287: Be Sure You Can See The Pathways To Victory... Then Start.

0:00:00 - Opening / "Strategy" and the indirect approach. 1:29: How to stay on THE PATH. 1:47:38 - 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 287 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And joining us again is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So, listen, if you've been tracking, we have been talking about B. H. Liddell Hart. We've been talking about his strategy of the indirect approach. We've been covering his book, The Strategy of Indirect Approach. Then we rolled into his book, which is just called Strategy. This stuff is... It is just... It's so important to wrap your head around this stuff. It's... A lot of it is counterintuitive when you hear it. It's counterintuitive when you hear it.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  It's sometimes even more counterintuitive when you try and do it. And if you understand it and you do it and you execute it, it is a game changer in the way you execute, and it's also a game changer in the way you think. So if you haven't yet listened to 285 and 286 to learn a little bit about B. H. Liddell Hart, who he is, you know, a veteran, a soldier, a British soldier, World War I, wounded multiple times, sent back from the front multiple times, sent back to the front multiple times, fought

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  in the Battle of Somme, I mean, just almost his whole battalion wiped out, gravely wounded with gas... He was gassed. I mean, been to hell and back, quite literally. And there's not too many people we can talk about, obviously, that fought in the Battle of Somme. And on the last podcast, I was talking about the fact that he, you know, battle... You know, we throw the words "battle-tested" around, like, oh, it's battle-tested. How about battle-tested in what's actually the worst battle ever?

• 1:55Jocko Willink?

  That's where he kind of started to think about the strategy and tactics that were being used. This is what sort of, when he talks about the indirect approach, is the antithesis to what World War I was. So if you haven't yet, go back and listen to 285 and 286, and then join us right now with 287. Dave, any intro remarks?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  No, man.

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  You were writing down that madly over there.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Thinking about the last podcast that we did and just where he's coming from. And I'm actually super stoked to get to these concluding, these, the end of this section, or this, this, this trilogy. Because I was saying this last time, I think, this is all new. Like, I get to hear this in real time. And the sort of the chronology of your very first introduction from 285 was like, hey, a little bit of the background of heart. But I didn't really, it didn't really sink in as you were saying it of what you just said, like, what he went through. And you said it left a mark on him. But I don't, I did not, I did not appreciate

• 3:10Speaker 01

  the depth of that mark, and what it compelled him to do, to try to course correct this massive, this, this massive mistake that, that he had to endure and witness. So I have, I think I've been able to understand what he's been saying a lot better as you've been reading it, thinking about where he came from.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  You know what I should have done is, I should have gone, well, first of all, I should have given a little bit more detail there. But I also should have gone back. There's so many references to B H Liddell Hart in so many manuals, it's ridiculous. And I should have pulled some of those up and said, oh, when we did this Marine Corps manual, when I did this Army manual, here's where this come from, here's the roots of this statement. Because they, they cite, they cite him. So I guess part of it is, there's some other podcasts that I have in the hopper in my mind that I want to do, that I really can't do without people understanding this idea of the strategy of the indirect approach. I just can't, I can't go forward. It's like I had to do this. So.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  I will go back, I'm sure, and do some more historical context around his life and what he went through. But I also, man, I wanted to get this stuff out there. You know, it's like a prioritize and execute drill, to be quite frank with you. I would, I wanted to get people to understand this and, and see how beneficial it can be for their thought process. Because it's been so beneficial for my, for the last 30 years of my life, uh, maybe 20, 25 years of my life, where I realized, wait a second. Going direct isn't always the best thing. In fact, the more I figured that out, the more I was like, oh, going direct is usually not the best thing.

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  Quite often, the indirect approach is correct. It's the correct thing in jujitsu. It's the correct thing in battlefield. It's a correct thing as a leader. It's a correct thing interacting with other human beings. So that's kind of where we are, how we got here. You know, a lot, a lot, that's the weird thing about, uh, having a podcast and doing things via podcast is

• 5:29Jocko Willink?

  part of the benefit is of it is the immediacy of it, right? Like, there's not, you know, if you write a book, if I was to write a book about this stuff, it would take three years. No, two years. Like if I just was, gave up everything else and said, I'm gonna write a book about this, it would take two years to do. To get it, to get it written, to get it published, to get it, or sort of get it written, edited. Like, there's so much lag time. To do a podcast, it's like, cool. You know what? Here's a book. I've had this book for a long time. I actually gave you my extra copy of this book. So

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  but to be able to say, you know what? I want to get this done. Now's the time. Boom. You can go and execute it. And it's, and what you sacrifice is you sacrifice some perfection, right? You sacrifice some perfection because had I sat there and thought about the best way to do this, maybe I would've said, you know what? I need a, I need an entire episode about the Battle of Somme. I need an entire episode about what gassing does to you. I need to do an episode about his battalion with the Yorkshire Light Regiment, right? And talk about exactly who was in there. There's a whole bunch of different things I could have done. And, and it's not, and that's, that would have made this better. And that's one of the, one of the compromises that you make in moving forward and executing like,

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  you know what, I'm looking back now hindsight, 2020, cool, should have done that, didn't do it, we'll do it in the future. It's the way it goes.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even for me, as I, as I contemplate what I'm trying to say, you talk about you sacrifice the perfection of your sacrifice, even the way I'm trying to say what I'm thinking is not exactly right. It's not how I would say it if I spent time to sit down with a pen and paper and write out what I'm thinking or what I'm thinking about, or the references I'm making in my head. But to be able to sort of reflect in real time as you're reading this, as inaccurate or not as eloquent as I'd like it to be, it's a really cool exercise as a listener of leadership to think about hearing what he's saying, contemplating the frame of reference he had, and how it applies to our world, which is,

• 7:41Speaker 01

  you don't need to be in World War I to recognize how absolutely directly affected you can be by thinking about what he's saying and applying it to your day to day life and how you interact with other people, which is kind of crazy to think about it. But it's also true. And I guess if there's a problem with any of this, if there's a problem with any of the things that you're saying is that there's nothing sexy about the indirect approach. It doesn't like, it doesn't play well. Like, you're not, I'm gonna get up and give a speech about the indirect approach. Men, we're gonna subordinate our egos today. Like, it doesn't, the, the language doesn't work. It doesn't, it doesn't give you that sad, that immediate satisfaction that people want with

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Clausewitzian total war. But what's, what's crazy is how obvious is, how obvious it is to think about how it helps you achieve the ultimate objective, which is winning the war. And how much more satisfying that is than just winning a battle, or than, than losing the war. So for, for whatever it lacks in, in the excitement of the language of, we're gonna destroy every single aspect of our enemy down to the ground.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  This actually is the tool that you need to be successful in anything.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  This is how you actually win.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  That's how you win.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's very counter-cultural. It's very...

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  Like you said, it doesn't sell well. It doesn't sell well.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you could imagine Stonewall Jackson standing up and saying, "All right, guys, the enemy is a half mile down there. We are going to take the fight to them," and people getting fired up. As opposed to saying, "Hey, the enemy's right down there, and we're gonna walk 14 miles right now to go and hit him from where he doesn't really expect it 'cause we don't want to have to face his really... We don't want to have to face his strength. We're a little scared to do that. So we're gonna walk around and kind of sucker punch him." You guys with me? Right? It's just like, it's like, it's really... As opposed to, you know, "Forward into the breach," right? No, not really. We're gonna sneak around and sucker punch somebody. Who's with me?

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  But it's how you win. So, let's jump back into it.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  "Further revision of theory. In trying to revise any theory and readjust it for better balance." Oh, isn't that interesting? We're talking about balance because this, everything is a dichotomy. Again, I owe royalties to the, to the Liddell Hart family.

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  "It is a help to have a background of study in the subject, as long as one is willing to modify one's conclusions." Isn't that interesting? We have to actually be willing to, to modify our conclusions. Change our mind.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  "I was, so far as I know, the first student of war after 1914 to 1918 to make a reexamination of the prevailing doctrines derived from Clausewitz about the objective in war. After calling it in question in a number of articles in the military journals, I was, I dealt with it more fully in Paris or the Future of War 1925. This little book began with a criticism of the way that the orthodox aim, quote, "the destruction of the enemy's main forces on the battlefield," end quote, had been pursued in World War I, pointing out its indecisive and exhausting results."

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  To your point earlier, like, hey, we want to go and confront the enemy head on. Cool. We did that for three years, four years, and we had not only, we had indecisive and exhausting results. We were exhausted. We didn't get anywhere.

• 11:42Jocko Willink?

  God, what a, what a freaking sin. What a sin to expend all those lives and be exhausted from it and have no real decisive victory.

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, it went on to argue that the advantages of the moral objective, showing how armored forces might deliver decisive blow against the Achilles heel of the enemy army, which is the communication and command centers, which form its nerve system, and two, how air forces besides cooperating in this strategic action, might also strike with the decisive effect, direct at a nation's nerve system, and that is its static civil centers of industry.

• 12:25Jocko Willink?

  So he's the first guy that said, hey, well, what we did in World War I sucked, and we shouldn't do it again. How about we use freaking tanks and aircraft to pierce the enemy and cut off their communication and ruin their industries?

• 12:43Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, the general staff prescribed the book for the study of the officers of the first experimental mechanized force when this was formed two years later. The air staff, less surprisingly, made still fuller use of it. There was then a lack of textbooks on air strategy, and it fitted the development, the developing trend of their views on the subject. The chief of staff, the chief of the air staff distributed copies to his fellow chiefs of staffs. What I have said now is thus a revision, after prolonged reflection of what I wrote a quarter century ago, and in a vowel of error over part of the thesis, it shows, so he's taking ownership of something that he screwed up. It shows how in correcting the

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  balance, one is apt to tilt too far the other way. This is something I call classic team guy over correction. I would make a, I'd go and, guys would be coming through my training, they'd make a mistake, hey, you're micromanaging, all of a sudden they let people do whatever they want, or the opposite.

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  Correcting the balance, one is apt to tilt too far the other way. T E Lawrence, observed in a letter he wrote me in 1928. This is Lawrence of Arabia. This is a guy that fought in the Arab revolt, in the Sinai and Palestinian campaign in World War I. I mean, this guy is legendary.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  And Lawrence of Arabia says, quote, "The logical system of Clausewitz is too complete." What an opening line. "The logical system of Clausewitz is too complete. It leads astray his disciples, those of them at least, who would rather fight with their arms than with their legs."

• 14:27Jocko Willink?

  What a freaking statement to open up a letter. Rather fight with their arms than with their legs. What an epic statement.

• 14:38Jocko Willink?

  Actually, it's kind of a, kind of a, goes in with my

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  Discipline Equals Freedom field manual, talking about, you know, oh, you want to fight? You want to, you want to know self-defense? Cool. You want to punch me? I want to run away. You want to kick me? Cool, I'm going to run away. I'm going to fight with my legs, not with my arms. Continuing on, "You at present are trying, with very little help from those whose business it is to think upon their profession, to put the balance straight after the orgy of the last war. When you succeed, about 1945," these are like little jokes he's making, because he's writing this in 1928. "When you succeed, about 1945, your sheep will pass your bounds of discretion and have to be chivvied back to some later strategist.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  Back and forward we go." End quote. "In 1925, I myself went too far in arguing the advantages of the air stroke at civil objectives, though I did qualify this by emphasizing the importance of executing it in such a way as to inflict the least possible permanent injury for the enemy of today is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future."

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  Who would think that that's possible? Who would think that Germany would become our ally? Right? Who would think that the Japanese, we would rebuild them to a point of like, you know, economic power where we're in total cooperation with them? My belief then was that a decisive air attack would inflect less total damage and constitute less of a drain on the defeated country's recuperative power than a prolonged war of the existing type. In further study, I came to realize that an air attack on industrial centers was unlikely to have an immediate decisive effect and more likely to produce another prolonged war of attrition in fresh form with perhaps less killing, but more devastation than from 1918, 1914 to 1918.

• 16:41Jocko Willink?

  World War I. But when one began to point this out, one soon found that the air staff was far less receptive to the revised conclusion than to the original conclusion. They continued to cherish faith in a speedy decision and when war experience compelled them to relinquish it, they pinned their faith instead on industrial attrition as fervently as the general staff of the last war had done to manpower attrition.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  We're not learning lessons. God.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  Collective egos at play, just not learning lessons.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  A lot of this is why, like I said, I've said a couple of times now that this book and these, this strategy is a setup for me for another series of podcasts that I want to do and it's all going to come so, become so clear.

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  Nevertheless, a realization of the drawbacks and evils of taking the civil fabric as the objective does not mean the restoration of battle in the own sense of the objective. The drawbacks of that cause, went cause, we'd see in formula were amply shown in World War I. In contrast, World War II demonstrated the advantage of new potentialities of indirect or strategic action against a military objective, amply confirming what had been forecast in that respect.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  Is he saying, "Yeah, I told you so?" Yes, he is. He's saying, "I told you so." "I told you that these things, I told you that this air, that this mechanized, fast-moving elements could change the face of war, especially when coupled with air power." "I told you so."

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  "Even in the past, such action had been effectively exploited by some of the great captains, despite the limitations of their instruments. But now, with the help of new instruments, the airplane, the tank, it proved still more decisive, despite the increased strength of tactical resistance. The new mobility produced a flexibility in varying the direction of thrust and threat which disarmed such resistance." And that's what we talked about in the last podcast. France, Poland, the Balkans, just disarmed resistance. "The time has come for a fresh revision of the doctrine of the objective or military aim in light of recent experience and present conditions. It is much to be desired that

• 19:19Jocko Willink?

  it should be undertaken on combined service basis to produce an agreed solution, for there is a dangerous discordance of doctrines at presence.

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  The outlines of a revised theory fitted to present conditions and knowledge have emerged, I hope, in course of this discussion of the subject." The key idea is strategic operation rather than battle, an old term that has outlived its suitability and utility.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  So get rid of this whole idea of battle. "Battles may still occur, but should not be regarded as the aim itself, to repeat an earlier conclusion that was strikingly vindicated in World War II. Quote, "The a, the true aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that does not of itself produce the decision, that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this." That's what we're looking for.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And have your opponent recognize that before the battle takes place.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  Optimally, yes. Optimally, they go, "You know what? We don't even have a chance." If they don't recognize it, cool. You're in such a good position that it doesn't matter anyways, and the battle's over very quickly.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I'm writing things down. I mean, just the things inside what he just said. How about just the first thing of the comment about study is designed to modify conclusions? Not, not to validate your conclusions, like, I'm gonna go do research and I'm gonna literally just overlook and bypass anything that doesn't align with what I already think I know. I'm just like, ah, that's not convenient. So I'm gonna skip that. So I'm gonna find, I'm gonna study so I can find information to reinforce what I already know. He's like, no, I'm doing the study to figure out what I, what I thought that's actually wrong. To modify my, to modify my conclusions. The, the inherent humility in that approach is I'm gonna study to find out where I'm wrong.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  How hard that actually is to do. And then he used the air staff as example and, and of course, you know, the air staff is a thing that didn't even exist. And now it's this thing where the counterculture there, they're the opposing view of, hey, we need to look at these things differently. And then how quickly, how quickly they solidified around their new approach? And became the inflexible rigid, we are gonna stick to these conclusions. We're gonna stay to these, we are not gonna change our, our, our viewpoint of this. And how quickly that, that process happens to.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  Human beings do not like change.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  They really don't. And they really like to dig into whatever they got a hold of. When they got a hold of something, they hang on to it.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  It's like trying to pry a, it's like a little freaking kid, a, a, a three-year-old with a rattle. You know what I'm saying? They got that rattle? Go and try and take that away from them. Why is that? It's a human instinct to hang on to what you got. And you see the general staff after 32 years of military service and 150 years of combined military service between these three, four generals. And, and, and they have that new rattle that they got a hold of and they won't let go of it.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:40Jocko Willink?

  And they're gonna kick and scream. It's disturbing.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  It's crazy. And he said something too, that, that he's referenced, you've, you've already said it. And, and this one kind of finally stuck is, is he's making the connection to leadership. He, he, he's not talking about Clausewitz so much. He keeps saying about his students, his disciples, the influence he had on a generation of leaders. And the, the, the tragedy that was created by that, based on Clausewitz's influence over people. And he's made the allusion to like, that really wasn't his intent. It wasn't his intent.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  He definitely, last podcast, he definitely pointed out that that was not his intent.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Totally. But the power, for better or for worse, the power of that leadership. And if you have disciples, and you've said this over and over again.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  And again, I, I don't remember the exact quote, but the, the, this, the, the uneducated disciples are more dangerous than the enemy. And to, to just blindly follow the language or the words of the leader and just try to go implement them without truly understanding the context and then the evolving application of that to the world that they're gonna be in.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  It, it's, I, I put, from, from those two pages, just pulling out those three, those things, how critical those things are.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  Can, can you fathom the freaking group think that's going on? Check it out. Not only is everyone on my side bought into this bullshit. So my entire freaking army of millions of people is all bought into this idea. And your side and your millions of soldiers and leaders are all bought into the same idea. Imagine how crazy that is. Imagine how crazy it is that our group think is so strong that both opposing sides, both are bought into the same group think.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  At the peril of millions of soldiers. Like, that's nuts to think how strong that group think is to think I'm looking at you and you're doing the exact same thing as me and I'm thinking, well, we're just gonna keep doing it. And you're looking at me thinking, we're gonna keep doing it. And neither one of us is able to say, you know, this doesn't make any sense. Hey, are you looking at what our enemy is doing? This, this is, this seems kinda dumb. The power of the group think there, the power of, you know, we always talk about, right, you gotta detach and you gotta take, you know, take a more strategic view. These are the freaking generals.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  On both sides.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  At the same time.

• 25:24Jocko Willink?

  At the same time, wrapped up in the identical group think when they are getting a daily dose of reality. The, the most stark reality that human beings have ever seen, ever. The most stark reality that human beings have ever seen, they're getting slapped in the face with that on the daily basis and they never look around and say, hey, you know what? This is freaking stupid. What are we doing? This is the sickest group think fathomable. It's crazy.

• 25:59Jocko Willink?

  So it's detach. It's detach, but like detaching to the strategic levels, not enough. If you're surrounded, if you're completely surrounded, if you're in, uh, uh, the, the virtual reality goggles on, right? No matter where you look, it's like you're in the game. You need to take those things off your head.

• 26:23Jocko Willink?

  All right, this is the last chapter that we're gonna cover in this book.

• 26:28Jocko Willink?

  It's called grand strategy.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  And it's gonna tie into a lot of things. This book is concerned with strategy rather than with grand strategy or war policy. To deal adequately with this wider subject would require not only a much larger volume, but a separate volume. For while grand strategies should control strategy, its principles often run counter to those which prevail in the field of strategy.

• 26:58Jocko Willink?

  For that very reason, however, it is desirable to include here some indication of the deeper conclusions to which a study of grand strategy leads.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  The object in war, so this is an interesting setup, right? The setup is, hey, what I've been talking about at this strategic level, we're actually gonna, we're actually gonna have some principles that are counter to that when we go up one more level. So this is a very interesting setup.

• 27:29Jocko Willink?

  The object in war is to attain a better peace, even if only from your own point of view. Hence, it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire. That would appear to be common sense.

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  What are we trying to get done?

• 27:48Jocko Willink?

  How can we get it done? Not just to win right now, but how can we set ourselves up in the grand future so that we're doing what we want to, so we're in a situation we want to be in? This is the underlying Clausewitz definition of war as a, quote, "continuation of policy by other means," end quote. The prolongation of that policy through the war into the subsequent peace must always be borne in mind. So you can't, you always have to think about the future. You always have to think about the future.

• 28:23Jocko Willink?

  You have to think strategically all the time? Yeah, at all times. A state which expends its strength to the point of exhaustion bankrupts its own policy and future. Again, what's the ROI? What's the ROI in what we're doing? We're expending all of our capital to make something happen and we look up and cool, we made it happen, but we have no capital left. We can't pay our employees, we can't order any more of our supplies.

• 28:52Jocko Willink?

  Good job. No, not a good job. If you concentrate exclusively on victory with no thought for the after effect, you may be too exhausted to profit by the peace, while it is almost certain that the peace will be a bad one, containing the germs of another war. This is a lesson supported by abundant experience.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  I brought up this quote again, one of the previous podcasts about, hey, cool. You won and now you're in charge of a wasteland. How about a leadership capital perspective? Cool. I got Dave to do what I told him to do. And now he hates working here and he's not going to do a good job. And he's putting his resume out there to everybody else. Good job. Cool. But I got him to do what I want him to do. I, I, I won, but he's got the germs of another war.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, go look at what happened between World War One and World War Two. That's exactly what it is. That's what he's referring to in his other examples, but there's, that's a freaking perfect one. No one was happy at the end of that war.

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  The risks become greater still in any war that is waged by a coalition. For in such a case, a, a too complete victory inevitably complicates the problem of making a just and wise peace settlement. Where there is no longer a counterbalance of an opposing force to control the appetites of victors. There is no check on the conflicting views and interests between parties of the alliance. What a brilliant statement, right?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  This is 19.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  I guess he's, this is, this is, so this is after World War Two.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It has to be, I mean, that reference to America and Russia like that.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Cool. Yep. We work together and as soon as we don't have our common enemy anymore, now we're pissed at each other.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:47Jocko Willink?

  The divergence is then apt to come so acute as to turn the comradeship of common danger into the hostility of mutual dissatisfaction. So the ally of one war becomes the enemy of the next. There you go. Hello Soviet Union.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  Versus America. This raises a further and wider question. The friction that commonly develops in any alliance system, especially when it has no balancing force, has been one of the factors that have fostered numerous attempts throughout this history to find solution infusion. So joining together.

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  This is like in a platoon. You have a platoon. If you leave them alone for a little while, they'll start fighting each other. That's just what's gonna happen. No, there's no balancing force. There's no one to go against. Even if it's just the training cadre, that's enough of a, you know, we'll go against those guys or another platoon. Once they're alone, they're gonna start fighting each other. So we look for, we look for solutions in fusion, but history teaches us that in practice, this is apt to mean domination by one of the constituent elements. And although there is a natural tendency toward the fusion of small groups and the larger ones, the usual result of forcing the pace is the confusion of the plans to establish a comprehensive political unit. Kind of, I will say that's a pretty pessimistic view.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  It's a realistic view, but it's a pessimistic view. Moreover, regrettable as it may seem to the idealist, the experience of history provides little warrant for the belief that real progress and the freedom that makes progress possible lies in unification. And this is something we need to pay attention to. For where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas, it has usually ended in uniformity, paralyzing the growth of new ideas. And where unification has merely brought about an artificial or imposed unity, it is irksome. Its irksomeness has led through discord to disruption. I love that, that from a leadership perspective, right?

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  We get everyone on board with the plan. Hey, listen, everyone just lock it up. We're going with my plan. Seems to help, right? It seems to help, but by the way, no one's now thinking. And on top of that, people are pissed. Discord. So now as soon as something goes wrong, you know, we got an element that's breaking off. You got people complaining. Why is that? We're trying to force, uh, uniformity.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  We're trying to force people to think the same way. It's a problem.

• 33:19Jocko Willink?

  Vitality springs from diversity, which makes for real progress so long as there is mutual toleration.

• 33:28Jocko Willink?

  Based on the recognition that worse may come from an attempt to suppress differences than from acceptance of them. Again, if you're a leader and you've got someone that's a little outside the lines and all you do is beat them into submission, it's not helping.

• 33:45Jocko Willink?

  For this reason, the kind of peace that makes progress possible is best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces alike in the sphere of internal politics and of international relations.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 34:03Jocko Willink?

  He goes into a little bit about, you know, the balance of power in politics, right?

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  He says, he says, "Any monopoly of power leads to ever repeated demonstrations of the historical truth epitomized in Lord Acton's famous dictum, 'All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  "Another conclusion which develops from the study of grand strategy against the background of history is the practical necessity of adapting the general theory of strategy to the nature of a nation's fundamental policy." You've got to make sure you're aligned. Got to make sure you're aligned.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  He goes into some, the difference between an, an acquisitive state and a conservative state, meaning, hey, my state is going out to acquire other properties that we're going to go, go on the attack, and a conservative state, which is, hey, we're just trying to maintain what we've got.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  "The acquisitive state, inherently unsatisfied, needs to gain victory in order to gain its object and must therefore court greater risks in the attempt. The conservative state can achieve its object by merely inducing the aggressor to drop his attempt at conquest by convincing him that the game is not worth the candle."

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  "And victory, its victory is in a real sense attained by foiling one's bid, one's side's, by foiling the other side's bid for victory. Indeed, in attempting more, it may defeat its own purpose by exhausting itself so much that it is unable to resist other enemies or the internal effects of overstrain. Self-exhaustion in war has killed more states than any foreign assailant." And how often do we see that in companies? How often do we see in companies where they are just going so hard and investing in so many different places and chewing up their teams?

• 36:08Jocko Willink?

  We have, you have to be cognizant of that.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  Weighing these factors of the problem, it can be seen that the problem of a conservative state is to find the type of strategy that is suited to fulfill its inherently more limited object in the most strength conserving way so as to ensure future as well as presence. Now, there's a reason I'm covering this part because of this statement. At first glance, it might seem that pure defense would be the most economical method. But this implies static defense and historical experience warns us that it is dangerously brittle method on which to rely. Economy of force and deterrent effect are best combined in defensive offensive method

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  based on high mobility that carries the power of a quick repost.

• 37:06Jocko Willink?

  And a quick repost, repost is a, is a move in fencing. It's a thrust in fencing.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  So it's cool to think, you know what, we're just going to conserve, we're going to stay here, we're going to be on the defensive. But we have to remember that historically speaking, and when he's talking about historically speaking, he's talking about a massive swath of history that he's looked at to confirm that you gotta have some offense, you gotta be on offense. And we say this a lot, like if you're, if you're just, if you're not growing, you're, you're losing totally.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  He's also clearly learned the lesson that he's kind of accused Clausewitz of not applying, which is the context to the statements where you say, hey, the conservative approach. And oh, by the way, if you're over there thinking that I'm telling you, dig in and be conservative, that's not what I'm saying. And to clarify and have the, the understanding of the comment itself, so the comment or the headline doesn't become the story, which he, he referenced so many times of, hey, this statement became its own.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  The interpretation of the statement became its own truth when it's not really what he meant, but he didn't actually take the time to make sure his disciples, his learners understood, "I'm not saying, 'dig in.' I'm not saying that. And I know if you're hearing that, let me be, let me be more clear what this approach really means." And that's clearly a lesson he's taken from the, the other leaders that didn't do that, and that the outcomes that that creates when you don't actually explain what you mean. We talked about it almost as a joke inside here of, "don't care," or, you know, "hold the line." And if you're hearing, "I hold the line on all things," let me be more clear. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this, this, and this, and this is how you apply this. So I really like the idea that he's, he's taking the comment, and then giving the context around it so people can understand what he's talking about. The people that are actually studying what he's saying.

• 39:07Jocko Willink?

  The idea of the dichotomy of leadership, that idea, came to me because I was working with these young junior officers, and you know what they want to do? They want to do good. They want to do good. So if you tell them to be aggressive, cool, got it. They are on freaking level 14 Berserker mode. They're charging into whatever. You tell them not to move,

• 39:41Jocko Willink?

  you tell them, "hey, make sure you take the high ground."

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Guess what they're doing? They're running to the top of every freaking hill that they see.

• 39:52Jocko Willink?

  So, so anything that I would tell them, there was a, there was, they had a proclivity to take it to the extreme. And so, within like one or two iterations, at our land warfare training facility, I was like, "okay, I gotta tell these guys that there has to be balanced. Everything that I'm saying has to be balanced. Every single thing that I'm saying has to be balanced. If you take anything that I'm saying and you take it to an extreme, it's going to be bad."

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  So I tried to do the same thing. It's kind of a universal. Man, I hate to say it's like a cop out. You know, because it's like, well, you know, if your ego's, you're saying ego's no good. No, actually, it's a balance. Right. And it kind of sounds like a cop out. Does it sound like a little bit of a cop out? Echo Charles, you seem to agree with me.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it can. Yeah, but no. Yes, but no.

• 40:42Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's a real bummer. I think some, not a bummer, but someone will say, well, you're saying that.

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  You know, you're saying that the ego is bad, but the ego's, the ego's what, you know, I don't want to hire people that bunch of pushovers.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:57Jocko Willink?

  It's like, yeah, I know, man, that's the dichotomy. And they're kind of like, oh.

• 41:02Jocko Willink?

  They're like, they think I don't have that. They forget that I have that, you know, and that's why I feel like bad sometimes pulling the dichotomy card. But it's the truth.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  The truth is, man, you take something to the extreme and it's bad.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:14Jocko Willink?

  That's the truth.

• 41:17Jocko Willink?

  You still don't like it?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  No, I, I agree with you. Where it's like, you know that it's not a cop out. In fact, it's the opposite of a cop out. It's like, you gotta be real specific and you gotta use judgment. You gotta, you know, there's just more to it than that. In fact, when someone doesn't recognize the dichotomy, that might be the more of the cop out. It's kind of like, oh, you say go here. Oh, I went there. I went there. That's what you said, right? It's like, right. You gotta start using your judgment a little bit, you know?

• 41:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 41:46Jocko Willink?

  You were, you were talking about, does it sound like a cop out? And in, in the scenarios of Top Gun, you know, everything is like a scenario. What do I do in this situation? And how do I react to this? And, and like the classic answer, the classic answer was always, it depends. And which had this feeling of like,

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a cop out.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a cop out and like, oh, you don't really know, or you don't have to be definitive because there are times when people want, want a black and white. They want a black and white answer. Hey, if I have this situation, what do I do?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Well, it actually depends and but it actually does depend.

• 42:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  It depends. It's not a cop out.

• 42:22Jocko Willink?

  Seems like one though.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  It does and because it's not satisfying and it requires like contemplation and understanding of the nuance and how did I get here in the first place? What am I trying to accomplish? So I was just thinking to myself when you were talking about this, this, uh, this feeling of it sounds like a cop out was the, the, the answer I gave 5,000 times at Top Gun to the students is it depends. And then you gotta dig in and go through it and go, well, actually in, in the case that you're describing, uh, this might actually be a better answer. Then in the same situation, but driven by another goal or got there for a different reason. Hey, I might go a different direction here.

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  And then you as a leader have to actually apply some judgment in real time as opposed to this situation requires this response. Well, it's, that's not that simple.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  Hey, Assault Team Leader, what are you doing way back there when there's, uh, when they're all bogged down up in the front?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, you told me not to get engaged in like the room to room clearance.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but they're bogged down.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. That your example of where should the platoon commander be? In a patrol, well, it depends.

• 43:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, where it makes sense.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 43:24Jocko Willink?

  Could be in the front, could be in the back, could be in the middle.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  And you know, and, and I, I guess we've hit this, I'm probably beating a dead horse a little bit, but, but the unsatisfying nature of that answer. When I got to, um, the basic school, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a brand new second lieutenant. And, uh, we get to the, the, the basic school and right outside of the main headquarters building is this giant bronze statue of a lieutenant. And he's in this pose, he's got his rifle, he's pointing his arm up and it says, follow me. You know, which is what they push you is lead from the front, get out in front of your men. And, and in a lot of ways, that's right.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  That's right to, to have that much, but in a lot of ways it's actually not right, but to place yourself where you need to be is nowhere near as

• 44:19Jocko Willink?

  cool.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  As cool as follow me, lead from the front. But if that's what you, hey, I lead from the front like, cool, you have no idea what's going on back here and half of your guys just got hammered because of that.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  There's this, I think this compulsion, which is why the Clausewitz thing plays so well to the, the, even just the catchphrases of leadership, which don't actually serve a leader very well. Lead from the front. Who's gonna say, oh, that's a, that's a terrible leadership philosophy, but actually sometimes you don't want to be in the front.

• 44:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is why I have a section in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, which is actually called Lead From The Rear.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  So it kind of like, you have to like the more under, because there has to be the formula, right? At some level, like obviously at the, at the surface, the formula is like, or you might, someone might, might make the mistake. The formula is, uh, lead from the front at all times, right? But that's not the formula. Formula is it depends, okay, on what? And there's a formula under there. But then under there, you're like, okay, well, if this and this and this, oh, well, it depends a little bit more. And the deeper you go, there has to be some formula, right?

• 45:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Okay. So that, and that's what I was gonna say too here. So the, the solution.

• 45:37Jocko Willink?

  I have the formula. You know what the formula is? It's a dichotomy. Or Dave will tell you the formula is, it depends.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I feel like.

• 45:45Jocko Willink?

  You're like, yeah. So both those are cop out answers. You don't want to hear them.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  No, no, no. No, I'm actually agreeing with you. Like that, that's what I would have said too. It all, it's gonna always depend. So, and also on top of it, there's more than one right answer a lot of the time, or pretty much all the time. Pretty much with very few exception, I would think.

• 46:07Jocko Willink?

  There are wrong answers.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I agree with that too.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay. But you're saying there's more than one right answer?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:13Jocko Willink?

  In many cases, yes.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  So I would say the solution is, the more you understand about all of it, the better decision you can make. And the better, the better educated you will be on what decision to make, given the parameters of all the dichotomies you're dealing with.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  Except for the fact that you may not have enough information to make the decision that seems like it's gonna be the perfect decision. In which case you kind of screwed up by not moving a little bit more quickly and making decision based on the information that you had at that current moment.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. But when I meant, when I meant. What I meant by knowing, like educated yourself, not on any specific scenario, I'm saying on how it works, on the dichotomy of leadership, or on the laws of combat, or whatever.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yes, understanding, well, yeah, then you're going back to what I said, which is the formulas is dichotomy. And you gotta be balanced.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:07Jocko Willink?

  That's the formula, the formula is be balanced.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, like some, the more you know about the whole game, we'll say, the more you know when you're gonna be on this side of the dichotomy, or I'm leaning on this side of the dichotomy, the more you know about yourself, the more you know about your guys, building relationships, by the way, the more you know about this, and the more about how this works, then you're gonna know more about, under what types of circumstances, you're gonna lean here, or lean there.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  You know what's cool? We have a business called Echelon Front.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 47:35Jocko Willink?

  The reason we have a business called Echelon Front is because we have to help leaders work through these issues. We can't give them a formula that they can then apply across the board in all situations. But like you're saying, correctly, if they learn and understand the principles, they can start to make better decisions, and right decisions, based on their understanding of these principles, and applying them holistically to their scenario.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Right, yes, exactly right, which I was gonna say, yeah, exactly what I'm saying, where, where do you get the formula from? Oh, you're probably the most educated on this whole game, as far as the game goes, right? So the more you, let's say you consult with a client, right, the more you consult with them, hopefully, the more they're gonna learn that same game, and they're gonna need you less and less.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's the goal.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 48:29Jocko Willink?

  All right, back to the book, the

• 48:33Jocko Willink?

  East Roman Empire was a case

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  where such an actively conservative strategy had been carefully thought out as a basis of war policy, a fact which goes far to explain this empire's unrivaled span of existence. Another example, more instinctive than reasoned, is provided by the strategy based on sea power that England practiced in her wars from the 16th to the 19th century. The value of it was shown by the way that her strength kept pace with her growth, while all her rivals broke down in turn through self-exhaustion and war, traceable to their immoderate desire for the immediate satisfaction of outright victory.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  A long series of mutually exhausting and devastating wars above all the 30 years war has brought, had brought statesmen by the 18th century to realize the necessity when engaged in war of curbing both their ambitions and their passions in the interests of their purpose. On the one hand, this realization tended to produce a tacit limitation of warfare and avoidance of excesses which might damage after the war prospect. So he's going back in time and saying, "Look, we kind of learned these lessons." It was a regression. That's why earlier in the last podcast, we talked about, he talked about Clausewitz was a regression. We're going backwards. Cause they had figured this stuff out, the 30 years war.

• 50:04Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that's the 1600s. You've got Germany and Sweden fighting Spain and Catholics versus, you know, all kinds of crazy warfare going on to no, to no real decisive victory. It's a problem. They realized that. Their ambitions and passions frequently carried them too far so that the return to peace found their countries weakened rather than strengthened. But they'd learned to stop short of national exhaustion. Which again, you take that for leadership capital and we're expending more than we have. At the most satisfactory, at the, and the most satisfactory peace settlements, even for the stronger side, proved to be those which were made by negotiation rather than

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  decisive military issue. This gradual education in inherent limitations of war was still in process when it was interrupted by the French Revolution, which brought to the top, men who were novices in statesmanship. The Directory and its successor, Napoleon, pursued the vision of an enduring peace through war after war for 20 years. There you go. Napoleon going for peace, 20 years of war. The pursuit never led to the goal, but only to spreading exhaustion and ultimate collapse. The bankruptcy of the Napoleonic Empire renewed a lesson that had often been taught before.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  The impression, however, came to be obscured by the sunset haze of Napoleonic myth. The lesson had been forgotten by the time it was repeated in the war of, in the World War I. Even after that bitter experience, the statement of the Second World War were no wiser.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Although war is contrary to reason, since it is a mean of deciding issues by force when discussion fails to produce an agreed solution, the conduct of war must be controlled by reason if its object is to be fulfilled. And here he goes into how we reasonably conduct war. One, while fighting is a physical act, its direction is a mental process. The better your strategy, the easier you will gain the upper hand and the less it will cost you.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  Very important thing to think about. Two, conversely, the more strength you waste, the more you increase the risk of the scales of war turning against you. And even if you succeed in winning victory, the less strength you will have to profit by peace.

• 52:54Jocko Willink?

  Just, just apply that one to World War I. And it's like, okay, we need to stop this. Three, the more brutal your methods, the more bitter you will make your opponents with the natural result of hardening the resistance you are trying to overcome. Thus, the more evenly the two sides are matched, the wiser it will be to avoid extremes of violence which tend to consolidate the enemy's troops and people behind their leaders.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  I mean, okay, war, yeah. What about leadership perspective on that one? No, like the more brutal, the more, the more you, you shut up Dave and do what I told you to do. Shut up team, this is what we're doing. The more you do that, the more resistance you're going to have to overcome.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  Four, these calculations extend further. The more intent you appear to impose a piece entirely of your own choosing, by conquest, the stiffer the obstacle you will raise in your path.

• 54:02Jocko Willink?

  So when I make a piece that's completely, you know, in my favor, cool, I'm gonna end up with problems. And the more I impose a plan on Dave and his team, the more I'm gonna end up with problems.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  And I can see the looks on the people's faces in a company when I tell them that. It's so hard to believe, it's so hard to believe that, hey, actually, the more efficient way is to say, hey, Dave, how do you want to do this? It's so hard to believe that.

• 54:35Jocko Willink?

  It seems so much more efficient for me to say, hey, Dave, here's the plan, shut up and do it. Here, give this to your team, here's the orders, go execute.

• 54:45Jocko Willink?

  Which is funny, because people go, oh, you know, these military, these military way of leading wouldn't work in the civilian world. It's like, what are you talking about?

• 54:54Jocko Willink?

  It's always fun, Leif's like, yeah, yeah, this is exactly what Jago did with me. He'd be like, hey, how do you want to do it? And I'd be like, oh, this sounds like a good plan. Okay, cool.

• 55:06Jocko Willink?

  Five, furthermore, if and when you reach your military goal, the more you ask of the defeated side, the more trouble you will have. And the more cause you will have to provide for an ultimate attempt to reverse the settlement achieved by war. Again, when you impose your plan on people, when you impose your will on people, there will be organ rejection of that.

• 55:37Jocko Willink?

  Force is a vicious cycle, or rather, a spiral, unless its application is controlled by the most carefully seasoned calculation.

• 55:50Jocko Willink?

  Just, just think about that. It's a common thing I tell clients. Minimum, you want to lead with minimum force required. That's how you want to lead. If I don't have to say anything, that's the best. If I have to say, hey, this is maybe an idea. If I get to a point where I have to bark and order at someone and tell them, shut up and do what I told you to do, that's bad. That's, that's the vicious circle of force. We don't like it.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  Thus, war, which begins by denying reason, comes to vindicate it, vindicate it throughout all phases of the struggle.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  The fighting instinct is necessary to success in the battlefield. So the fighting instinct, we gotta be ready to fight. The fighting instinct is necessary to success in the battlefield. Although even here, the combatant who can keep a cool head has an advantage over the man who sees red.

• 56:43Jocko Willink?

  So that's his little caveat. And then he says, but the fighting instinct should always be ridden on a tight rein.

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  The statesman who gives that instinct its head loses his own. If you just want to scrap, cool. Guess what's going to happen? You're going to lose your own head. He's not fit to take charge of the fate of a nation.

• 57:09Jocko Willink?

  Victory in the true sense implies that the state of peace and of one's people is better after the war than before. Victory in this sense is only possible if a quick result can be gained or if a long effort can be economically proportioned to the national resources. How much are you investing?

• 57:32Jocko Willink?

  How much are you investing of capital from your company? How much are you investing in leadership capital?

• 57:39Jocko Willink?

  ROI, where's it at? The end must be adjusted to the means.

• 57:46Jocko Willink?

  We throw that one out all the time. And it's, and it's got like the connotations of being a wimp. Focus on your goal. There's forty-eight freaking, uh, uh,

• 58:00Jocko Willink?

  inspirational memes a day. Set your goal and never fear from it. Cool. I got a better idea. How about the end must be adjusted to the means?

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 58:14Speaker 02

  This is not very inspirational.

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  I want that Lambo.

• 58:18Jocko Willink?

  I want a dream board. I got a Lambo and I got an infinity pool.

• 58:25Jocko Willink?

  Cool. How's that Wendy's salary kicking in? Right? Adjust your means a little bit, man. Adjust the end to fit the means.

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, this is, this is, again, no one's, there's no, there's no, there's not one single inspirational meme on the gram that says, that says the end must be adjusted to the means. No one says that.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  Actually, it's the opposite as far as in the inspirational quotes industry. Well, for lack of a better term, it's the exact opposite, actually.

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  It's like, hey, basically, it's like, okay, adjust the ends to the means, right? Or the ends to the means, right? So it's kind of like, hey, don't freaking have this goal that's like unrealistic, essentially.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  Essentially, yeah.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Fact, like, it's unrealistic, right? Like, it's irresponsible. It's irresponsible. You have an irresponsible goal right there. You can, like, whatever, kill yourself doing it, right?

• 59:21Jocko Willink?

  You should go and the comment should be like, you're dumb.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Should be, right? Given that. But if you, but they'll talk about-

• 59:29Jocko Willink?

  There's someone right now that's gonna hear this and be like, this is kind of bullshit. You gotta fucking set your goals.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, if you're down for the thing, and I get it, because-

• 59:37Jocko Willink?

  Double tap, uh, heart like if you want to be a, you know, for your first hundred million.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, fully.

• 59:45Jocko Willink?

  Bro, there's people that tap that twice.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, yes, sir.

• 59:49Jocko Willink?

  And- And like, for a moment, they're kind of like pumped.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure they're pumped the whole time. Until the ends really, but the no, well, if you're the guy, if you're the guy who says this, what this book is saying, hey, like.

• 1:00:03Jocko Willink?

  The end must be adjusted to the means.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  That's a good goal. Like that's a lofty goal, which you know, obviously I can't hate on lofty goals.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Wait, that's not even really a lofty goal. That's just a realistic thing to do as a human.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  But the realistic guy.

• 1:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Realistic human memes.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, in a way.

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, the first one will be the end must be adjusted to the means.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  It's very not inspirational.

• 1:00:23Jocko Willink?

  They would get downvoted.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, you'll, you'll be branded as the hater, really. Like that's what, that's the point where they, they'll brand you as a hater. It's like, everyone's always hating.

• 1:00:32Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? This goes into, uh, the whole idea, Dave, that you were talking about of like,

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  about, hey, this isn't really sexy. This is the absolute like non, this is getting downvoted. This is getting haters. And, and what's interesting is who you gonna, who's gonna get the upvote, right? This person is getting, you're getting hated on. Cause you're like, actually it's an unrealistic goal. You should check yourself.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Right. Oh, the downer, the doubter, right?

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the thing is, I get it because every once in a great while, you'll get someone who achieved this super lofty goal. Not to say that they didn't adjust the ends to the means, because they had the means apparently. At the end of the day, the means were there because the end is there too, right? But here's the thing, they had that, uh, un, un.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  Uninspirational memes.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  We'll just say realistic.

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Realistic memes.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But nonetheless, they, they achieved that goal that was kind of untip, not typically realistic. It was unrealistic, right? Comparatively speaking or whatever, and they achieved it.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  I, I mean, we could easily argue that. Like, oh, this person did this because they had the mean, the means, right? They had the intellectual horsepower, they had the educational thing, they had, they had all these things set up. So it was actually a realistic goal.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  I know that, that's what I'm saying, where, but they'll take the, the, the, the crazy quote unquote unrealistic uh, ends, right? The goal will say, president, but that's the one, right? The classic president of the United States. You can do anything you want. Oh, I'm gonna set my goal the highest I possibly can in life, president of the United States. Right? So they'll be like, alright, cool. Therefore, we should all essentially set goals as high as president of the United States. Right?

• 1:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  That's kind of the inspirational message, right?

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, the very few individuals that became president of the United States had the means. So their ends technically, by definition, were adjusted, their ends were adjusted to the means, because they had the means. See what I'm saying? Probably not everyone has the means. So you gotta adjust those.

• 1:02:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, everyone's saying, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Don't adjust.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  If he can do it, I can do it too, right? Which, hey, I'm not saying they can't, I'm not even saying that, but I'm saying, hey, man, you gotta be realistic on that kind of stuff.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  See what I'm saying? But then if you say that, you just can't say that out loud.

• 1:03:03Jocko Willink?

  You know what's really crazy is, like, I just got slapped in my own face thinking about this, because we're kind of joking about this. But what he's saying and what he saw was hundreds and hundreds of thousands of soldiers that were killed because the leadership didn't adjust the ends to the means.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Which is crazy to think about.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  And as you guys were talking, I was thinking in my mind, like, people have figured this out. There, there, there are even phrases out there, the one I kept thinking of as you're talking about this is, I remember the phrase. Live within your means. Like, I've heard, that's a phrase. What it's not is, it's not hanging on a poster in any kid's bedroom, anywhere. Like, I don't go to bed at night like it's a nine-year-old going, "Live within my means." The irony inside that is the best way to actually ultimately expand your means over time, so your means get greater and greater, is to do exactly that. Like, that's, that's the trick to it, is, is the dissatisfaction of the reality

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  is something people overlook. And the, the unfunny part of that, which is the sobering piece that you just mentioned, is that it can actually lead people down a path to do exactly what you just said, which, which almost seems not possible, except for the fact that these, that he specifically lived that in a way that goes, "What are we doing here? What are we doing? What are we expending? To, and what are we accomplishing by doing that?" So it wasn't just the national exhaustion, it was the national exhaustion with nothing to show for it. And then the scale of that, which is, which is impossible, as opposed to, "Hey, why don't we operate within our means here? Why don't we do that?"

• 1:04:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And if you fast forward, the kid, if there was a kid that had a poster on their wall that said, "Live within your means", and therefore they're saving and they're putting together, and you look at them in 20 years, and they're in a way better position than someone that was like, you know, "You need the Lambo," or whatever, right? Because they're gonna end up in debt, and they can't invest properly. And they have to work a job that they don't really like, and it's a job that's a dead-end job. Like, all these things add up.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  You said something about you being an NBA basketball player. I would say, on record, on an inspirational or demotivational post, saying, "Hey, bro, that's unrealistic." I would tell you that. And I think factually, it is unreal, well, as far as factually goes, it is unrealistic. I don't know that I would tell a high school kid that when he's really into basketball. I don't know if I would, I would say that. Like, it'd be unrealistic in certain ways, like if, under certain circumstances or whatever, but given like how you consider it, most people, how they get into like professional sports, whatever, they work hard, they really love the sport, you know, they go through trials and tribulations or whatever, and they end up making it, kind of a thing.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  So if you get someone that that's kind of in the beginning of that type of path.

• 1:06:13Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Where that path is not straight up blocked off for whatever reason, like it would be in your case. I wouldn't really say that's unrealistic. The point is, there are really cases where it's unrealistic. So if you tried to be an NBA player, hired the best coach in the world.

• 1:06:31Jocko Willink?

  I I get it.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  You would wind up exhausting all your resources.

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  I should adjust my my end to my ends.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  You might want to make sure that your kid who you don't want to stifle that dream. You might want to make sure that they're not putting all their eggs in that one basket. Two, like, hey, listen, go for it. But you're not going to drop out of school.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  You're not gonna stop doing this and this with the

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  the ultimate meme of focus on your goals and block out every distraction. So I I'm done with school because school's stupid because school ain't gonna help me be be an NBA player. Meanwhile, you're five, six, you're done growing, you're not that good of a shot, but you've got this this passion. You might want to keep that kid on the track of, hey, cool, I'm not here to crush your dreams. However, comma, let's consider some other things as you're doing that.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Actually, you should never have a plan B. That means you're not fully committed to your plan A.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, you got a plan B, I guess you're not committed to plan A.

• 1:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Inspirational meme for you. Actually, he addresses some of this here. Uh, going back to the book, failing a fair prospect of such a victory. So the end must be adjusted to the means, failing a fair prospect of such a victory. Wise statesmanship will miss no opportunity for negotiating peace. Peace through stalemate, based on a coincident recognition by each side of the opponent's strength is at least preferable to peace through common exhaustion and has often provided a better foundation for lasting peace.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  It is wiser to run risks of war for the sake of preserving peace than to risk, run the risk of exhaustion in war for the sake of finishing with victory. A conclusion that runs counter to custom, but is supported by experience.

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  So it's better to like, maybe we don't have war and we just kind of maintain peace with kind of what I've got.

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  That's a better deal than, you know what, we're just gonna, we're gonna exhaust ourselves and hope for some kind of a victory.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  Perseverance in war is only justifiable if there is a good chance of a good end. The prospect of a peace that will balance the sum of human misery incurred in the struggle.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Like each one of these statements, Dave, you just shake your head knowing where it came from.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  That's all I'm thinking is every one of these is, is what he, what this comes from and just how savage that experience had to have been for him.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Indeed, deepening the study of past experience leads to the conclusion that nations might often have come nearer to their object by taking advantage of a lull in the struggle to discuss a settlement than by pursuing the war with the aim of victory. History, so look, man, you gotta look for those opportunities. We got a little lull, hey, you wanna keep going with this or you wanna maybe stand down? History reveals also that in many cases, a beneficial peace could have been obtained if the statesmen of the warring nations had shown more understanding of the elements of psychology in their peace feelers. You get the peace feelers out there like, what, let me sense about what's happening here.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  And people don't have good understanding of their peace, they don't recognize their peace feelers. Their attitude is commonly been too akin to that seen in the typical domestic quarrel. Right? So now we've got to fight with our wife. Each party is afraid to appear yielding with the result that when one of them shows any inclination towards conciliation, this is usually expressed in language that is too stiff, while the others apt to be slow to respond, partly from pride or obstinacy and partly from a tendency to interpret such a gesture as a sign of weakness when it may be a sign of returning to common sense. Eh, classic, right? I'm not gonna apologize.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Just say you're sorry.

• 1:10:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Just say you're sorry.

• 1:10:41Jocko Willink?

  Don't look weak. Thus, the fateful moment passes and the conflict continues to the common damage. Right? We are killing ourselves over something that we could easily say, hey, look, I'm sorry, it's my fault.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Rarely does a continuation serve any good purpose where the two parties are bound to go on living under the same roof. This applies even more to modern war than to domestic conflict, since the industrialization of nations has made their fortunes inseparable. It is the responsibility of statesmanship never to lose sight of the post-war prospect in chasing the mirage of victory.

• 1:11:28Jocko Willink?

  Where the two sides are too evenly matched to offer a reasonable chance of early success to either, the statesman is wise who can learn something from the psychology of strategy. It is the elementary principle of strategy that if you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. Get personal way out.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  It should equally be the principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down. Get people a way out.

• 1:12:03Jocko Willink?

  Give your wife a way out in that argument. Give your subordinate a way out in that argument. Give your boss a way out. Don't make them dig in. Don't make them fight to the death.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  The question may arise as to whether such conclusions based on the history of war between so-called civilized states apply to the conditions inherent in a renewal of the type of purely predatory war that was waged by the barbarian assailants of the Roman Empire? Or the mixed religious and predatory war that was pursued by the fanatical followers of Mohammed? In such wars, any negotiated peace tends to have in itself even less than the normal value. It is only too clear from the history that states rarely keep the faith with each other,

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  save insofar and so long as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests. That's a good thing to note, right? I'm not going to keep any promises if they're not for my benefit. That's what history tells us.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  And now we're, so now we're talking about extremists, whether it's the barbarians attacking the Romans, or the Islamists attacking the West. Back in the day. But the less that a nation has regard for moral obligations, the more it tends to respect physical strength, the deterrent power of a force too strong to be challenged with impunity. So you've got somebody that's not gonna, you know, you make peace with them, but you don't trust them, guess what? You better be strong. People that don't, people that don't respect the moral obligation, they respect strength.

• 1:13:55Jocko Willink?

  In the same way, with individuals, it is a matter of common experience that the bully type and the robber type hesitate to assail anyone who approaches their own strength. Check. You don't see the bully picking on the big yoked up guy with cauliflower ears.

• 1:14:14Jocko Willink?

  It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whether individuals or nations can be bought off, or in modern language appeased, since the payment of dangeld stimulates a demand for more dangeld. What's dangeld, you ask? It's Viking protection money. Like, hey, you can live here, I need some dangeld, you gotta pay me a little bit of, you know, a little bit of something, something. And what does that do? Makes me want more.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  Oh, the Viking?

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The dangeld, I asked you, I need some protection money from you. You know, you can, you can work this corner, but you know, you gotta give me my cut. What does that make me want? More cut. So you can't buy them off.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  But they can be curbed. Their very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force. This forms an adequate check, except against pure fanaticism, a fanaticism that is unmixed.

• 1:15:17Jocko Willink?

  So you get pure fanaticism, it doesn't matter if I'm gonna kill you or not, you're gonna come.

• 1:15:24Jocko Willink?

  While it is hard to make real peace with the predatory types, it is easier to induce them to accept the state of truce and far less exhausting than an attempt to crush them, whereby they are, like all types of mankind, infused with the courage of desperation.

• 1:15:42Jocko Willink?

  So we have to be strong. You have to be strong. And look, if you're stronger than these predatory fanatics, it doesn't necessarily mean you want to go to war with them, because they're gonna fight desperately. But if you're strong and you can keep them in check, that's sort of a good balance of power that's acceptable.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  I don't know how many more you've got on this, but I'm just, I'm thinking of all the things he's describing, all the behavior and the reaction, the action and the reaction. It's all human nature. It's all, this is how, this is how they will respond to this. And the repetitiveness, and he keeps coming back to this idea like, hey, this is not a, this is not a sample size of one. This isn't just one thing that's happened in history. And I think that's the power of the idea of human nature is this is how people will react. This is how people will respond. And if you understand human nature, I mean, that to us is, is the foundation of leadership. This is a human nature endeavor.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Understanding how people will react. And anytime we behave in the extremes, there will be a reaction to that. To us, operating in the extremes, there will be a natural human reaction to some other extreme. And he's like, hey, do you want to subdue human nature? Be moderate. Limit the natural reaction. Hey, have a little bit of something over here, have a little something over here. But just listening to all those things you're saying is a human nature, human nature, human nature, human nature.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And the response, be balanced, be balanced, be balanced.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Be, be, it's fine to be in the middle to limit, to minimize the reaction that you're going to get. Total war. Cool. You win. Guess what you got now? You got an insurgency. It's gonna last for 20 years. And is that really what you want? Or could you maybe operate with some restraint, understanding that what you're really trying to do is not beat them? What you're really trying to do is create a peace for a couple of decades, maybe? Could you, could you think of the long game here? Again, that's probably not going on a poster somewhere.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  You don't, you're not getting recruited into the Marine Corps with that one. Here's a little, maybe a little warning for us. "The experience of history brings ample evidence that the downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war." Yeah, that's a little warning.

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  A state of suspense is trying.

• 1:18:40Jocko Willink?

  And, and his usage of the word suspense there is like mental indecision. A state of suspense or mental indecision is trying. It has often led nations as well as individuals to commit suicide because they were unable to bear it.

• 1:18:58Jocko Willink?

  But suspense is better than to reach exhaustion in pursuit of the mirage of victory. That's a bold statement. So indecision can be so bad, this, this existence of indecision can be so bad that you, you, you can destroy yourself. You can kill yourself. You want to kill yourself.

• 1:19:21Jocko Willink?

  But that's actually better than to just exhaust yourself completely in pursuit of a, of a victory that can't be had.

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  What's, you know, what's counterintuitive about that is, you know, this idea that humans, we need a goal. We need something to go towards, right? We need a goal. We need something. We, we want something. We want to struggle. We want to fight. What he's saying here is like, well, let's think twice about that one.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Let's think twice about that one.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  And I think it's probably because he understands what the true exhaustion of a state looks like.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  On a scale that most people can't comprehend.

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  And he said this before, I read it, read it. The mirage of victory. The mirage. What you are seeing, this goal that you're working towards, it's actually not a thing. It's not a real thing. It's a mirage. And you've convinced yourself victory for me is I defeat Jaco. That's victory and I am going to move towards that until it happens. But that's actually not a real thing.

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  It's not a real thing. Yeah, it's not a real thing. And what you'll end up with is an insurgency.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Or exhaustion.

• 1:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Or exhaustion or whatever else. Or you, or you'll rule over the barren wasteland that I left.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  Moreover, a truce to actual hostilities enables a recovery and development of strength. While the need for vigilance keeps a nation on its toes.

• 1:21:00Jocko Willink?

  So we're looking for a truce. It's okay. Peaceful nations are apt, however, to court unnecessary danger because when once aroused, they are more inclined to proceed to extremes than predatory nations.

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Interesting, right? This is like the guy that's sort of quiet, keeping to himself. But when you piss him off,

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  you know, then they freaking go ham. That's a technical definition as well.

• 1:21:32Jocko Willink?

  For the latter, making war as a means of gain are usually more ready to call it off when they find an opponent too strong or too easily overcome. And this is really the last point for this book that we're going to talk about. It is the reluctant fighter, impelled by emotion and not by calculation, who tends to press a fight to the bitter end. Thereby, he too often defeats his own end, even if he does not produce his own direct defeat.

• 1:22:07Jocko Willink?

  For the spirit of barbarism can be weakened only during a cessation of hostilities. War strengthens it, pouring fuel on the flames.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  So by attacking people, by attacking the barbarians, when we attack them, we make them stronger. We make them fight harder.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  War makes them stronger, makes them fight, makes them resist, pours fuel on the flames.

• 1:22:45Jocko Willink?

  We can only weaken them by backing off a little bit. Again, this is not the recruiting poster.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  And it's so counterintuitive. It's so counterintuitive to the natural reaction of push harder, be more dominant to get the outcome that you want.

• 1:23:06Jocko Willink?

  So, look.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  We're, we're here for the truce. We're, we're here for the compromise. Like, it's just, it's so counterintuitive to what we, what we preach, what we want, which is to- total victory. I like total victory. That sounds good. It's a mirage.

• 1:23:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just never compromise.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  You know, no compromise.

• 1:23:26Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's another great, you know, inspirational meme. Cause there's none that say, hey, it's really good to compromise oftentimes and kind of take what you can get and work out a good deal and, you know, that's fair.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  We're gonna get hammered for this.

• 1:23:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, some inspirational meme people are gonna be mad at us.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Jocko Willink?

  And what's crazy is, I mean, you probably, you know, open up, uh, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. We'll pull out some stuff like this. I got all kinds of stuff in there. Getting crazy.

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Are you gonna make me crack it open and start reading some?

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  No, I'm not.

• 1:24:05Jocko Willink?

  Guilty as charged.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  I'm kinda wanting to.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Well, the good thing about your book is that it's not,

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  it's not like you've done a good job, whether it be in the book itself, or-

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Compromise. Page thirty-two, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. When working with other people in dynamic, oh, this is, see, this is kinda cool. Here's what it says. This is just the first thing I opened up to. When working with other people in dynamic situations and relationships and deals, a person, especially a leader, must compromise.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Finding the common ground between teams. Merging different approaches to the same problem. Bridging personalities with people who might not get along. Reaching agreements in courses of action. All of these require compromise. And in many cases, a failure to compromise is a failure to succeed. I guess maybe I'm wrong.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  I mean, maybe I'm wrong about me writing stuff that's inspirational meme crap. But those are external compromises with other people, other humans that have their own personalities and ethos and issues. And compromises needed to unify. So work with them, compromise, so to work with them, compromise is a must.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Not with yourself.

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  And then I wait, but internally, it's different. With myself, I have to hold the line. There are areas within myself where I cannot compromise. I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna train hard, I'm gonna improve myself, I'm not going to rest on my laurels. I'm going to confront my own mistakes. I'm going to own my mistakes and confront them. I'm going to face my demons. I'm not gonna give up, or give out, or give in, I'm going to stand. I'm going to maintain my self-discipline. And on those points, there will be no compromise. Not now, not ever. Whoa.

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  It's pretty inspirational.

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  Pretty, uh, we might go meme on that one.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you go from the headline to the conclusion there and skip the content in the middle where it says compromise, not now, not ever. You got a little Clausewitzian issue here where your disciples are like, I didn't quite read the context, but I saw the page that said compromise. You know how it ended? It said, not now, not ever.

• 1:26:18Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  It's not good.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  I think if we go through this book, here's one called Fight. Go down swinging. And I'll tell you, if you fight with all you have more often than not, you won't go down at all. You will win. But you have to make that attitude part of your everyday life. Do the extra repetition, run the extra mile, go the extra round. Make the right choices, give the full measure.

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  I'm in the game. I think I'm in the inspirational meme game.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you are, but what I was gonna say is like, yeah, yeah, you do that. But the good thing about having a whole book and a whole podcast and eight million other books is, or whatever, you're gonna explain the whole situation rather than just have the one post. You see what I'm saying?

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look, the, the entire book is predicate. I think the opening salvo you have is, this is about you. And you say, I am nothing but weakness. I am nothing but, but flaws. I am nothing but these things. So this is the, this is the, this is what you are with yourself, with self-discipline. As opposed to how I'm gonna treat other people around me.

• 1:27:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes, this is aimed internally.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, in a literal sense. And that fight is against,

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  I mean, it's even in the video that we show at the mosque, I am nothing but weakness. And I'm gonna fight against that weakness. That compromise, all those things that my, my mind is telling me to do to myself, which is.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  I think also you could look into the terms like the difference between between impose discipline and self-discipline. Impose discipline does not work and self-discipline does. It's as simple as that.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  And as we impose ourselves on other people in war, in leadership, in parenting, in insert any human interaction, human and another human, when you impose your discipline, when you impose yourself on them, in the end, you will lose.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  But it's much more efficient just to impose your way.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's faster.

• 1:28:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man. Uh, so there we go. That's what we're going to cover for this book. Uh, I've kind of, I guess, foreshadowed some of the other things we'll do in the future. And it's one of those things, if you can make, if you can take these lessons, these lessons written in blood, not just in one war, but in war after war after war, and the exclamation point of World War I, you can learn a lot and you can apply this. And we know that it's not as striking. We know it's not as sexy. We know it's not as meme-worthy as

• 1:28:59Jocko Willink?

  some of the more, um, direct approaches.

• 1:29:07Jocko Willink?

  We know that. But this is, to give the original name, this is How to Win Wars.

• 1:29:18Jocko Willink?

  With that, speaking of winning wars, Echo Charles, we want to, you know, win the war on ourself.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  We do. Yeah, that, you, when you say win wars, right, win wars, you don't, this is one of the takeaways that I think, hey, dang, that's something good to remember. Where when you think about warfare and winning the war, you don't think about the peace that afterwards, you know, like the aftermath. So I grew up on Koi.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  You know that. So the thing about Kawaii is like, if you get in a fight with someone and you don't resolve it in a peaceful way, I don't care how. I don't care if it's the kind, hey, we don't like each other for no good reason and we just fighting like, okay, we're cool. We fought and we're done. If you don't resolve it in some peaceful way, you gotta deal with somebody's cousin, somebody's brother, somebody's, you know, whoever, neighbor, who's just down for the cause or whatever, and you're gonna see him again, too. That's the thing. You go to the store, he's gonna be there, like next week or whatever, you know? So it's kind of one of those things where it's kind of in the back of your mind. If I'm gonna fight this guy, I sort of gotta deal with that, contend with that long, that long game.

• 1:30:24Jocko Willink?

  Is there a methodology to get that resolved post-fight?

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, all the fights I've ever been in have never been like lasting, like it'd be like a fight and then we're friends afterwards. But I was a kid, so I have very little, I had very little understanding of that. But nonetheless, the point is where that's something, when we think of warfare, we think of, oh, defeat, crush your enemies, having driven before you. See what I'm saying? And we don't think about that. Oh, wait, you know, you got your neighbor, his freaking dog or whatever is barking, his tree is growing over your fence and you're gonna, you guys are warring.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  Years. It's like, bro, you don't have to do that, you know? You gotta live next to that guy. When you go to the post office or whatever, you go to your car and you see him getting in his car too, you're like, oh, it's awkward or whatever. Like, bro, you don't have to do it like that, you know?

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Are you really going to achieve the peace that you hoped for by beating this dude's ass right now?

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  Cause chances are, you're not really, if you think a little bit, chances are you're not thinking, hey, I'm gonna go the distance right now. Like, I'm, I'm ready to just go, I'm ready to go all in. I'll fight every cousin, nephew, brother, sister, I don't care. Like, but that's where you can end up.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  We don't want, we don't want to end up.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  In fact, that's a common thing, especially like with the neighbors or whatever. Oh, I'm gonna tell them off. It's usually that kind where I'm gonna tell them off. I'm not gonna take that from him or her, whatever. And meanwhile, ten, twenty, thirty years, you're warring with this neighbor, right next door, by the way.

• 1:31:53Jocko Willink?

  The feud.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  The feud, man. That's, yeah, it's total, total common thing, you know, when all you gotta do is be like, hey, like, you know, make a peaceful discourse. And you guys can live neighborly, see what I'm saying?

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  Preferable.

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  But anyway, yeah, so the point is like thinking about that aftermath or considering that it's a thing, you know? Do that. Like if you roll with someone in jujitsu and you fight dirty because you want to win, you know, do that stuff. Then when you're done rolling, you tap them out. Hell yeah. Everyone's talking about you. Oh yeah, you dirty. Nobody respects you. Nobody likes you in the community. It's true. You gotta be careful with that kind of stuff.

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  All right. So how can we, you know, win the war that we're all fighting? Kind of on an individual basis, day to day?

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  With unmitigated daily discipline in all things.

• 1:32:44Jocko Willink?

  I like it. I like it.

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  So when I say daily discipline, I mean the energy drink. Boom. So it's healthy for you. And it gives you the payoff that you'd expect from an energy drink.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  See what I'm saying? So this is good news for us. Anyway, so on this path that we're all on, we need some supplementation. We could benefit from supplementation, right? So we got Choco Fuel. To the rescue in a sense. Got energy drinks for you, healthy, good, short term and long term. We got protein, additional protein, tastes real good.

• 1:33:15Jocko Willink?

  We got dessert, basically.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Dessert.

• 1:33:17Jocko Willink?

  That's good for you.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, good short term, good long term. The aftermath of the milk of the protein, the dessert. It's good aftermath. It's a peace, peaceful truce.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  That be very peaceful truth.

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Also, when your joints act up, when your immunity acts up, we got some stuff for that as well.

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  You don't let your joints act up. How do we get into a continual state of peace with our joints?

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, like a preventative situation.

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Because to wait, waiting for your joints to act up is a bad call.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  And I was about to say preemptive strike on your joints.

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  I mean, you're like, hey, how about a cooperative, you know, you're going down like the right path there. I'm like preemptive strike.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So you're more attuned with Marine Corps recording poster.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  It is, it is called joint warfare.

• 1:34:02Jocko Willink?

  It is called joint warfare.

• 1:34:03Speaker 02

  I know, bro.

• 1:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Preemptive, so there we go. Preemptive strike on joint issues.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  Joint issues. Yeah, you gotta beat them down.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Them into submission.

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Beat inflammation into submission with joint warfare. Don't wait until you have joint issues. That's a dumb call. That's what Echo Charles just told you to do.

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm here to help, you know? I'm saying, hey, if you don't want to worry about joint issues, you take the joint warfare and the super krill oil.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  That's it. If you don't want to worry about colds or sicknesses or flus or whatever, you take the vitamin D3, you take the cold war, that's going to help you.

• 1:34:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Don't worry about that.

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Preemptive strike. Go to war. Go to war.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Total war, yeah, fully. So you can get all the stuff at Vitamin Shoppe. You can get all the energy drinks at Wawa and you can get all of everything on JacoFuel.com.

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  And if, look, if you want to save a little bit of money and you want to save brain power, you get a subscription. Get a subscription to whatever you want. It'll show up at your house once a month. Boom, there's the Molk, there's the joint warfare, there's the super krill. It's coming in, coming out, you don't worry about it. You can focus on something else. You can prioritize and execute some other tasks.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Yep. Speaking of brain power, Origin USA, they got some American made stuff.

• 1:35:24Jocko Willink?

  How's that have to do with brain power?

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  Right, you know what I'm talking about. Don't act like you don't know. American, American made denim, as far as jeans go.

• 1:35:31Jocko Willink?

  I was going to call you on a couple of those last podcasts where, you know, speaking of whatever, I'm going to talk about something totally different. That's sort of like become your new mode.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  No, yeah, because you got to make the association. You see what I'm saying?

• 1:35:41Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of pickles.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  That's the brain power.

• 1:35:44Jocko Willink?

  OriginUSA.com, you can get some jeans.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  American made denim, that's a big deal. As far as American made stuff goes, you got the denim, you got your jeans, you got your gees, rash guards, you got athletic wear, you got belts, you got boots.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  All made in America, Origin USA, boom.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  See, see what I'm saying about the brain power?

• 1:36:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was definitely had a lot to do with brain power.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  Also, speaking of a lot to do.

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  The amount of brain power you expended making that connection is pretty ridiculous.

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  Speaking of ridiculous, Jaco has a store.

• 1:36:18Jocko Willink?

  It's half a watt.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  It's called Jaco Store.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  If you want your discipline equals freedom shirts.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  Merch as far as merch goes, you know, shirt that says good on it. Boom, you can get it there. You can get all kinds of stuff, uh, hats.

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  Do you still sell that?

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Hoodies, rush cards.

• 1:36:37Jocko Willink?

  Still sell the shirt with your head on it? Do you still sell the shirt with your head on it?

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  You designed that shirt.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you still sell that shirt with your head on it?

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, we still sell it.

• 1:36:46Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  Best seller.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  Yes. Uh, it sells double the amount of the one with your head on it.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  If you must know.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, yes, the shirt that Jaco designed with my head is on it on there.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  A bunch of other stuff on there as well. We have a subscription situation for the shirts, some other shirts. They're exclusive. I said it, exclusive.

• 1:37:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:37:09Speaker 02

  It's called the Shirt Locker. If you're part of the Shirt Locker, you have, you get one of these shirts every month. It's a new, they're new kinda creative, for lack of a better term, designs. If you're not part of the Shirt Locker, you don't get them. Sorry. It's like the nature of the locker. See what I'm saying?

• 1:37:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you went a little more simple this time, which was good. I appreciated the simplicity of it. You still can't describe what the shirts are with any, with any sensible.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Words.

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  Well, some things can't be explained, you know.

• 1:37:40Jocko Willink?

  That's even better. That's even better. I like that.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Jocko Willink?

  Even to say, look, I can't really explain this, but trust me, you know, you're gonna want one of these shirts.

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  Okay, these shirts cannot be explained, Jaco. They can only be experienced.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:37:52Speaker 02

  So you make this choice whether or not you experience it by you wearing them or by you seeing someone else wear them. That's up to you. That part is up to you.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  I think it's you either, you either regret what you have done or what you have not done.

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:07Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be a lot, a lot more regret on what you have not done.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  I think so too.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  You see somebody representing in a shirt, you're like, oh, that's cool. I'm gonna pick one of those up. But you can't.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  It's true. Yeah. That's what the field is telling me as far as feedback goes. So, yeah, I agree.

• 1:38:19Jocko Willink?

  They're fueled now.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  The field, you know.

• 1:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Check this out.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  The field.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  Anyway, like I said, JacoStore.com. That's where you can get this cool stuff.

• 1:38:30Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of cool stuff.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  You can subscribe to this podcast if you want to, because Echo seems to think that you haven't subscribed to it yet. Cause you've been listening to 285 episodes, 287 episodes. That's where you're at. You're like, you know what? Maybe today's the night. Maybe I would get that. Hold on, let me whip out my iPhone and just hit subscribe. Smash the subscribe button, button. Button.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  The way it's going, but yeah.

• 1:39:00Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, we got this podcast. We got the Jaco Unraveling Podcast with DC, Darryl Cooper. Of martyr made fame. We got the Grounded Podcast. We got the Warrior Kid Podcast. We also have Jaco Underground. Where we have a, a sovereign location, a virtual sovereign location. Where we will not be impeded upon by forces. We will, we will do what we want in the Jaco Underground. Look, hey, here's what's going on in the world. There's things happening on these platforms. There's things happening, these platforms. We don't control the platforms.

• 1:39:40Jocko Willink?

  We don't control the platforms. There's a possibility that things could happen that could hurt what we're trying to do. Whether they start charging you money to listen on these platforms. Whether they start inserting advertisements into the middle of us talking about World War One. Or Vietnam and all of a sudden you're listening to an advertisement about, um, uh, whatever, mattresses, right? So we don't want to have that happen. We definitely don't want to be censored. For whatever reason. So we gotta have an alternative platform. We made our own, JacoUnderground.com. Look, we, hopefully we never have to go to it. It's possible.

• 1:40:24Jocko Willink?

  But if we do, we'll be ready and we appreciate the support to get us ready. If you want to subscribe to that, we do a little extra podcast.

• 1:40:33Jocko Willink?

  And we answer a bunch of questions. We give some amplifying information. If you want to join it, it costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford that, it's cool. Email assistance at jocko underground.com. We're just trying to, we're here to hook you up if you need it. But we appreciate you hooking us up as well. Freedom isn't free, by the way.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:40:56Jocko Willink?

  We gotta maintain that freedom. We got a YouTube channel. Speaking of smashing the subscribe button.

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  And freedom.

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of post, like and comment, what is it?

• 1:41:07Speaker 02

  Post, subscribe.

• 1:41:09Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe, like and comment. Yeah. Wouldn't it be annoying if the, like every video, that's what somebody's got to put in the front of it?

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Like and subscribe, that's what it is. And hit the notification.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Comment too. No, they say comment. Oh yeah. And plus hit the notification. What are you doing, dude?

• 1:41:24Speaker 02

  Let me know in the comments.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let me know in the comments. And they always have some dumb thing to talk about.

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  Yes, most of the time.

• 1:41:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I was thinking, if you want to see more videos like this, go make, let me know in the comments. Shut up, bro. What are you talking about?

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  You know what, you're, we'll just say, I'm not gonna say you're salty. I'm not gonna say that. Apparently you're salty. But that's not what I'm saying. The reason that you feel what I think that you're feeling right now about that is because it's like, it's super obvious. Like what they're doing. They want to like, they want the intel for the algorithm, right? The more, they want the engagement, right? Obviously, they want the comments, they want the likes, they want to, because that's for the algorithm so they can rate their video higher so they can whatever. And you, we know that, we know that. We're not even mad at that, really.

• 1:42:09Jocko Willink?

  Kind of mad at it.

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  But they're not, but I think we or you are mad, quote unquote, at the part where they try to like fake like that's not it. They try to fake like, oh yeah, you let me know all, you know, you're, you're, we're talking to each other, we're friends, almost kind of a feeling. And you're like, bah, you don't want to know. You don't want to know what I think, you know? That's what it feels like. I can't read the guy's mind. So I don't know if you really want to know or not, but that's how it feels. That's why. I feel it too.

• 1:42:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm, I don't say in the videos like, comment. But I read the comments because they're funny.

• 1:42:43Speaker 02

  They are funny.

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  And they're good. And some of them are interesting.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  I've gotten some good tips on books to cover and stuff from YouTube comments. Literally, that's kind of crazy, right?

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  So I'll read the comments because they're interesting. They're funny.

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, YouTube comments kinda have a reputation on that kind of straight up YouTube comments have the rep, the stigma of being like a cesspool of just like unreasonable negativity. But I think usually with our stuff, it's there, they can be constructive most of the time.

• 1:43:16Jocko Willink?

  I'm down.

• 1:43:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:43:18Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, if you want to leave a comment, leave a comment, like, subscribe, smash.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  Anyway, yes, the point is we do have a YouTube channel. So if you want to look at that, boom, there you go. Also, Psychological Warfare is an album that Jaco did. I recorded back in the day for the purpose of... Yeah, very hard. No, man, it was helpful.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  I recorded it.

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  It was very helpful.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  You literally pressed record, bro.

• 1:43:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what recording is. You press record on the thing.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  You think everybody's like super pumped on that?

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  I think they're very impressed, yeah. Nonetheless, it was recorded for the purpose of helping me through my moments of weakness. Then we added some other stuff about weaknesses that I don't have, but that other people might have. Which turned out to be the case. So yeah, if you have some moments of weakness, you want to listen to Jaco telling you how to get over them, boom, Psychological Warfare.

• 1:44:07Jocko Willink?

  If you want to see a visual representation of how to stay on the path, go to flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer, his company, he's putting all stuff, kinda cool stuff to hang on your wall. And plus it's Dakota Meyer, which is just, well, it's Dakota Meyer. Got some books, Final Spin, coming out soon. Well, coming out in November, is that soon? Depending on when you're listening to this. So, Final Spin, novel, book, poem, transcript. What did you think you called it? Text? The text. Literature.

• 1:44:45Jocko Willink?

  If you want that first edition, get on it. Leadership Strategy and Tactics, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocol, Disciplining Your Freedom Field Manual, read a little bit of that today.

• 1:44:54Jocko Willink?

  Way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3 for your kids, for your neighbors' kids. Just for every kid that you know, get them on the path when they're young. Mikey and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth, which I wrote the foreword to. Extreme Ownership and the Decotomy Leadership. Echelon Front, what do we do at Echelon Front, Dave?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  We solve your problems through leadership.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  What about, what about problems that aren't leadership problems?

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. All your problems are leadership problems. I stole that, though.

• 1:45:23Jocko Willink?

  Who'd you steal it from?

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Somebody.

• 1:45:27Jocko Willink?

  Go to echelonfront.com if you need help inside your company. That's what we do. We have efonline.com where we teach leadership principles online. This is your leadership gym. It's where you go in and get some sets, get some reps. Get it done. Work up a little leadership sweat. Do some role playing. Ask some questions. We're there all the time. We have a, a, a conference that we put on. I don't know if that's the best word, but we have an event that we do. I don't even know if that's the right word. Anyways, there's a thing you can come to, which is called the muster. We talk about leadership for two days. We do activities.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  Come and check it out. Phoenix, August 17th and 18th. Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th.

• 1:46:20Jocko Willink?

  We have something called the FTX coming up.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  July 12th and 13th. If you want to check that out. It's tactical training with the emphasis on leadership. And you can take the leadership principles that we talk about all the time and imply them in a tactical environment, which will then you, you will then be able to transfer to whatever environment you're in. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, then go to AmericasMightyWarriors.com.org. Sorry. And if you want to hear.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  If you want to hear more of this, of my cringingly long, just reading of texts.

• 1:47:16Jocko Willink?

  If you want to hear Echo Charles randomly ranting about God knows what. If you want to hear Dave getting hyped up on things that don't matter.

• 1:47:30Jocko Willink?

  You can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, on Facebook.

• 1:47:39Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles, Dave is at David R Burke, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all of the uniformed personnel out there in the military who take these strategies and put them into action to protect our way of life. Thank you for what you do. And to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for protecting our way of life here at home. And to everyone else out there, remember that Napoleon, the, the great military leader,

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Napoleon Bonaparte, remember that he pursued his vision of peace for 20 years of war.

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  And ended up defeated and in exile. Don't do that.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that.

• 1:48:40Jocko Willink?

  Think strategic.

• 1:48:43Jocko Willink?

  Adjust your ends to your means. Make sure you can actually win.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  Make sure you can see that pathway to victory. Make sure you can see those pathways, plural, to victory, and then start down that path.

• 1:49:03Jocko Willink?

  And then give it everything you got.

• 1:49:06Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.