The Tim Ferriss Show - #88: Stanley McChrystal on Anti-War Americans, Pushing Your Limits, and The Three Military Tests You Should Take

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Starting point is 00:03:07 And welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where my job is to deconstruct and sometimes interview world-class performers, ranging from chess prodigies to hedge fund managers to professional athletes to, in this case, a masterful commander and military mind. Stanley McChrystal. This is part two. In part one, we delved into all sorts of different subjects. As a bit of bio, Stanley McChrystal retired from the US Army as a four-star general after more than 34 years of service. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates described him as, quote, perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I've ever met, end quote. He was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader

Starting point is 00:03:46 of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, when he served as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC. That was from 2003 to 2008. And the follow-up questions are really fun. So in this particular episode, he answers questions such as, if he could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, one billboard, where would it be and what would it say? What are three tests or practices from the military that civilians could use to help develop mental toughness? What are his favorite documentaries or movies? Why? What hundred dollar or less purchase has most positively impacted his life in the last 12 months, et cetera. a bunch of questions from you guys who submitted them and asked for this round to this part two. So please check out Stan McChrystal, check out McChrystal group. And again, that's spelled M C C H R Y S T A L. And without further ado, here is Stan McChrystal. Answers to 11 questions by Stan McChrystal. Question one. What are three tests or practices from the military that civilians could use to help develop mental toughness?

Starting point is 00:04:57 The first is push yourself harder than you believe you're capable of. You'll find new depth inside yourself. The second is put yourself in groups through shared difficulties, discomfort. We used to call it shared privation. You'll find that when you have been through that kind of difficult environment, that you feel more strongly about that which you're committed to. And finally, create some fear and make individuals overcome it. Things in the military like maneuvering under live fire or doing parachute jumps all make a person more resilient over time.

Starting point is 00:05:31 Question two, what is the greatest attribute of an excellent soldier that you wish all politicians had? I'd say it's modest servant leadership. We're in an era now where politicians are forced to think about their own re-election, about their own marketing, about what they must do to maintain popularity or stature. And that's almost in contradiction to what we really hope in leaders is that they have a sense that they serve individuals, but they do it in a moderate, self-effacing way. Question three, what was your biggest frustration with being in the military? And what is your biggest frustration being out of the military? Well, clearly my biggest frustration in the military was the bureaucracy. From day one, I hated it. Waiting in line or dealing with rules that didn't make sense would drive me crazy.

Starting point is 00:06:28 But the biggest frustration with being out of the military is many times having to search for that higher purpose that most soldiers share. Even when jobs are difficult or they're frightening or they can be very, very frustrating, there's a shared sense of purpose among soldiers, particularly in combat, that rises them to some new level of effectiveness. The next question, what is the find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze methodology? We call it F3EA. And how did your approach change over time? F3EA, or find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze,

Starting point is 00:07:07 is a targeting methodology. It essentially says we will first find an enemy target, fix it in location to be sure it hasn't moved, then we'll finish it. That was a capture or kill operation. We'll then exploit the information, the computers, the documents, and other information we gathered.

Starting point is 00:07:25 And then finally, we'll analyze that information and draw conclusions from it to allow us to repeat the cycle and continue after the enemy. When we began, we had the different parts of F3EA conducted by different organizations, often in silos, without an understanding of the overall product of what they were doing. So individuals who would do the find would collect signals intelligence for example wouldn't really understand who they were collecting on or how that fit into the broader effort and so clearly they were less able to nuance their effort or be as motivated. What we did was we pulled that entire cycle together shared information across all of it so that all of the participants had the complete view of what we were trying to do and the process and the importance of its outcome. And we found the blinks or losses as we passed information reduced,

Starting point is 00:08:19 and then the sense of ownership commitment to it increased dramatically across the organization. Next question, what can low to mid-level management do to encourage a more decentralized, agile, and flexible work environment? I'd say first, you can reduce limiting rules. If you put rules that say people have to do things a certain way, or they can't do this, or they can't do that, you're really creating excuses for not accomplishing the tasks. I would have done it but I couldn't do this, I couldn't spend this amount of money, I couldn't travel. And so what I believe is reduce those limiting rules. Obviously there's got to be clear guidance about doing nothing illegal or immoral or

Starting point is 00:09:00 outside certain limits that are constraints of the organization. But other than that, give people a challenge to accomplish the task and constrain them as little as possible. The second is stress rapid decision-making by those people closest to the problem qualified. Now, we often tell ourselves, well, the young people close to the problem aren't really qualified. They don't see the big picture. They don't have the information of maturity. But I would say they know more than we think.

Starting point is 00:09:28 And if we push information down to them and stress that they need to make rapid decisions, we'll find that our turn on actions is much, much faster. And a decent decision now in the military is always considered to be a better decision than a great decision 48 hours from now. Finally, I'd say accept mistakes and failure. If the organization and the individuals involved learn from them. If you don't have people willing to go out and try things because they're afraid of not accomplishing what they want the first time, you won't get mistakes, but you also won't get rapid behavior. You get very risk-averse behavior. And so I'd push the organization by saying it's okay to fail as long as we get better with each failure.

Starting point is 00:10:15 Next question. What is one thing you want average Americans, particularly anti-war Americans, to understand regarding wars and conflicts you've been involved in? Or about the military in general? Well, from afar, situations in foreign wars look frustrating and difficult. Both our enemies and allies become two-dimensional stereotypes. The enemy becomes this stereotypical bad guy, totally evil. And our allies, sometimes we can paint them too positively, but more often recently, we paint them in frustrating colors. They just don't get it. They're not capable.

Starting point is 00:10:51 They don't care as much as we do. They're not courageous enough. They're not committed enough. You know, reality is far more complex. Our enemies often have a rational position, and it's very defensible. And in many cases, if you put yourself on the other side of the table, you could see their position, and except for fate, you might be on that side. But our allies have a complexity as well, and they have a different viewpoint. And that can be very different from ours. Just because we've decided to ally with them doesn't mean they see the world entirely as we do. In many cases, in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq, they have a different level of long-term commitment. We may come and risk our national treasure, risk our lives, but they are going to live there forever. And as people used to talk

Starting point is 00:11:35 about local troops in Vietnam, they were not in a hurry to rush out and to be killed because if they wanted to get killed, they could get killed next week whenever they wanted because the war was there and they had to try to survive in the long term. I think what we really do, it doesn't mean we don't pursue our objectives, but it means we must possess the empathy to understand their positions, to see it from their view. Next question. What's something you see in military movies or movies involving the military that drives you crazy? Well, for me, the thing that is most frustrating is seeing the stereotypical bombastic military leader. In reality, there are some, and I've known some, and I've served for some. But the average leader I see understands that soldiers are motivated by inspiration and confidence in their leaders, not fear of punishment. Next question. What filters can the public use,

Starting point is 00:12:31 or what questions can they ask, to sift through the noise of news to get a feel for the real truth behind the stories? Well, it goes to something that we don't do enough. Try and get the perspective of the various players. We see the actors in a conflict or in any case, and we want to assume that what we read in the paper is all there is, or see in the news is the depth of the story. But in reality, whenever we're involved in one, we know it's not. You may not agree with someone else's position. You may not know all they know, but the reality is there's typically a rational reason for how they think and how they act. There are occasional irrational players, but most of the time people have a history that drives what they do. If we can get inside that, if we can begin to

Starting point is 00:13:21 appreciate that, again, we may not completely agree with it, but it will suddenly make a lot more sense to us. Next question. What $100 or less purchase has most positively impacted your life in the last six months? Well, I think clearly it's a book. And the one that comes to mind is David Brooks' recent book, The Road to Character. You can spend $100 or less on a gadget or on food or on something like that, but something that makes you think, something that makes you question your character, why it is the way it is, how it could be better, is typically found in a book. I think David Brooks made me think in his recent book. Next question. What's one of your favorite documentaries or movies, and why? Well, it sounds negative, but one of my favorite is a documentary. It's really a docudrama that was

Starting point is 00:14:17 produced called The Battle of Algiers, and I think it was made in 1966. And what it does is it tries to recreate the case of the French in Algeria, particularly as French paratroopers came in and tried to get control of the city of Algiers. And the thing that is great about it is, one, it's got a grainy, realistic feel. In fact, many of the players that played on the Algerian side, the Front Libération Nationale or FLN, were actual participants in the actual movement. But it also shows the complexity. It shows the difficulty of oversimplifying. It shows the position of the French nationals who lived in Algeria and why they wanted to

Starting point is 00:15:00 protect the status quo. It shows the position of the FLN or the Algerians who wanted independence. And it shows also the difficult position in the middle of the French military or paratroopers found themselves. It doesn't depict anybody as all good or all right. It shows a complex environment and just how difficult it can be. Final question. If you could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, one billboard, where would it be and what would it say? I think it would be in a high traffic area, probably an airport in a city like New York, or maybe on a street in a busy city, New York or

Starting point is 00:15:44 Chicago or San Francisco, and would have a simple quote from an individual named Robert Byrne, and it would say, the purpose of life is a life of purpose. Thank you.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #88: Stanley McChrystal on Anti-War Americans, Pushing Your Limits, and The Three Military Tests You Should Take

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #88: Stanley McChrystal on Anti-War Americans, Pushing Your Limits, and The Three Military Tests You Should Take

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