The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #13: When To Put Your Foot Down to Get Your Subordinates On Board with The Plan

Jocko and Good Deal Dave discuss issues from clients of Echelon Front Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Debrief Podcast, episode 13 with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. We have a leadership consulting company. We work with leaders all the time in every industry, and we help solve their problems through leadership. And Dave and I often have conversations as we debrief scenarios that are unfolding inside the companies we work with. We also have these conversations amongst the rest of the team at Echelon Front. But sometimes the lessons learned are things that we all think it'd be good to share. So we bring these debrief points here for you to listen

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  to, and hopefully you learn as we do. So Dave, let's debrief. What do you got?

• 0:46Dave Berke?

  We've got an alignment issue.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  Big shocker.

• 0:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's kind of crazy because the last time we recorded, what we were talking about a lot in that last podcast that we recorded was about alignment. Alignment has been a subject that has come up so much lately. And for me-

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  Do you think that's because, like when you, when you're thinking about buying a Jeep Grand Cherokee, you start seeing them everywhere?

• 1:10Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  And I know I've been going crazy talking about alignment, and now you're starting to see it everywhere?

• 1:15Dave Berke?

  Totally took the words out of my mouth. I was gonna say, for me, it's not because it's some new concept, but because as I, as I start to, as I listen and pay attention to the things you're talking about and listen to the other guys and the team talk about how they're interacting, I notice the similarities there, and it's, it's easier for me to see it. And it has become much more noticeable, the difference between the principle that we teach and maybe what appears to be kind of a narrow problem, go, hey, the issue here is that you can't solve this until you move up a little bit higher on this alignment ladder to get to a place where you can solve this particular problem. And this one is really similar, and you said this, we've said this before, obviously, we're sort of combining a couple different situations to create this scenario, but there's a company that we've

• 1:59Dave Berke?

  been working with that, one of the things they do is they have a sales team to sell their product. And sales team is broken up basically regionally. So they got four, north, southeast, west region. They got a person in charge. They got a manager in charge of each of the four regions. And these managers are all equals. They're, they're peers, they're equivalents. And, you know, their responsibilities are all very similar. As the company has grown, they are all kind of operating a little bit differently. And as this company has expanded, the COO, who's really in charge of the operation, is starting to see enough disparity between these four regions that it's starting to affect their ability to deliver, and it's affecting how they interact with their clients. So as this company has grown and got more mature, what they want to do is they want to standardize some things.

• 2:40Dave Berke?

  They want to create some similar operating procedures, some SOPs. And so the conversation I'm having with the CEO, I'm sorry, the COO is, hey, you know, we've been talking about this for a while. I've got these four different managers. I can't get them all aligned. When do I, when do I put my foot down and just get my, the ones that are kind of resistant? When do I just get them on board? Hey, I've heard what you've had to say, but, but we're done with this conversation. We're now executing. And so that was the, the question. And it was very similar to a conversation you and I had about a bunch of different, this came up on EFRM, it's come up in different places.

• 3:22Dave Berke?

  And look, to be honest, I've gotten, we've gotten kind of crazy about this. We've talked about this a ton is the way to get the, and the conversation we had was the way to get those four aligned. The question of, hey, when do I put my foot down? And the answer is hopefully never. Hopefully the tool that I use to get Jocko, my one outlier of my four regional managers, that hopefully I don't ever get to a point and go, hey, I'm done listening to what you have to say. You now need to just do what I'm telling you to do. So as we talk about the way to kind of create this alignment, one of the things that the COO kind of had to come to grips with, which was important in our conversation is, hey,

• 4:04Dave Berke?

  as this company's matured and we've evolved, do you know exactly how we're going to get to where we're going in the next three years with these plans for expansion, different things? And the answer is no, we don't. Now, we know where we want to go. We have a vision of where we want to get. We know what we want to expand to, how, you know, how we're going to get there. Of course, we're going to learn those things along the way. So.

• 4:27Dave Berke?

  The way to get them aligned is to not to demand their alignment, but actually help them create how we're going to get there. So, the real conversation was about is, the conversation should start with, hey, I'm going to bring these four managers in. And there's two things I'm going to try to do. One is, I want to make it clear, this is where we're going. This is where the company has come from. This is where we are now. This is where I want to take us. This is where we're going. This is the vision, that direction. And the other part of that is, I kind of should expect that I'm not going to get four people all seeing it the exact same way. Everybody, I should actually welcome some, some different viewpoints. And when I get these differing viewpoints,

• 5:10Dave Berke?

  what I have to understand is that their version of the world is actually different. So here I am up at the top of the organization, trying to standardize everything. What I actually have to tell you and your three counterparts is why I want this standardization. What am I trying to accomplish? So, it isn't to get you in line to me, just like them. Here's the problems we're having at the, at the senior executive level. The way you're doing your paperwork and the way you're doing paperwork is different. And so what's happening is it's creating a slowdown at headquarters because we have the support staff trying to answer what you're looking for and answer what you're looking for. The turnaround time is much slower because it's different ways of doing it. It takes them longer. Your customers have to wait. Now, I'm up at the senior executive level. I'm talking to senior executives of the companies you're working in. They've got some offices in the north and some offices in the south.

• 5:54Dave Berke?

  And they're asking me now, hey, why is my Chicago region getting this type of interaction? But the folks down in Florida are getting this type of interaction. It's my company. I've got offices in two different locations. Why is there such a big disparity in these regions? So there's actually some genuinely valid reasons why I want to create some of this alignment. But if I can't explain why that is, and let, let my team, who is actually central to the interaction with this, these customers, help shape the outcome, the best I'm going to get is, if I'm lucky, I'll get you on board

• 6:26Dave Berke?

  at the bare minimum input. Meaning if I gotta, if I gotta demand that you just get aligned.

• 6:32Dave Berke?

  You could leave, you could not get aligned, you could fight and resist, or at a bare minimum, the best I'm gonna get is, you're gonna say, "Okay." And am I really gonna get what I need out of you? So, what we talked about the COO is, hey, rather than demand the alignment, why don't you just identify the vision? Why don't you talk about the things that you are trying to create standardization for, how that's going to help the company, and see what they have to say? And then recognize, as you move forward towards that goal, you're gonna learn some things, things are gonna change. You're gonna be open to that input and that feedback. And all of a sudden, the alignment is actually coming from them, rather than you demand that they get aligned.

• 7:08Dave Berke?

  I know that look.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I know, it's, it's, it's good stuff. You know, and, and I remember the question on EF Online. I, I think the term that he used was, "At what point do I impose my plan on people?"

• 7:22Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting about that word, "impose", is imposing things on people is not leadership. So, right out of the gate, you can probably guess what my answer is. The same answer that you gave. It's like, my, my answer right out of the gate is, "Oh, you wanna impose things? Okay, so that's not what we're doing. That's not what we're looking to do." And, and so, yeah, this is what we talk about all the time. Decentralized command doesn't start when you're in the field. Decentralized command starts in planning. Decentralized, decentralized command, how many times have you heard me say this? "Hey, I don't say, 'Dave, here's the mission, here's who I want you to take, here's the vehicles I want you to bring, here's the weapons I want you to..." I don't, I don't say that, right? I say, "Hey, here's, here's the mission, figure out how you wanna accomplish it." That applies all the time.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  Now, if we get somebody that doesn't like the new plan, or doesn't, you know, I try and tell them the plan and they don't like it, yeah, the absolute answer is, "Cool, come up with a plan, I like that better." And, and what are the chances that you, as a leader, are going to be able to create out of thin air, a standard operating procedure that is actually 100% good to go out of the gate? The chances are zero. So, why am I utilizing my leadership capital to get you to do something that I'm not even, that, that I actually am sure that it's not right?

• 8:39Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  I know that this is gonna be a problem. So, I'm wasting leadership capital to get you to do something that I actually know is gonna have to change? And I'm wasting leadership capital to do that? And, and by wasting leadership capital, I mean, you're mad. And by the way, when you're mad, even if I impose it on you, I make you do it, and you say like, what'd you say the best-case scenario was? You say, "Okay, fine, I'll do it."

• 8:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  And what kind of rigor and tenacity are you going to have to execute the mission? The answer is zero. I'm thinking you're out there trying to sabotage what I'm actually trying to do. Yeah. So we have to watch out here. Now here's what's interesting.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  This isn't even a problem of alignment. Really isn't even a problem of alignment because, and this is why alignment, it comes up so rarely because the fact of the matter is the chances that the person in the West and the person in the East aren't ultimately aligned. The chances of that are almost zero because ultimately, hey, we're trying to be a good company. We're trying to take care of our customers. We're trying to, you know, be profitable. The chances of someone on the team not wanting to be profitable, the chances of someone on the team not understanding that we want to take care of our people, like the chances of that are so rare that most of the time we get into, okay, we don't even have to get to alignment to solve the problem. Where we run into a problem is where Dave's like,

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  "Well, I don't want to do, I don't care what they think in Chicago about my paperwork." "Okay, but your paperwork, we can't give you the supplies that you need unless you have that paperwork." "I still don't want to change," right? So we get to a point where I go, "Oh, okay, wait a second." He's actually, we've gone up the highs we can on this ladder. Most of the time you only have to go up a couple of rungs. We don't even get to a point where people aren't aligned. So that's why it's, it's very rare that we actually have a problem of alignment. We can, can we have agenda problems? We can have agenda problems. We'll, we'll have 12 agenda problems today, right? We'll have 12, and, and I guarantee all those four, those four regional managers, they're all, they're all, they're all going to have their own agendas.

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause guess what? I gotta deal with clients that want this, and this is a product that's in high demand. Well, up here, we're up in the cold. We don't need that product. We don't even use it up here. So we got agendas. We got it. We're gonna have agenda problems all day long. That's okay. We expect them. We anticipate them. We deal with them. We listen to them. So that's what we end up with most of the time. And the way to, way to come around this is to listen to what people have to say. Boy, there it comes again. Listen to what people actually have to say. And the thing you have to watch out for is Dave doesn't want to do it my way. That makes me, that makes my ego mad.

• 11:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  So therefore, I'm going to impose my will on them.

• 11:20Dave Berke?

  So the, the phrase that was being used is from the COO is, they have to do this. And it kept, they have to do this. And that's that, that, that key red flag that the ego is, is getting involved. And as a matter of fact, the way you said it, and the agenda, which, which is what creates the pushback. When I'm getting resistance from my subordinate leaders, not only should you expect it, you should embrace that. That's, that's, it's almost the proof of the alignment is what they're telling you is, hey, hey, that, that's not going to work down here. And I want it to work because I want to be successful. I want to make money. I want, I want to deliver product. And so the resistance is actually the ideal outcome.

• 12:07Dave Berke?

  When you said the, the misalignment is so rare, I think that's such an important point because really what we're talking about is the individual agendas from these four people that you're trying to, and I say the word get aligned, that you're trying to get on board with this long range strategic objective. The best thing I could do is hear what you had to say and go, geez, I didn't even know. I didn't, I'm, I'm co-located headquarters up with the North Region here. I didn't even know that about the West. That's a really good point. I should embrace that, that agenda that you're pushing is actually what proves to me that you are actually on board for the big win, which is you wanted to be successful. And you're going, listen, that won't work here. We need to make some of these adjustments or we need to have a,

• 12:50Dave Berke?

  an adjustment to the SOP for this region or for whatever reason, that embracing the pushback from your people. And you have talked about that when people have asked questions and they make this assumption like, hey, when, when you were in charge of task unit bruiser, um, you know, did you ever, did you ever get any pushback? And you kind of laugh like, no, all, all 30 of my people just vertical head nods.

• 13:14Jocko Willink?

  All, all whatever, 30 or 40 of my people that are complete alpha, you know, big ego guys. They all, they all were just like, cool, great. Jocko said this, so let's execute it immediately.

• 13:24Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 13:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's, that's, when I hear that phrase of like, you, you guys have to do this. You have to do this. I've broken that. I've, I've been through that mental grappling match a thousand times, times with different leaders, starting in the SEAL teams and going all the way up until, you know. Three days ago where I was talking to some, some leader and, and it's like, oh, why, why do they have to do that? And usually there's that silence that we just heard because, because why do you, why do they have to do that? Why, why do they have to do that? Because that's the standard operating procedure. Well, why is that the standard operating procedure? Well, because that's what makes sense. Well, why does it make sense? You know, you just start asking that question. Eventually what you figure out at the end of the whys is you end up with a, um, with an ego sitting there.

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  That's why, what a great indicator for you as a leader. It's such a beautiful stark. What's the, what's the, what's the most, what's the most, uh, alert? What's the, what's the highest alert that you get flying an F-18? What, what is like the whole, I'm in trouble?

• 14:27Jocko Willink?

  Is there anything like that?

• 14:27Dave Berke?

  Like the, like the highest warning level?

• 14:29Jocko Willink?

  Highest warning level.

• 14:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah. I mean, I think we literally call them warnings. Like we have cautions, we have advisories, we have alerts, we have all these different categories. Warning means you're about to die.

• 14:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So this is a big warning. Wait, what were they again? Go, go through them again?

• 14:42Dave Berke?

  Advisory, alert, caution, warning.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  This might be a caution, but it's really getting really close to a warning. If you as a leader have to impose something on your troops, that's a caution, if not a warning, that you're jacked up.

• 14:55Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  You're making some kind of mistake. If you have to impose on your team something, you are probably jacked up in 14 different ways. So listen, that's the beautiful thing is here's the solution. Listen to what the team has to say.

• 15:12Dave Berke?

  Because you know, you're, because you know, you're aligned, the listening is actually what helps you not go from the caution to the warning. It does, that's how you prevent that outcome. And I mean, just like you just described is, is if I hear my people push back to me and if I'm capable of managing my own ego, controlling my, my, my own ego saying, that's a good thing. Jocko just pushed back on my plan. That's a good thing. That alone, just that mindset alone, the power of going, hey, hang on man, you're, you're pushing back on this. What am I missing? What am I not seeing?

• 15:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Next level is when you're like, oh, Dave's pushing back and he's right. Which is by the way, every attitude I have is if Dave's pushing back, my hope and prayer is that Dave is right and we can go with his plan.

• 16:02Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 16:02Jocko Willink?

  That's my, that's my, that's my hope.

• 16:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  Check. Good one. All right. What's the next one?

• 16:08Dave Berke?

  This one's actually kind of a little bit of a sit rep. I just want to talk to you about it a little bit because one of the things that we have seen when we started to build out the LDAP program is

• 16:18Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is just FYI at Echelon Front, we have a long, long range program where we work with companies and leadership, development and alignment. Yes, alignment program. And this could be, what's the shortest LDAP? Three months?

• 16:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  But they usually go for longer.

• 16:38Dave Berke?

  They, they almost always go longer and, and a while. And, and that actually kind of connects a little bit to the point was is that one of the goals of these alignment, these LDAP programs is that eventually we want them to be self sustaining. We want, the model is that eventually there's enough internal inertia inside of an organization with this core team that eventually it kind of sustains itself, which is what lets us leave.

• 17:02Jocko Willink?

  And we are the, I don't know if we're the only consultancy, but we might be the only leadership consultancy that our goal is to work ourselves out of a job. We don't want to work with you forever. We don't want to milk every penny week. We want to teach you. We want to train your trainers. We want to get you all aligned. We want to set up an organization where you are self sustaining. You don't need us around anymore. That's the goal always.

• 17:23Dave Berke?

  That's exactly right. And given how many of companies we work with that are caught off guard by that, if we're not the only ones, we're one of the very few because what they're, what is most typical was I kind of get my little hooked in you and now what you become is reliant on me. And that's, I think, a traditional business model. But what does it say about me, Dave Berke, the LDAP instructor or the lead for this client engagement that if two years from now, you don't know how to do cover and move. It means I'm not doing a very good job. So our goal is we, we don't want you to be reliant on us. We actually want it to be self sustaining. So.

• 18:00Dave Berke?

  One of the things that we realized, and you know, we've known this, but it's come, it's been, become much more clear now that we're traveling so much less, is that this leadership development is, what you're developing is, is, I guess the best way to describe it is, is the muscle of leadership. Developing this, this skill, this, this behavior, this attribute, which requires a ton of repetition. So, one of the things that, well, first, now that we've stopped traveling so much, we have been interacting with people online, but that's like, still live virtual. That's still me talking in real time. I'm on a computer, but I'm still talking to you. The-

• 18:40Jocko Willink?

  Traveling less, interacting more.

• 18:42Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  I mean, we are absolutely interacting with our clients more, because we don't have to spend five hours in a plane, or you know, in a hotel, or whatever. We are interacting more, flying less, interacting more. And, and as you said, everybody knows, we don't need to explain that, the efficiency and effectiveness of virtual interaction now. Like, we all, everybody knows that the internet's so good, the, the, the apps are so good that are allowing us to interact, the Q and A, the way the screens, everything's just good. It's a solid system and we're using it big time.

• 19:13Dave Berke?

  Yeah, whatever barriers we thought might have existed, or even what the clients that we're working with might have thought existed through this virtual training, they're mostly no factor. We can interact really well virtually with clients. And we are indeed much busier. We are spending more time, we're getting more reps with the people that we're working with. Well, even inside that, especially with some of the bigger companies, one of the hardest things to do is scale these. We can, we were working with companies that have tens of thousands of employees. And it's not, it's not all that reasonable sometimes to engage 10, 15,000 people. It takes a lot of time. And as you kind of think of this idea of how do you scale down into smaller organizations,

• 19:55Dave Berke?

  one of the things that has been a, a, a question of some of our bigger clients is, what is the best thing we can do? We being the client, the customer. To help interact with lower levels in the organization where it's not really cost effective to pull them off the line, you know, manufacturing companies or companies where these folks are working, to tell them to stop working so they can sit into a classroom or an auditorium. And so, obviously, we have the EF Online program or the EF Online resource, but inside that, what we did is we came up with a certification, basically a way to introduce the concepts. And the reason I'm bringing this up is that one of the lessons that I have learned is when you have, when you're trying to figure out how to get this to the lowest level inside

• 20:38Dave Berke?

  of an organization, kind of your frontline folks, the things that they need in some ways are actually very similar to what you need at the highest level. You need exposure and repetition. And it's not always effective to demand that during their normal work cycle that they take time away that you plan and expect from them to devote to leadership development. So the certification program that sits inside of EF Online, we did kind of an operational test with the company of, hey, we want your folks to have access or exposure to this. We're looking for feedback. Hey, does this certification, this program, is this effective, is this a work? And so, we created this program that helped people run through essentially self-paced

• 21:23Dave Berke?

  leadership development. And I think the reason why this is important is that as these leaders were going through the certification process, this initial test of the certification process at this company, both the problems that they are dealing with and how their leaders were engaging them was very similar to what we saw when we were with them in person. So, for me, this idea of leadership development, the principles we teach, the mindset we teach, how we interact, the muscles that need to be exercised are the same muscles that need to be exercised at every level inside the organization. And what's funny is that you kind of emphasized the A in alignment, and the whole point of

• 22:06Dave Berke?

  this was, the alignment that we are trying to figure out is how do you get aligned from the top of an organization to the very bottom of an organization? How do we all see this the same way?

• 22:18Dave Berke?

  One of the most common questions I get is, and I got it today as a matter of fact, the people at the front lines, do they have to understand the strategy the same way? Do they have to be as aligned at their level as we are at the highest level? Meaning at the executive level? And the example they gave is, hey, if you've got a Marine on your team, he's a very young Marine, he's a frontline rifleman on your team, does he really have to know large counter insurgency, grand strategy, American strategic strategy? And the answer I gave was, well, not, not to the same level as me. And I shouldn't expect that a private first class who's been in the Marine Corps for nine months understands counter insurgency, grand strategy as much as maybe a four-star general.

• 23:02Dave Berke?

  I said, but can the people at the bottom of your organization, can your frontline individual contributors, can they impact, can they undermine your long-term strategic objectives? Do they have the ability for them individually to undermine that? And the answer to that question is actually, yes, they can. There are countless examples from us in the military that when we do things, when our frontline folks do things, we talked about Abu Ghraib, we talked about a couple of different, like really big glaring examples, is that the recognition is that you need to develop your people at every single level in an organization, down to the very bottom, because at the very bottom of the organization, the people that do the actual work, don't understand

• 23:47Dave Berke?

  at least the fundamentals of how their behaviors impact the larger team, you will not have the organizational alignment from the top to the bottom. And as we spend more and more time with organizations where they struggle with the most, isn't them as a management team, or supervisor team, or an executive leadership team, where they struggle the most is how do you push this down to the lowest levels in an organization? That has been one of the most common things we're seeing as these companies grow and expand with us, is how do you push the alignment down to the bottom of the organization? We obviously have different ways of doing that, but that is a fundamental challenge every organization has down at the very bottom of creating that alignment. And I guess, now that I think of it...

• 24:30Dave Berke?

  The way we were describing alignment before, which is like alignment being a problem, and maybe that's not the exact right way to describe it, maybe it's just that we are all oriented in the same way, but them understanding to a fundamental degree, the same thing that we understand about where we're going and what we're doing and why what you're doing individually at the lowest level actually contributes to the big picture is a critical thing.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the standard riff that I give when I talk about decentralized command is everybody understand, everybody on the team has to understand what the mission is, what the goal is, what the end state is, what the commander's intent is, what is the intent of this, what is the intent of this operation, which then is also very easily translated, those things kind of combined together into why are we doing what we're doing? And, and so that is absolutely important. The, the other thing is, and this is, it's a different kind of alignment.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  And that is, and this is kind of the, the basis for the LDAP, Leadership Development Alignment Program. Why is alignment in there? When I'm telling you that, that 99% of the time, alignment's not a problem. Because it's that, that, that alignment in the name of that program is actually related not to, hey, what our mission is, what our goal is, what our end state, it's not related. It's related to how we think. How are we thinking as leaders? Because if you as a leader are thinking differently than me, we are going to run into all kinds of problems.

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  It's a different, it's not the, it's not the physical activity that we're doing, that, that alignment ladder could be totally squared away, we could be perfectly aligned. But if your leadership methodology is different than mine, we are going to have a problem. If I'm thinking, hey, I'm in charge, I'll just impose my will on everybody, and you're thinking, hey, what I'll do is I'll get input from everybody and we'll figure out the best plan and we'll move forward. If we are not aligned in the way that we think as leaders, we are going to have a problem.

• 26:56Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 26:58Jocko Willink?

  We sure, when we're working with clients, we can maybe have a rare case where there's not an alignment, very, very rare, in their, in their mission.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  But it happens all the time that we have different leaders that are not aligned in the way that they think.

• 27:18Jocko Willink?

  And one of the things, I'm about to do a podcast about this too. Our language that we use as human beings, it, it is woven into the way that we think. So, one of the first things that we talk about, and in fact, I say this at the muster, if you remember at the end of the muster, when we talk about, you know, how to move forward, one of the things, I have a slide that says, "Use the language." Why is that? Because when we, when you and I are talking about leadership, if we're talking different language, if we're using different words to describe things, that's a problem. So, just having a mutually understandable, a mutually intelligible way of communicating about leadership gives us leaps and bounds.

• 28:03Jocko Willink?

  We see, you know, it's sort of like any, any problem that you run into, or, or, no, any, any improvement that you try and do, obviously you see a really big improvement right out of the gate, you know, when you start working out, your improvement goes up high really, really quickly. When you learn, you learn a ton, like, right out of the gate. Anything that you just start doing, your learning curve is very, very rewarding in the beginning. That's one of the things, when people start working with us, they get this massive jump. And part of that is just because they start communicating effectively with each other, because they're utilizing, for the first time ever, a, a, a doctrinal use of terms that they are all now communicating properly. So, that's why it's so powerful.

• 28:48Jocko Willink?

  That's why when companies like boom, they, they all of a sudden they go, "Oh, we can, I know what you're talking about." "Oh, oh, it's cover and move." "Oh, it's, it's, it's, we're not, we're not, we're not using decentralized command here." "With this, all these, oh, I don't know what the mission is, I don't know what the commander's intent is." All these things allow us to communicate. If we can't communicate... It's sort of the opposite of what I said on the last podcast where I was like, hey, look, if I'm not communicating well with you, but we have a great relationship, well, then at least we can talk about it and we can get through it. But if we have a great relationship, but we speak different languages, it doesn't matter how good our relationship is because we can't even talk to each other. So the framework that we utilize, the things that we talk about,

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  they are so powerful because all of a sudden it gives us a common way to talk, which then leads to ultimately, we are now thinking the same way as leaders. And that is alignment and that's what we do at Echelon Front.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  And I guess it's my turn now. It's, again, it's interesting because you talk about, you were talking about the sort of the need to keep studying leadership. And, you know, I got this question on EF Online the other day. You know, we had a guy that was moving from whatever it was, six, six direct reports. He's now starting up a division and he's going to be in charge of 100 people. And he sort of referred back to General Clark's Guidelines for Leaders and Commanders. You know, what, and, and General Clark, and we talked, you and I talked about it on the podcast. You know, you've got this leader and then you've got a commander, right? And then there's like generalship even above that.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  So you've got this, you've got these, he, you know, the way General Clark kind of spells these things, have to these transitions that you need to make. And so this guy was asking like, what do I need to do differently now that I'm going to be more of a commander than a leader, right? What, what, I'm going to be in charge of way more people. What do I need to do differently? And so I'm listening to him and as I'm thinking through what he's saying, you know, we had had this kind of conversation, but.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  You don't need to do anything different.

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  But you need to do better. When you're leading a little team. When you're leading a little team. You have the capacity to be right there. You have the capacity, and I'm gonna use this word. You have the, you have the capacity to actually impose your will physically to get things done. So if there's any time as a leader where imposing your will works, it's when I've got four people and they work for me and I can stand right there and I can make them do it. I can impose my will. So that's why. Look, do I need you to understand the why and all this stuff? If it's just you, if I'm just in charge of four people, do I really need them to understand? No, I can actually just go, Dave, move over a little bit more.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  I could just, I can just physically adjust you or like sit there and look over your shoulder and say, do it this way.

• 31:57Jocko Willink?

  Now, when you have a hundred people or a thousand people or 10,000 people, that direct connection is gone.

• 32:06Jocko Willink?

  So now we are relying 100% on good leadership principles. Right? That's why, that's why you can have a team leader that maybe isn't a great leader. Right? Not a great leader, but he's still making things happen. He's still getting things done because he's right there. Right there imposing his will, he can make something, you know, I can get this six man team. To, to, to get the concrete poured, right? Because I can say, hey, Dave, move that form back a little bit. Hey, bro, hey, hey, Bill, back the truck, like I can literally do that. Because I'm right there, I got a small team, I can, I can. I can physically make things happen.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  But like I said, 100 people, 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people. Now we truly have to practice real leadership.

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  Real leadership.

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move, right? The first law of combat. It's pretty easy to get four people to cover and move. I can literally yell at them and tell them, "Get down." I can, I can make that happen.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  But when you have to get whole groups of people to look out for each other and mutually support each other, you can't just manhandle them into position. You have to build unified goals. You have to make roles and responsibilities and you have to build relationships. You have to show where those overlaps are and you have to actually build teams that build relationships. You have to build teams that build relationships.

• 33:36Jocko Willink?

  Not just, it's not just I, it's not just I have to build a relationship with Dave so that we can cover and move for each other. I have to get this team over here who I don't see every day to build a relationship with Dave's team who they don't, who they don't see every day.

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  So it's still the same principle, but it's a lot harder to do and I have to be better at doing it.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  Keeping things simple, this is kind of what you were referring to. If I got a team

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  and, and I don't keep things simple enough that, you know, Dave doesn't clear the stairwell. Guess what I do? I walk over and clear the stairwell or I walk over and point at the stairwell and clear that thing right now.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  So it doesn't matter that my message was, was or wasn't. It doesn't matter that you understood my message or not because I'm right there. And I smack you upside the head and tell you to do something.

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  You get, you get a thousand people? You do, you cannot adjust them. They have to, you have to, you have to be so simple, so clear. Your words have to resonate, they have to make sense, they have to understand to a broad range of people, which means you have to be better.

• 34:48Jocko Willink?

  Prioritize and execute. I love this one. When you're a team leader, guess how many priorities you, you have? One, you've only got one thing, you've got one job, right? Maybe worst case scenario, you've got two things going on at once. Cool, you, you have to figure out which one to do. You're basically an expert at prioritize and execute when you've got one thing to do. Good job. Now all of a sudden you're in charge of. A squad, now you've got three things, right? In a platoon, all of a sudden you've got six things. You've got to do some actual prioritize and execute now. You're a company commander, now you've got a dozen things going on. You've got 15 things going on. You've got to really prioritize next. You've got to figure out what's important. You've got to figure out how you're going to handle those multiple problems. How are you going to focus your resources? That's what you've got to do. And by the time you're in charge of a thousand people,

• 35:28Jocko Willink?

  you have a massive number of priorities. And you have to actually divvy up those priorities within teams. And then those individual teams need to figure out, need to understand what their priorities are inside of those individual teams. Things that you weren't even thinking about. And then the priorities are going to change. And the teams need to know about when those priorities change. And they need, when the overall broad priority changes, you've got to make sure that the person, the team leader on the front line, changes her priorities so that she makes an adjustment.

• 36:12Jocko Willink?

  So this is, this is you, so what does that mean? You have to be better at it. You have to be better at prioritize and execute. Decentralized command. Larry said it, you're in a small team. I'm right there. I can adjust the decisions, right? If Dave makes a bad call, I can just say, Dave, don't do that. I can literally say, Dave, don't do that. Come back over here. In a big organization, now I've got all these people. I've got 100 people. I've got 1,000 people. They're all executing things that are completely out of my control. When I'm a team leader in charge of four people, I can control everything that everyone does. When I've got 1,000 people, I can't control anything that anyone does directly. I have to do it through leadership. They better know the mission. They better know the end state. They better know the parameters.

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  They better understand the why. And on top of all that, I have to have trust up and down the chain of command.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  And I have to build a culture the whole time.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  A culture of values inside the organization that allow people to make decisions without ever even having to talk to any of their leadership.

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  And this list goes on and on and on. The principles that you

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  the principles that you utilize as a leader, they don't change as you go up the chain of command. You just have to get better.

• 37:49Jocko Willink?

  You got anything on that?

• 37:52Dave Berke?

  Just, just listening to what you're saying and thinking about that and just connecting to the last comment we made about

• 38:01Dave Berke?

  exposing the people at the lowest level, do they have to be able to write the strength, the grand strategy of your company? No, but inside of all those things you just described is they have to have that common, the common language, the language of leadership. When you, when you said that it's understanding how to think and if you're gonna, if you're, if, if you're gonna keep people on your team from understanding the language of leadership, you're going to lose them. You're not gonna be able to do what you just described. And just thinking about just the power of them even just understanding what the words mean and, and how we can communicate in a language that everybody understands.

• 38:43Dave Berke?

  Now, I'm not saying that a frontline employee has to have the same vision and viewpoint of, of a CEO, but that common language of, of, the common language of leadership of, of this is what we're going to do. So they can make that connection. And as I'm hearing you talk about thinking about it, man, when you move up from my four man team to my 16 man team, my 30 man, I'm 100, like the magnitude of that, you have to get better and you have to get better quickly. These are not little gradual steps. They could, they are significant. They are almost exponential. And if you do it quickly, you will go from four to 40, like that. And the problems. The, the risk of not being able to accelerate how well you do this, you have to get better and

• 39:28Dave Berke?

  you have to get better quickly because those, the magnification is so significant how, when you move up like that. And that common language allows us to be able to do that. Anyway.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  Check. Yeah. And I, I'm not even going to go into it right now, but I, I, I mean, a couple EF online's ago, I, I, I talked about, I talked about the principles of leadership and, and how they're not just actions that you take, they're actually a way of thinking.

• 39:57Dave Berke?

  And it was, dude, I, we gotta be careful because I'll, I'll run for an hour on this and take this podcast and, and destroy it. But that comment, and I don't know if I convey this enough on this podcast, but I, as a part of this team, an echelon, I am, I, I, I am inside a living leadership laboratory that, that is, that is growing and learning as, and, and those type of comments, when you say the, how we, it's the way you think. Um, those are, those are powerful moments in, in even just helping other people understand what they're doing.

• 40:36Dave Berke?

  And yeah, I could talk all day about that. As a matter of fact, Jocko will probably tell you sometimes I call him at, at inconvenient times and demand a lot of his time to talk about this stuff, which is crazy.

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  With that, good place to stop. Um, and if you want to dig deeper, and believe me, it goes deep into all these aspects of leadership, um, you might be able to tell that this is what we do for a living. Join Dave, me, the rest of the Echelon Front team. We are at efonline.com and we solve problems through leadership. And if you want leadership guidance inside your organization, if you want to get your leadership thought aligned, then yes, go to echelonfront.com and we will show up there either in person or virtually and we will make it happen. I've also written a bunch of books about the subject of leadership, extreme ownership, the dichotomy of leadership and leadership strategy and tactics. My other podcasts are Jocko Podcast,

• 41:31Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Unraveling, Grounded, and the Warrior Kid Podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from jacostore.com or originmaine.com or jacofuel.com.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for listening to us debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.