187: Principles and Tactics with Creativity Dominates All. MCDP 1-3 Tactics, with Dave Berke

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:36 - Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication MCDP 1-3 Tactics. 2:32:19 - SUPPORT: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:53:38 - Closing Gratitude. 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 Jocko Podcast number 187 with David Burke and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Dave.

• 0:08Dave Berke?

  Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  And in case anyone was wondering where Echo Charles is at this time, Echo is actually in Hawaii. Trying to get back in touch with Ka'aina, the land as we used to call it. And he will be back in a few more episodes. In the meantime, I got Dave Berke here who now lives in the AO of San Diego. And if you don't know about Dave, he was on this podcast number 69 and number 135. He was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, flew the F-18. He was a Top Gun pilot, Top Gun instructor, Top Gun Senior Instructor, F-16 pilot, F-22 pilot, F-35 pilot.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  The first and still only one of a few pilots qualified on all those platforms. He was the first commanding officer of an F-35 operational squadron. And on top of that, he was the commander of Anglico Salt 6 on the ground with us in the Battle of Ramadi. And he and his team did scores of operations with TU Bruiser.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  And he is now with us on the team at Echelon Front where he leads the Long Range Leadership Development and Alignment Program.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  So Dave, thanks for coming on and filling in for Echo.

• 1:35Dave Berke?

  It's good to be here.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  Have you been brushing up on your video games and 80s and 90s movies?

• 1:46Dave Berke?

  Unfortunately, no, I'm not going to be able to fill in for that.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  Check. Well, actually, it's a good thing that you do have the experience that you have and it doesn't have very much to do with Super Mario Brothers because I want to talk tactics and it's one of my, I wrote that it was one of my favorite Marine Corps doctrinal publications. That's, that's kind of a, that's really a big statement as if I sit around and grade which one's my favorite, but it definitely is up there. It is MCDP 1 Tac 3 Tactics.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  Let's get into it.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  How long, how long were you in the Marine Corps for Dave?

• 2:29Dave Berke?

  Twenty-three years.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-three years, and you retired as what, a lieutenant colonel?

• 2:32Dave Berke?

  Lieutenant Colonel.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  Check. Did you, so you went to the basic school?

• 2:37Dave Berke?

  I did.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys cover this in the basic school?

• 2:39Dave Berke?

  Absolutely. Actually, when I went to the basic school in 1994, it was the predecessors, basically the same pub, uh, the one dash three had a different, slightly different name, but pretty much the same stuff.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  And I actually looked, this one is dated July of 1997. I looked for a, a newer one, and there isn't one. This is it.

• 2:59Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  And it's interesting, cause you'll, everyone will see, there's examples in here. They don't have examples, obviously, from Iraq and Afghanistan, or Iraq II, and then Afghanistan. I'm sure at some point, they will, they will do that. Because they got a lot of Gulf War examples, and I, I, you know, obviously, they were just looking for some recent examples, when they did it in 97, that was the last big war. So, there you go. But we'll get into it.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  And the book starts with a foreword, and because it's the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps, even when they write a foreword, it sounds good. So this is how it starts off. "This publication is about winning in combat."

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  Is there any better way to start this manual?

• 3:52Dave Berke?

  Nope.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  "This publication is about winning in combat. Winning requires many things: excellence in techniques, an appreciation of the enemy, exemplary leadership, battlefield judgment, and focused combat power. Yet these factors by themselves do not ensure success in battle. Many armors, armies, both winners and losers, have possessed many or all of these attributes. When we examine closely the difference between, the differences between victor and vanquished, we draw one conclusion: Success went to the armies whose leaders, senior and junior, could best focus their efforts, their skills, and their resources toward a decisive end." Sounds like the Marine Corps is, uh, saying that leadership is the most important thing

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  on the battlefield.

• 4:39Dave Berke?

  Repeatedly. And when you're at TBS, you're there to, there to be a leader, that is what you hear every single day. Leadership is the difference.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  Their success arose not merely from excellence in techniques, procedures and material, but from their leader's abilities to uniquely and effectively combine them. Winning in combat depends upon tactical leaders who can think creatively and act decisively. So taking all of these techniques and these procedures and the material and being able to take those things and mix them up and combine them together. That is what makes, that's the winning combination, the creativity. How often did people at TBS talk about being creative?

• 5:28Dave Berke?

  Believe it or not, they never use those, they didn't say be creative, they would say, "Think." They'd give you all this doctrine in pubs and all these rules, but they would say, "You actually need to think and think of what makes the most sense here." And they bred a lot of flexibility. I never remember anybody saying, "Be creative," but they said, "Think about it, think if this makes sense, and if it doesn't, do something else." And these are the rules, the guidelines, but there was always this maneuvering around there to bring all those pieces together.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  I say that combat is an exercise in creativity. And people, especially people that don't know anything about combat or war or anything, they always kind of, that always surprises them, right? Because they think creative, being creative is writing a song or painting a picture. But for me, being a creative is positioning your machine gunners effectively.

• 6:19Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  Right? I mean, that's, that's like true creativity, in my mind.

• 6:25Dave Berke?

  Leadership's not a template. It isn't just, "Here's what to do in this situation, you have to think, you have to think creatively and come up with the best idea."

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  I see that in mixed martial arts. So one of, one of my favorite mixed martial artists of all time, do you know who Fedor Emelianenko is?

• 6:39Dave Berke?

  I do.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  You do?

• 6:41Dave Berke?

  I do.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'm impressed with your knowledge. So, two things about Fedor. Number one, he was completely stoic and never showed any emotions, win or lose didn't matter. You could look at him after a fight and you wouldn't know if he just won the Pride GP or if he just lost his first match in his life. He looked the same. And so that's one very good lesson learned from Fedor. The other lesson learned from Fedor is Fedor would take the skills that he had and apply them in very creative ways where you'd say, oh, he just did, you know, a judo throw followed by a submission, a sombo submission attempt, followed by just dropping bombs of ground and pound.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  And, and those are all three separate things. And he would just mix them up all really well together. And that, when you see, that's like the new level of mixed martial arts is the older generation. Hey, I was really good at jiu jitsu or hey, I was really good at wrestling or hey, I was really good at striking and I would kind of stay in my lane. And if I could bring you into my world, I could beat you. Now it's just who has, who can take all these tools and get creative with them and apply them to this scenario that they're in. Same thing with leadership, same thing with combat leadership. And by the way, same thing with all leaderships and it doesn't only apply to combat. Check. All right. Moving on, this book pertains equally to all marine leaders, whether their duties entail combat service support, combat support, or combat arms.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  All Marines face tactical decisions in battle regardless of their roles. Tactical leaders must develop and hone their warfighting skills through study and practice. This publication serves as a guide for that professional development. It addresses the theory of tactics and its application in a chaotic and uncertain environment.

• 8:29Jocko Willink?

  The concepts and ideas within this publication are battle tested. Throughout our history, one of the most important reasons for the success of the United States Marine Corps has been the military skill of our leaders at every level, level of command. Through their tactical skill and battlefield judgment, our commanders achieve tactical and operational advantage at the decisive time and place. And they talk a lot about the chaotic and uncertain environment, which as we know, that's what combat is. And by the way, that's what life is. That's what business is. That's what the world is.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  So getting into chapter one, understanding tactics.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  Such a straightforward, the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps doctrines, doctrinal material is so straightforward and so simply written. It's just outstanding. Starts off with a couple quotes.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  In tactics, the most important thing is not whether you go left or right, but why you go left or right. And that's from General Al Gray.

• 9:42Jocko Willink?

  Twenty ninth Commandant of the Marine Corps, forty one years, three Purple Hearts, Korea, Vietnam. A Mustang officer, by the way, get some.

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  He's the only one, he's the only, he's the only Commandant that's pictured in his, in his official picture as the Commandant of the Marine Corps. In his camis.

• 10:02Dave Berke?

  In his camis, absolutely.

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 10:04Dave Berke?

  He's a legend.

• 10:06Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I think I had like a, maybe a year or two overlapped with him where I was in and he was in. I think he retired in like ninety one or ninety two or something like that. And yeah, so there you go. The most important thing is why, understanding why. This is underlying tenet really of decentralized command, but of, of all leadership. Next one is, next quote is, there is only one principle of war, and that's this. Hit the other fellow as quick as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him the most, when he ain't looking.

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  That's Sir William Slim, who's actually a, a Brit.

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  Fought World War One and World War Two. What's up with fighting in World War One and World War Two?

• 10:54Dave Berke?

  Totally, man.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  It's just, it like.

• 10:58Dave Berke?

  We've talked about World War One on this podcast a few times, you and I have, and dude, what a savage experience and to roll right back and do it again, you know, twenty five years later.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. What's up with that? Hey, yeah, you know, you barely survived. Guess what? Go get some more. And by the way, he, he like led the fight in Japan, uh, led the fight against Japan and in Burma. I mean, that guy was no joke. So there's the principle. Go hard, go fast, hit them when they're not looking.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  All right, continuing on. This book is about winning in combat. Winning requires a thorough understanding of and knowledge of tactics. But what is tactics? An art and a science. Tactics is the art and science of winning engagements and battles. It includes the use of firepower and maneuver, the integration of different arms and the immediate exploitation of success to defeat the enemy, as well as the sustainment of forces during combat. So think about that right there. You got, you got the art and science. It includes firepower, firepower maneuver, cover, move, fire maneuver, right? Different arms, taking all the different, all the different assets that you have and

• 12:11Jocko Willink?

  applying them correctly. And then on top of that, the immediate exploitation of success to defeat the enemy. So when things are going good and you see the enemy start to crack,

• 12:20Dave Berke?

  It's time to go.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  Drop the hammer.

• 12:21Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  It also includes the technical application of combat power, which consists of those techniques and procedures for accomplishing specific tasks within a tactical action.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  So I guess they're saying technical application of combat power. This is like one level below tactics. This is like you're going to shoot correctly. You're gonna...

• 12:43Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and you actually have to know how all of your equipment works. This machine gun will go, will go this far, be effective at this range. And beyond that range, you need another piece of equipment. So you have to actually know all these technical things. It's no different than an airplane. You have to have all the understanding of how all these things work, but that by itself isn't enough. That's where the creativity comes in. And hey, I'm going to use this machine gun to get this reaction. And they're going to move in some other direction. And then I'm going to apply other combat power. I have to know what that power can do and where and how it works. And that's the art that they're talking about is bringing all these things in together. And the good commanders recognize, they see it go, now it's time for this. Not because the book says the range, because they see it as a leader and to apply that.

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  I was in the talk for the first of the 506 in Ramadi and their battalion commander was just like such a legit guy and there was a lot of mayhem going on and he's sitting there in a chair in the talk just you know just a normal whatever crappy chair and and they're getting questions from the field they want to drop like a building they want to call QF there's a bunch of things going on and this guy he was just and one day he's going to be on the podcast he was just but I'm just watching him and this is when I first got to Ramadi I'm watching this guy and they're going they're going hey sir they want to bring tanks down to this area they got they're receiving fire and he'd like

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  look at it kind of glance over at the map and he'd be he'd say do it just as calm as you could possibly be pretty awesome yeah that guy had some uh some serious he had the he had a good handle on the art and the science back to the book tactics refers to the concepts and methods we use to accomplish a particular military I mean a particular objective in either combat or military operations other than war in war tactics is the application of combat power to defeat the enemy in engagements and battles combat power is the total destructive force we can bring to bear against the enemy it is a unique product of a variety of physical

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  moral and mental factors see so this so this is when you start talking about leadership right because because okay the physical thing we get we get what guns are we get what airplanes are we get what tactical maneuvers are but then when you start talking about the the moral and the mental factors and how you're going to get a bunch of human beings to do something that is going to be dangerous to them

• 15:09Dave Berke?

  yeah and to expect that from a 19 year old marine they said at the beginning this is leadership at every level Lance corporals fire team leaders and expecting and demanding that they behave morally in what's going to be maybe the most brutal physical situation they'll be in their lives and recognizing that without that you're going to lose in the long run that's a losing plan to be devoid of morals in doing this in combat it's pretty amazing

• 15:36Jocko Willink?

  that's the the super strategic picture

• 15:39Dave Berke?

  yeah the long game they realize without it in the end we will lose if we don't have that

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  if we don't have the moral high ground we will lose

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  Tactics results in the actions and counter actions between opposing forces. It includes the use of maneuver, supported by the application and coordination of fires to gain advantage in order to defeat the enemy. In military operations other than war, tactics may be the schemes and methods by which we perform other missions such as to control a crowd or provide a secure environment for the delivery of food, medicine, or supplies to a nation or people in need. As stated in the definition, I wonder if this, when this gets rewritten right now, if they'll tone back, if they won't mention as much like the military operations other than war. Cause that in 1997, that was a lot of that, that kind of seemed like what the world was

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  gonna be now. You know, it's gonna be, hey, look, we might not be fighting a war ever again, but we, you know, we're gonna be doing things that will require, that's what they called it, military. For those of you that are wondering what that is, military operations other than war, this is like a humanitarian assistance mission. This is like a security and stabilization mission. So those kinds of things. Crowd control, those kinds of things are what they're talking about. And in the, this was written in 97, so, and it certainly, you certainly could have, if you had a naive view of the world, you certainly could have thought to yourself, you know, are we really gonna fight another, like, actual war? Are we really gonna do that?

• 17:16Jocko Willink?

  And it's really easy to look at it from a logical perspective and say, listen, America's just this giant country, we have this super military force and technology, and no one is gonna step up to the plate to try and get some, right? So let's just focus on these other things. It'd be pretty easy to think that.

• 17:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah. I actually remember when I was, got in the Marine Corps, you know, 94, Desert Storm was in the rearview mirror, I kind of missed that big op, and I remember thinking, I wonder if I'm ever really gonna get into combat, you know? And a lot of years went by before the opportunity was there, and a lot of us thought, that might never happen in my career.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Dave Berke?

  A lot of people never did. They spent that decade in between 91 and 2001, they did eight, nine, 10 years, and they got out and never saw anything like that.

• 18:02Jocko Willink?

  I know guys that did 25, 30 years, came in in 1973, 1974, 1975, you know, 1971. Like, if you joined, if you got to the SEAL teams in 1971... Or 1972, you didn't, you, you know, you didn't go to Vietnam.

• 18:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, actually, so let's look at it. You, if you went straight into the SEAL SEAL Teams, you, you joined in 1970. It took you, it took you, you know, to go through boot camp. Next thing you know, it's 1971 and a half. And then you show up at a SEAL team and now it's 1972 and there's no, they're not deploying platoons anymore.

• 18:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  So there's a couple, there's some, some odds and ends are still going over, but they're not deploying straight up platoon. So if you're a new guy, you don't go. And now, if you didn't do anything in the Gulf, which was, there's a couple of platoons in the Gulf. There's a couple of platoons in Panama. There's a couple of platoons in Grenada. You know what I mean? It's like, if you weren't one of those people, you could easily have gone through 30 year career. Next thing you know, you look up, it's 2001, you're, you, well, it's the year 2000 and you're retiring from 1970 to 2000.

• 19:07Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and people sometimes forget the Gulf War was like four days. You know, the, the sustained combat operations was like 96 hours, something like that. And if you missed that, which a lot of people did, that was the big show in an entire generation.

• 19:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:23Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, as the, as stated in the definition, tactics is a combination of art and science to gain victory over the enemy. The art of tactics lies in how we create, creative, creatively form and apply military force in a given situation.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  I really like talking about that. Creatively form and apply military force in a given situation. It involves the creation, positioning and maneuver of combat power. When do we flank the enemy? And when do we ambush him? When do we attack? And when do we infiltrate? How do we use speed and momentum to achieve a decisive advantage? This creativity is developed, is a developed capacity acquired through education, practice and experience.

• 20:18Jocko Willink?

  How much more, how much more qualified are you right now to be on the battleground, be on the battlefield in Ramadi in 2006? How much more qualified are you now than you were then?

• 20:33Dave Berke?

  The things that I would see now, the things that I would know to look for now that I didn't even think of then, and what you just said, that, that, that last comment, that, that's everywhere. That, that, that training piece, all the pieces that go into that, and, and any one of them without the other, doesn't work. You can't just be awesome at one thing. You can't just be all about the science of these things. And, and when you usually work creativity, I mean, when you see people do things like that, and it works, like, it's like artistry. You see just the flow and the maneuvers and the things that are coming in. And I'm sure that, that first to 506, when he said, "Do it," he's actually looking up and seeing, "This is the reaction that I'm gonna get. This is what's gonna happen when that happens." You know, he's seeing those things. And I love that

• 21:17Dave Berke?

  image of him just sitting there in the chair and like, "Yep, do it." And know, and knowing what's gonna happen, you know, well beyond what, what people can see in real time.

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  And knowing that you can't know what's gonna happen.

• 21:30Dave Berke?

  For sure.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  At the same time, you're saying, "Yeah, do it." And then you're thinking, "Okay, I know there's at least an 80% chance that this goes the way I'm thinking it'll go." And there's also a 20% chance that this, and something completely different happens.

• 21:41Dave Berke?

  And he's also totally relinquished control of, of what happens next. I mean, there's nothing he can do. Once he says, "Do it," he's totally relinquished control of, of what's gonna happen at that point with his guys. And that's it. And the, the best leaders, they're completely comfortable doing that because they know what their guys are gonna do. Because they have trained them so hard. They have repeated that situation so many times that they're, for all the chaos that is definitely going to ensue, he's extremely, he knows exactly what his guys are gonna do and how they're gonna react.

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "The Science of Tactics Lies in the Technical Application of Combat Power." It includes mastering the techniques and procedures that contribute to the development of warfighting such as marksmanship, navigation, gunnery, and close air support. The execution of these techniques and procedures must become second nature for us. This requires intensive and continuous training. Without mastery of basic warfighting skills, artistry and creativity in their application are impossible. Discipline equals freedom. You've got to have the discipline on the little things and then you can get creative with them.

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  Now that we've examined the art and science of tactics, let us look at how we can use tactics to complement strategy and campaigning. Strategy and campaigning bring our forces to a particular place at a particular time. We use tactics to win in combat. A war typically involves many individual engagements that form a continuous fabric of activity. War typically involves many individual engagements that form a continuous fabric of activity. There's so much going on in war. You know, when we did our first big push into, I guess it was cop iron, and there was 50 armor pieces that were getting ready to go.

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  And like, one of them, someone from the 137 was just talking about, "Okay, well, here's where we're at with fuel." And of course, you know, we had fuel for our Humvees or whatever, you know, like we drive around, but they had 50 armor pieces that drink diesel. Like, what do you think they get? Two, I mean, it's just something, it's just something completely crazy, probably two miles to the gallon or something like that. Yeah, I think it's gallons per mile. Yeah, I think it's that much worse. It's that much, yeah. But here we were, just thinking, "Okay, well, the armor's just going to be where the armor's got to be, and that's all good." But they're thinking, oh, actually, no, we need to have whatever thousands and thousands

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  of gallons of diesel fuel's got to be here and it's got to be there and it's got to be delivered, it's got to be good and it's coming from where it's coming from some totally different place and all that stuff has to be orchestrated and boom and there you go and now we're going on this combat operation. There's so much going on. And by the way, convoys get hit, fuel, big fuel trucks that have 28,000 gallons, they get hit on an ambush and they don't even make it to Ramadi. Like that happened regularly.

• 24:53Dave Berke?

  Yep, absolutely. And on the other side of that, when that phrase, that continuous fabric, you also have to get the folks at your lowest level, the folks out there with a rifle, maybe the guys driving the tank to recognize how everything, how every individual thing they do actually affects this whole campaign. And that even those small individual actions that seem like there's nothing else going on in the world other than you and maybe that that sniper on the roof or that position, that even your interaction with that one thing will have implications all the way down to the entire campaign, to the strategic level. The Marine Corps, I don't think they say it anymore. They used to have a phrase called the strategic corporal with the recognition that even this engagement, you were influencing so many other things at this broad level that you actually have

• 25:37Dave Berke?

  to be aware of your actions. And that gets back to that comment about even the moral behavior. Think of the times that we saw guys do things that we knew were wrong and how it totally undermined the big strategy because everything got shifted away from the war and it got shifted towards whether we did something right or wrong, it got on the news and all this.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Abu Ghraib is the one I always talk about. Abu Ghraib.

• 25:56Dave Berke?

  For sure.

• 25:57Jocko Willink?

  But a couple, some people acting like knuckleheads.

• 25:59Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 26:00Jocko Willink?

  And next thing you know, that, that, that event completely fueled the insurgency.

• 26:05Dave Berke?

  For sure. That tiny tactical, that people like tiny tactical event had massive, think of how many enemy fighters that recruited and made our job strategically that much harder.

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. In combat, our objective is victory.

• 26:23Jocko Willink?

  Check. Sometimes, this involves the complete destruction of the enemy's forces. At other times, achieving victory may be possible by attacking the enemy's will to fight. The Marine Corps must be equally prepared to win during both situations. Those in which the enemy forces must be completely destroyed, as during World War II, and those in which the complete destruction of the enemy's forces may not be necessary or even desirable.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  As the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division in Desert Storm stated, "Our focus was not on destroying everything. Our focus was on the Iraqi mind and getting behind it." He knew that the path to victory did not lie in the total destruction of Iraqi forces, but in undermining their will to fight.

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  Which they certainly did very effectively.

• 27:13Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Jocko Willink?

  The environment. Next section. "The tactical arena is a dynamic, ever-changing environment. The complexity of this environment makes combat chaotic and unpredictable."

• 27:29Jocko Willink?

  As an example of confusion and chaos on the battlefield, consider the amphibious assault on the island of Tarawa in November 1943. During the assault, the combination of high casualties, lack of effective communications, and disruption of the 2nd and 8th Marine Regiment's landings on the assault beaches led to a chaotic and nearly disastrous situation for the 2nd Marine Division. Units were decimated under heavy fire. Surviving Marines huddled together under a coconut log seawall in intermingled units without effective communications. Landing craft carrying reinforcements and supplies could not make it over a coral reef to the landing beaches.

• 28:13Jocko Willink?

  Only through daring leadership, initiative, and teamwork were Marines able to get off the beach and annihilate the defending Japanese force. The violence of combat only increases the level of confusion and chaos.

• 28:29Jocko Willink?

  Robert Sherrod, a time and life correspondent at Iwo Jima, gave testimony to this chaos in what he called "War at its Worst."

• 28:40Jocko Willink?

  The first night on Iwo Jima can only be described as a nightmare in hell. About the beach in the morning, lay the dead. They had died with the greatest possible violence. Nowhere in the Pacific have I seen such badly mangled bodies. Many were cut squarely in half, legs and arms lay fifty feet from any body.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  Battle is the collision of opposing forces, animate, interactive, and unpredictable in behavior. Performance varies from week to week, day to day, and even hour to hour as a unit interacts with its environment and the enemy.

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  Ruff, I know you and I often joke about our complete and utter. Our experience just pales, I mean, obviously in comparison to the guys that fought at Tarawa. The guys that fought at Iwo Jima, the guys that fought in Europe in World War II. And you get in those environments, right? Those environments. And it is this, this idea of this dynamic and complex and ever-changing battlefield. There it is.

• 30:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I've said it a few times and I still feel this way. I'm embarrassed sometimes to call what I did in an airplane combat. I read these books and I listen to the podcasts and I listen to these stories and it's almost hard for me to even try to relate to the idea of that I was in combat in an airplane, you know, given what these things sound like.

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  What did you think about those King B pilots? From, from Tilt?

• 30:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I'd love to share, swap stories with those guys, you know, what did I do compared to what they did?

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's a quote that I didn't read and I don't know why I didn't. I had it marked, but I just didn't read it. But there was like a situation on the ground. There was total enemy fire everywhere. And like one aircraft approached and got shot out and the team on the ground, this is, this was one of, it was either one of two. It's one of, one of the SOG crews was down on the ground and they're just trying to get extracted.

• 31:04Jocko Willink?

  And the basically, all the pilots are like, hey, we can't go in. You guys need to move to a different extract. You need to move to a different extract. You need to go somewhere else. Like, we need more fire support. We can't get in there. And this one pilot, this one King B pilot comes on and he just comes on the mic and says, King B goes down. Meaning, hey, I'm going in. Yeah, whatever. There's enemy fire? Cool. Watch this.

• 31:32Dave Berke?

  So legit. I love how this book is called Tactics. This book about tactics. And I think that section we're on is called Understanding Tactics. And they're talking about the chaos of war. It's not a book just about tactics. Do this, do that. This is what worked. It's about war. And you said it a couple of times. Success in combat is the only measurement the Marine Corps has ever given their Marines to be successful in combat. And to remind them of just how hard that actually is. And the things that you're going to see and smell and feel and endure in combat is well beyond what we can replicate in training. And this serves as a reminder, you know, day one of Iwo Jima. And it gets back to what we said. It would be pretty

• 32:17Dave Berke?

  arrogant to think that a day like that could never happen again in the future. That we're never going to have something like that ever again.

• 32:24Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy who was working for a guy and doing a project where we, the brief that was given was, listen, we need as SEALs to kind of like move in a different direction. Because since we have, you know, satellite coverage, we don't need to do reconnaissance anymore. And since we have T-LAMS, we don't need to do direct action because we could just send a GPS guided missile. Like, why would you send troops on the ground to go do that? Like, there's no reason to. And, and this was, you know, this was around the same time period. This was like 96, 97. And the theory was, look, we will not

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  We as SEALs are not going to do a direct action mission again. It's just not going to happen. And you know, I mean, I was sitting there listening. I was disappointed to hear that, but it was hard for me to think what could bring that about.

• 33:17Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  Because every scenario I could think of was, oh, well, you just, you just send in a T-lam. Right? That's what you do. Okay, maybe I was thinking maybe like a hostage rescue scenario. Okay, that's the one. How often is that happening? Right? So like, yeah. And then, you know, you fast forward, what was it? Five or six years from there? And I was doing it. I was doing a direct action raid almost every night of the week in Baghdad.

• 33:42Dave Berke?

  And we had been for 15 years.

• 33:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes. Exactly.

• 33:46Dave Berke?

  When I got to the fleet in 1998, my first fighter squadron, combat capable squadron, we got introduced to GPS weapons. First squadron in the Marine Corps to get a GPS weapon. And the, and the brief that I was given was you'll never overfly the target again. You now have a weapon that you can release from a standoff range that will guide itself to the target. You'll never have to overfly the target, which meant the, the risk goes down. You'll never have to be worried about smaller.

• 34:11Dave Berke?

  Never overfly the target again. And, and, and it was three years later, you know, we kicked things off and think of how many times we had aircraft directly overhead in, in every one of those missions, you know, exposed to the enemy. Uh, and that complacency that came in from technology will solve these problems for us.

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  What, what was the threat to your aircraft when you were supporting troops on the ground in Afghanistan?

• 34:31Dave Berke?

  The threat was small arms and, and shoulder fired IRMAN pads, they called it, you know, SA7s, these short range missiles, which the thing of it is, is that if you get outside the three, four mile range, there are no, there are literally no threat at all. But if you get inside that range, almost anybody in the world could pick one of those things up, look through a little optic and shoot it. And the missile goes after the heat signature and they were, they were everywhere.

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  I went to Stinger Missile School.

• 34:56Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, it's not, it's not a hard weapon to work. I mean, it's, the school is like a week long. I mean, it's not a long school. And you go to that school and then you can pick up one of those things. And like you just said, I mean, if, if I pulled out the manual right now, I could, I could shoot down an aircraft pretty easily.

• 35:15Dave Berke?

  If you had spent the last 10 years fighting against the Russians and you could definitely shoot down an American airplane. And that's what we're dealing with this guy that had actually a lot of experience with it. And that stuff was everywhere.

• 35:28Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Never overflying the target to you were directly over, overhead the target at very low altitudes. Cause you needed to be a low altitude to provide the support at huge risk. It look, and there's certainly a balance. Technology has allowed us to do a whole bunch of things and that's, that's good stuff. But hey, we'll never have this happen to us again, meaning our human beings are never going to be put in those situations again. It's, and I love how this manual is, that's what it's telling the Marines, hey, read this book. Oh, by the way, this is what's happened and it's going, we know it's going to happen again. I don't know when or where it's going to happen again, for sure.

• 35:59Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you were pointing out that, and this is, this is actually, I'm going to point this out later. I think I'm going to point this out later as a shortfall to this book. But what you're pointing out right now is, is, you know, it's not about do this or do that. Cause think about it, what have they told, what have they, what tactics have they talked about so far? Zero. They've talked about zero tactics. What they've told you is get ready for mayhem.

• 36:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Jocko Willink?

  Learn the fundamental tactics and then get ready for total mayhem. That's what they've told you so far. Be creative. That's what they've, that they've used the word creativity like over and over again.

• 36:30Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Jocko Willink?

  That's what they're trying to get into your heads. They haven't even told you any tactics yet.

• 36:37Jocko Willink?

  So, and I think part of that reason is because there is a fundamental baseline that all Marines have.

• 36:43Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Jocko Willink?

  That they assume. And so they don't really talk about it in here. And maybe that's the reason why I, I pictured as a little bit of a shortfall of, hey, this is tactic. Which like if you've read the book, The Last Hundred Yards, which gets very in the weeds on tactics, like the actual maneuvering, small elements. And this doesn't really have it. And I think the reason it doesn't really have it is because of the assumed knowledge of. Every Marine.

• 37:12Dave Berke?

  Yeah, for sure. And I think to put some context around this, the Marine Corps knows and expects the actual tactics are going to be taught at school. Yeah, and what the Marine Corps, I think, is really trying to get the youngest junior Marines, whether it's a junior Marine leader, an officer, a lieutenant, or a young private, is what tactics means. Not the application of the tactic itself, but what does it mean to be part of the tactic for winning? And it's everything from understanding the nomenclature of your weapon to the brutal nature of war. And they know that what's required is actually going to learn the tactics that you will apply as an artillery man, or infantry man,

• 37:51Dave Berke?

  or a supply officer, or a logistician. But tactics, make no mistake, that is the brutal application of war.

• 38:00Jocko Willink?

  You know what this reminds me of? So when we're working with, when we are working with a company at Echelon Front, it seems like oftentimes what people learn about business, like, let's say they get their MBA from somewhere, or they, even if they've gone through some kind of a program, whatever kind of program, what they learn is actually the maneuvering on the battlefield. Like, they learn how to, they learn that technical part of it.

• 38:30Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  And the part that they don't often know is all this, oh, this is going to be complete and total mayhem.

• 38:36Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  Like, things that you had no idea. Oh, by the way, oh, leadership, what you need to do is surround yourself with some good people. Okay. And by the way, half those good people are going to be crazy. The other half are going to be insane.

• 38:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like, every, every, like, that's what's missing. So what they focus on here is kind of what we focus on at Echelon Front, working with companies. Oh, like, there's going to be things that aren't going the way you, the way they were going to be going on paper, when you made that hire, or when you opened that branch, or whatever you did.

• 39:10Dave Berke?

  That's interesting.

• 39:11Jocko Willink?

  No, it's, I think it's exactly the same, for sure.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  Check. Going back to the book. Military forces are complex systems consisting of individuals and equipment. They interact internally and externally in seemingly chaotic ways. As Clausewitz wrote, "A battalion is made up of individuals, the least important of whom may chance to delay things or make them go wrong."

• 39:38Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was just saying.

• 39:40Dave Berke?

  Like, that that sentence is so the least important person.

• 39:45Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 39:46Dave Berke?

  Can literally destroy your plan.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 39:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 39:51Jocko Willink?

  As Marines, we believe in the, we believe the actions of single individuals can have great impact in combat and can also make things go right. For example, Sergeant John Basileon, as a machine gunner at Guadalcanal, contributed, and this is a quote, "in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment."

• 40:13Jocko Willink?

  He steadfastly manned his position in the face of repeated wave-type assaults and was instrumental in breaking the enemy's ability to press the attack, forcing them to retreat without achieving their goals.

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  Medal of Honor for that situation, Navy Cross later, where, when he was killed at Iwo Jima, but virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment.

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  Bazey.

• 40:40Dave Berke?

  Yeah, a legend.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  Battle is also influenced by a variety of external conditions. Directions and missions established by authorities, terrain, weather, attitudes of the civilian populace that often cannot be foreseen. The outcome of combat can only be anticipated in terms of probabilities.

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  All those things, authorities, terrain, weather, attitudes of this, like, terrain. You're looking at a, you're looking at a map, a one to 50,000 map, or even a one to 24 map, which is twice as good.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes that terrain doesn't even reflect anything that you've, that you thought it was gonna look like.

• 41:28Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  The people.

• 41:30Dave Berke?

  That, that part of the people, I mean, that's the piece too. Think about that. I'd, I'd like you to consider the attitudes of the people in the application of this plan and like, the amount of chaos that's embedded just in that comment. Uh, it's, it's, it's staggering. And then again, relinquish control to your people and have them go deal with that as it happens in real time.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. We, we're gonna send you into a city.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's been under a regime that's now got insurgents in there. There's people getting killed. They're trying to survive. They're from a totally different culture. Consider that and just, you know, play around that, would you? Just add that as one of the factors and the weather too. Yeah.

• 42:12Jocko Willink?

  And that happens in the business world too. Totally. You get things completely wrong. Get things completely wrong. Oh, this, I'm sure everyone's gonna love this new product we're making. No, no one likes it. Doesn't sell anything.

• 42:26Jocko Willink?

  Or I was working with a company and they made something. And they anticipated selling between two and four per shop. They were going into a massive, um, spread of shops. A very large chain of shops. And they made this something they were anticipating selling between two and four per shop. And they ended up selling on average thirty-four per shop per day. Like crazy. Who predicted that? No one. Then they're spending twenty million dollars on a new factory. Immediately.

• 43:06Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 43:09Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Technology also affects the tactical environment, but not always as anticipated. Technology may reduce uncertainty and it may also increase it. The Spartans organized into phalanxes attacked in close formation, making it easy to see and control one's forces. Today, tactical formations are less well-defined as distances between elements have increased, complicating command and control. Increased weapons lethality, communications range and tactical mobility cause us to disperse forces over greater distances. War is more fluid as a result of technology. While the machine gun bogged down warfare in World War I,

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  tactical innovations like the tank, the airplane and the aircraft carrier made warfare more rapid and free-flowing in World War II.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's what you just talked about with technology. The, the GPS guided bomb.

• 44:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and as a pilot, I was pretty much on the leading edge of tactical evolution in aviation. And it was, it was awesome.

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  When did you guys start flying night vision goggles?

• 44:18Dave Berke?

  So I have a very similar story to you. I had my first night vision goggle flight in the summer of 1998. And they were pretty new at the time. And I, so get this, I go on my, we do like a simulator, we do a brief. I learn how it works in like a dark room and everything, but you can't replicate it till you get in an airplane. And the first airplane, you have an instructor in the back. We get in the airplane, go do the whole thing. We get airborne, we're out here, Southern California. I took off out of El Toro before it closed, just over the water.

• 44:47Dave Berke?

  And I'm looking up and I'm looking at all the airplanes at LAX lined up, hundreds of miles away. I can see this with my night vision goggles. And I asked the instructor, hey, is this, is this pretty common? He's like, well, I can't actually see what you're looking at.

• 45:00Dave Berke?

  I said, how come? He says, I'm not wearing my goggles. And this was kind of a really old, really kind of senior crusty guy. I think he was originally an A6 pilot, the transition. He goes, I don't like them. And I remember, I was a really young student at the time, so I certainly wasn't going to have, I'm just, you know, Roger that and go to that. It didn't really occur to me till years later, talking, you know, conversation we had about when the SEALs were trying to introduce goggles. And guys like, hey, we don't need that kind of stuff.

• 45:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Dave Berke?

  And just thinking how, being in, and like, that is the most insane thing I've ever heard. But, but, but just something to think about, I have been on flights. It happened actually twice, once in a combat mission in Afghanistan where my wingman took off and he didn't have his bracket. He forgot his bracket that attaches to the helmet where you put the goggles on. So he reached down to get the night vision goggles to mount them on his helmet airborne. He's like, dude, I don't have my bracket, which means no goggles, period. So we're going to go do seven hours without, without him having night vision goggles. And he was kind of paralyzed by that.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I think.

• 46:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And so he had put himself in this technology. And then the moment that technological thing he'd been accustomed to was gone, he, he didn't know what to do. It was like, hey, hangman, we're, we'll put in a couple of risk mitigated, we'll do some altitude delta and we'll, a couple of very easy things we could do. But it was hard for him. And that, the technology in and of itself doesn't solve your problems unless you can, A, know how to use it and react when it's not giving you what you want.

• 46:27Dave Berke?

  I've seen that in airplanes all the time that all of a sudden GPS goes down in an airplane. And what you want to do is hey, let's just go home. Like, we can't go home. We're here to support it. And I've seen guys get paralyzed by losing that technological thing that they've become accustomed to. And that's kind of the beauty of what is the saying here is, hey, there's a basic thing that's going to go on here that you have to be able to execute. They can't replicate the invasion of Tarla, being pinned down and watching a regiment get decimated. You can't replicate that in combat. And you can't replicate telling a guy, get up in a hail of gunfire and lead your men. But you can actually, you can actually get people to recognize that that's what you need to do in those situations. And that's why those Marines actually got up and did that.

• 47:09Dave Berke?

  The contrast is incredible. The dichotomy of that is incredible to think about.

• 47:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the technology thing, the GPS, you know, like, there wasn't GPS when I first got in. There was, but it wasn't a feasible thing to use because it was slow and it just didn't work. And I remember getting told, hey, we know with this piece of equipment, we can know exactly where we are. And it weighed 28 pounds. And I said, hey, I know exactly where I am and I have a map and compass. So, next question, let's move on. And there's definitely are guys that have become reliant on GPS. They do not know how to do land nav. And land nav is an absolutely critical skill. If you know land nav, you don't need to look at your GPS. In fact, if you know it well, you don't even need to look at your map. You remember the terrain features, you're keeping track of your pace, and you know exactly where you are.

• 47:59Dave Berke?

  I didn't use a GPS or a map in Ramadi after the second week inside the city, except on very rare occasions. But every Spears, Jolie, I knew where I was because, well, we did it all the time. But that was actually, if I had to say, hang on one second, let me orient myself to this, it's over. Like, let me break out my GPS and see where we are. So, those fundamental skills are actually required to be able to take advantage of the technology.

• 48:25Jocko Willink?

  When I looked back at my first deployment to Iraq, once we were in Ramadi for like a month, I realized, because in my first deployment, we'd be going all over the place, you know, we did a lot of work in Baghdad, but Baghdad is huge. And we wouldn't do the same neighborhood, even, you know, maybe we do the same neighborhood one or two times. But most of the time, I say, we've just never been here before. And I realized how Much better, I should have known the terrain. Like, I would be looking at the battle map going into, on my first deployment, we'd be going into some random town. And I'd be like, "Okay, here's a major landmark, there's a mosque over here, there's a, there's a, a, a bridge over here, cool, I got that. Oh yeah, this building looks pretty particular, our target building is right next to that building, so, okay." So I'd kind of have that level of familiarization.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  But I wouldn't know it like what we knew, when, in Ramadi, where you're looking at the same thing all the time. And that's how you should know the terrain, that's how you should study the terrain. And then when something doesn't fit in the way it is, the way you, the way it's supposed to, then you will recognize it. Like, if you're looking at a rural environment, because rural environments, I think, are tougher to read, I guess clearly they are tougher to read than city environments. Although you can get turned around in the city as well. But, you know, a stream or a, you know, you, you, you hit a little stream that wasn't on the map and you think you were the big one and blah, blah, blah. You, you can just get mixed up. But if you are tracking it,

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  then you can, you can make sense of it if you've studied it more. So, be careful of completely relying on technology. It can, is not always your friend. Back to the book, future battles likely to become even more chaotic. Although combat in Operation Desert Storm was between fairly well-defined forces in a well-defined space, the forces and operating areas in Vietnam, Somalia, and Grenada were far less well-defined. Enemy units were dispersed and often hidden with, within the civilian population, making them hard, hard to detect and harder to target. They converge at a time and place of their choosing. Future opponents may choose to fight in this manner to offset our overwhelming superiority in firepower.

• 50:33Jocko Willink?

  A little foreshadowing. Yes, they may choose to fight that way.

• 50:40Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, this chaotic environment also brings opportunity. Clausewitz wrote about combat, "No other human activity is so continuously bound up with chance." The challenge is to recognize opportunity when it occurs in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, and to seize it to obtain a clear, unambiguous victory. When viewed through time, even the most chaotic of systems may reveal recurring patterns that may look, that may then be exploited. The experienced tactician will look for these reoccurring patterns that can be exploited to advantage.

• 51:22Dave Berke?

  I mean, where is that not true? That statement? And, and that's combat in a nutshell, but I mean, I talk about the Oodle Loop all the time in aviation and, and, and business too. And you see the people, when you're working with folks and it's their first time, maybe they, they've gotten their, their first team. And, uh, you know, they introduce themselves in their first couple of weeks and, and very immediately things don't go the way that they want and they're on their heels and they don't know how to react. And it's not because they're a bad leader, it's not because they don't possess, it's they've never seen it before. And if you've never seen it before, a lot of times you don't know what to do. So you, you freeze, or you do, or you do nothing, or you make the wrong decision, but it's really that sense of being overwhelmed. And right next to might be someone that they've been doing it for 10, 15 years.

• 52:07Dave Berke?

  And like, hey, hey, man, I've seen this a thousand times and they react completely differently. I've never seen a place where that isn't true. I mean, that experience of doing things over and over again, to find a pattern, go, this is how I think this is going to work out. That's what lets you go. Do it. Because you can anticipate what that outcome is going to be because you've seen it so many times.

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's.

• 52:33Jocko Willink?

  There's a way of looking at things and overlaying your knowledge that allows you to see things that other people don't see. And it's hard to do. And not many people do it. Not many people take what they're, the knowledge that they have and overlay it onto what they're looking at. And you can't, what you can't do is you can't let what you're overlaying block what's behind it. You have to overlay it, it has to be transparent because you have to be able to see through it, you have to be able to see the changes. But if you can take your experience and you can overlay it onto what's hap, onto what's happening, it, it, it gives you this massive advantage.

• 53:18Dave Berke?

  It's a huge advantage. We talk about when flying, having a mental rolodex of literally a billion different, almost like screen captures of what you're seeing out your windscreen, in your world that you're looking at as a pilot. And having however much experience you have back there in your head to go, I've seen that before. I can pull from my memory or my recollection of things I've thought about, kind of overlay that, just like you said, and look through it, almost transparently and go, these are the same. And it doesn't guarantee that you know exactly what's gonna happen next, but it narrows down to such a, a small margin of what the likely outcomes are gonna be, that you're, that's how you start thinking ahead of, of your opponent or the person even next to you is

• 54:00Dave Berke?

  being able to pull that experience and say, I've seen this and I think this is what's gonna happen because of all these other things. But just like you said too, you don't get to freeze time. You don't, there's no pause button there. Airplanes are moving hundreds of miles an hour dynamically and, and the guys that do that really well pull those pictures out and go, I've seen this. And they're making moves and you look and go, how, how did you know to do that? And it's exactly what you just described.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  I was at, at the training command, I was running training and we got tasked with training the guys in a new mission. And so we get, we tasked the guys with this new mission and they come up with a plan to execute this new mission. And so when, whenever we were taking the guys on a field training exercise, they would give the brief to their task unit or their troop or their platoon. And you know, us training cadre would sit there and we'd like take notes and say like, hey, this is a bad part of the plan. Hey, you should have thought about this. Hey, this won't really work. You know, so we'd, we'd give them critiques. And then, and you know, I would go last, you know what I mean? Cause I was the guy in charge, so they, they let me go last. So everyone would kind of, you know, there'd be two or three guys that would kind of pick apart the plan.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  And then I would go and mention maybe, you know, four or five other things, right? Because my guys would cover most of them. So these guys get up and they're, they brief this new mission and how they're going to execute this new mission. And they go, okay, you know, where they wrap up their mission. And now we've got the leadership in there to debrief them on their, on their brief. And my guys like didn't have anything.

• 55:30Jocko Willink?

  And, and so they get to me and I was like, okay, here's what's going on. Boom, boom. And I just rattled off like 19 things. And the, the senior enlisted guy that was there, we got done and we walked out. He was like, when you leave, no one's going to be able to. And, and I was like, no, man, he's just, but, but when I think about what just occurred, what occurred during that time, all I was doing was taking what I knew already, what, what my senior listening guy knew as well. I just overlaid it. He didn't overlay it. It didn't look the same, so he wasn't quite sure. So I just overlaid what I knew and said, oh yeah, here's, here's what doesn't make sense. Cause guess what? Cover move still applies. Decentralized command still applies. We want to keep it simple. That still applies. Prioritize and execute still applies.

• 56:12Jocko Willink?

  Who, that's those things, the terrain, taking advantage of the terrain, that still applies. So even though the mission has a totally different name, the fundamental principles don't, don't change. So if you can take and overlay what you know, you're going to do well. And that's actually, that's actually what good leaders do. What good leaders, they take what they know about humans. Oh, I've worked with a guy like that before. You know, it's funny, we do our role playing people. And one of the characters that we talk about in our role play at Echelon Front, one of the characters that we talk about is a grumpy old Arnold, right? Grumpy old Arnold, who's been doing this for 25 years and he's really good and he's really respected. And, and he likes to do things his way.

• 56:59Jocko Willink?

  And he doesn't like, you know, he doesn't like being told what to do. And when we, whenever we bring up this character that I, I made up, but of course, like I made it up, but everybody says, oh, is this based on our company? So everybody has an Arnold. And then we go to the next role play. And the next role play is, you know, this guy who's, you know, young buck. And what's young buck like? Young buck is super fired up and he's just ready to go get after it. But he also doesn't like following what the rules are because the rules are impeding his progress. And everyone goes, oh yeah, we got young buck over here. We're actually, it's so funny, like at the muster, go walk around with people that go, this is young buck. They go, yeah, here's Arnold or we all, you know, it's always funny. It's always good.

• 57:39Jocko Willink?

  But what good leaders do is they, they take now, now when someone says, hey, this is Arnold or hey, we have an Arnold. That Arnold's not exactly the same, but you can certainly overlay some of the knowledge that you have onto that person. You can't overlay it completely because that's a mistake as a leader. It's a mistake to treat Arnold, this Arnold, the same as that Arnold. Cause they have the same, some similar characteristics, but they're not the same. And what you did with this one won't, may not necessarily work with that one. You're going to have to modulate it a little bit. And so what you do as a leader, if you can take and you can overlay your knowledge onto situations that you haven't seen before, but you recognize what similarities there are and how to,

• 58:23Jocko Willink?

  how to handle those scenarios, that's going to make you infinitely better.

• 58:27Dave Berke?

  Totally. In thousands of flights that I had in my career, no two were exactly the same. I never had two flights that were exactly the same. And that's would any, insert any job, anything we've ever done, nothing is exactly the same.

• 58:42Dave Berke?

  And I had, I've had that same experience of people saying, this is that guy that you're, you're just, this is our Arnold or this is our, our young buck. But if you, if as a leader, you start getting more and more successful, kind of racking up wins and you start to figure that out. And you think that you know how everything is going to play out, that, that's a killer too. And we, we had in aviation, we have, we track mishap rates, which obviously expensive airplanes and airplanes crashes catastrophic. And there's two spikes in a person's career, the mishap rates. And one is about the 200 to 300 hour range, which is we're literally just learning how to fly an airplane. So it stands to reason, a lot of people crash airplanes when they're first learning how to fly. And then after about 500 hours, that mishap rate falls really low.

• 59:27Dave Berke?

  And then there's a very, very low mishap rate. And then, and then it spikes again. And it spikes at about the 2,000 hour mark. And that's a really experienced squadron commander kind of level, really experienced. And it's because they fall into that trap because they, I've seen it all. And the reality is that some of those things never change. Actually, the principles, they never change, but the outcomes are always moving around. And that buck that's here, it's different than that buck over there. And when you get complacent and think, I've got this figured out. The same thing happens in aviation. That's where the mishaps go up again. And it's the same thing for leaders, recognizing that all these problems are different. All these problems are the same, but you do not know the outcome. You do not know the outcome.

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that, that is like a fire in my brain. Every problem that I look at, I'm simultaneously looking at it. At the same time, I'm saying, okay, I think I've seen this before. I also have a louder voice in my head that's saying, you don't actually know. You don't actually know anything. You should actually just be quiet and listen and try and figure this thing out because you don't know. So that's definitely right. And you can see when people get to that 2,000 hour mark, they start to think they've got it all figured out. And that's not going to be good. Overlay your knowledge.

• 1:00:43Jocko Willink?

  Next section is called how we view combat and how we fight. How we view combat, how we view the combat environment in large part determines how we operate in it. There are two competing views of combat.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  Some see it in simple terms as if the battle and the environment represented a closed mechanical system. This deterministic view argues that combat is predictable. Among the advocates of this view are military theorists who seek prescriptive rules for battle and analysts who predict battle outcomes based upon force ratio. The other view is that combat is chaotic and uncertain. In this probable, in this probabilistic view, battle is seen as complex, a complex phenomenon in which participants interact with one another and respond and adapt to their environment.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  The probabilistic viewpoint sees combat as unpredictable. The distinctions between these two views of combat are important. They drive the choices commanders make in combat.

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  So this is again, I was with a client, a new client the other day, Echelon Front, and meeting the CEO for the first time. And it was interesting, he was asking me in a very positive way, not a negative way. He was asking me in a very curious way. Basically, the question was, like, what do you teach? What are you, what are you teaching that, that, that other people don't teach? You know, what is it? How, how, you know, there's this high demand signal at my company for you to be here. And I get it, and that's why you're here, and I appreciate it. But what are you talking about? Like, what can I expect to see?

• 1:02:37Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I said, and I ended up going and doing the, kind of the introduction to the Laws of Combat and Extreme Ownership. So he, that's when he, kind of, when I got done with that, he said, oh. But I think this is what people from a leadership perspective, if you have a deterministic viewpoint of leadership, hey, when the person does this, oh, here's the prescription for that.

• 1:03:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And yet, that's an easier thing to sell, right? If I'm trying to sell you my leadership instruction, the easiest thing to do is, oh, what problems do you have? Okay, well, I'll just tell you what the prescription for that type of problem is. The problem, the problem with that is, it's a lie.

• 1:03:20Dave Berke?

  It doesn't work.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  It's not true.

• 1:03:21Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:22Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't work at all.

• 1:03:25Dave Berke?

  We've been working with companies the last couple of years, and one of the things that a lot of companies are dealing with is growth. Economy is good, everybody's dealing with growth. And, and I, you can see the difference in the leaders that have these two different points of view. And the ones that think they have, they kind of have it all figured out, this prescriptive mindset, there's nothing in them that feels like they need to push and relinquish control down in their organization, because they think they, they have the template, and they might have small, started small, and they believe that they can control everything. It's a very, it's centralized, it's just, it's at their core, they, they, they're the leader.

• 1:03:57Jocko Willink?

  And they did control things when there was 27 people, and they saw them every day, and they control, hey, everything worked awesome.

• 1:04:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's really, you can do that with a small group, especially at the beginning. It's, it's actually not that hard to kind of control 15, 20 people. And as the, as it grows, it's those leaders that think that everything is predetermined by this matrix, this if this, then that, that, that whole approach, they're the ones that are struggling the most. And ironically, You don't see it in the beginning, but the ones that are willing to decentralize everything and give, those are the ones that actually don't have nearly as much problem with the growth, not because they know it's all figured out, it's because they know that there's no way I can figure this out and I can't solve any of these problems by myself. And the best thing they can do is get their folks that, when you have a problem, here are some guidelines, here are some things we do, here are some foundational things that we do at this company, but I actually don't have the answer for you. As a matter of fact, I am not as good as

• 1:04:48Dave Berke?

  you are at knowing this particular situation because you're living in it and every day I'm off over here doing other things. The leaders that recognize that everything is chaotic, nothing is predetermined, no matter how good or experienced they are, they're the ones that are the most successful and the ones that think it's all figured out, they try to control everything and they're the ones that are most likely to fail. And from the outside, when you walk in, you look and go, oh, oh, all you have to do is let them, let this person make that decision on their own and it's going to work out. And if it doesn't, he'll learn from it and he'll figure out the next time. It's easy to see from the outside, you see these two different leaders, it's not just combat, it's everywhere.

• 1:05:24Jocko Willink?

  It's absolutely everywhere. It's absolutely everywhere. Prescriptive leadership, I'm putting that one in my notebook. We're not selling prescriptions, we're selling health, leadership health. Continue on, the deterministic view of combat often leads to centralized control. Hmm. It can be a recipe for micromanagement, stifling the initiative, subordinates need to deal with combat's inevitable uncertainties. Overly prescriptive orders and plans inhibit a unit's ability to cope with uncertainty and change. Eventually, the unit, inflexible and unable to adapt, may be overwhelmed by events. And I'll change that maybe overwhelmed

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  to will he. How's that for deterministic? If you have that, if you have that micromanagement, you will end up in a bad situation. The probabilistic view.

• 1:06:18Jocko Willink?

  of combat recognizes that the complexity and uncertainty of war leads to a more decentralized approach to control. We place greater trust in subordinates to achieve the desired result. Through the use of mission orders and commander's intent, subordinates are able to handle unforeseen situations and exploit opportunities that arise. Marine Corps tactics are based on the probabilistic view of combat. Must be shocking for some people to hear that.

• 1:06:43Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I bet you they have a totally different viewpoint.

• 1:06:45Jocko Willink?

  That that they just think, oh, the

• 1:06:48Dave Berke?

  you're in charge.

• 1:06:49Jocko Willink?

  The big boss is gonna come in and tell everyone what to do.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  We must be able to cope with uncertainty and operate in an ever-changing combat environment. We must be flexible and responsive to changes in the situation. There are no fixed rules that can be applied automatically, and every situation is different.

• 1:07:08Dave Berke?

  That's so legit. Picture that scene you described of being in Tarawa and all those and look around, your squad leader is gone. Your fire team isn't there anymore. Your battalion commander is gone. None of the things that you anticipated, prepared, or trained for, they don't even exist anymore. They're not even there. What are you gonna do now when in this predetermined, preordained, coordinated plan? It doesn't work.

• 1:07:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is, the things that you expected are literally gone.

• 1:07:39Jocko Willink?

  Your plan is is completely evaporated. It is nothing. The plan that you had is completely and utterly gone.

• 1:07:50Dave Berke?

  And if you don't do anything about that, you will be too, very soon.

• 1:07:58Jocko Willink?

  There are no fixed rules.

• 1:08:04Jocko Willink?

  As one tactics manual put it more than a half century ago, "The leader who frantically strives to remember what someone else did in some slightly similar situation has already set his feet on a well-traveled road to ruin."

• 1:08:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's actually from the book Infantry in Battle. So this is, so this is where you have to, this is why that overlay that you put, it's, it can't block what you see. It's an overlay. And for those of you that don't know, speaking of, speaking of just going old school, in the old days, when we used to have maps and not these incredibly advanced software programs that put overlay, they're still called overlays, but you'd put a transparent, what was that piece of? Cellophane or something? Yeah, it's got transparency and you would draw little things on it. And you'd say, okay, this is, here's the terrain, here's where the target's gonna be. And you could put another overlay that showed the enemy suspected enemy positions. And you put another overlay that showed your friendly positions. So that's what I'm talking about. You can see through it. If you block it

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  out, that's not gonna work. Leaders must remember that there are no fixed rules and no precise checklists, but there are bounds. Here we get in that economy. That is why successful leaders study, train, and exercise their minds to improve tactical proficiency. We study examples of successes and failures, not to emulate someone else's scheme, but to increase our own tactical understanding and competence. Why do we do that? Why do we, why do we study, train, and exercise? It's so that we can put those overlays in our mind. And then we can, we, we can increase our own tactical understanding and competence.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  Next section, Marine Corps tactics. The successful execution of Marine Corps tactics hinges on the thoughtful application of a number of tactical concepts so as to achieve success on the battlefield. Key among these concepts are achieving a decision, gaining advantage, being faster, adapting, cooperating, and exploiting success. Each of these concepts is discussed in detail later in this publication. Creative and practical employment of these ideas throughout the planning and execution of tactics leads to success. Creative is number one. That's going first. That's going first. Creative and practical employment of these ideas throughout the planning and execution of these tactics leads to success. These concepts are not standalone

• 1:10:33Jocko Willink?

  ideas, but are to be combined so as to achieve an effect that is greater than their separate sum.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  Part of the art and science of tactics lies in knowing where and when to apply these concepts and which combinations to use to achieve the desired effect. How often does somebody ask you, "What law of combat do you think is most important for us?" And it's like, "Well, this one's really important, but guess what? You can't get one without the other."

• 1:10:59Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:11:00Jocko Willink?

  They're all woven together. "The number one definition of these concepts, the number and definition of these combat concepts are not fixed and their order of presentation does not indicate their value. Marines may find in their studies new or slightly different ideas that may be just as important. These ideas are presented in this publication so that readers will think about how to achieve success on the battlefield." I wonder if the Marines at the basic school and you went through were afraid to use the word creative?

• 1:11:30Dave Berke?

  I guarantee you, I guarantee, because the word, I'm telling you, they used, they said, "Think."

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:11:37Dave Berke?

  And that's what they meant, they meant to be creative. Yeah, fine, the word is the word, but that's exactly what they're getting at is, the answer isn't in this book. The answer isn't that we're gonna go do one week of combat in the defense and all of a sudden you've got all the life experience you need to be defensive and you have to think.

• 1:11:55Jocko Willink?

  "These concepts help to provide a framework for developing a tactical mindset that has long been the hallmark of Marine leaders from corporal through general. And here's the conclusion to tactics. Tactical excellence is the hallmark of a Marine Corps leader. We fight and win in combat through our mastery of both the art and science of tactics. The art of tactics involves the creative, once again, and innovative, once again, use of maneuver warfare concepts, while the science of tactics requires skill and basic warfighting techniques and procedures."

• 1:12:32Dave Berke?

  For sure.

• 1:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Because let's face it, if you don't have the, if you don't know the techniques, you can't apply them creatively. You don't even know them.

• 1:12:40Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 1:12:41Jocko Willink?

  "It is our responsibility as Marine leaders to work continuously to develop our own tactical proficiency and that of our Marines. Understanding the concepts presented in this publication provides a foundation for that development." Boom.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Chapter two, that was one chapter deep, by the way, that's one chapter deep. Awesome. And we're staring at it over an hour. That's awesome. Get some. Chapter two, achieving a decision.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  It follows then that the leader who would, and this is a quote, it follows then that the leader who would become a competent tactician must first close his mind to the alluring formula that well-meaning people offer in the name of victory. To master his difficult art, he must learn to cut to the heart of a situation, recognize its decisive elements, and base his course of action on these. And that, once again, that's from this book Infantry Battle, which Infantry Battle is an awesome book. And what's really interesting about Infantry Battle, and I'm going to cover it on the podcast probably, I don't know, I've got it in the queue. But what's interesting

• 1:13:51Jocko Willink?

  about Infantry Battle, the book, is it was written in 19, like, 39, or it came out in 1939. So it's not based on, it's not based on what we learned in World War II. It's what we did in World War II. It's based on World War I. And like, these things worked and these things didn't work. They don't, they don't, they don't say it that way, but that's basically what it is. It's a great book. And there's some, and this is, when you see a, when you see a leader do this, cut to the heart of a situation, recognize its decisive elements, and base his course of action on these, that's like the most pleasurable thing to see as a, as an observer, or as a trooper. When you see someone go, hey, here's what's going

• 1:14:35Jocko Willink?

  on, this is what we're gonna do. A lot of people will be talking, and all of a sudden the leader will go, hey, this is what's happening, this is what we're gonna do. And you go, oh, thank God for this guy.

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  Going on, another quote, "We must be ruthlessly opportunistic, actively seeking out signs of weakness, against which we will direct all available combat power. When the decisive opportunity arrives, we must exploit it fully and aggressively, committing every ounce of combat power we can muster, and pushing ourselves to the limits of exhaustion."

• 1:15:10Jocko Willink?

  Which is the way you should actually live your life as well. No big deal. And that's from, that's from FM FM1.

• 1:15:19Dave Berke?

  You're fighting.

• 1:15:21Jocko Willink?

  Which I don't know when I covered that on this podcast, but it was like podcast five or something like that. So yes, ruthlessly opportunistic, fully and aggressively. That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:15:33Dave Berke?

  And also recognizing that the number of times you're going to get that opportunity to exploit something to win, it might be once in a battle.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it might be once and that window may last four minutes. It may last an hour. It may last a day, but it might be gone.

• 1:15:50Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  And when you see it, you're going to have to step and you're going to have to make that decision and there's going to be risk in that decision and you're not guaranteed an outcome in any way, shape or form. But here's the counterpoint. If you don't maneuver well, that opportunity can be lost.

• 1:16:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  And, and there, this is a, there's a huge discussion about the dichotomy. They don't use the word dichotomy, but they, they definitely talk about it all the time. Just because we're saying you gotta be opportunistic and take advantage of those things, that doesn't mean that you just run to your death. Doesn't mean you charge into every bunker that you see because you think it's the decisive bunker. No.

• 1:16:25Dave Berke?

  We talk about this all the time. You, you even, I think, you know, the, the dichotomy that comes to mind here, the idea of being brave but not foolhardy. And, and then you even talked about it in Q and A recently about recognizing that being default aggressive, obviously that's a really good thing, but, but you can't be like that all the time because if you're over aggressive and you exploit the wrong opportunity or you, or you're actually so aggressive that you haven't had a chance to bring all your forces to bear when it actually is most effective. That's everybody's destructive is being so disconnected or being so unaggressive that you miss those opportunities as well. And the answer, like you said, it always, it's, it's in that middle. And just saying be aggressive, that doesn't solve your problems. You actually have to know when to do that.

• 1:17:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if the, the podcast I was talking about when I started thinking about the dichotomy of leadership, this was a big deal because, because what I had to do to, to. Come up with that to allow my brain to get around that. I had to say that I was wrong.

• 1:17:23Dave Berke?

  You were wrong, yeah.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  That I was wrong, like this, this isn't right all the time. It's not always good to be aggressive. It's not always good to go forward. It's like all those things. It's not always good to step up and lead all the time. No, actually it's not. There's some times when you should follow, like for me to sit there and I remember it was one of those situations. This is what we just talked about. There was some time where I was watching something unfold and the, the thought was, well, they should have been more aggressive. And I was like, that's what I want to say, because that's what big tough Jaco says. But guess what? That's not the right answer. The right answer is actually that would have been the wrong time to be aggressive and they actually did a good job by sitting back and letting that situation develop. So what is this?

• 1:18:09Jocko Willink?

  And I was thinking about this in my head, you know, what is going on here? Oh, because you can't be too aggressive. You can't be aggressive all the time. Oh, and by the way, there's every trait that you look at. Yeah, there's a counter to it. If you go too far with any of them, you're wrong.

• 1:18:22Dave Berke?

  For sure. And that's why the things that we teach, we don't teach the answers of saying, oh, your answer is be default aggressive. That, that by itself doesn't work. So you actually have to understand not just what it means, but when to do that and know that there is actually a, a limit to doing that, that it will become ineffective if you're just, I'm aggressive. That's how I lead. Get on board. And, and that you lead your team to, to destruction. Because you're thinking, I, I gotta be aggressive. Yes, you do. But you have to actually have to know when to be aggressive. And actually, sometimes the best thing is to be the exact opposite of that and let the situation unfold until you see that opportunity.

• 1:19:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and I mean, it's flanking, right? Flanking is an aggressive movement, but it's not as aggressive as charging up the middle, right?

• 1:19:16Dave Berke?

  The frontal assault.

• 1:19:17Jocko Willink?

  Frontal assault is more aggressive. We give you credit, but it's not gonna, it's not gonna work out better.

• 1:19:22Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  And then the other funny thing from a leadership perspective is, hey.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Am I, am I being weak? Am I being fearful if I don't, if I'm not aggressive? But here's the answer. And this is a real simple way to look at it. When, when you deal with another human being, are you building the relationship? Or are you breaking it? Are you, are you moving it forward? Are you moving it backward? That's the question. And, and the answer is the answer. The answer is if you're, if what, if I'm going to have a conversation with you and it's going to move our relationship forward? Cool. That's probably the right answer. If I'm going to have a conversation with you and it's going to move our relationship backwards, that's probably not the right answer. So if Dave, if, if you came up with a bad plan and my approach with you on that is,

• 1:20:15Jocko Willink?

  hey, Dave, your plan sucked and I don't think you're cut out for this.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  Or, hey, your plan sucks and I don't, I, I'm going to, you have to use my plan now. Which, both of those have a negative outcome. Both of those, you're looking at me going, okay, so Jaco doesn't trust me. He didn't, he doesn't think my plan is any good. Instead of me going, hey, man, can you explain to me? I want to understand like how you're going to execute this thing. Because it's important for me to understand what you're thinking. So I can give you the support that you need. Can you, can you kind of walk me through your, your thought process and how this is going to go down? Well, that, what does that do with our relationship? Now you're going to explain something to me. I'm going to subtly and smoothly point out the little mistakes in the plan that you had. And I'm going to actually let you come to the conclusion.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  You're the one that's going to be telling me that, you know what? I'm actually going to change this a little bit. And then I go, oh, wow. I would have never caught that. And boom, all of a sudden our relationship got stronger. So yes, there's a dichotomy.

• 1:21:19Dave Berke?

  There is. And there's actually, there actually is a time sometimes that the frontal assault does work. That's why there's a frontal assault.

• 1:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:21:29Dave Berke?

  If it never worked, it wouldn't be a thing.

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:21:32Dave Berke?

  But the time and the place to do that, first of all, it's a lot less common than people think. The frontal assault should be the exception by a huge margin, but there are times that the frontal assault works. And sometimes when the frontal assault with another person, the times that it is most effective is when you've spilled, spent a lifetime and built a lifetime of a relationship that you can go, Dave, this is stupid. We're not doing it. And I go, Okay.

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Dave Berke?

  And I trust you and I don't get defensive and I don't shrink back down because I'm cashing in or you're cashing in on a lifetime of not having done it over and over again. I'm, I'm going to just roll over when you say that and it's going to make it worse for me. But there are times that actually the frontal assault does work.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:22:13Dave Berke?

  And it only works when you've not done it a thousand times. The one time it happens, the guy is willing to listen to what's being said.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and there's, there's other times where the frontal assault is good. And the frontal assault can be good because you're setting up other avenues of approach.

• 1:22:30Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that you're not going to actually follow.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. There's, I've, I've used that approach sometime where I've gone ballistic about something that wasn't a big deal, but what I was really doing was prepping the battlefield for something else. So yeah, there's maneuvers that have to happen sometimes.

• 1:22:43Dave Berke?

  For sure.

• 1:22:46Jocko Willink?

  Moving back to the book, tactics is the employment of units in combat.

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  The objective of tactics is to achieve military success through a decision in battle. Using tactical actions to achieve a decision is central to Marine Corps tactics. In the past, military forces have also have often won only incremental gains when they thought, when they sought victory, taking a hill here or a town there, pushing the front forward a few kilometers or adding to the body count. Sometimes these incremental gains were the result of a competent enemy or the chaotic nature of war, meaning what they're saying there is like, sometimes you're only making these incremental gains because the enemy is super competent or nature's crazy. Okay, so we get that, that can happen. And then it continues.

• 1:23:34Jocko Willink?

  Many times, however, commanders sought incremental gains as a means to achieve victory.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Think about that. You're looking at the battlefield and you go, you know what? We're going to get this house. We're going to get that house right there and we're going to do what, no matter what, we're going to get that house. And you're not looking at this whole battlefield, this whole city, this whole region, this whole province. So we look at these little tactical incremental gains as a means to achieve victory. This incrementalist view sees war as a slow cumulative process and it is best, and is best exemplified by the grinding attrition tactics seen on the Western Front in World War I.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  There, the opponents were more or less evenly matched and their tactics resulted in indecisive action. In Vietnam, where the opposing forces were quite dissimilar in their military capabilities, the incremental approach led to the US's over-reliance on firepower and body counts. This, in turn, led to the conduct of military operations that were often irrelevant to the outcome of war, even though a comparison of casualty ratios appeared favorable. Think about that. You're conducting operations that were irrelevant on the outcome of the war. How often do I see that in leadership, in businesses, in life? People are doing things that are irrelevant to the outcome of the war.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  And committing so much time and so many resources to that. And so much individual human stress. Yeah.

• 1:25:08Jocko Willink?

  The body count thing in Vietnam, you know, the more I learn about that, the more, it's such a clear mistake when you look at it from now, right? With our hindsight. And I was just reading an article the other day from a Vietnam guy. He's like, yeah, I think we killed two. We reported 20. Like, that was, because that way, hey, you know, everyone get the pat on the back. No one else knows. No one cares. And how many platoon commanders did that? Well, every platoon in the company. So it was 60. It was 60. We killed 60. And guess what? Even if we did kill 60, guess what? The Vietcong didn't care. They were there for the long war.

• 1:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but on some spreadsheet, 60 means we're winning. Yep. Yep. 60 versus we took two casualties. Cool. We're gonna, we're gonna beat them. We're gonna win. Yep.

• 1:26:03Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Therefore, the Marine Corps has embraced a more flexible, imaginative, and effective way to wage war: maneuver warfare. That is the way you should picture everything that you do in your life. It should be maneuver warfare. Marine success with this approach has been demonstrated in places like Grenada and the Persian Gulf. In contrast to tactics based on an incremental attrition, tactics and maneuver warfare always aim at decisive action.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what you want your, that's what you want to be looking for.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  This is what Echo Charles refers to as the long war. He says, well, I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't refer to that, but it's, but he says that that's the biggest thing that he's learned. And if he wishes he knew one thing from sitting in here for all these hours, listening to me, he wishes that he knew, he wishes that he understood the long war at a younger age.

• 1:27:02Dave Berke?

  For sure. I feel, I think everybody probably feels like that. I certainly feel like that. And the reason life mirrors that is because that life is life. Life is a campaign. Life is, life is as long as it is. And you have, maybe in life, you might have four or five culminating events in your life. You might get, if you get lucky, you just get a handful of those. And if you miss those, if you don't, if you're not aware that you're working towards those, you'll do what a lot of people do is look back and say, boy, I wish I had, dot, dot, dot, whatever that is. And that recognition that it's the same thing as a campaign and you have to actually, everything you do affects something else. And you need to be working towards whatever that culminating event is. And if you're lucky, you get a few. And if you miss them, you spend a lifetime looking back wishing you hadn't.

• 1:27:45Dave Berke?

  And in combat, if you miss a culminating event, you can lose. You, you can lose, you can lose your guys, you can lose the war, you can, you can lose everything.

• 1:27:53Jocko Willink?

  You and I were with a client and I actually, I actually like, we were with a day, with him for a day. And I was like going to close out the day and I had like some little thing that I had, I talked about at the end of the day. And as soon as I got done, I realized I wish I would have said something else. And here's what I would have said, because it's we, you and I were reading the surveys. And one of the things that we read on the survey, someone said, hey, this training, because you'd worked with this client before. Someone said, hey, the training with, you know, Dave was cool, but it was kind of like seeing a Rocky movie.

• 1:28:35Jocko Willink?

  And at the end of a Rocky movie, everybody wants to go and, and box and, and train and work out. And then two days later, you're, you're not doing any of those things. And I, what I should have done, and it hit me as soon as I walked upstairs, it's just one of those bad timings. I should have said, hey, I should have brought up those surveys and said, I'm gonna read you what someone said. And what someone said is, this is like a Rocky movie, and everyone wants to train boxing, and then two days later, you're back to normal. And I should have said, the person, whoever wrote that in this room, and I'm not gonna call you out, whoever wrote that is 100% right. You are 100% right. Because

• 1:29:15Jocko Willink?

  this is not an inoculation. You're, we know you're gonna be fired up, but what it takes to change leadership inside of a company is not one brief or two briefs from Dave. What it takes, it's a campaign that you have to think about every single day. You have to think about the long war. You're not gonna go, you can't sit through a three-hour briefing and expect that, oh, now, well, now our leadership is good to go. No, it's not like that. It's a campaign that you have to get on. You have to think about it every day. You have to train it every day. And actually, the same group, we had done some physical training with them in the morning. You know, we put them through like a PT program. I should have said, okay, now that we did that PT this morning for 40 minutes, who is now

• 1:29:57Jocko Willink?

  in good shape? And no one would have raised their hand. And I would have said, that's right. Just because you sat through three hours with Dave and I, does this mean that your, your leadership is now honed and sharp? No, not true. Just like you have to continue to work out every day, you have to continue to train and study every single day, you have to continue to be reflective and look at yourself and see, and look at your peers and talk to each other and see what you can improve and see what you can do better. That's what you need to do. So, yes, in two days, you're, you're gonna be back to normal, if you allow yourself to be. But if you get in the game, and if you see this as a campaign, and if you see this as a working out that you need to do every single day, and if you look at yourself for the mistakes that you're making as a leader, and what mistakes your

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  organization is making as leaders, that is when you will become better, and you can become a champion, just like Rocky.

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, I thought of it like three, like literally 15 seconds after I walked off. But um, you know, and what I told them was similar, but it wasn't the same.

• 1:31:02Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:31:03Jocko Willink?

  Wasn't the same. So.

• 1:31:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I remember, I remember that conversation and, and it also gets to the point too, that no matter where you are in an organization, you actually can have massive influence from that position if you, if you do that. You don't have to be the CEO of a company to steer the company in a particular direction. And if you actually recognize, okay, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if I get on this path and I stay on this path, I'm going to start to cultivate a little more influence. I'm going to get a little more success. I'm going to, and eventually you can be the driving force behind the organization, the team being successful.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:31:38Dave Berke?

  At any level.

• 1:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you can. You have so much more, just like you have so much more ownership of things like in your world.

• 1:31:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:47Jocko Willink?

  People, people don't realize how much control and power they have over their life. Okay, I get it that there's exceptions. I get it that there's horrible diseases. I get it that there's accidents happen. I get it. I get it. And, and the sympathy and empathy that I feel for those situations. Absolutely. I get it. There's also so much that you have control over in your life. So you have this impact over your life. And it's the same thing in an, in an organization. You think, oh, I'm just a middle manager or I'm just a frontline soldier. Okay, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens if you get in the game. I'll tell you what happens. Al Gray.

• 1:32:31Dave Berke?

  Amen.

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  He started off as whatever at E1 in the United States Marine Corps. That's what I'm talking about. How did he do that? By sitting back and complaining and pointing his finger at other people? No, by stepping up and making things happen. That's how you do it. Hackworth. Young kid, enlisted kid.

• 1:32:52Jocko Willink?

  What do you do? Sit back and complain or sit back and say he didn't have any control? No, he stepped up, took ownership of things, made things happen, got a battlefield commission. You can make these things happen. Whether you get a battlefield commission or not, you can make these things happen. I see that all the time when I was running that training, there'd be a, if there's a platoon with like a weak leadership, like weak platoon commander, weak platoon chief, and it happens. But there'd be some pipe hitting E5 in there. Just a hard dog. And he would have good leadership skills and he, I had one kid, he was such a beast and, but he wasn't like letting it out. They were going through their urban training and they're all pinned down and the leaders are making no decisions.

• 1:33:36Jocko Willink?

  And I walk over to this kid, he's pinned down behind a wall with like a saw. And I'm like, I'm like, hey, bro. And he's like, what's up, sir? And I was like, you just gonna sit here and let all this happen? He's like, you're kind of like, what do you mean? And I said, make something happen, bro. You know what to do. And the light in his eyes as he just started to get some, and that's all it takes. Somebody step up and lead. So it doesn't matter where you are in that organization. If you, if you look at where you're at, if you look at where you want to go long-term, you'll get there. You will have him, but then it's not going to be easy. Man, there was things that I fought for in the SEAL teams that I took years and years and years. And some of them I wasn't successful completely. I planted seeds that are still trying to take root.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  But that's what you gotta do.

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. This does not mean, however, that combat should be viewed as a bloodless ballet of movement. I should have read that in a different voice. This does not mean, however, that combat should be viewed as a bloodless ballet of movement. Combat, especially at the tactical level of war, will be characterized by tough, brutal, and desperate engagements. We must remember that war is a violent clash of two opposing wills in which each side is trying to wrest advantage from the other. Our future enemies may not allow us to gain, maintain, or employ technological or numerical superiority. The future battle may be bloody and tough, and that makes it vitally important that we, marine leaders strive to develop tactical proficiency.

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  What do we mean by achieving a decision? Take a moment to compare these two historical examples. Anzio, a model of tactical indecisiveness. Late 1943, the Allies were searching for a way to alleviate the stalemate in Italy. The campaign installed around the Casino Front and resembled the trench warfare of World War I. In order to keep pressure on the Germans, bypass the stubborn German defences at Casino, and capture Rome, a bold operation was envisioned. The US Army's 3rd Division and the British Army's 1st Division would make an amphibious landing at Anzio about 35 miles south of Rome.

• 1:35:58Jocko Willink?

  The Allies achieved complete surprise by landing at Anzio on January 22nd, 1944. Under the command of the US Army's Major General Lucas, the Americans and British quickly established a beachhead and rapidly advanced three miles inland by mid-morning against light German resistance. With the majority of their forces concentrated further south around Casino, the Germans could not possibly reinforce the Anzio beachhead until January 23rd to 24th. If the Allies pressed their advantage, the road to Rome lay virtually undefended. The seizure of Rome would have had the effect of isolating the German defenders in the south and firmly establishing Allied control over Italy. Pretty straightforward situation.

• 1:36:39Jocko Willink?

  Yet, General Lucas delayed, concerned about being overextended and wanting to build up his logistics. So, our Lucas failed to press his initial advantage of surprise and allowed the Germans to reinforce the Anzio area. Not until January 29th did Lucas feel strong enough to make an offensive bid, but by that time, it was too late. The Germans had arrived in force and had seized the dominating high ground in the beachhead area. Not only was the Allied offensive at Anzio stalled, but the Germans had seized the initiative and quickly threatened to drive the Americans and British back into the sea. As a result, the Allies did not complete the reduction of German defences in southern Italy and capture Rome until several months later.

• 1:37:22Jocko Willink?

  General Lucas lost a tremendous opportunity to exploit an initial success and gain a decisive result. Pretty straightforward.

• 1:37:36Jocko Willink?

  It's it's easy to sit here too and be like, oh, I obviously would have just pushed forward, right? There's and that's what you got to think about. You got to think about, okay, what, what did he see? You know? And how much intelligence did he have? He might not have known all this. That being said, this is one of those situations where you go, look, we just made it ashore pretty easily. We've got, we're doing pretty good. The Germans aren't in position yet. And you'd figure that out pretty quickly. And let me tell you something else. Here's, here's what my mentality would have been. The Germans, okay, let's say we don't know 100% that the Germans aren't set up on us, right? How are we going to find out? You know how I'm going to find out? I'm going to go. Yeah, not sitting here waiting.

• 1:38:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going to sit here and wait. I'm going to find out. I'm going to push forward. And guess what? If we push forward and we meet massive resistance that requires this extensive logistic train that I'm waiting for? Cool. Guess what? Looks like we're going to wait for it. But if I push, start to push through and all of a sudden I realize that that we get through, well, guess what? Cool. We're going to move a little bit further and I'm going to continue to push. You know, I talk, I've been talking a lot about this incremental decision making idea. And that's a great example, right? It's not, okay, we landed, we're going to go straight to Rome. But guess what? We landed, we're three miles in. Guess what we're going to do tomorrow? We're going to go five miles in. Guess what we're going to do the day after that? We're going to do a seven miles in. Oh, and by the way, if we start to see like an open road, we're going

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  to go until we meet some resistance. So I'm not committing 100% day one, because we don't know what we're up against. We don't know, because if we run out of ammunition, we're screwed. We get that. So I'm going to make these incremental decisions that are going to lead me toward my final objective. But it's going to, it's going to prevent me from getting stagnant and waiting and not gaining any new information. Because when we're sitting still, we're not gaining any new information. And matter of fact, the enemy's maneuvering. I say it all the time. If you're sitting still, the enemy's maneuvering on you. Here's a classic example. And what do you think the Nazis are going to do? The Nazis aren't going to maneuver on you? Right. These are the blitzkrieg people. Remember them? Yeah. We're not sitting back and waiting for this to happen. We need to go forward.

• 1:39:45Dave Berke?

  And obviously, again, you know, this is all for us, we can sit here in hindsight and listen to this and read this and recognize that, but that's with the first two pages of this book, that's a leader's job is to recognize that when you have those culminating events, when you have the opportunity, you have to see it and you bring all your forces to bear to attack that. Now, that doesn't mean that you just get online and push, in this case, you just push the 30 miles room. That's not what it means, but it means that this is our time to take the things that we have, the all the things available to us to do that, and we, we get aggressive and we attack.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  And what I'm saying is, I'm actually giving away a pragmatic tool that you can technically use, which, because I'm not saying you, we can look back and say, hey, the decision should have been this or this. What I'm saying, here's a pragmatic tool that you can use as a leader, which is the following. You see an opening, press.

• 1:40:39Dave Berke?

  You press.

• 1:40:39Jocko Willink?

  You don't need to go crazy.

• 1:40:41Dave Berke?

  No, you press and you evaluate. Yeah, and you see what happens. And that, and actually, that's a better chance to reveal what's actually happening than not pressing, which is different than everybody get online and run. That's not what I'm saying. But we move to the next one, and the best intelligence you're going to get is at the point of friction. And if it's, there's not a lot of friction here. Good. Keep moving. Hey, there's way more friction than we expected or can deal with. Now we know, and we can actually respond to that as well.

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Another example, Canai. A clear tactical decision achieved. On August 2nd, 216 B.C., the Carthaginian general Hannibal fought the Roman army under the command of Tarantinus, Tarantius Varro, near the city of Canai in southern Italy. Hannibal based his tactics on the specific characteristics of both forces and on the aggressive personality of the Roman commander.

• 1:41:39Dave Berke?

  Oh, I highlighted that in my notes.

• 1:41:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Because, listen, Hannibal based his tactics on the specific characteristics of both forces and on the aggressive personality of the Roman commander.

• 1:41:53Dave Berke?

  He knows Varro.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  He knows Varro. He knows that that dude likes to get aggressive.

• 1:41:57Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Cool. I got you pegged. Here we go. As dawn broke, Hannibal drew up his force of 50,000 veterans with his flank, with his left flank anchored on the Aphidus River, secured from envelopment by the more numerous Romans. So you got on your left flank, you're protected, you got a river there. Great. His center line contained only a thin line of infantry. His main force was concentrated on the flanks. His, his left and right wings each contained deep phalanxes of heavy infantry. 8,000 cavalry tied to his left line to the river, or tied his left line to the river. 2,000 cavalry protected his open right flank. 8,000 men guarded his camp in the rear. Varro and more than 80,000 Romans,

• 1:42:39Jocko Willink?

  so they're outnumbered by Hannibal's outnumbered by 30,000. Varro and more than 80,000 Romans accepted the challenge. Seeing the well-protected Carthaginian flanks, Varro dismissed any attempt to envelop. He decided to crush his opponent by sheer weight of numbers. He placed 65,000 men in his center, 2,400 cavalry on his right, 4,800 cavalry on his left, and sent 11,000 men into attack the Carthaginian camp. Following preliminary skirmishes, Hannibal moved his light center line forward to a salient against the Roman center. And when they say salient, that's like a, it's like a, it's like a projection. It's like a, a group that's gonna move forward. It's like a point, almost like a point element, but it's a big point element.

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  Then his heavy cavalry on the left crushed the opposing Roman cavalry and swung completely around the Roman to, Roman rear to attack the Roman cavalry on the other flank. The Roman cavalry fled the field. The Carthaginian heavy cavalry then turned back to assault the rear of the defense, the rear of the dense Roman infantry who had pressed back Hannibal's thin center line. At the same time, Hannibal wheeled his right and left wings into the flanks, the Roman center. The Romans were boxed in, unable to maneuver or use their weapons effectively. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Romans died that day

• 1:44:05Jocko Willink?

  as Varro's army was destroyed. So Battle of Salm had 60,000 casualties in one day. This is 60,000 dead.

• 1:44:17Jocko Willink?

  Know your opponent. Don't be, this is, don't be over aggressive too. Varo was over aggressive. Vosik, I see a thin line. Watch this. Yeah, watch this is right. Understanding decisiveness. What do these examples tell us about achieving a decision? First achieving a decision is important. An indecisive battle wastes the lives of those who fight it and die in it. It wastes the efforts of those who survive as well. All the costs, the deaths, the wounds, the sweat and effort, the equipment destroyed or used up, the supplies expended are suffered for little gain. Such battles have no meaning except for the comparative losses and perhaps an incremental gain for one side or the other.

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  I've been talking about being a black belt in jujitsu and how a black belt in jujitsu, when you grab something that doesn't matter, they don't care. What they want is the decisive thing. That's what they want. They want the decisive position. They want the decisive movement. And that's the difference. And that's what they're talking about here. You, when you do things that are indecisive, that they're not, they're not gonna, they're not gonna make or break the battle. That's what's happening. It's not gonna make or break the battle. It's just, you're just wasting, wasting energy, wasting, and in war, you're wasting humans and you're wasting equipment and you're wasting ammunition and supplies.

• 1:45:37Dave Berke?

  And for a leader, think about what that means when you do things that waste your people's times and certainly in this case, waste their lives. Obviously that's an extreme situation, but even just wasting their efforts. When you do things that waste their effort, over time, your credibility as a leader and even your opportunity to be successful in the long run, every single time you do that, it goes down. And that failure to recognize that this tactical thing, we're gonna stay late to do this one thing because this thing needs to happen. And there are times it's actually true, but there are times that if you continually waste your people's efforts, eventually they recognize you actually don't care about what it is that we're doing. And over time, your credibility as a leader goes away because you don't recognize that

• 1:46:21Dave Berke?

  these tactical things you're trying to get solved are all leading you down towards, in this case, the destruction of an army.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And here's what you just said, and I'm gonna add something to it. You said, "You don't care about what we're doing." And what's even gonna drive these people into a worse situation from a leadership perspective is they're gonna realize that you don't care about them.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  You don't care about them. And you know, I haven't done a good job when when General Mukuyama was on. Muk, he put this massive emphasis on caring about your people and like making sure they understand. And if you you, because when you ask him why he loved Hackworth so much, it's like, oh, because Hackworth cared about us.

• 1:47:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:05Jocko Willink?

  So the most important thing, the most important thing is like, oh, yeah, we we I get I'm I'm definitely concerned about what we're doing. The most important thing I care about is you troops. Now, we have a mission to do. And by the way, the mission that we're going to do is going to benefit us, all of us in the long run. Because when we win this war, our kids don't have to go to war, and we're going to have stability, and we're going to have security, and that's what our goal is. So it benefits us, and there's going to be sacrifice in the short term, but that's what we're here to do. We're not here to make any sacrifices that aren't required.

• 1:47:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:34Jocko Willink?

  At all, ever. That's the most important thing. I care about you, my troops. I care about you. I want you to win.

• 1:47:46Jocko Willink?

  I want you to survive. I want you to be taken care of, and we have a mission to do, and we're going to do it. But the minute, but the mission benefits you as well, right? It's not just, hey, you you're going to die for me.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  No, that's not what we're talking about at all. We're going to put our lives at risk because we have something we're trying to accomplish that's going to benefit each and every one of our families and our lives and our country.

• 1:48:10Dave Berke?

  That that idea in business, and that idea is so important, that belief that that you care about your people so much that they recognize at a point that they would be willing to do anything for you. And it doesn't mean you don't ask your people to go do hard things. It doesn't mean you don't put them in very difficult situations by which their lives might actually be lost. That's not what it means. To care about you means I don't put you at risk. Sometimes I actually do put you at risk. But if a leader. And it's not just, it's actually believing, if a leader actually believes that his people are that important, and as a subordinate, if I work for someone and go, holy cow, this guy actually,

• 1:48:52Dave Berke?

  he cares about me that much, I would literally be willing to do anything for that person. But it actually comes from that understanding that this person I work for, he doesn't just care about the mission being accomplished for the mission's sake, or even for his own sake, that he recognizes actually in my best interest. That's a rare thing. That's what cultivates young Marines, or young people, willing to do anything for you. And leaders get that backwards all the time. They don't, they recognize it, they fail to recognize that the thing that will allow them to do the hardest things they need to do, is by having those people believe in them that much.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm gonna put an actual quantifiable amount, because you just said it twice, you said "that much." You said the leader cares about you that much. You said it sort of in the beginning of your statement, and you just said it at the end. I'm gonna quantify what "that much" means, because it's really easy to do. The way you quantify how much a leader has to care, how much is it? It's the leader cares more about the person than they do about themselves. And if that's what the troops see, if that's what they see, that's when you get, as you said, young Marines, young, or employees, or soldiers, sailors,

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  airmen, Marines, linemen, construction guys, manufacturing people, whoever it is, when they see that, they will know, and that, then they will go that extra distance for you. Hey, is it every single one of those guys? No, because you've got people that are self-centered, and they're gonna look at you and go, "cool, I'm gonna take advantage of this guy." That happens. It does happen. You gotta be wary, you gotta, not even be wary of it, you just need to understand it.

• 1:50:34Dave Berke?

  For sure.

• 1:50:35Jocko Willink?

  But, that's what you need to do.

• 1:50:37Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and you can't fake that. That, you can't fake that. That as a leader is something you have to believe. You have to believe that feeling of, they are actually more important. And those things in some places come very naturally. With your kids, that comes naturally. But you can't fake that, and they will see right through that. And that, that feeling, as a leader, that's hard. But...

• 1:51:04Dave Berke?

  It's actually, it's possible. I have worked for people that I have come to realize they care about me more than them. They are willing to endure more of themselves for my benefit. And it's almost always the other way around. And those people, those few times I've worked for people like that, I would literally do anything, anything for that person.

• 1:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  Second, achieving a decision is not easy. History is littered with indecisive battles. Sometimes it was enemy skill and determination that prevented even a victorious commander from achieving the decision he sought. In other cases, commanders fought a battle without envisioning a larger result for their actions. Again, this is long war. Sometimes even with a vision of making the decisive, making the battle decisive, they cannot achieve their goals due to the chaos and friction that is the nature of war and makes decisive victory so difficult. That leads to the third lesson. Our examples point out, to be decisive, a battle or an engagement

• 1:52:10Jocko Willink?

  must lead to a result beyond itself.

• 1:52:18Jocko Willink?

  Must lead to a result beyond itself.

• 1:52:23Jocko Willink?

  Within a battle, an action that is decisive must lead directly to winning in the campaign or war as a whole. For the battle to be decisive, it must lead directly to a larger success in the war as a whole.

• 1:52:41Jocko Willink?

  Don't really even need to comment on that, except for to say, how often do people and businesses do things and fight battles? They fight battles that have no bearing and no result beyond the battle itself.

• 1:52:58Jocko Willink?

  You see people shooting themselves all the time with this very idea. They're gonna win that war. They're gonna win that argument with their wife, right? Oh yeah, they're gonna win that battle. What does it lead to? They're gonna lead, they're gonna win that argument with their subordinate. Or they're gonna win that argument with their boss. Where does it lead them? Oh yeah, that worked out great for you. It actually sets you back in your campaign. You don't think about that, though.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  On the other hand, we must not seek decisiveness for its own sake. Oh, boom, dichotomy coming at you. We do not, after all, seek a decision if it is likely to be against us. We seek to ensure, insofar as this is possible, given the inherent uncertainties of war, that the battle will go our way. We have stacked the deck in our favor before the cards are laid on the table. Otherwise, to seek decisive battle is an irresponsible gamble.

• 1:53:57Jocko Willink?

  If you're, if you see me, Jaco, if you see me engaged with someone,

• 1:54:07Jocko Willink?

  I already know the outcome. Like when I'm talking, when I'm discussing someone, I already know the outcome. Because I've already laid that out in my head. Otherwise, I'm just listening to you. I'm just gonna listen to you because I'm learning. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna step onto the battlefield, right? I'll talk to you and we'll discuss possibilities and outcomes and plans, and that's, that's great. I will not take a stand until I actually know what the outcome's gonna be. Just FYI.

• 1:54:40Dave Berke?

  And you've done all the things that you need to do prior to that, up to including that conversation, to know what that is. Because if not, then you're just arguing for argument's sake. And then you might win the argument, which is great. Only, it won't actually help you in the long run.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. When we seek battle, we must seek victory. Accomplishment of the assigned mission that leads to further significant gains for the force as a whole. At Anzio, the Allied aim was to break the stalemate in the south, opening up a southern front that would force Germany to move additional forces from the defense of Normandy. This weakening of Normandy defenses would support our planned invasion of France later that same year. At Cannae, Carthage won, Carthage won one round in its long contention with Rome for the domination of the Mediterranean. These tactical battles were planned for their overall operational and strategic effect. The consequences of a tactical engagement should lead to achieving

• 1:55:34Jocko Willink?

  operational and strategic goals. Please, everyone, please, don't fight battles unless they're gonna help you win strategically.

• 1:55:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah, the battle for the battle's sake doesn't help you. And in those examples too, we're not doing an amphibious landing on Tarawa to do an amphibious landing on Tarawa. We're doing an amphibious landing on Tarawa to establish a beachhead specifically so the next, the final thing we do is push the enemy off the island or kill it. And it's that same, we got here, we established, we accomplished this mission and this, this tactical thing, this battle. That's actually not what we're doing. It's a step.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  In fact, we're not even just pushing them off Tarawa. That's not the goal. The goal isn't pushing them out.

• 1:56:18Dave Berke?

  It's four years down the road. Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:56:20Jocko Willink?

  The goal is two years down the road. The goal is we're gonna put a, we're gonna put airplanes here that we can then bomb Japan. That's what we're doing.

• 1:56:26Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  Next section, military judgment. Once we understand what is meant by the term decisive and why does it important to seek a decision, a question naturally arises, how do we do it? There is no easy answer to that question. Each battle will have its own unique answers. As with so much in warfare, it depends on the situation. No formula, process, acronym, or buzzword can provide the answer.

• 1:56:53Jocko Willink?

  No formula, process, acronym, or buzzword can provide the answer. Rather, the, and you wouldn't guess that if you saw, if you saw, if you go online, even with the, even what they do with like me, they'll do an article on me. Three things a leader needs to do. It's, oh yeah, there's three. That's definitely three. Yeah, there's three. But guess what? You need to actually learn the art behind the science. Rather, the answer is in military judgment, in the ability of the commander to understand the battlefield and act decisively. Military judgment is, is a developed skill that is honed by the wisdom gained through experience. Combined with situational awareness,

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  military judgment allows us to identify emerging patterns, discern critical vulnerabilities, and concentrate combat power.

• 1:57:43Dave Berke?

  The beauty of that is the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps understands that those traits, that attribute of judgment, that attribute of decisiveness, those can be developed, those can be learned. Those aren't just innate, natural capacity that we just happen to bring these people into the Marine Corps. That's one of the traits that the Marine Corps recognizes that we have to teach people to learn decisiveness and teach people the quality of judgment. And they breed that in their Marines and they train and teach them. Now, yeah, some are better than others, no doubt about it. But these qualities, these things, and we're talking about how important these are, not just in the military, but in the private sector, these can be learned, these can be evolved and developed inside everybody. To what degree is certainly different, but everybody can get better at this.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  Almost everybody.

• 1:58:32Dave Berke?

  True.

• 1:58:32Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:58:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah, no, you're right, absolutely. And I'm speaking in absolutes and everybody, and really what I should be saying is not just, I shouldn't say it that everybody, I should say almost everybody, but I should say, we have so much more capacity to evolve these things than we think we do.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, just in case no one was paying attention to what I've been saying for the last 25 years, when I say almost everybody, the almost, the person that I can't teach this to, the person that can't improve their military judgment, is the person that already thinks they have good military judgment.

• 1:59:04Dave Berke?

  Says he knows it all, yep.

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  Is the person that thinks that they already have the wisdom. That that person, they're not going to get any better. In fact, they're going to get worse because they'll reinforce their ideas. So if you have an open mind, you can get way better at this stuff.

• 1:59:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21Jocko Willink?

  If you don't have an open mind, you won't get any better. Understanding the situation, the first requirement of a commander is to understand the situation. You would think that that was just so obvious.

• 1:59:32Dave Berke?

  So self-evident, yeah.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  That you wouldn't need to say it in a book. But how often am I dealing with a leader, military, civilian, another human being, just going through life? They don't even understand the situation that they're in. That's why we have to say this out loud in a book. The first requirement of commander is to understand the situation. The successful tactician studies the situation to develop in his mind a clear picture of what is happening, how it got that way, and how it might develop further. Considering the factors of mission, enemy, terrain, and weather, troops and support available. This is Met T.

• 2:00:05Jocko Willink?

  The commander must think through all actions, determine the desired result, and ascertain the means to achieve that result. Part of the commander's thinking should also include assuming the role of the enemy, considering what the enemy's best course of action may be and deciding how to defeat it. Thinking through these elements helps the commander develop increased situational awareness. So yes, study the situation. Study how it got that way. Study how it might further develop.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting when we work with companies because you get, well, the first thing you get is kind of where they're at. Like here's where we're at right now. And then you start getting filled in on, on how it got that way. And those are some interesting stories often. And then we're looking at how it could develop. Because one thing we know is if we develop leaders and we start to get on the path, it's going to develop in a great way. And if we don't do that, it's going to be problematic.

• 2:01:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Based on this understanding of the situation, the commander can begin to form a mental image of how the battle might be fought. Central to the commander's thinking must be the question in this situation, what efforts will be decisive?

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  The commander asks this one, this question not just once, but repeatedly as the battle progresses. The commander must also address the possible outcomes and the new situations that will result from those possibilities. As the situation changes, so will the solutions and the actions that derive from it.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  You always have to reassess what's going on.

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  For every situation, the leader must be able to decide which of the countless and often confusing pieces of information are important and reliable.

• 2:01:54Jocko Willink?

  The leader must determine what the enemy is trying to do and how to counter his efforts. The leader's skill is essentially one of pattern recognition. The ability, after seeing only a few pieces of the puzzle, to fill in the rest of the picture correctly. Pattern recognition is the ability to understand the true significance and dynamics of a situation with limited information. Pattern recognition is a key skill for success on the battlefield. Get those overlays out. Tactics requires leaders to make decisions. A leader must make decisions in a constantly changing environment of friction, uncertainty, and danger. Making effective decisions and acting on those decisions faster than the enemy is a crucial element of Marine Corps tactics. Making decisions faster.

• 2:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes there are, sometimes there may be time to analyze situations deliberately and consider multiple options. Comparing several options and selecting the best one is known as analytical decision making. When time allows a commander to apply analytical decision making, usually before an engagement or before a battle begins, the commander should make the most of it. Absolutely. Once engaged, however, the commander finds time is short and they need, and the need for speed is paramount. In some cases, speeding up the analytical decision process may be sufficient. However, in most cases, intuitive decision making is needed to generate and maintain tempo. Intuitive decision making relies on a commander's intuitive ability to recognize the key elements

• 2:03:21Jocko Willink?

  of a particular problem and arrive at the proper decision without having to compare multiple options. Intuition is not some mysterious reality, not some mysterious quality. Rather, it is a developed skill grounded firmly in experience and one that can be further developed through education and practice. It is not without some risk, however, and leaders should use the decision making style that works for them. Learn to detach, learn to take a step back, make the intuitive decision, make incremental decisions. You know, Brian Stan, when Brian Stan was on here, I'll have to go listen to it again.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  But one thing I noticed is he always, he was really into the tempo. And I paid attention to that. He said, you know, I wanted to keep the tempo. You know, certain people, they sort of, they sort of grasp onto a tenant and it makes really good sense to them. And when Stan was on, like I could see, oh yeah, the way he talked about maintaining that tempo, you know, he had a good instructor at that block of the basic school that really explained it well. And he said, okay, I get this. I can, if I can go, if I can keep that speed up, if I can keep that operational tempo up, I can overcome my enemy.

• 2:04:46Dave Berke?

  I love how they described the idea of being intuitive is not magic or mystery.

• 2:04:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:52Dave Berke?

  And people write that off like, oh, he's got, people that are naturally intuitive actually aren't naturally intuitive. They've cultivated and developed that through a ton of experience and the discipline to put themselves in those situations over and over and over again. And for those of us on the outside, it looks like it's just natural.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:10Dave Berke?

  But it's really a byproduct of all the times that they've done that. So it is, it is natural to them only because of what they've done to put themselves in that position.

• 2:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there's like pragmatic things that you can do to make yourself seem super intuitive. And I do them all the time. There, for instance, and I was just writing about this, I'll sit there and there'll be a group of my subordinates talking about whatever thing we got to decide on, and I'm not saying a damn word. And I'll listen and I'll get all this great information from all of them about all the different possibilities of things, the way things could go and the way things, the outcomes we could have and the resistance we could meet in these various areas. And I get done listening to all that for 28 minutes, and I haven't said anything. But guess what I've done is I've taken all those things and by being detached and by listening and, and by not having a preformed

• 2:05:59Jocko Willink?

  opinion and by letting my ego not drive my decision making, when I finally say, hey, here's the best way to go forward, it seems like, oh, he made that decision really easily. No, actually, it's, it's because I just listened. There's pragmatic things you can do that can make you seem more intuitive. An incremental decision is one of those things as well, because you can make an incremental decision very easily because there's less risk in it. So when you say, hey, listen, we just landed and the, the Germans, we haven't met any resistance, we're going forward. We're going to go forward three more miles. That seems like a really bold intuitive decision. But really, you haven't met any

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  resistance and it's pretty easy to make because you're not over committing. So, so you seem like this super cool, you're not saying, hey, we're going all the way to Rome. You're just saying, hey, we're just going to go three more miles. We made it three, we're going to double it. Let's go. And everyone thinks, damn, that's bold.

• 2:07:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:00Jocko Willink?

  But the reality is you haven't met any stern resistance. Cool. Let's rock and roll. Am I super intuitive? No, I'm just detached. I'm assessing and making a decision.

• 2:07:12Dave Berke?

  Or, you know, I find myself kind of laughing. I'm hearing you, you read it and I kind of chuckle to myself a little bit. There's the reason these seemingly totally simple and obvious statements need to be said. Like, you need to assess the situation and figure out how we got here.

• 2:07:30Dave Berke?

  That, it's so easy to listen to that, but in reality, it's really hard for people to do that. And the people that do that the worst are the ones that are most emotional about what's going on. They're the most inside. We, we talk about, at Echelon Front, when we talk with companies, we talk about detach when we're talking about prioritize and execute. And if I say prioritize and execute, the first thing that people jump to is, I gotta get the right resources and make sure I know what the right priorities are. That is true, but actually individually, what you need to do is you need to detach from what's going on and make sure that what seems to be a priority for you isn't a priority because you're so inside that and so emotional about that that you can't see that actually this thing changed. Step B took us to this and, and things are different now.

• 2:08:15Dave Berke?

  We have to shift our priorities. And it isn't just people, resources allocated to the right things. Those are true. It's, are you detached from the situation so you're actually doing that correctly? So you don't stay in one place too long or push too far forward or anything in between? And, sounds right to say, you need to detach and pay attention and look at what's going on around you. And we kind of laugh at that. It's so hard for some people to do, especially when it's your thing that you're living on the inside. And, and when you do that as a commander or do that as a leader in an organization, you can crush organizations by being so committed to the thing you're doing in one direction or another because you're simply just not detached. And when you can show people what detachment looks like and just pull them out a little bit and look around. I was at an FTX two weeks ago.

• 2:08:59Dave Berke?

  So we do these FTXs and they're, they can be very chaotic, very dynamic. There's things going on and more often than not, when you're leading your team in this FTX, this field training, you're getting slaughtered by the enemy. There's 15 of you, there's three of them, and they're destroying you because they'd see what's going on. And the leaders run around and they try to make decisions and I grabbed someone who was, who was dead. So we put some heat, sat them down, pulled them up and I sat them next to me and I took about 20 steps away from the action. I said, what do you see? Just tell me what you see. And they said, oh, I see a group over here running. I see someone getting cover. I see two enemy running behind that building. And they went on and said about 15 different things that they saw. And I said, you know what you see, actually? You see everything. You're just standing here looking around because you're totally detached.

• 2:09:41Dave Berke?

  And what do you think we should do? I said, oh, those people need to get out from behind that building and run over here. Like, that's what a good leader does. And when they can see that from the outside in, instead of the inside out, all this stuff becomes obvious. And we're listening, you know, leading, reading it and sort of laughing about it. But it's actually really hard to do when you're inside that.

• 2:09:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, now, that's the, that's the classic Seth Stone story I tell when he had his neck brace on during land warfare, and he wasn't allowed to participate. And he's sitting there watching his, his task unit get annihilated. And he says, you know, can I help them? And I said, well, hold on a minute. And then they're going to be annihilated anymore. And he says, can I help them? And I said, all right, go ahead and help them. And he gives them, you know, one quick immediate action drill. And they execute it and they're gone. And he says to me, man, it's so easy when you're way up here. And we were literally six inches above the task unit. But when you're, and then I told him, you know, when we were going through this training, it was like this for me every time. I could see everything because I was detached. I wasn't in the weeds. And that's gives you, gives

• 2:10:42Jocko Willink?

  you this incredible power and visibility. And it happens, doesn't, we're not only, here's the thing, we're not only talking about the battlefield or the training scenario, we're talking about any situation, we're talking about business. And yes, we're talking about life as well. Take a step back. I had a friend that was falling off the cliff with addiction, alcohol, alcohol addiction. And he was briefing me on another person that we knew that was falling off the cliff of drug addiction. And he's sitting there explaining this to me like, I can't believe you don't, he doesn't even see what's happening. It's so bad. And

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  he doesn't get it. He can't see how bad it is for himself. And I'm sitting there. And I was, I was going to the extreme. I was going, I know, I can't believe how hard, I can't believe he can't see that. And I was describing him.

• 2:11:37Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Because we can't detach. We get caught in relationships and jobs and scenarios that are bad because we can't detach. And we get emotional. So don't let it happen.

• 2:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Leaders with strong situational awareness and broad experience can act quickly because they have intuitive understanding of the situation, know what needs to be done and know what can be done. This insight has often been called "coup de balle", which is a French term, and we've talked about it on this podcast, which literally means a stroke of the eye, which means you take a quick glance at something and you can understand it. It's also been called tactical sense. Union Army Brigade General John Buford's approach to the Battle of Gettysburg offers a good example of understanding the battle so that it leads to a decision. Arriving at Gettysburg with a division of cavalry on the morning of June 30th, 1863, Buford saw Confederate forces approaching from the northwest.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  With the bulk of the Union forces still some miles away, Buford was able to conceptualize the coming battle in his mind. From his position on a hill outside of town, he's de facto detached, he could see that early seizure of the high ground west of Gettysburg was critical to giving the Army of the Potomac time to mass its forces. Occupation of this high ground would also preserve tactical advantage of the high ground to Buford's rear for the Union Army once they arrived on the battlefield. Buford also knew that if the Confederates were allowed to mass forces first around the high ground to the south and west, Lee would have the advantage over the arriving Union forces.

• 2:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Quickly spreading out, one brigade west of town along McPherson's Ridge, General Buford settled in to defend Gettysburg until the arrival of Union reinforcements. On July 1st, the following day, he held his ground against a division of Confederate infantry supported by artillery until General John Reynolds' 2nd Corps came up and reinforced the line. General Buford's ability to foresee the coming battle, take quick action in the disposition of his forces and hold the high ground until reinforcements was one of the decisive actions that defeated the Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Gettysburg. Buford's actions at Gettysburg demonstrated an exceptional ability to grasp the essence of a tactical situation through the skills of pattern recognition and intuitive decision-making.

• 2:13:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna say that when you get up on the high ground and you look around, you can see things that other people aren't gonna see and you can make really good decisions. Now, this is a physical example, but you can mentally do this as well and you have to. You have to mentally step back, detach, acting decisively. Our ability to understand the situation is useless if we're not prepared to act decisively. When the opportunity arrives, we must exploit it fully and aggressively, committing every ounce of combat power we can muster in pushing ourselves to the limits of exhaustion. The keys to this effort are identifying enemy critical vulnerabilities, shaping the operation area to our advantage, designating a main effort to focus our combat power,

• 2:14:40Jocko Willink?

  and acting in a bold and ruthless manner.

• 2:14:47Jocko Willink?

  Critical vulnerabilities. For battlefield success, it is not enough to generate superior combat power. We must focus that combat power. Hmm, interesting. We must concentrate our efforts on a critical vulnerability. That is a vulnerability which permits us to destroy some capability without which the enemy cannot function effectively.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Seeking the enemy's vulnerabilities means striking with our strength against his weakness, rather than his strength. And at a time when the enemy is not prepared. This is where we can often cause the greatest damage at the lowest cost to ourselves. In practical terms, this means avoiding his front, the frontal assault where his attention is focused, and striking his flanks and rear we did not, does not expect us.

• 2:15:34Jocko Willink?

  So yes, the frontal assault, it does exist and it can be used. Not the best option, very often not the best option. Just because a target is vulnerable does not however, mean that it's worth attacking. We must direct our resources and strike those capabilities that are critical to the enemy's ability to function, to defend, attack, or sustain himself, or to command his forces. We must focus our efforts on those critical vulnerabilities that will bend the enemy most, to our will most quickly. You know what that makes me think of? That makes me think... When I see leaders get focused on things that don't matter, that they're going to get critical about. So, you know, Dave, you're doing 10 things. Six, three of them are really

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  important for our organization. There's two of them that are at the bottom end that aren't really like a big impact at all. You're doing your top three pretty well. You're letting one of your bottom two just like doing it horribly. I might mention a little something about it just to make sure it doesn't go completely off the rails, but I've seen, I see leaders that they take all that focus and that focus on something that doesn't matter. They want to get mad about, you know, you should have done this or you should have done that. And I'm thinking, how are you really going to expend your leadership capital on that thing that barely even matters? You know, going back to the patches with me and Leif, you know, hey, I'm not going to expend a bunch of leadership capital on the fact that you are wearing these patches. You know what? I don't like it, but cool. Let's, let's

• 2:16:57Jocko Willink?

  move on. I, I, what I want you to do, Leif and Seth, I want you guys to plan and execute awesome missions. I want you to take the fight to the enemy. That, that's the top things I want you to do. Do I want you to dress professionally? Yes, I do. But that's pretty low on the totem pole, given where we are in this situation right now.

• 2:17:13Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And leaders will, will create this, this scenario by which, okay, if I, if I acquiesce on that one little thing, that's a weakness and they're going to see that I don't hold the line on that. And so it's going to infect everything else. And so they, they'll, they'll overdo that one thing because I hold, that's how I lead. I hold the line on everything. When in reality, the exact opposite will happen is, is they'll recognize that Jaco's actually a human being. Hey, and I'm not going to just completely gaffe off Jaco and ignore what he says. He's kind of, he's giving a little indication, hey, don't let this thing fall so off the rails that it then starts to affect everything else. But what actually is important is what we're focusing on. And the inflexibility we see leaders like, well, I'm going to hold the line on everything. Well, guess what? Not everything is the same

• 2:17:58Dave Berke?

  importance and not everything will have the same impact on the outcome. And what you need to focus on the most is the things that are most impactful, things that are most important.

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Patches. Patches. Patches on. Good job, Leif.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  At the, at the lower tactical level, this may mean using fire maneuver to take out machine gun position that is backbone of, that is the backbone of enemy defenses. It may mean using a gap in the enemy's field of fire that allows us to get into his rear, get to the rear of his position. It may mean exploiting the enemy's lack of air defenses by calling in close air support. It may mean taking advantage of an enemy's lack of mobility by rapidly overrunning a key position faster than he can respond. It may mean interdicting enemy resupply routes when his supplies are running short. It may mean exploiting a lack of long range weaponry by employing standoff tactics. When, whatever we determine the enemy's critical vulnerability to be, we must be prepared to rapidly take advantage of it.

• 2:18:59Jocko Willink?

  In the business world, that's, that's something you should always be paying attention to because we got our business and that's cool. We're going to do our thing, but what, where, what weaknesses do, does our competitor have? And are we ready to exploit those weaknesses? There is no formula for determining critical vulnerabilities. Each situation is different. Critical vulnerabilities will rarely be obvious. This is one of the things that make mastery of tactics so difficult and one reason that so few actions achieve a decisive outcome. Identifying critical vulnerabilities is an important prerequisite to achieving a decision.

• 2:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Shaping the operating area. Once we have developed an understanding of the situation and have determined enemy critical vulnerabilities to attack, we try to shape the operating area to our advantage. Shaping includes both lethal and non-lethal activities such as planning fires to fix the enemy, using acts of advance to facilitate movement, designating objectives to focus our combat power, or using deceptive measures to reinforce enemy expectations. I like that. Using deceptive measures to reinforce enemy expectations.

• 2:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Because they already have that idea. We're just going to reinforce it. Shaping activities can make the enemy vulnerable to attack and impede or divert his attempts to maneuver, facilitate the maneuver of friendly forces and otherwise dictate the time and place for decisive battle. Shaping forces the enemy to adopt courses of action favorable to us. We attempt to shape events in a way that allows us several options so that by the time for the moment, so that by the time the moment for decisive action arrives, we have not restricted ourselves to only one course of action.

• 2:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Through shaping, we gain the initiative, preserve momentum and control the tempo combat. So yeah, we have multiple things that we're going to do.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  And we'll pick that course of action when it develops.

• 2:21:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah, we haven't determined ahead of time which one we're going to use. Is it going to be air power artillery? We haven't actually made that decision yet, but we're going to do things that will reveal their vulnerability and then I'm going to apply whatever that is to crush them.

• 2:21:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, some people might be wondering in a day to day or in a business environment or in life, what is it? What are you talking about shaping operations? And this is a very clear translation of what this means. How you shape operations in the business world and in, and in your life. What shaping operations means is that you're outbuilding relationships with the other human beings that you're going to be working with. That's what it means. We build up alliances. We build up trust. We build up relationships. So that when the things start to unfold, we know who we can count on. We know where we stand.

• 2:21:54Dave Berke?

  And also recognizing they might be the one that delivers the most critical the most critical action. They might be the one that at the right time, at the most critical moment, do the thing we need them to do.

• 2:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 2:22:07Dave Berke?

  And if your plan is wait for that moment to start building that relationship, it's, it won't work. That's not how it works. You have to go back in time and you have to build that with the anticipation of not even knowing which one it's going to be at that time. But that relationship has to be available that you realize it's here. We need to do this now and they're on board.

• 2:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Main effort, the main effort is the central maneuver is a central maneuver warfare concept concentrating efforts on achieving objectives that lead to victory. Of all the actions going on within our command, we recognize one as the most critical to success at that moment, the unit assigned responsibility for accomplishing this key mission is designated as the main effort, the focal point upon which converges the combat power of the force. The main effort receives priority for support of any kind, it must be, so you gotta look at your life and say like, what's your main effort in your life, right? And you gotta make sacrifices in other areas that aren't as important in that particular time. And they're gonna talk about this too, your main effort can change, like it can, it can adapt.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Hey, my main effort right now, I'm focusing on this thing, oh, that changed. You know, I was finishing a book. I was finishing a book. And guess what? That was my main effort for like, you know, actually, it was the main effort when I was editing. So you get edits back from your, from your editor, right? And they've got little ideas. There's a timeframe that that's doing. So I've got, you know, whatever, 80,000 word book. It's, when I'm writing the book, it's not the main effort. Because it's just part of what I'm doing. It's an hour a day, it's a thousand words a day, boom, I look up in three months and I've got 80,000 words, good, okay, it wasn't the main effort. Then all of a sudden, I get back my edits from my editor.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  And now I've got a, and that's due in six days. That becomes my main effort, 100%. Cause I can't, I don't have time, it's gonna take like three, four hours a day to do the, to do those edits. So it has to be the main effort. So your main effort can change in your life. But what you do is you sacrifice other things, like during that time period, I was kind of lucky because I hurt my knee beautifully, hurt my knee, couldn't train jiu-jitsu, I was like, cool. There's that editing needs to get done, did it. So your, your main effort can, can change and adapt and the same thing happens on the battlefield.

• 2:24:27Jocko Willink?

  Faced with a decision, we ask ourselves, how can I best support the main effort? So the main effort receives priority for support of any kind. It must be clear to all of the units in the command that they must support that unit in the accomplishment of the mission. The main effort becomes a harmonizing force for a subordinate's initiative. Faced with a decision, we ask ourselves, how can I best support the main effort? And if you want to be a good, if you want to create a good reputation for yourself as a, as a leader and as a human being, when you're not the main effort, instead of complaining and worried that you don't have the spotlight, what you do is you look at the person that's the supporting effort, you say, how can I help you win?

• 2:25:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah. A good leader says, when they recognize somebody else is the main effort, is what can I do to help? And all the time we see it where, when you're not the main effort, you know what the bad leaders do? They complain that they're not the main effort.

• 2:25:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:25:19Dave Berke?

  And they argue and they fight and they stamp their foot to say, I should be the main effort.

• 2:25:23Jocko Willink?

  And even worse, they undermine the main effort because they want to see the main effort fail. Dave shouldn't have had this. I'm going to undermine Dave, watch him fail, and then I'll get the leg up.

• 2:25:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah. How does that help you in the long run? Oh, wait, it doesn't.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right, because you're playing the short game. Some actions may support the main effort indirectly. For example, commander may use other forces to deceive the enemy as to the location of the main effort. Marine forces used this concept extensively in conducting a series of combined arms raids prior to the ground offensive in Operation Desert Storm. The raids were to confuse the Iraqis as to the true position and intention of allied forces. The raid force appeared in the middle of the night and fired from positions the enemy had every right to believe were unoccupied. Use of a main effort implies the use of economy of force. This term does not mean that we use as little force as we think we can get away with.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Rather, it means that we must not fail to make effective use of all the assets available to us. Forces not in a position to directly support the main effort should be used to indirectly support it. Such forces might be used to distract the enemy or tie down enemy forces that might otherwise reinforce the threatened point. Uncommitted forces can be used in this effort by maneuvering them in feints and demonstrations that keep the enemy off balance.

• 2:26:44Jocko Willink?

  And this is something that I think you mentioned earlier. It's like, oh, yeah, like, the person that's not the main effort has a huge impact on what's happening.

• 2:26:53Jocko Willink?

  So just because you're not the main effort doesn't mean you shouldn't do everything in your power to support the main effort. While a commander always designates a main effort, it may shift during the course of battle as events unfold because events and the enemy are unpredictable. Few battles flow exactly as the commander has planned. Isn't that funny? Few battles flow exactly as the commander's planned. As a result, the commander must make adjustments.

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  How often do I see a commander, a leader, have their plan in their head and that's what they're sticking to?

• 2:27:25Dave Berke?

  Yeah, we see it all the time. I'm sticking to the plan.

• 2:27:28Jocko Willink?

  And yet, few battles flow exactly as the commander. But it's okay.

• 2:27:33Dave Berke?

  It's by definition saying you should not stick with your plan because it's going to change.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:27:41Jocko Willink?

  One way is by redesignating the main effort. For example, if company A is designated as the main effort but runs into heavy enemy resistance while adjacent company B makes a breakthrough that exploits a critical vulnerability, the battalion commander may designate company B as the main effort. This new designation of company B as a main effort must not, however, be merely nominal. It means that the combat power which was supporting company A now shifts to company B.

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Identifying the main effort is the principal and most important answer to the question, how do we achieve a decision?

• 2:28:17Jocko Willink?

  Boldness and ruthlessness. You want to know how you achieve a decision? Here's how you do it. Forcing a successful decision requires the commander to be bold and ruthless. Boldness refers to daring and aggressiveness in behavior. It is one of the basic requirements for achieving clear-cut outcomes. In order to try for victory, must dare to try for victory. We must have a desire to win big, even if we realize that in many situations, the conditions for victory may not yet be present. Ruthlessness refers to pursuing the established goal mercilessly and single-mindedly. This doubly important, this is doubly important once we gain an advantage. Once we have an advantage, we should exploit it to the fullest.

• 2:29:01Jocko Willink?

  We should not ease up, but instead increase the pressure. Victory in combat is really a product of the initial plan, but rather of ruthlessly exploiting any advantage, no matter how small, until it succeeds.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's where a lot of people want to stop listening. Just that, that, because that sounds so fired up that they think, cool. Bold and ruthless, that's how I'm gonna roll from now on. And then we get into the dichotomy. Bold and ruthless, boldness and ruthlessness must be accompanied by strong leadership and tempered by sound judgment. Without these qualities, boldness can become recklessness and ruthlessness can be distorted into cruelty.

• 2:29:53Jocko Willink?

  So, yes, there is a dichotomy in every aspect of leadership. And if you go too far in one direction or the other, you will fall apart and fail.

• 2:30:05Jocko Willink?

  Can you have, can you have too much sound judgment? Oh, yes, you can. You can sit there and wait to make the perfect judgment. That, that, that's, that's what's got to be balanced.

• 2:30:18Jocko Willink?

  So be careful. Conclusion. As marine leaders, whether of fire teams or of a marine expeditionary force, we are responsible for achieving success. As you pointed out earlier, what are you going to get graded on? How, if you're successful, that's how we're grading you. We don't care how you did it. In combat, the success we seek is victory, not merely a partial or marginal outcome that forestalls the final reckoning, but a victory that settles the issue in our favor. To be victorious, we must work ceaselessly in peacetime to develop in ourselves a talent for military judgment. The ability to understand a situation and act decisively.

• 2:31:02Jocko Willink?

  Military judgment results from the wisdom gained from experience. It allows us to identify patterns of activity and to concentrate our efforts against a critical vulnerability that will bend the enemy to our will. We must sharpen our ability to make decisions intuitively based on our understanding of the situation.

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  Boom. So we just did two chapters. I thought we were going to get through three, but we didn't.

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  So we'll hit the other. What is there? Eight, nine? No, there's eight chapters. There's eight chapters in this book. We got through two. We'll do the next two on the next one. All kinds of things that sort of lessons learned inside this. And, and you know, we covered that part that was about stacking. The deck in your favor, a skilled commander seeks victory from the situation. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to stack the deck in our favor, trying to be ready, trying to be prepared.

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Not just for combat, obviously, but for life, for business, for family. Any recommendations from you, Dave?

• 2:32:31Dave Berke?

  I do have some recommendations on being prepared. And yeah, combat for sure, business for sure, and in life for sure. Origin, USA. Origin, Maine, up in Farmington.

• 2:32:53Jocko Willink?

  So. You started jujitsu how long ago?

• 2:32:58Dave Berke?

  Just over a year ago.

• 2:32:59Jocko Willink?

  Really? It's only been a year?

• 2:33:01Dave Berke?

  Yeah, well, probably a year and four months, I guess.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:33:04Dave Berke?

  So not maybe about two months before the Origin camp last year.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:33:10Dave Berke?

  Which is coming up next month.

• 2:33:12Jocko Willink?

  How often do you overlay what you see in jujitsu over everything else that you're doing in your life?

• 2:33:19Dave Berke?

  All the time. Now, I'm, I'm, I'm always a little cautious about talking about it because.

• 2:33:26Jocko Willink?

  You're inexperienced.

• 2:33:26Dave Berke?

  Because I'm inexperienced. But if you're asking me how often I think about it and how often I make the connection to it, it's, and I say all the time, I mean it all the time. And now there's another layer to that. So I got my kids started on jujitsu about probably about six months ago. We had a little, we moved cross country, there's a little gap in there, but I got them set up pretty quickly here. And last week they actually did a week-long jujitsu camp.

• 2:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:33:52Dave Berke?

  Where I'm actually making my money now is how much better I am at helping my kids starting to figure things out because they're doing the jujitsu and I'm actually starting to make connections for them about their lives and look, they don't see it all. They don't, but the impact of that on my life goes well beyond my personal life right now. It's my kids and how impactful that is and added a long list of regret in my life. If I had started when I, when I was six years old like my son, how different my life would be, but it is, it is awesome, man. It's awesome.

• 2:34:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's good to be able to discuss things and be able to explain things. You have this incredible metaphor for everything.

• 2:34:40Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  If you get that jujitsu on.

• 2:34:42Dave Berke?

  I can't give my kids combat metaphors, but I can give them jujitsu metaphors that they actually understand. And I'm amazed at how much more they understand than I thought because oh, they're young. They understand things.

• 2:34:57Jocko Willink?

  They understand things. And you know, the other thing is you can explain things to them that they might understand. They don't, they don't understand it. They understand it subconsciously. And when you make it conscious for them and they go, oh, oh, I see. Oh, so I shouldn't just try and stay in this position. I should let that person move a little bit and look for an opening. Oh, okay. Kind of like when mom's telling me to do something. I shouldn't just get, just trying to hold position. I should actually maneuver a little bit. Okay, I get it. I get it. Oh, I should, I should try and get in a good position. Hmm. Yeah. If you start jujitsu, which you absolutely should, go to Origin Maine. You're gonna need a gi. Go to Origin Maine. Get a gi for jujitsu. Get a rash guard for jujitsu.

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  Get workout clothes, t-shirts. Get some jeans. We have Origin jeans now and.

• 2:35:51Jocko Willink?

  They're super, they're just super comfortable and super kick ass. So get yourself some of that. We have supplements. Joint Warfare. I just got an email yesterday from some, somebody that said, my mom wanted me to send you an email to say thank you because she's 71 years old and she's feeling awesome. And I was like, hey, cool. Grandma's in the game. So Joint Warfare, Krill Oil, Discipline, Discipline Go. I saw you take some Discipline Go prior to us starting this podcast.

• 2:36:29Dave Berke?

  Discipline Go. I, I might have developed a small addiction to Discipline and Discipline Go. Uh, it's honestly the first supplement that I've taken where I'm like, eh, we'll see that, that it, it just works. This, it works. And, uh, it's, I, you, so I travel a lot. I don't get a ton of sleep. You know, the lifestyle we live right now, we're, we're, we're moving pretty aggressively. And I have to be in the game. I, I can't, I, I can't show up and be like, hey, I'd love to give you my best today, but I'm tired. That's not part of the deal. And, um, you know, you can go with the frontal assault power through method, or you can actually take something that's going to help you out. This, this stuff is legit, man. It is legit.

• 2:37:12Dave Berke?

  And yeah, I took it before this because you know what? I wanted to be in the game.

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  And how much on the milk train is the Burke family at this point?

• 2:37:22Dave Berke?

  So here's another thing.

• 2:37:23Jocko Willink?

  I went to your house and like opened up a cupboard and I was like, oh, this dude's got a problem.

• 2:37:27Dave Berke?

  So here's the thing, man, is every time I think I'm on the train, I'm like, man, I'm so on the train. And I'm like, oh, and then the mint, I'm like so on the mint and then the peanut butter. It actually took the strawberry milk to make me realize what it really means to be on the milk train. Because I, you know, I, I keep a little low profile, you know, uh, echoes. I'm not the key spokesperson for, for milk. Bro, when we got strawberry milk, that is a whole nother level, man. Um, and I was, you know, I did peanut butter and like, ah, I kind of went back to, I have not gotten off the strawberry milk train yet. It is still just, it's, it's so good. And everybody in the house, nobody wants the other stuff right now. And I was, you know, I go back to this stuff because it's, it's good. I like, I really like the other stuff.

• 2:38:13Dave Berke?

  But strawberry right now is still at the top of the list and it hasn't moved for a while.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I finally got off the strawberry train because you know, because I got it before everyone else.

• 2:38:22Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  And then I was just so deep into it and plus I was I was on the Warrior Kid strawberry.

• 2:38:28Dave Berke?

  That's where it started.

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  So I was already on that. So yeah, maybe like a week ago, I was having a little little lunchtime hitter. And I and I had some peanut butter. So anyways, hey, if you want to get some extra protein in your life, check out the milk. Any of those flavors are really delicious. And we got Warrior Kid milk too, which is awesome for your kids. It's actually crazy that no one made it. It's actually crazy that no one made Warrior Kid milk before we did. Because here, oh, you want your kids to drink poison? That sounds like a good plan.

• 2:39:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:05Jocko Willink?

  No one's feeding their kid poison, except for everyone that's feeding their kid chocolate milk filled with sugar. No one thought of it. Cool. I did. Well, we'll just go with Warrior Kid milk. It tastes awesome. Your kids are gonna love it. And you got Jaco White Tea too. You can either get the dry tea bags or you can get it in a can. And you can crack that open. And by the way, right now, we're drinking actually at this time, the or I'm drinking the the Jaco Discipline Go in a can. And it's.

• 2:39:35Dave Berke?

  So here's the thing, same thing. If you are a parent and you know that milk exists, you should not buy anything else because it's not good for your kids. It's not. I got the early sample of the Go in a can. Got to try that a couple about a month ago.

• 2:39:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:51Dave Berke?

  If you, when this happens and you drink it, there is no reason to ever buy a carbonated beverage of any other type again, ever. You should not, don't, the 7-Up, you should never buy 7-Up ever again.

• 2:40:03Jocko Willink?

  No, you won't. You won't buy 7-Up. You won't buy Red Bull. You won't buy Coke. No, you'll just buy this because it's actually good for you and it tastes awesome, blah, blah, blah. All right, cool. So that's that. And also we do have a store that's called Jaco Store that. is jocklestore.com and then we got rash guards and t-shirts and hats and and hoodies.

• 2:40:25Dave Berke?

  You got some women's gear too. By the way, my wife, every article of clothing she now owns has the origin logo on it like everyone. And now that we're out in the West Coast, the winter gear, winter gear here is a hoodie.

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:40:37Dave Berke?

  That's it. And the women's hoodies are legit.

• 2:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Lightweight hoodie or?

• 2:40:40Dave Berke?

  We are still just regular hoodies, no lightweight hoodies yet. Whitney is still a little, she doesn't do lightweight. And so she's cold, she puts on the hoodie. I'm a lightweight guy now. I got, I got both hoodies. I transitioned.

• 2:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Like the medium weight or the lightweight one?

• 2:40:53Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 2:40:53Jocko Willink?

  Which you were all Echo put you on the spot.

• 2:40:56Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:57Jocko Willink?

  Bro, how do you like that right in front of me?

• 2:40:59Dave Berke?

  He did.

• 2:40:59Jocko Willink?

  Because he wants to.

• 2:41:00Dave Berke?

  He was a valid, he was looking for some validation. Yeah, he did.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles. So yeah, you can get all that stuff. You can support the podcast at jocklestore.com represent. What does Echo say? Represent while being on the path. That's what he says. He says it in like a um, sort of a really super dramatic way. If you want to represent. Sometimes Echo takes long pauses like I do, but there's no sensibility to him. He'll just say, if you want to represent while,

• 2:41:33Jocko Willink?

  you're on the path. But hey, that's my brother Echo Charles.

• 2:41:37Dave Berke?

  Hey, man.

• 2:41:38Jocko Willink?

  Hey, um, we got this podcast, subscribe to it.

• 2:41:42Jocko Willink?

  It's wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Leave reviews. Warrior Kid Podcast, Dave.

• 2:41:48Dave Berke?

  Dude, three more just came out a couple of weeks ago. Burnt. My kids were so fired up because I had episode 14 on repeat in the car because they will listen, literally listen to those Warrior Podcasts over and over again, even if they've heard them. And we just got through three new ones in the last week and they were fired up.

• 2:42:05Jocko Willink?

  The stories from Uncle Jake.

• 2:42:09Dave Berke?

  So good. The one we just did it just today was the kid had the car and the two other kids wanted that radio controlled car, but it was expensive. And there's two paths down to getting that car. One, which was a little discipline with your money. Save your money. Save a little bit here, a little bit there. And at the end, you know what you get? You get the thing that you want. And this other kid, and you use an example of ice cream on Fridays at school for a dollar. That literally is exactly what my kids get Friday.

• 2:42:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 2:42:39Dave Berke?

  Yes. And they saw that. Little delayed gratification.

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:44Dave Berke?

  Kids, kids, kids understand it, man. I know they're young, but they, these stories, they make sense to them. They internalize it. They understand that they're not too young to figure out these life lessons.

• 2:42:53Jocko Willink?

  The classic parables of life that every kid you just wish. And I think they get so ingrained with the kids when they hear these stories. They're so relatable. And they go, oh, yeah. It's like, it's like embedded in them now. They truly understand that you have to delay gratification sometimes. For example, they truly understand that you have to make the right decisions. They truly understand that the world doesn't center around them. They truly understand that you have to work. It embeds in their brains. So check out that Warrior Kid. Warrior Kid podcast. If you want to help out a Warrior Kid, you can go to irishoaksranch.com. And Aiden, who's a Warrior Kid, he's just working hard, running

• 2:43:35Jocko Willink?

  a business at the age of 13. He's making soap with goat milk. You can get that soap so you can stay clean. YouTube channel where Echo makes legit videos in his opinion. Other people have that opinion as well.

• 2:43:53Dave Berke?

  I do.

• 2:43:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you do?

• 2:43:55Dave Berke?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're an Echo Charles?

• 2:43:56Dave Berke?

  Those videos are legit.

• 2:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Supporter.

• 2:43:58Dave Berke?

  Big time.

• 2:43:59Jocko Willink?

  Do you think Echo goes overboard from time to time?

• 2:44:01Dave Berke?

  Yes, I do. I absolutely do.

• 2:44:03Jocko Willink?

  Does he get out of balance?

• 2:44:04Dave Berke?

  Every now and then.

• 2:44:05Jocko Willink?

  How many explosions can there be? You know, Jaco Talk?

• 2:44:10Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:11Jocko Willink?

  Where you say, okay, that was a bit much. Nine is over the limit.

• 2:44:17Jocko Willink?

  So there's that, there's, yeah, if you subscribe to the YouTube channel, then you'll see them pop up and you can watch them and you could, there's some of them are smaller. So you don't have to listen to a three hour podcast, which not everyone has time to do. Understood psychological warfare. It's got little short excerpts, not even excerpts, they're little short statements from me. If you've got a little weakness that you're trying to overcome, you can go to iTunes, Google Play, MP3, you can get those.

• 2:44:48Jocko Willink?

  And press play when you're about to take a, take a hit, go down the wrong path.

• 2:44:53Dave Berke?

  Yeah, take a step off the path.

• 2:44:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:55Dave Berke?

  Press play, stay on the path.

• 2:44:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one. If you want a visual representation, you can go to flipsidecanvas.com. My brother Dakota Meyer, he's running this business. He's making art for your wall, high quality that say all kinds of good stuff on them. Things like good, things like discipline equals freedom. So check it out, flipsidecanvas.com. You got on it. Who's making all kinds of good stuff? Check out there, go to onit.com/jaco and check out some of their various equipment. If you want plain equipment, you can get it there. If you are more like Echo Charles and you want to have little artistic things and you can get that as well.

• 2:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Got some books.

• 2:45:45Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you got another thing that's on repeat in my house are the Warrior Kid books. So you have many knows there's, there's three of them out there, Where the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission Warrior Kid three is out there where there's a will. That book has been read repeatedly. I get to the end, we go back to the beginning. Every now and then it'll be a detour back to one of the other books, one or two, but right now three is on repeat and two of the three kids. Those books are, are legit and even Mikey and the Dragons, even that book, even though it's for younger kids, another book that my kids love, not just because they can read it themselves, but because they actually understand the message of the story. It's so legit, those books, uh, those books are awesome and those books are a must, not just for the kids, but for the parents reading them, man.

• 2:46:32Jocko Willink?

  We got the, uh, the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. If you want to check that out. It's one, it's, it's a book that people take pictures of the book. Like they take pictures of the book.

• 2:46:44Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:46Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, let me tell you a little something about this book. I'll tell you, you know, have you ever heard me talk smack about my publisher before?

• 2:46:53Dave Berke?

  Your current publisher?

• 2:46:54Jocko Willink?

  My current publisher, yeah.

• 2:46:55Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:55Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, yeah. So occasionally I do that. Here's one example of me doing that. So inside, when you open it up, they give the, uh, they give the credit to the design, cover design, and they get like somebody that works there. And I'm sure they, they did, they hooked it up, but like, I sent him this picture and said, okay, this is what it's gonna look like.

• 2:47:19Jocko Willink?

  So it's, uh, but it, they did do a great job with it and it came out solid. It has black pages. They have to dye the edges black. It's a black book. It's called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. The, the publisher told me it was the biggest risk he ever took with publishing a book.

• 2:47:38Dave Berke?

  Really?

• 2:47:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He said, he said, I, I said, is this the riskiest book you've ever cooked? He goes, oh my God, not even close. Nothing's even close. Cause there's no pre-existing book, anything like that. So you're doing something completely outside uncharted territory.

• 2:47:54Dave Berke?

  I, I hope it worked out for him.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  It worked out well for him. It worked out well. It's actually worked out awesome and I appreciate everyone checking that out. It's a book that, you know what? You know what? You see the big spike in sales? Is toward graduation time. People get it for, oh, everyone's graduating school. Oh, here you go. Here's, here's what you should do. Now that you're done with high school, get on the path. So that's a, the Freedom, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. The audio version of that is not on Audible. It's on MP3. So iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play, whatever. And then Extreme Ownership.

• 2:48:25Dave Berke?

  Do the beginning, man. Uh, a lot of folks have read it, I know. Um, so here's the thing about Extreme Ownership. Has to be read. Also, good for younger kids. I, I actually read part of that stuff to my kids. They get it. But it's not, it's not everything. That and dichotomy together are, are, they have, they go together. You have to read them both. Uh, they're, they're critical and it explains how actually even with the lessons in that first one, you can go too far. On any of those principles, you can go too far. Uh, you gotta bring dichotomy into that understanding of Extreme Ownership.

• 2:48:57Jocko Willink?

  Leif was telling me maybe like a year ago. He goes, you know, I was just rereading Extreme Ownership. He goes, I've been like trying to figure, he's, he's like, I was trying to figure out a way to say something. And then I read it and I was like, it's, it's in there. Like the actual answer is in there. He's like, I was trying to recreate a way or craft a way to say something. He's like, man, I forgot that I even wrote this section or whatever. So yeah, check that out. And what about Echelon Front?

• 2:49:23Dave Berke?

  Echelon Front.

• 2:49:26Dave Berke?

  The Good Deal Dave story continues because I am, I'm part of that team now. The, the lessons, all those things we just talked about, uh, not just in this podcast, but in those books. Jago and Leif actually put together this company that I'm a part of. That takes all those leadership principles and we help companies solve problems. Every problem is solved through leadership, everyone. And I'm part of a team that is not just carrying just a good message, but a message that can actually impact everybody's life, business, personal, every aspect of it. Uh, obviously you and Leif putting this together, came aboard with JP, uh, Flynn Cochran, Mike Sorelli, Mike Biama, Jason Gardner. The team is growing, man. I'm so stoked to be on this team with those guys, man. It is, it is legit.

• 2:50:11Jocko Willink?

  How about EF Online?

• 2:50:13Dave Berke?

  EF Online has turned out to be even more important of a resource than I thought. Cause one of the hardest things we have to, one of the hardest challenges we have is when we leave a company is we want to stay as connected to them as we can. And look, you're not there every day.

• 2:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you mean it's not like a Rocky movie and we just get all pumped up?

• 2:50:29Dave Berke?

  So that amazingly sometimes.

• 2:50:31Jocko Willink?

  It takes more training than just, just, just a Rocky movie?

• 2:50:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah, what it takes is reps, hundreds and thousands of reps. And what EF Online lets people do is get reps, rep after rep after rep. And that resource has proven, I knew it was going to be important. I didn't realize how important it was going to be, not just to reach folks that can't spend time with us, but even once they spend time with us, what they need to do to reinforce the things that we're talking about. EF Online is, works in both directions. If we're not working with you, no factor, it's there. And if we are working with you, they are realizing how important that is to, to stay connected to you, man. It's, it's legit.

• 2:51:06Jocko Willink?

  And then the muster.

• 2:51:10Jocko Willink?

  I like listening to you talk about this stuff. What about the muster?

• 2:51:14Dave Berke?

  Muster. I've probably said the word legit too many times, but I'm going to say it again. As a, as a leadership conference, there's nothing like it. You, you have said on every single podcast, the muster is going to sell out. And yet there are still people that towards the end of signing up and we put, ask if they can go, not only did the last one sell out, we got Denver coming up in September. It's, it's almost sold out in September. And we're actually looking. So we've got muster in September, uh, coming up in, in Denver on September 19th, 20th. We also have Sydney, December 4th and 5th. Ask me how close we are to selling out Sydney.

• 2:51:55Jocko Willink?

  Too close.

• 2:51:56Dave Berke?

  We're going to sell out Sydney in our first overseas muster in December 4th and 5th. Uh, these events, dude, the, these are, these are the things that put in, but these are the things that make the things we talk about. They make them real. They make them so real. You can take back from those two days and have so much to go do for yourself to make your life and your company better. Uh, there is not a better way to truly understand what it is that we're teaching

• 2:52:22Dave Berke?

  than the muster. It is legit from beginning to end, and it has made huge impact on folks' lives. I can't tell you how many emails I get. I get, God only knows what you're getting of what the muster meant to their life, to their, to what it did for their life. They're all, the next one coming up in Denver, uh, go while you still can.

• 2:52:40Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be close. And then there's EF Overwatch, which is where we're taking proven leaders from special operations and from combat aviation, and we are placing them into civilian companies that need leadership. These guys are tested. They are proven. They've been in charge. They've led people. They've been under stress and pressure and now they're looking for their next career. Why not have their next career? Be with you, taking the principles that we talk about all the time and implementing them into your organization.

• 2:53:18Jocko Willink?

  efoverwatch.com if you want to get involved with that and if you want to discuss any of these topics further you can actually find us on the interwebs on Twitter on Instagram and on Dine Fazin Wukin Dave is at David R Burke B E R K E and I am at Jocko Willink Dave any closing thoughts?

• 2:53:41Dave Berke?

  My closing thoughts is that I'm so stoked that I'm here right now here on the west coast to get to be a part of this man, thank you.

• 2:53:48Jocko Willink?

  Check and to all you folks out there in uniform that are executing the tactics that we've been talking about today in order to keep our country free, thank you and to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all first responders. You know, I've heard a statement that when you hear an ambulance or you hear a fire, it's a reminder to you that you know, you're someone's having a worse day than you. And that's certainly true, but let me take it one step further because I actually don't think that when I hear that siren, I think about the people that are responding, those

• 2:54:29Jocko Willink?

  firefighters, those paramedics, those police, and they're going to put themselves in harm's way. That's what I think about when I hear those sirens. So for those of you that do those jobs for a living, thank you for keeping our homeland safe and to everyone else out there. You gotta remember we're at war and you were at war and maybe not a war in the classic sense of the word that you're out there with a weapon and you're fighting against a uniformed enemy. But make no mistake, life, and I know this might sound harsh, but life is war. It's a war against time. It's a war against weakness. It's a war against ego.

• 2:55:14Jocko Willink?

  It's a war against the most base part of you as a human being.

• 2:55:24Jocko Willink?

  So as the Marine Corps doctrine says, actively and aggressively seek it out. And when the opportunity arrives, level every ounce of power you can muster,

• 2:55:37Jocko Willink?

  pushing beyond the limits of exhaustion to achieve total victory.

• 2:55:47Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Jaco and Dave out.