of Robert E. Lee. One of them fell of a carrier, dropped it. A Union soldier found it, wrapped in three cigars, and made its way up. So McClellan actually had the entire playbook of the Army of Northern Virginia. Oh, wow. He just still couldn't act. So when you look at it as like leadership is action,

like when we go to Gettysburg, leadership is action. McClellan just can't take action, even when he's got a playbook. It's almost like you're at're at this you know the last night's game everybody talking about like georgia playing tcu it kind of looked like georgia had the playbook right right but they also took action is that is that because of his do you think because of his aspirations or he just didn't care he was just so like risk avoidant he's like well you know i think i heard the message, but I'm really not going to take action. Cause either I don't want to, I just want to sit in

this position until then I can get into higher position or, or what's the insight on kind of why he couldn't take action or didn't really right. Decided not to take action, I guess. Well, yeah. And you know, Kevin, like say if you and i are working together and and and and i'm the boss and you're my core commander and i i get this playbook yeah and i don't share it with any of my other commanders i don't let them so the guy because if there's going to be glory i want all of the glory i mean everything so it's very much all about me. It's not just about McClellan. It's all about, it's even painful now to talk about it. Like here, you know, hearing such a high level leader act like that at that, you know, even now to think, you know, cause it's such a central

thing. Like if I know something and you see this, like I see this in projects or from doing programs, like I'm, you know, heading up a team of project managers now. And if I get something, some folks will ask, oh, do I need to ask you first before I can tell them? I'm like, no, like why take longer to share the information to get something done faster? So, so yeah, hearing that mindset is, you know, is painful. And I would imagine not helpful for the, for the direction of the, of the him or his, or his troops.

But I guess in his mind, he thought it would be in his best interest. Yeah, I mean, you've got 75,000 privates out there that are doing the work. I mean, Leland doesn't get a scratch. He doesn't even leave his headquarters. He's not on the battle. When people say they share the risk, he know, he's not sharing risk like with the common soldier. Then you flop it over on the other side, and we talk about Lee and Jackson and their relationship with Lee Jackson and Longstreet with his core commanders.

Of course, you know, Lee is always having conversations with these folks. And if you look at the two commanders of Longstreet and Lee, you've got one that's defense, you've got one that's offense. Longstreet's the defense guy. Jackson is the offense guy. Just like having an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator. You're down there in Blacksburg. You've got a head coach.

He's got coordinators because the head coach can't do it all. But he has to be able to trust these guys. So you could imagine if the head coach can't do it all but he has to be able to trust these guys so you could imagine if the head coach of Virginia Tech found the playbook and Jake Barrett with his offensive defensive coordinator because he wants to make it look like he's the genius over there on the sidelines right that's not going to last very long in college football well this guy's not going to last very long as the commander of the Army of the Potomac. But Jackson, because of the name that he got, one at the Battle of Manassas, it's just north of me. And then the 1862 Valley Campaign, which I know later on, you know what I mean? You were thinking about, you know, getting more folks in that Shenandoah Valley that's there.

The 1862, that put Jackson on the map uh what he did in the valley and we do a staff ride of the 1862 valley campaign we actually hike from front row virginia all the way to waynesboro oh wow yeah we call it 100 miles in 100 hours uh and the only requirement is you got to be able to purify your own water oh cool because you can go five days without eating but you're not going to make it not water yeah especially there yeah feel for how awesome it was to walk through that land beautiful uh beautiful part of virginia um so when you're looking at the aspect so jackson comes back and his name uh in coming through 62 is just huge uh with the army

of northern virginia so if you could imagine you got, you got Robert E. Lee and you got Longstreet and they're sitting up at right outside what's called the Dunker church. It still stands up in Sharpsburg, Maryland at the back park up there. And they're standing there and they're waiting on Jackson to come. And they've got this army of the Potomac that's coming at him. And he's only got one of his corps. So he basically has half of his army.

Jackson shows up and it's just Jackson. He's riding up over the, you know, coming on these farm fields. And it's just Jackson when he's riding on his horse. And some of the privates in Longstreet's corps see Jackson. And one of them turns and he's like hey it's Jackson we're all good just because Jackson's there right you know so when I look at it on it on our an organization and leadership when you show up at work is it like oh man it's JD's here? Right. Or is it like, hey, man, hey, JS. Yeah.

And he doesn't even have any troops with him yet. Right. Wow. It's just his presence alone lifts the spirits of the organization. So when you look at it on a leadership aspect, you got to kind of think of, and we've all seen it because you're always under observation. Somebody's looking out the window and you're like, oh, man, that's Kevin, man. I see him getting out of his truck and people start to scurry. Like, you know, they don't even want to interact. They're going to act like they're doing something different to where a lot of times if you just walk in and everybody's just still the same,

nobody's scurrying. That says a lot about the leader when you're looking at it of a leadership aspect. It makes sense. Yeah. How do folks receive you when you come in? It says a lot about the leader when you're looking at it of a leadership aspect. Makes sense. Yeah. How do folks receive you when you come in? It says a lot about the organization. I mean, you can, because if I come up to you and you're like, yeah, hey, GD, how's everything going? Well, of course, you're the boss. I'm going to tell you everything's great, man. And yeah, you're doing a great job. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, man, I got caught by the over going to the bathroom and Kevin nailed me at the bathroom and now I'm stuck with him, I got caught by the over going to the bathroom and Kevin nailed me at the bathroom and now I'm stuck with him. So when you look at Antietam and you look at the

aspects of the two different kind of commanders that are out there running around, you want to be the Jackson, the where, when you show up, people are excited that you're there because you're going to go to work. It's not that he's buddies with anybody he's not buddies with any of them uh you know jackson doesn't he doesn't socialize he doesn't drink he's very religious he's not going to be the party guy that's throwing the keggers at his house at virginia tech prior to the football game he's not even go to the football game uh so jackson's not one of the it's just how he shows up to work and it's a blur i was gonna say it sounds like the key is, you know, so even if you're not the one that's, you know, in the group, so to speak, but when you show up, folks know, oh, stuff's getting done. Like that has value, but it's also a balance, right?

So, you know, how do you balance being such a great performer and leader and kind of aggressive? You know, it made me think of folks that are real like idea folks and, hey, let's do this and let's push forward and we can get this done. But then maybe there's some part they could add a little bit more to where maybe socialism would help a little bit. You know, so it's awesome to have that inspiration. It sounds like but but it sounds like maybe the balance of of time spent with his folks. You know, could there have been some value in that if he would have done that a little bit more? Yeah, because, you know, Jackson did not trust anybody. He was very close hold with his information. I always tell people, if you're operating for Jackson, you're going to get up early in the morning.

You're going to get on the road. You're going to face to the right. You're going to hike about 20 to 25 miles. And there's probably going to be a gunfight at the end of it. And that's all, you know, uh, which that's not the kind of, uh, organization that I want to be a part, but you know, you notice that if you're winning, nobody's going to question. Right. Right. Everybody likes it. Everybody likes the winner. Yeah. You're going to put up with Barry Bonds just to get a ring. You're going to put up with somebody that isn't necessarily a team player,

but if they're winning, you're going to stay on that team just because of that aspect. And then when they start losing, then you're like, Oh, we never should have been with that guy. I should have left years ago. It's all that hindsight that comes in. So, you know, when you leave out of there and you look at it, Antietam is kind of considered a tie between the two armies. And, you know, Robert E. Lee moves back down into Virginia and then Lincoln's going to get rid of McClellan. He's going to bring in another commander. And the commander is General Burnside. It's going to take over the army commander. And when Burnside comes in, it's interesting how he gets into command because Lincoln comes to Burnside, calls him in. He's like, hey, you know, we're going to get rid of McClellan. And I really I want you to take over as the army commander and burnside tells abraham lincoln i i don't think

that that's in my wheelhouse like i don't think i'm i'm confident enough to run an army uh you know give me a division give me a core i'm pretty comfortable being a core but i'm not comfortable being the army commander that's just too. And that's Burnside seeing himself and telling that to the commander in chief. Is that, do you think that's a humility thing or an actual lack of confidence or a mix of both from that? Probably a mix of both.

Like I said, a lot of these guys, they, yeah, they've been out of the game. True. And now he's seeing of the actions of one he's also been around to see what robert e lee and them did to him on the peninsula yeah all what happened i mean robert e lee's making a uh he's making a pretty good name for himself with the army of northern virginia right so when when you look at the aspects of burnside coming in and you got this guy that's telling Abraham Lincoln.

So Lincoln looks at him and says, well, OK, you know, General Burnside, if you don't take the job, I'm going to give it to General Hooker. And Burnside's like, dude, I'm not working for Hooker. You either take the job or you're working for Hooker. And Burnside takes the job. So he literally takes the job just because he doesn't want to work for this other guy somebody else yeah it's named hooker because and hooker actually did a pretty good job at antietam he got wounded in antietam but on the same token when you look at it on the hooker aspect hooker is not uh a what an individual of good character you would probably look at.

Hooker, you know, where the term hooker comes from. Like, well, I was going to say, if folks listening are thinking, yes, that's it, right? That's where it came from. He had a little entourage of women that followed him around and the privates would be like, yeah, you're at a battlefield.

And it's like, who are those women? They're like're like oh those are hookers and it sticks wow um so when you're looking at a at a man or woman of character and there's people that are doing it in 2023 today running a business running an organization and and people see that um and so you know that that is a character flaw. Everybody knows. It's not, people think they're getting away with things. They're not. Somebody is seeing you.

So Burnside takes the job. But when you look at Burnside on a leadership aspect of knowing yourself and your capabilities, and he tells that to the boss, but then even though the boss of Lincoln's like, okay, if you don't take it, you're working for hooker. And he's like, I'll take the job just because you don't want to work for an individual says a lot. And then, okay, these guys are peers and now you're going to have to work with these individuals. So it's not like you get to pick

and choose who you get to work with. Like sometimes you just, you get these people, you have to deal with people. That's why when you look at it on a leadership aspect there is no difference in people in 2023 than there are in people in 19 or in 1862. that human element is that cell phone man yeah yeah yeah i was gonna say it made me think of two things one the military right one person studied a little harder for the advancement exam they got promoted now you work for me and we were buddies and hanging out which changes the game or can change the game for some folks um and then yeah for especially in you know the past couple years the great quit or whatever it was called you know folks moving jobs remote work, right? Contract folks come in, new managers come into your

organization. Now you've got someone new that you work for and really says something, I think, you know, and, you know, I've had change of how you adapt to that, right? Do you support them? Do you help build them up? Are you resentful? Or you're like, well, I'm not working for them. And then you leave, you know, it's to your point in 2023 is, it's almost a great mirror of that time with all these leadership changes and people changes because it's happened so much over the past few years and probably every, every business really all around. So that's a, that's an awesome analogy to look at.

And interesting that, you know, what drives people's decision making uh based on other human interactions and who they will or won't have to have a uh a gotcha professional and kind of life relationship with when you're going into battle with these folks is different than just going to the office and having to sit in your cube outside their office or something you know what i mean to that point as opposed to marching and getting shot at yeah when you look at like if i'm driving down 64 and i get the lex then i jump on 81 and I'm coming down to Blacksburg and you see that minivan and it's got that whole ass family on the back of it. Yeah. Every organization has that

family. So if you think you're just going to hop around to avoid, you know what I mean? Dealing with difficult leadership or being a good follower, Because, you know, even though I'm working, you know, if you come in and on a change of command and you get hired in as the new boss. Right. I still have to actively follow you. Yep. You know, being an actor, I can't just put my hands in my pocket and do nothing. You know, that's just not going to work out. So even though we might not see, I still have to actively follow you. And especially in the military so that I kind of know what's going on in the

organization. If I'm just putting blinders on and I'm not paying attention because I just don't like Kevin, you know what I mean? How well is the organization going to move forward as a whole? Yeah, that was well for sure. So yeah. So Burnside burnside again he turns down command and if you come over here to fredericksburg you can look it's the first um amphibious assault under fire in american history uh so it's our first waterborne because they got to get the

boats across the rappahannock river uh and hit fredericksburg and it's just it's a it's a terrible it and it's cool that it's amphibious because you were a marina i was in the navy but actually doing it back then i guess it was awful right i i wouldn't want to take place in that especially uh of what happens at fredericksburg so but you know burnside kind of called it it really wasn't in his wheelhouse so burnside's going to get fired so now we're coming in you know it's that's the winter of 62 so you know you started out at the war you've got McClellan now you're going to turn around you're going to get rid of Burnside now you got another boss coming in and we're only

within a year and a half oh man you're changing over leadership and now guess who we're getting? Hooker. Yep. Hooker comes into and you're getting him. And then he's still on the Northern side of the Rappahannock river and it's, it's in the winter time. So, you know, back then, uh, the roads that still run here, the modern day, uh, telegraph road, the route one road that runs all the way from Washington, DC, all the way down to Richmond. They called it the Telegraph. It just got renamed Emancipation Parkway.

Gotcha. It used to be called Jefferson Davis. Jefferson Davis. Yep, they got rid of Jefferson Davis. There's different segments. One of them is Emancipation Parkway. Another one's like Patriot Parkway. It's kind of confusing depending on where

part of Virginia you're in, what it's called. So on that modern day Route 1, that road still existed, but none of the bridging was there because they blew the bridging. And that was the big kind of line in the sand, if you're looking at it, between D.C. and Richmond as the two capitals. And you growing up in Richmond, you could jump on i-95 you could be in dc in an hour and a half right there yeah depending on what time of the day yeah that's true not at rush hour but yeah and if you've got your hob uh to be able to make sure it's one north or south so bringing this guy hooker and you know the army of northern virginia is still the same it's but the only difference is this time hooker is gonna get across the Rappahannock on the south side coming into the battle of what we call Chancellor's Bell.

And it's actually, he's got Robert E. Lee outnumbered three to one. Wow. So he's got a huge advantage. Longstreet is not here. Longstreet got sent down to Suffolk, you know, dealing with that region because they were independent commanders working for Robert E. Lee. But so he's got Jackson with him. And when they make the crossing, the interesting thing is about Hooker is, is Hooker, you know, he's all about Hooker. So you're going from a lot of these leaders, not necessarily Burnside, but McClellan, and then you got Hooker. And Hooker, man, he wants, you know, he's looking at what's in this for me afterwards.

Like, you know, he's really an individual. George Gordon Meade, who fought at Fredericksburg, George Gordon Meade's the one that broke Jackson's lines at Fredericksburg. So he was successful there. And then he was here when he crossed the river. He actually could have gotten in and behind and cut off Robert E. Lee from Fredericksburg. Oh, wow. And Hooker called him back because he wanted everybody back.

He wanted to run defense and he wanted to do to Lee what lee did to him at fredericksburg but he's trying to force something because robert e lee gets a say in what he's going to do sure you know when we get guys that go to a fire and we have fire prediction and fire models and all these things well just like we have a weather prediction i don't know if you know uh my wife and i were sitting in here um what was it sunday evening and i've got snow coming down with ice on the back deck well the weatherman didn't get right you know what i mean so so the weather gets to say so does robert e lee so hooker's going to pull them back in and they're going to be on the modern day route three uh kind of going towards uh culpepper and uh charlottesville yep you're gonna head over on the 20 the constitution highway gotcha of what

we call it in virginia uh coming over from charlottesville so that kind of gives you the area of what we're talking about and jackson's going to convince ro E. Lee to allow him to take two thirds of the people that they have and go all the way out around 14 miles and do the most incredible flank attack in the history of the world. Oh, wow. It's going to totally catch Hooker completely off guard because he's like, who's who could go all the way out that far stonewall yeah wow the amazing thing is is when when you look at the two uh if you come down to chancellors when you're looking at a leadership aspect of being able to convince the boss uh so you know kevin if i'm working for you and i've got to convince you that spot on the battlefield is called the cracker box uh and it is three quarters of a mile from where I stand. Uh, yeah, right out. I run the school all the time. Um, that's where Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at night are sitting on two cracker boxes with a little fire

and it's not recorded. So nobody knows actually what Jackson was saying, but he was able to convince Robert E. Lee to take two-thirds of his fighting force. And Robert E. Lee is only setting less than a mile from the Union lines. And they're going to go out 14 miles and around. I mean, if the Union would have just stepped up and gone forward, game over. Wow. I mean, it must speak to the value of having a good, you know, I've talked about this, you know, there's times and levels, right, to the type of briefing and discussion you should have, right, with the troops, with the folks doing the work. We're getting details. We're doing task by task. We're going to really get in there with kind of their managers. Hey, I'm going to need some resources this much probably this long um i would i would like to think uh but

not knowing it's probably a really good bottom line up front i believe i can do this and he's a superstar and the troops believe in him so that helps right he's got momentum but to me that that speaks to the power of like if i need to brief the C-suite, I need to be succinct. I need to have good data to back it up. They obviously need to believe in me, not just from the data and stuff I'm talking about. And then be passionate about it. I would imagine Stonewall Jackson was pretty passionate about wanting and knowing in his mind that he could do this as he pitched it on the Cracker Barrels. That's pretty cool.

Cracker Box, rather. Yeah, and Cr yeah cracker barrel we've got a lot yeah no virginia yeah so uh you know when you look at those aspects of in the trust that uh lee's got to have in jackson right to be able to pull that off so i mean it it knocks the army of northern of the potomac the army of potomac gets knocked back over across the rappahannock river to the north again and that's where you're like well here we go again so what happens hooker gets relieved uh but he doesn't get relieved the army of northern virginia with robert e lee's like He gets along the street back. He loses Jackson at Chancellorsville. Jackson gets killed. He does a night reconnaissance because he can't. Most commanders, they send reconnaissance out like me. If I'm working for you, Kevin, you would send me

out and say, hey, JD, go out and see if you can find the lines, see if there's anything. Then I would come back and I would report to you. Well, Jackson liked to do everything because Jackson didn't trust me. Right. So it's just like, you're not going to trust me. So you're going to go out and then you go out, you're coming back in and his own people shooting. So it was a North Carolina regiment and it's no fault to the North

Carolinians. They didn't know that the commander was out front of friendly lines. No night vision goggles in that day and age. Yeah. Comes back in, they shooting shooting they clip his arm his arm gets amputated and he's on the ambulance route and he ends up dying of pneumonia and robert e lee makes a statement when he finds out that jackson's dead that it felt like he lost his right arm which is a pretty profound statement uh so jackson is is gone and he had hill and yule who are two of the

corps commanders that we talked about while we were at gettysburg uh so that also tells you something of why didn't lee just pick one or the other why did he split the corps and get make them each core commanders and i kind of look at it as jackson wasn't preparing his subordinates for that next level great point yeah so you know when we always talk about like you should know two levels up and two levels down in the organization and the number one job of as a leader is to make more leaders well i wasn't doing that no yeah And Hill and Euler, they're good general officers, but they haven't been a core commander. I mean, there's a difference. It's just like if you're a captain and then you become a chief and you move up and you're a borough.

Big jumps, yeah. Yeah. I mean, every time you're in the job, they're like, hey, how's it going? I don't know. I've only been doing it for two days, man. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out. Because you think you know what's going on until you're actually in that seat.

And so Robert E. Lee is going to convince Jackson because Vicksburg is under siege on the Mississippi. And Davis actually wants to send Lee down towards Mississippi and Vicksburg to try and relieve some of that pressure because Ulysses S. Grant's down there. And Robert E. Lee does not want to go to Mississippi. So he's like, hey, boss, if I take him north, that might be able to sway the, you know, because now we're getting into 63. 64 is another election year. He can go north into Pennsylvania. He can sway the votes. Abraham, cause now we're getting into 63, 64 is another election year. He can go North into Pennsylvania. He can sway the votes. Abraham Lincoln doesn't get the ticket and Hey,

which status quo. Cause McClellan's running on that 64 ticket, right? There's some other folks that are in there. So he's like, Hey, I can do that and relieve some of that pressure. So they can't send reinforcements down there to, to, uh, to grant. So, but when he goes North, he's, he's been for the first two years of the war, he's been fighting two core. Now he's going to fight three core, and he's going to do an away game. A lot tougher. Yeah, I mean, it's easier to play in Blacksburg than it is. I mean, just between the rivalry between UVA and Virginia Tech.

For sure. I'd rather go play on my home field after listening to Enter Sandman and the stadium shaking than, yeah, than travel to Charlottesville. Can I ask a quick question for Jackson? And we touched on clearly not developing folks below him. What about when you talk about Jackson and feedback that you've gotten because the term lead from the front, right? And then I've also heard lead from behind, all different aspects, different ideas.

Lead from the front, probably I've heard the most out of kind of all the leadership things. How do you frame that? Or how do you respond when folks have questions about it? Or do you kind of really focus more on the preparing folks just in case? But, you know, he was the epitome of leading from the front, but it wasn't, it didn't seem like an altruistic because I'm going to pull all my people with me. It's like, because he had lack of trust and didn't develop folks. What are kind of the, some of the discussions you get into from folks on the staff rides when, when that comes up, I would imagine that comes up because it's, he's like the epitome of

it, right. Leaving from the front, literally. And he is, but that's not, it's, it's the trust issue. I couldn't imagine working for somebody like that's my job, right. You know, in the Marine Corps, you know, I was a, I was a, the eyes and ears for the battalion commander. That's our job as, as Marine snipers, we go out forward. I report back to the commander. If you're not going to use me and my capabilities, you're going to just try to do it yourself because you don't trust me that you need to take a look at yourself. Yeah. You know? And then, you know, his, he so when you're looking at a leader and everybody's got a leader, that's like Jackson, everybody's probably worked for a Jackson, that the guy is just,

he's one of those individuals is like, well, why am I going to let my subordinates do it? Why am I as well? They're going to do it wrong. And I'm going to end up doing it. I'll just do it myself. That way I don't have this pause and wait. So he's not growing anybody in the organization and everybody's replaceable. Right.

Yeah. Great point. You know, except with Jackson, he thinks he's got a higher calling. So he's very religious and he thinks that, you know, he's going to put his hands in the Lord and he's going to be fine and this is the way he's been operating and nothing's happened since and now he goes out on a night reconnaissance. I mean, that'd be like in today's day and age, you would see guys over in Iraq and you've got like the two-star generals out doing reconnaissance,

coming back and making their own plans. I mean, they've got people that can go do that and bring it back. It's that trust of a subordinate. So you can imagine how that could be in any organization. Right. You know, I don't care what we're doing. If you're constantly looking over my shoulder and telling me because, you know, we're going to do things differently.

As long as I meet your end state of what your vision is and you give me my mission statement and you task me. And as long as I meet it, it doesn't matter how I get there to it. As long as I get there, because we're all going to be doing stuff differently and there's nothing wrong with that. I might have something more creative so when we talk about jackson i mean a lot of people can relate to jackson especially as they're coming up in the organization because everything that you do or your people do or fail to do is a reflection on you right you know so if you look at it in a football aspect i know we've used a lot of football because you're down there might as well yeah yeah a lot of football because you're down there. Might as well, yeah.

Yeah, a lot of people get it. You've got the coach. So Jackson is the coach, and he's got, you know, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. He's got a receivers coach. He's got a strength coach. He's got all these coaches. And then he's got these players that are like enlisted people.

They're the ones that are actually going on the field. And when the quarterback gets out onto the field, he has a different perspective of what the coach sees. Right. And what the guy in the box sees. And everybody's calling down, but they're on a timeline. So they've got to have that OODA loop moving pretty fast. So it's actually exciting to watch the coaches.

The coaching is more exciting than the players on the field because they're just waiting for the command and then it's control so it's command and control they give a command they can't control what those 11 guys on the field are going to do right but they think they can't so they're going to try to instill discipline to that instant obedience to order, but you're dealing with humans and you're dealing with individuals that they're going to miss a block. They're going to pull too late.

And you just have one little incident out of 11 guys can screw a whole play up. Yeah. Yeah. And the coach is standing over there throwing clipboards and, you know what I mean? Grabbing guys by the face mask. And he's like, well, okay, coach, why don't you just do a Jackson and go out there and quarterback? Right.

Which is funny because it made me think of all the, quote, professional quarterbacks in the stands yelling stuff like, just do this and just do that. And you're like you know these are the the best athletes on the planet right and to your point like they aren't perfect but then and when you're winning love you when you mess up once twice oh get out you know this and and it's a great point i mean it's like you know having our our chief information officer go there and and typing in our project plans and kind of stuff. And we're just all hanging out and we're like, what, why do that? But, or not trusting and, and yeah, you know, fortunate to have great leaders that it's like,

one, you do, you do got to build your competence right in their mind to do that. But, but yeah, being, being so single-minded what, what you know with his belief in just not building folks up is just just so detrimental but yeah it's it's every time i think about football and the games we've been to whether it's high school football junior football at alco whatever there's always pros from different perspectives so to speak but that on the field perspective like nothing can equal it ever and nothing beats it. And, and that again, speaks to the value of like listening to your folks. So if someone that's doing the project says, Hey, this is happening in these meetings, or when we go to do this onsite stuff, these

installs, this, that kind of stuff, I don't need to go, well, every time I've done it, it's this. So just do it like that. Right. Cause then it's, it could be totally wrong, which, you know, the football analogy, the project analogy. But so Jackson out and now we got two leaders that are split. And do you think it was a balance of kind of the weight that Jackson could could carry on his own, given the way he led versus what each of these other folks could carry you know with with half the force so to speak that jackson had assigned to him yeah it's given him uh options of just the the managing of of that large of a core okay so it's almost like when burnside made that comment of like yeah hey i'm good at being a core guy don't give me the whole army right you know so these guys are like

divisions you know what i mean now i'm gonna step up now i got a core so it's helping us kind of span a control thing right a little better yeah cool yeah which always you know robert e lee that's why you know when we look at it when you fight two core that's a very flat organization you know when you look at the army of the potomac at one point time, they got like six core there. So you're commander, you're dealing with six folks and they're all different. Right. So, you know, your command and control is going to be a lot different.

So he's going to split them up and he's going to make three corps, but then he's going to go fight in a way game. And, you know, they end up the other here in may and 63 63 and then they go to gettysburg uh and and people are always like well just like when we talked at the beginning of my cat how did you get to gettysburg yeah well that's how they got to gettysburg they move up and it wasn't like let's go to gettysburg gettysburg as you know it's got those seven road intersections that all roads lead to gettysburg right it was, it was kind of a coincidence, but the roads literally took them to Gettysburg,

right? Right. So, and you know, Robert E. Lee's got to run the Shenandoah Valley. That's the breadbasket of his army is the Shenandoah. So he's going to run it.

He's going to jump across the Potomac. And at this time, you know, Abraham Lincoln looking at the army of, of, of the Potomac, he's got a leadership dilemma with Hooker. And so now he's going to finally pick because the only person that's been successful so far in the Army of the Potomac is George Gordon Meade.

And the interesting thing is, is when you look at George Gordon Meade,orge gordon meade when we bring groups to gettysburg normally at the beginning i always ask people hey put your hand in here if you know who robert e lee is and the whole room like i don't care if you're from washington state alaska california everybody knows robert e lee they raise their hand and then when i say well who here knows george gordon me and like two people yeah i for sure did not yeah i mean yeah and this is the guy that has been successful um but it's it's how you're perceived in history uh of mead and you know there was just a book written two years ago finally oh wow uh it's called meeting command uh i've got it right here. Let me grab it real quick.

This is because I was super excited when this book came out. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, Meat at Gettysburg. Oh, yeah. And it's fine. I'm a huge fan of George Gordon Meat. Not for what he did at Gettysburg, for just the individual the individual the leadership aspect the person of character like they finally have somebody that is over top in the army and that leadership change you know

we talk about the changes in a command so you're you've looked at it from mcclellan from burnside to hooker you've got the same core individuals doing the work right there wasn't a huge change in leadership style nor the human themselves yeah you bring one person into the individual change the dynamics of the organization it makes sense that's how they end up defeating the army of northern virginia in gettysburg because this guy from him yeah who as you said most folks had not heard of yeah but was was doing good work so truly kind of even though they wore union blue the gray man so to speak of of success really of just getting stuff done and wasn't didn't seem as boisterous or noted but yeah that'd be cool to meet in command check

that book out and and yeah to your point leading to there so for i think our pre-read we had a manual kind of right that had some keynotes that we used when we walked through and then the killer angels was our pre-read book um which is and then of course the movie's pretty good and i i loved again i don't remember when we talked before i think so so on on the episode i did a few years ago um and of course use the the what i learned plus you know reference the movie just who played who to give folks an idea like this person was this actor in the movie um you know sam elliott right and i also referenced if there was someone's voice i could have the mustache right that it's like we're gonna hold the high ground i was like that's awesome i had um a dog uh gringo this old real dog we had we just just lost him but i pictured he had his voice he was like this

i'm gonna show up and stand there because i used to work cattle and i'm gonna take the toy i want i'm gonna lay in the bed that i want but no fights like he just walks in like just like you would imagine uh sam elliott or you know buford's like hey we gotta do this stuff let's get it done boom uh and for for folks so when you start learning about gettysburg um general buford uh is who sam elliott played uh another awesome leader probably one of my favorites from there too for the various reasons right and and want folks really to to listen we could touch on but I think it's a good, a good summary of how we got to Gettysburg. And then the series you did with Jocko, I think

captures that great. Certainly would want, you know, y'all to listen to the early episode. I did a link to all those link to meet and command to your website for your organization to get signed up and things like that. I think, you know, a lot of what I heard about, you got to look out for your people, you got to build them up, right? You can't just be looking out and for yourself only. And when you get new leadership, like you got to adjust to it and support it and not just sit there with your hands in your pockets and do nothing and, and allow for folks to go out and do things and know that like, something's not going to work right don't fall in love with your plan because it's not it's it's we would say this with you know jackson and

the other folks on our incident management team now i was in planning section i'm a program manager project manager i like plans right they help everybody pull everybody together but it's really the process that does not the piece of paper and so making sure like don't fall in love with this piece of paper because as soon as we print it and give it to somebody and a person does something, it's wrong. You know what I mean? And that's fine. As long as we talk to each other, the outlines there, and you know, where you show up, and there's enough police here and that. So, you know, those are some of my key things. What are can ask one from the Marine Corps to Omna, with Echelon Front doing all this historical experiential leadership. What is, if it's probably a big ask, what's the kind of big takeaway that you would give folks listening to learn from history?

From the history that you do. Well, one, the biggest takeaway is all history is remembered history um it's what somebody remembered that they told somebody else of what they remembered and then somebody ends up writing a book um so that's where the experiential aspect of it is. Like, Kevin, when you came to Gettysburg, I'm not telling you what you need to think, what took place. You have your own thoughts. You have your own ideas. And I'm not right.

And if you could be right, we don't know. We weren't there. Right. And so when, when you're looking at a lot of things historically of why certain individuals, and that happens on a daily basis, you know, when you look at it, you're like, why did my neighbor do that? You know, and it could just be your neighbor. Why did he put that up? Well, maybe there's more to it. Yeah. It could be the most gaudiest fence you've ever seen in your life or the way he we don't know. We're just assuming, you know what I mean?

But everybody that's out there of having that perspective of individuals that when you study history, you know what I mean? It's different if you're there. It's not to criticize somebody. It's not to look for the fault in the individual to have somebody to blame. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. When you sit there and look at somebody and they, they see a play that took place on a football and they're literally catching a 30 second clip and they're making a decision of the entire outcome of the game. You know what I mean? It

wasn't one individual. It wasn't one certain thing. It's a chain of events that was taking place through time that put that individual there in that decision. And they made a decision and right, wrong, or indifferent at that time. You know, I'm a firm believer that there was nobody, you know, we do a lot of the civil war stuff. We do the, uh, you know, the battle of little big horn, uh, we're flying out in a week to do uh the mexican-american war we do the battle of sam pascal out in san diego um nobody in my opinion wakes up in the morning and they're saying man what can i screw up today right right yeah no doubt were i mean there might be a couple that are out there there's there's always a 10 but for the majority people are going to show up they're

just trying to do the right thing it It's just they're making mistakes. Right. And, you know, you're just next. And so it's that I always look at as remember history of where it's one book. Right. And that's one person's perspective. And you need to understand and read books on both sides of their perspective that took place instead of the ESPN Monday morning armchair quarterback. And then we're at work talking about

what we would have done. That's easy unless you're in the moment and you're the man or woman that's in the box. So that's the one thing that I would leave folks with is to come in with an open mind and don't look for judgment. If there's something that happens, you're not there to judge the individual or to, oh, if this guy, because we see it a lot. Oh, if Robert E. Lee would have just done that, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. That one thing is not going to change the course of action. And they didn't. So, which is why we have the United States of America of 2023 of what we got today. And I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. Absolutely. I think, you know, Jocko and I, we talked about it when, you know, when you look at people in

America and they think that, you know, like right now in America, we're just, could you imagine 1860 in America? When they're actually fighting in the streets everywhere? Yeah, right. Not just the streets, everywhere. Like, yeah, for sure. That's a whole different. You hear a term of, oh, there's going to be a civil war. Man, I hope not.

Right. Right. hear a term of oh there's going to be a civil war man i hope not right right yeah and you know and that's another push for folks to study history because you know it's it's you know and and i certainly heard this on jocos but of course you know kind of the the glory i don't know how much before the civil war this was but like before world war one right oh war is glorious and then they're like oh this is awful again right and so they're forgetting the history and folks that throw that out there probably half you know trying to be grandiose or whatever machismo and not understanding any level of violence let alone actual war let alone what it was like to go through the civil war so the push to learn from history i think you

know it should just, folks should be a student of it in all aspects, let alone for, for leadership, but to know like there's awful consequences. Imagine the battles in your backyard, literally, right. That's a whole different thing than, than, you know, some, I'll just jock up and get all my stuff and go fight because you know, it's not going to be, because you see posts on social media

from whoever all the time and you're like are you really going to do that and I don't think you really understand what that means and you know the point of learning from history and but with perspective I love that point and and for the the folks out there kind of that are in you know program management or response or incident management, you know, kind of the fields have been in that kind of stuff. We do lessons learned after action reports right after action reviews. And to your point, we do need to gather the details. Excuse me to talk about what happened, what decisions did you make, but also what were the environmental factors that led you to that? So that if I'm in that situation, to your point, it's not like, well, they screwed this up. I'm going to do that this way, blah, blah, blah. It's like,

let's understand where they were so we can, or what happened so we can, if we're, if it's real time and we're still helping you build off it now and get better or yes, excuse me, avoid some of those risks, but learn it not, not for blame, but to just do better overall is a great point. I love that. Love that aspect of it. Yeah. Thanks so much, man. That this is I love history, love civil war history. Have for a while. We'll share all the links, but, you know, do the kind of traditional where can folks contact you and go to some of these staff rides? What is the best contact information to get in touch with you? Well, the first thing, well, the website uh, website, uh, they can go to omniinternational.com. Uh, and then again, we're on Instagram as well. Uh,

Omni is on Instagram. We're on Facebook. Uh, so, and you know, there's links to be able to just shoot notes, uh, straight to us, uh, to, to reach out. Um, and then, uh, like I said, it's not just the civil war. Uh uh we're actually heading up this summer we're doing uh 1776 uh in new york oh wow fbny uh in the u.s forest service for an all hazards incident staff ride uh so we're doing it based off of 1776 but we're looking at super storm sandy oh yeah that's a great oh man so many lessons learned from that one i bet yeah and uh the fdny uh guys are going to be nice enough to let us do it on the fireboats uh so oh wow yeah it'll be a staff ride by boat but you can also use the ferry

uh as well up there and then you know we do the little big horn uh and then as well you know we work with us a lot in front uh and we do getettysburg. Matter of fact, we're going there in March. That one's well, it's sold out. Wow. But we do a little big horn. We're going back the little big horn with Echelon front as well. Uh, and then on my website, it's got all the list of events. It's got all the stack ride stuff that we do. That's on there. It's got the reading list, which is probably the most important thing on there. That's great. Is the reading list.

And then just reach out to us if anybody wants to come in and jump on or have a staff ride put on. That's great. Yeah, it's always been fun to connect with those FDNY guys and gals. We did through the Institute Management team. And then I think some of them got on staff teaching and I did a field reconnaissance thing in San Diego when we were there for a conference a few in 2017, I think. And that was taught by the FDNY guys. So, you know, good, great to see that the embrace and that's how a big growth of all hazards and

management came from right. 9-11 and Hey, there's so much going on and calling the wildfire folks out, you know, down the road pulled all the the local all-hazard folks and regional and state folks like myself so cool to make that connection back from you know with the folks that were in wildfire out west and other areas that went to new york and then fd9 fdny embraced it and you know work with you so it's cool these connections of folks just putting the work into, to get better, to do the real work, but then also come back and go, okay, let's talk about this and get better,

you know, for the next time and develop leaders and think of it that way. So thank you so much for, for sharing your knowledge. I, I appreciated it. I'm sure the listeners do. We'll share all those links in the show notes, of course. And then on the website. So kept talks pod.com. You'll see this post that I'll share it out on all the socials and tag you. So it was good catching up for the podcast and just in general, man, I really appreciate it and look forward to hearing you more on Jocko Podcasts and just seeing what NOMNA keeps doing and what that's all I'm from. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, brother.

All right, man. Take care.