The Debrief w/ Jocko And Dave Berke #26: Your Boss Wants What You Want

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko debrief podcast number 26, sitting here with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. What we do on this podcast is we have a leadership consulting company. It's called Echelon Front. We work with a bunch of different companies, every different industry, wild range of industries. And we help them with their leadership. And a lot of times we debrief amongst ourselves to try and learn and educate ourselves on what different leadership challenges people face. So we do some debriefs.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  As a company, but I figured we might as well debrief on the podcast or on a podcast so we can educate more people and more people can learn from these lessons. And these, we change the names and we change the industries so that to protect our clients. So whatever we're talking about, we say, oh, this was a gas oil company. It's probably a software company. Or if we say it was a software company, it was probably a manufacturing company. But the leadership stays the same. The leadership challenges stay the same. So that's what this podcast is about. And Dave, what do you got? What do you got for debrief for today?

• 1:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah, this podcast, by the way, people are pretty stoked on it. What cracks me up because we do always mix things up and we're never going to talk about something that can identify a particular client or particular person. And because people really like this podcast, I'm always getting the question, hey, was that our company? Hey, was that me? So it tells me that it resonates. So you know, the problems we're talking about with this company, whatever it might be, it's, it's the same problems that so many different companies are having.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's like at Echelon Front when we do the academy and I, at the beginning of the case, we have an online training academy and we go on there. And I usually present something on a Monday. Hey, here's a leadership issue. Here's a, here's a, something you should try and look at as a leader. And usually the team at Echelon Front is saying, he's talking, is he talking about me? He's talking to me. And the funny thing was after a month of that stuff of the, kind of the text thread going back and forth, oh, is he talking about me? Is he talking about me? I said, yeah, I'm talking about you, all of you and myself. Like this is what we're doing. We all make these mistakes. We all have these tendencies that we can fall into. So yes, we're talking about you. And the interesting thing about that is if you don't think we're talking about you, we're probably talking about you even more.

• 2:14Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  All right. So what do you got?

• 2:18Dave Berke?

  The easiest summary for this one is your boss wants what you want. And the reason I say that is because so many questions we get and so many challenges we get from people are challenges with their boss. And this was an interesting one, which I thought was worth talking about because I got a question. I'm with a client. We work with clients, sometimes relatively short period of times, but usually we're with them for a while.

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  So just real quick.

• 2:42Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  The, the real interesting thing is the minute you have, if you're sitting here thinking, oh God, I'd like to ask a question about my boss. Let me tell you, the answer to the question about your boss isn't your boss. It's you, you're the answer to the question. You are the answer to the question. When your boss is doing this, that, or the other thing, the way to change that isn't to change your boss, it's to change yourself. It's to change your interaction. So just keep that in mind. And there's some people that are sitting here right now like, well, yeah, but in my case, okay, so cool. What do you have the, have you figured out some hypnotism way to sneak into your boss's house at night and change their personality? You can't do that. You can't do that. Your boss goes off the handle sometimes. Your boss is slow to make decisions.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  Your boss is micromanaging. Your boss, you, you name that problem. It's who they are. And listen, can you over a campaign of years, get someone to kind of morph their personality and change and trust you more? Sure, you can. But as far as what you're going to do tomorrow during the meeting, you can change your actions. You can't change your boss's actions tomorrow. So we focus on ourselves. That's called ownership.

• 3:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's spot on. And obviously the connection ownership is embedded in everything we talk about. But what was cool about this is not just what you just described, but how hard it is sometimes for people to even get to the question, which is, hey, I need to change my boss's behaviors, what they're thinking. The question that was asked to me, which is why this was so interesting was that it was posed to me that said, hey, what would you do while you were in the Marine Corps? If your boss gave you a set of orders that would get your people killed? That's how this question was phrased.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is there, which is, I've, I've been asked the same question. Yeah, but what are you doing? They're telling you to do something. So this is a common question and it's a common, what is it? A straw man, right? It's a common straw man question. Well, what would you do if you were telling, being told to do something that was going to get everyone killed?

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'm gonna let you continue, but that's a straw man question. It's a straw man setup of well, what would you do? Cause everyone thinks that their boss is telling them to do something that doesn't make any freaking sense at all. And they're freaking out about it. And like, what would you do if your boss was so dumb?

• 4:58Dave Berke?

  Okay, continue. Yeah, that's it. No, that was it. So the cool part for me is that when I get to answer that question, I get to say, and I've been asked that before as well as I was in the Marine Corps for 23 years. And that never happened to me once. Now, listen, I know that has happened and you've actually covered some of that on the Jocko podcast. We know that as a thing. Now, it never happened to me. I never had someone give me a set of orders that based on those orders, if I followed them, would get people killed. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened throughout history. You've talked about that.

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  I wrote about it, by the way.

• 5:30Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  Cause this is the situation. Look,

• 5:34Jocko Willink?

  when we were told to take Iraqi soldiers out on with us on operations and they gave us a ratio of we had to take seven Iraqi soldiers for every one SEAL that we took out. That was gonna be a disaster. That could have literally gotten people killed for sure.

• 5:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  And what did I do in that situation? Well, what I did was wrote a email to my boss, explain the situation. And luckily, because I had built up trust with my boss over the previous 18 months. My boss was like, yeah, Jocko, don't get anyone killed. Yeah, you do what you gotta do. Of course. Which, which by the way, ties into the point that you're about to say, because guess what? My boss did not want us to go out and get a bunch of people killed. My boss did not want us to take excessive risk. So go ahead.

• 6:17Dave Berke?

  No, I mean, you, you're hitting it. And I think why that, why that story is such a powerful story and why we get to use that as an example so well is the whole point behind that is that there is no way your boss's secret agenda with that ratio of who to take out was to get you or anybody killed. There's no way that that's what it was.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  Or just fail, fail a bunch of missions, put people at massive risk.

• 6:39Dave Berke?

  Totally. Set back the war effort. Yeah, we're not doing that over here. And so. The whole point to that was, which is the beginning of this conversation was, hey, listen, I never got told in my career to do something and to get my people killed. But I worked for some bad bosses. I had times where I had bosses that weren't great. Uh, you know, in my 23 years, I had the whole bell curve. I had some incredibly good bosses. I had a couple of bosses that were pretty bad and most of my bosses are just solid guys, good guys to work for. But universal, no matter where they fit in that bell curve, my number one goal was to have a good relationship with my boss. My number one goal. Didn't matter if I thought they were the best guy ever, or if I hated him. And I think you've used the phrase at the molecular level. It didn't matter.

• 7:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't think that is my phrase molecular level.

• 7:20Dave Berke?

  We've talked about, yeah, I'd say I hated this guy at the molecular level. Heard people talk about how much they hate their boss and I could go from a boss who I loved and a boss that I hated and what they both had in common was I had a good relationship with both of them. For the exact reason that you just described, I don't want conflict with my boss. Specifically, if I do get to a place where I do get those orders that inadvertently, we're going to get people killed. So the first question about getting orders to get people killed, we're able to move away from that with that explanation. And I talked about, hey, I want to have a good relationship with my boss, which really got us to the actual question. He said, well, how about when you know your boss is wrong? Now I started to understand, all right, this is really what's going on with this question. He doesn't really want to know about my Marine Corps experience.

• 8:04Dave Berke?

  He has a boss that's telling him to do things that he knows is wrong. So we're getting to exactly where you were, which was the real root of this conversation. And to me, this all centers around the biggest challenge in all this is not what your boss is asking, but how your ego was reacting to that, especially if your ego says your boss is wrong. And the first mental exercise that I think of every single time I hear something from someone that I might think isn't a good idea, the very first question I ask myself is, what does my boss want? And I'll go through this series of questions. Does my boss want us to lose money? No. Does my boss want to hurt the company? No. Does my boss want to put us behind schedule? No. And I go through all these questions.

• 8:46Dave Berke?

  Does my boss want us to lose clients? Does my boss want to hurt our reputation? Does he want to alienate employees? And on and on and on. And the answer to every one of those questions is almost always no. That is not what your boss wants. And so just by thinking about what does my boss wants?

• 9:05Dave Berke?

  80 or 90% of the problems that you have, just by stopping and thinking about what you, what he wants, and you come up with the answer, that problem, that problem gets solved right away. Without even having to go through the whole exercise of, he's wrong, he's this, he's that, it's trying to get me killed, just recognizing what it is that he wants.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  So I, I was almost, I thought you were going somewhere that I was going mentally. You were, you were, we were in the ballpark. I have one more previous question that I'm gonna ask. So your question that you ask is, you know, what is, what is it that the boss really wants? That's the question that you ask. When your boss, so if my boss tells me to do something that doesn't make any sense, I, that my second question is probably that. My first question is probably, what am I not seeing? How am I wrong? This is, when, when somebody tells me something that doesn't make sense to me, I don't think they're an idiot. I don't think that they don't understand the world. I think there's, I, I wanna check myself first, cuz there's a decent chance, my boss has been dwelling

• 10:06Jocko Willink?

  on this, my boss has been looking at the studies, my boss has been running the numbers, there's a bunch of things that my boss has been doing, he's been gathering information from a bunch of different sources, there's a really good chance that I don't actually know. And by the way, this also includes my peers. So if Dave's my peer, and Dave comes in and says, hey, here's how I think we should execute this mission, my instinct is that Dave has been looking at this for a while, my instinct is that Dave has probably reviewed this with the intel officer, that he's talked about it with his platoon, and he's coming to me with a pretty good idea, and there's something that I don't understand. And also, if Dave is my subordinate, and Dave comes to me and says, hey, I looked at this project that we want, I looked at this form of marketing, and I think we should put a bunch of money behind it, my instinct isn't, oh, Dave is

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  an idiot. My instinct is, oh, Dave is actually coming to me, his boss, and he's presenting me with an idea. Did he come with this idea half-cocked, and he's not really, he didn't do any research, he didn't look into it, he doesn't have any numbers to back it up? No, my instinct is actually, oh, it doesn't make sense on the surface to me right now, cuz that's probably cuz I'm personally

• 11:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I think that reveals the core of this question and the core of the question we get all the time, which is the instinct is if you listen to your ego, your ego actually tells you your boss is an idiot. That's what ego is whispering to you. So if you ask me a question that doesn't make any sense, my instinct, if I have a fragile ego and I don't have a good relationship with my boss, if I actually have a bad relationship with my boss, what my ego is going to tell me is he's an idiot, which to exactly to your point, which we know is is not true. And so the exercise of what does my boss want is it to me, it's a very similar way of saying, what am I not hearing from this guy? What don't I understand? What is he asking me to do that I just don't fully understand? For a second, let me just think about it. And the whole point to this is that I don't need to go back to my boss most of the time. If you ask me to do something and it doesn't initially doesn't

• 11:54Dave Berke?

  make sense, the resolution nine times out of 10, I don't even need to have, I don't even need to talk to you. If I can just sit for a minute and go, all right, hang on, let me think about what he said, let me think about what he asked, let me think about what he wants. And if I can be humble and think about that, sometimes I don't even need any clarity. I can go, oh, all right, hang on, I'm just frustrated. I'm mad about this, or I've got an issue over here, or I'm struggling with these things and I'm pushing that back on my boss. If I just take a step away from my own ego and just think about what you're asking, I don't even need to go back and say, hey, walk me through this so I understand it. I can just think about what you're asking and know what it is that you want, and I can go execute on that. So I think the instinct when you are frustrated with your boss, which is the whole theme of this, the whole point of this question, which several people

• 12:37Dave Berke?

  ask, is the problem with your boss is you. And if your instinct is my boss is an idiot, the first thing you need to do is stop and think, is my boss, does my boss really want to hurt the company? And my boss's real objectives is to cause problems for me or for my people. And in almost every case, the answer is no. Now, this is one of those scenarios where I'm going to talk about that point 001% that I hate to talk about because it's the one that everyone says, yeah, you see, this is the one, this is, which is, well, talk about it. But let's just read, because I have that at the end, like I want to reinforce it. I'm always over here on the other side, just make sure, just because Jocko's talking about the point 001, it doesn't mean it applies to you. Yeah, in fact, it doesn't apply to you. There's some other person that it might apply to. And

• 13:20Dave Berke?

  that is, guess what? You may have a boss that's an idiot. You may have a boss that's a tyrannical maniac. You might have a boss that's an egomaniac. You, all these things are true. You might have those bosses. Here's what's awesome about what we're talking about. Let's say your boss is a great guy.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  A brilliant leader and they present you with something and say, hey, I want you to do this and it doesn't quite make sense. And so you say, hey, let me think through this. Hey, boss, let me just make sure, let me clarify this. And you go back to your boss and he starts to see that there's some things that should be done differently. And he says, yeah, that looks great. Go ahead. So that's, that's the course of action. You took, you took an indirect approach of trying to figure out where you were wrong, owning the relationship. And it turns out positive. Now, let's say your boss is a tyrannical idiot and your boss, that's a tyrannical idiot, tells you to do something that doesn't make any sense. Guess what you should do? You should actually exercise the same protocol because that's how you're going to have the best possible outcome. The worst possible outcome is to say, oh, you know what?

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  My boss is an idiot. So your boss says, hey, I want you to do this plan. And you say, that plan is stupid. It doesn't make sense. Well, how does that work out for you? Now you have an antagonistic relationship. You're probably getting demoted. You're probably getting fired. You're probably getting overrun, you know, just over, just overwhelmed with brow beating from your boss who's going to make you do this thing. And you're going to be miserable. So the course of action when interacting with other people is actually listen to what they have to say, actually try and figure out where you're wrong, actually try and figure out how you can support their plan. Like those are the courses of actions that actually work. And it doesn't matter where you are on that bell curve. That's right.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  Tyrannical egomaniac to benevolent leader of justice. Doesn't matter. No matter where you are on that bell curve or anyone in between, the best way to interact with them is to listen to what they have to say, try and support what their plan is. Oh, and by the way, it's not just bosses. It also applies to your peers. Well, you know, if it's my peer, I don't have to put up with it. No, it still doesn't help. Well, if it's my subordinate, I can at least smash them. No, it still doesn't help. Doesn't educate them, doesn't put them in a positive mindset, doesn't unify the team. Instead, it breaks the team apart. You know, I said something on the Huberman podcast a little while ago, we were talking about, I forget how we even got into it. But I looked at him and I said, hey, Andrew, if you had

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  a team of 10 people and you all loved each other and I had a team of 10 people and we all hated each other, who would win in whatever we were doing? And he says, well, the team that loves you. Yep. A hundred percent. It's a hundred percent right. And you get those, you get a SEAL platoon that's falling apart and you dissect them, what do you find? You find a bunch of infighting people that are pissed at each other, people that have little egos, they're fragmented. You take a SEAL platoon that's really good, you go talk to them, you can't find any cracks. You can't find any disruptions. Anybody that does maybe feel like they're getting slighted, they know enough to subdue that and suppress and go, you know what, I just need to, for the good of the team, I gotta get on board with the program. So the idea that when you're interacting with other people

• 16:25Jocko Willink?

  up, down, or across the chain of command, what you should do is you should do it in a positive way so that things move forward. So you have stronger relationships up, down, and across the chain of command. Up, down, and across the chain of command. It's interesting. You know, early on at Echelon Front, we would talk about leading up the chain of command. And the reason we talked about leading up the chain of command specifically is because most people didn't view that as a thing. Most people didn't see leadership as something you do up the chain of command. And because we talked about it in a way that people weren't used to, people thought it was somehow different.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  So now whenever I talk about leading up the chain of command, I also say, and by the way, that's the same way I treat people across the chain of command, that's the same way I treat people below me in the chain of command. I'm building relationships, I'm listening, I'm treating people with respect, I'm allowing them to influence me up, down, and across the chain of command. The way you lead up the chain of command ultimately is the same way that you lead down the chain of command. And it's the same way you lead across the chain of command. And it's the same way you lead with some other team that doesn't report to you. And it's the same way you lead when you call for a seat change at an airline. And you're gonna talk to this person for seven minutes and hopefully they can get you an upgrade.

• 17:48Jocko Willink?

  That's how you talk to them. You try and build a little relationship with that person. You don't say, "Hey, by the way, look at my miles where I'm at right now. Do you know what kind of..." No, you don't do that. You know what that person does? They go, "I'm sorry, sir, we can't find your, we can't find this." "I'm sorry, sir. No, it looks like the middle seat is the last thing available and it's in row 93, middle seat." So no matter what you're doing, and listen, does this mean that you're running around being a brown-noser, kissing up to people? No, it doesn't mean that at all. It means you're treating people with respect. That's what you're doing. And when you do that, people are much more likely to treat you with respect and say, actually, sir, you know, it looks like we just had a cancellation

• 18:30Jocko Willink?

  in one of our, one of our business class seats. Will that work for you? And you said, that'd be wonderful. Doesn't matter who you're interacting with. Be cool, be nice. Damn, I did that with Echelon Front the other day. I said, here's something you can do. Be cool to people. Be cool. It goes a long way. What else?

• 18:50Dave Berke?

  That's a lot of it right there. I mean, that, that covers it. I've been this thing in my mind. I, I, I wanted to go through the spectrum of this, of this, different types of scenarios. And listen, there is a spectrum. It, it goes back and forth from situations by which we don't even need to communicate with each other to times where I gotta sit down and have a conversation with my boss before we execute on something. And the point that I think is critical of this is, and I think you've already emphasized it extremely well, which is the tool that I have in the few times, the few times that I really need to stop before execute and sit down and you can call it pushing back, you can call it asking questions, you can call it whatever you want. But just like

• 19:30Dave Berke?

  you described, up, down and across, my goal, my goal, especially in a subordinate position in this particular case, if I'm asked to get something done for the team, my goal is to try to execute on that. Think about what the outcome is, think about it helps the team and be able to execute on that without causing a bunch of issues, without pushing back, without having a reputation of being, um, you know, someone who, who resists and what do they call those people? The, uh, you know, the ones that are always, always pushing back.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  Contrarian?

• 19:57Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Thinking it in some other way. My goal is to execute. And the thing that gets in the way.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  That's a really good, that's a really good personality trait to have in life. Oh, what's your goal? My goal is to execute, make things happen. That's just, just amazing.

• 20:12Dave Berke?

  And just like you described, that doesn't just work with my boss. That's with everybody in every aspect, my personal life, my professional life. My goal is to just be able to execute on what it is we're trying to get done. And if I can keep my ego out of it and keep my frustration out of it, even when I'm asked to do something that initially doesn't make sense, just like you described in the beginning, if I just think about it for a minute and go, What do they want? What are they trying to accomplish? Does this make sense? What am I missing? I can think about it for a couple of minutes ago. I know what he wants. And I can just go do it. And even at times when maybe the instruction isn't exactly the way I should do it. If I have a decent relationship with my boss and you tell me to go do something, you've given me some latitude. I might not do it exactly the way you want or follow the instructions to the letter A, B, C, D. But if I get to the same outcome, you're not coming down here saying, well, did you do this?

• 20:57Dave Berke?

  This, this, and this, or you just, did you just get it done? Hey, I got it done. It wasn't necessarily the exactly the way you wanted. But on a few times, a very few times, and that's when you said that point, whatever, 1%. I was like, hey, listen, this is the rare event. If your mindset is just to go execute, once in a while, I might, I might need to go, hey, hang on, hey, hey, Jaka, before we go execute on this, I need to talk to you. And what I'm going to need in those rare times is I'm going to need more than anything, you being willing to listen to me. You talked about trust, you talked, it's all stuff, same things I wrote down, all the same things that I said is all the components of a relationship or a relationship is if I do need to push back and resist, what I need more than anything is you being willing to listen to me go, hey, I think if we execute on this, just like your email, you want that other person to be willing to listen to you.

• 21:42Dave Berke?

  And I don't get that by pushing back and resisting every single time you ask me to do something. I don't get that. And in fact, I get that by doing the exact opposite. So you covered it all. The whole point behind this and the conclusion of this is the biggest problem most of the time with our bosses is not our bosses at all. It's us. It's our egos that convince us they don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand. They're dumb. They don't get it. Or whatever story we tell ourselves, when most of the time, if I just sit and think about it for a minute, I know what they want. We're aligned. We want the same things at the end, and I just go execute on it.

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  So much better.

• 22:18Dave Berke?

  It's so much easier.

• 22:18Jocko Willink?

  So much easier, so much better. And listen, I know it might sound like it's going to take a little bit longer. It might sound like it'd be better just to say, hey, boss, this doesn't make sense. Then you put, kick up their defenses. You seem like a resister and you don't move forward in a positive way.

• 22:34Dave Berke?

  Just by saying what you said, if you put yourself in a position and you just are honest with yourself and somebody says, hey, I don't like what you said. I don't like how you say that. Most people have a problem with that comment. Most people don't like pushback. And you said it earlier, this isn't about being, I think you described it, we don't want a bunch of yes men. We don't want yes men. What we want is a bunch of hell yes men. Hey, is that what you want? Hell yeah, we can go make that happen. And there's a big difference between those two. But that, that resistance, I have to recognize that me pushing back is a habit, is a habitual way of letting you know that I don't like what you're doing, hurts everybody to include me.

• 23:15Dave Berke?

  The habitual, I can get this done to make it happen, helps me. And when it helps me the most is when it matters the most. When you get that email that says, you need to take for every one of you, seven of them, you're like, hey boss, listen. I, I need to let you know how we operate and what this looks like. And if we do this, the risk that's created, what you needed more than anything is your boss to listen to you. And if you had pushed back on every single directive and guidance and idea, the time you actually needed to push back, he might not have been interested in what you had to say. And in fact, he might have given you two choices. Hey Jocko, go execute, or oh, it sounds like you don't want to execute. I bet you I can find someone that will. And then all of a sudden, that bad plan is getting implemented all because of what we just described.

• 23:54Jocko Willink?

  With no mitigation whatsoever.

• 23:56Dave Berke?

  None.

• 23:58Jocko Willink?

  It's on you people.

• 23:59Dave Berke?

  And it's not, and like you said, it's not that hard to just stop for a second and think about it and go, okay, I know what he wants. I'm going to go execute.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. All right. Um, so here's my debrief point. I was working with a company and this company had a big group, a big group of people in the field. And the people that are in the field have all kinds of autonomy. They can kind of show up when they want. They can kind of take breaks when they want. They can come back to work when they want. They can kind of wear what they want. And there's some guidelines. There's some guidelines on everything I just said. There's guidelines about when they're supposed to show up. There's guidelines about when they're supposed to take a break. There's guidelines about what they're supposed to wear. There's guidelines about the tasks that they're supposed to conduct when they're out in the field. There's guidelines on these things, but they're real loose. And they're also real unenforceable because there's, these people are out in the field, out in the field solo. They're on solo operations.

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  And with all this autonomy in this company, some people were starting to take advantage of that autonomy, right? And you know, when, when there's multiple people in the field that are not quite doing what they're do supposed to be doing and they're kind of abusing this autonomy. Well, then corporate starts to get frustrated. They start to get feedback. You know, they see the, they see the report of someone that gets, uh, you know, in a car accident. Well, how'd they get in a car accident in this neighborhood when they're supposed to be over on this job site and they're, they weren't even there? Like, so they start catching these things and all of a sudden they start getting frustrated. So now corporate's wondering what's going on. So now what does corporate do? Corporate starts to impose rules.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  And now what happens with the people that are out in the field? Well, now the people that are in the field who were, most of them, when they're taking a break at a certain time, it's like, oh, yeah, I take a break at this time because I'm already driving by this, you know, the restaurant. So I just stopped there and I have an early lunch, but I still get back to work on the, and it actually makes sense. You know, you've got people on the front lines making decisions that are positive most of the time. And then you've got a small group of people that are making decisions that are abusing the system. But what does corporate need to do? They need to police up the people that are abusing the system. So they start making rules.

• 26:15Jocko Willink?

  And then what happens with the folks that are in the field? Now they start flexing a little bit. They, they start to do what they can do. They start some of those like, like the solidarity campaigns in Poland when they were resisting the Soviet Union. They would just do small things just to frustrate, right? That's what they did. And then what does HQ do? Then HQ starts to impose even more rules. And now what we end up with is we end up with a lack of trust. Trust is a key part of relationships. You get, it's not respectful. If I say, hey, Dave, yeah, you do what you want, but you can only take a lunch break from 11:30 to 12:30. Then I want you back in your vehicle doing your job. That doesn't show trust. That doesn't show respect. And when

• 26:56Jocko Willink?

  you say, yeah, but Jocko, you know, for me, I don't like to take a lunch break at that time because I'm so far out in the field. I can't get any food. And I also can't even check my, my emails because I'm too far. I'm outside the zone of cell phones. So I'm not getting, I like to take my lunch actually at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I say, I don't care. The rules are the rules, 1230, and now you're not being able to influence me. I'm not, so you can see, we just have relationships falling apart. So I'm sitting here listening, and by the way, in this meeting, I had the field workers and I had HQ, all in the same room at the same time. So I asked a question.

• 27:38Jocko Willink?

  I asked a question, I said, and I was talking to the field workers. I said to the field workers, I said, let me ask you a question. If you break rules, do you get more rules or less rules?

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  If you break rules, do you get more rules or less rules? And that's a good question. And it was, I could tell it was a good question because the room went silent. Because everybody knows the answer to that question. We all know the answer to that question because we all are human beings that grew up. If you break rules, you get more rules. That's what happens. And what this really is, as I thought about it after the meeting, this is just another form of discipline equals freedom. That's what it is. It's another form of discipline equals freedom, but it's on a very professional work basis. Here's something that I actually talked to this group about in the Marine Corps. And everybody knows I love the Marine Corps.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  I love the Marine Corps. I've spent time on Marine Corps ranges. So, so when you go shooting, sometimes we'd go out and we'd use Marine Corps ranges. And you, sometimes we'd show up in the Marine Corps, be there, you know, finishing up their range, and it's very, very, very controlled, right? It's like lock and load, one magazine each with three rounds of 556 ammunition. Ready on the left, ready on the right, all ready on the firing line, commence firing with three rounds. Like, they're doing that.

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  Why are they there? Well, they're there because they have a lot of rules. Why do they have a lot of rules? Because mistakes have been made and for every mistake that gets made, a new rule gets implemented.

• 29:26Jocko Willink?

  And you end up with a book of rules that are,

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  they're a little too stringent in some cases. A SEAL range, if you go to a SEAL range, it's basically this. Range is hot or range is cold. That's it. That's it. That's all you're gonna get. Range is hot or range is cold. Range is hot. Cool. We're shooting. We're doing whatever we want. But the reason for that is we are so freaking hardcore about the rules of weapon safety. We are so psychotic. Like you can get, I don't know what happens in Marine Corps if you have an accidental discharge. I don't know. What happens? You know, Lance Corporal has an accidental discharge, cracks off a round, what happens?

• 30:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that's not good.

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  It's not good, but what happens to him?

• 30:08Dave Berke?

  I don't know if I could tell you exactly what happens to him. Yeah. I can't imagine based on what I think the path you're going down is that the punishment is nearly as, yeah, significant as what you're gonna get if you crack that, you crack off around.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  It's severe punishment. If you do something stupid with a weapon in the SEAL teams, it is severe. It is absolutely severe. So what you have is a very small number of rules that everybody obeys religiously. Religiously.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  And so what you end up with is a very, you know, range is hot. That's what we're doing. Very few rules. So think about that. Think about that if you, as you work for a company or as you work for a team, there's rules in place. If you obey the rules that are in place, you'll end up with less rules. And that's why I spent so much of my SEAL career doing, and I know this sounds crazy, but doing whatever I wanted to freaking do. I had so much leeway in my career. And that was because I followed the rules. I followed the rules. And because I followed the rules that were in place, I didn't have very many rules to follow.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  Because my bosses knew that there was a parameter, there was a left flank, a left flank and a right flank that I was not going to depart from.

• 31:31Jocko Willink?

  And so they didn't, they let me go all the way out to that right flank, all the way out to that left flank. And do whatever I wanted to when I was inside that box.

• 31:41Jocko Willink?

  I followed the rules and therefore I had very few rules and got to do whatever I wanted to. So, so think about that when you're working inside of a company. The more you follow the rules, the less rules you have. And then also think about this as you lead a company or as you lead a team. You should explain that to your people that your goal is to give them less rules.

• 32:06Jocko Willink?

  Your goal is for them to have autonomy. Your goal is for them to be leaders, your goal is for them to make decisions. And you should also explain to them that when you as a leader are forced to impose rules, you should tell them it's because these rules weren't being followed. Like, "Hey Dave, the only reason I'm gonna have to come down and inspect your weapons two times a month is because the last time I looked at them, they weren't cleaned. So we're putting some rules in place."

• 32:36Jocko Willink?

  So when you, whether you're a subordinate and you're part of a team, think about following the rules to a T so that you can have less rules. When you're in a leadership position, think about making it a goal to give less rules. And the reason you do that, or the way you do that is by explaining to the team that following the rules will actually give them less rules.

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  And then,

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  as an individual human being, as a person, in your, in your personal life, you need to have rules in your personal life. And if you have rules in your personal life that you follow, you don't need that many of them. If you have a rule that says, "Hey, wake up early." If you have a rule that says, "Work out every day." If you have a rule that says, "Eat clean." If you have a rule that says, "Get your work done, be productive, don't waste time." If you have those rules in your life, you're probably doing pretty good as long as you obey them. Now, if you can't follow those rules,

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  then you need to put more rules in place. You need to be one of those people that sets the, uh, this thing on your phone where it turns off at 10 o'clock. So you're not wasting time on that. You need to be the type of person that wakes up in the morning and says, "Okay, I'm not going to eat anything until I get done with a workout. That's my rules. Oh, and by the way, I can't control myself when there's a sleeve of freaking Oreos. So guess what? I have a rule that I'm not gonna have any junk food in the house."

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  And if you're wasting four hours a day watching TV, watching streaming services, which is now like putting heroin into your house, because you can just tap into it at any time. Well, guess what? Now you need to make the rule that you're not allowed to have any TV at all. You're not watching it. You can only watch it on, you know, Saturday from seven o'clock at night until 10 o'clock at night. That's it. That's all the TV you get. So you need to put rules. If you can't follow the simple rules, the basic rules, then you put more rules into your life. I was watching, I saw a clip from Theo Von, and he had another comedian on there. It's a Greek guy who I can't remember his name, but he's really, really funny. But the guy says,

• 34:48Jocko Willink?

  yeah, you know, I can quit drinking at any time. He's kind of a heavy guy. And he says, you know, I can quit drinking at any time. I can quit, you know, I've used drugs. I can quit them anytime. But he goes, but food, I just can't quit. And then they started talking about the fact that, you know, the thing with food is you have to have food, right? And so Theo Von was saying, yeah, can you imagine if it was like, hey, don't do cocaine, but you have to do cocaine every six hours every day. You have to do a little bit. He's like, I would be out of control. So putting those rules in your life to make sure that you are on the right path. And if you live by those rules, if you have to tighten up the rules on yourself, eventually you realize, oh, my life

• 35:30Jocko Willink?

  is a lot better when I don't eat crap. My life is a lot better when I wake up at a decent time every day. My life is a lot better when I don't waste a bunch of time doing things that don't provide me any benefit whatsoever. And if you can live by those rules, your life is going to be better. And what this boils down to is another form of discipline equals freedom. But the aspect of considering, see, we don't like rules. It's the psychological reactance. We don't like rules. But if you realize that those rules are the pathway to less rules, it will hopefully put it in perspective, make it easier for you to follow those rules. And by the way, I'm a rebellious

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  person. I figured this out. I figured this out when I was like in boot camp. If I follow the rules that they set up for me, I'm gonna have more freedom. So I'm a rebellious person, but the way to rebel is actually to succeed. The way to rebel and overcome the rules and not have to follow them is by actually obeying those rules. I did that at Officer Candidate, at Officer Candidate School. I obeyed the rules so hard that they told me to stop. I actually did that at Bud's too. You know, at Bud's, the punishment for being dumb is, or doing something stupid, or is getting wet and sandy. Meaning you're going to be miserable, so they could go hit, go hit the surf, go get wet and sandy.

• 36:55Jocko Willink?

  So when we were in third phase, we're in San Clemente Island, I would just start off the day, go get wet and sandy. Didn't do anything wrong. Me and my swim buddy, we'd go get wet and sandy. The instructors finally, after like day three or four, they're like, what are you doing? And we're like, just, I'm just trying to be tougher, trying to be harder. And he's like, you can't do that. They eventually told our whole class, you guys are not allowed to get wet and sandy anymore. We obeyed the rules to the nth degree and they told us, hey, stop. I did that at Officer Candidate School too. At Officer Candidate School, you gotta yell everything in what they call a ballistic tone. So every time I was interacting with the upperclassmen, I would be like yelling at the top of my lungs. And finally they're like, hey, we don't want anyone in your class to yell anymore because we like hurt their ears.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, sometimes I take it to an extreme, but guess what? You end up with less rules. So it remains true. Discipline equals freedom. You got anything for your notes there?

• 37:49Dave Berke?

  I just was thinking back on something you said when you were talking about, and it, it gets to all the counterintuitive things we say. If you want less rules, follow the rules. But it also made me think about too, if, if you want influence over some of the rules that aren't good rules, following that, those, it's another great way to, to get the influence. Cause if you're always pushing back on all the rules, sooner or later, I'm going to stop listening to you. Even if the rule is dumb and I actually do need to hear you, if all you ever do is push back on the rules. But if you're a dude that understands those limits, operates inside those limits and you go, hey, boss, there is this rule here that really prevents me from getting these things done, like the lunch rule. I am so much more inclined to hear what you have to say, if we need to change that rule, if you're someone that operates inside that.

• 38:31Dave Berke?

  So it doesn't just give you less rules, it gives you influence over the rules that need to be changed.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Dave Berke?

  And I think it ties in, you know, that earlier question too, so.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. My boss asked me to do something to do, if my boss asked me to do something that doesn't make sense, I'm actually going to try and do it to the best of my ability.

• 38:46Dave Berke?

  Going to try to execute.

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  And I'm probably going to do, try and do it really, really well.

• 38:49Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  And then my boss, and then I'm able to say, yep, yep, boss, we did, we won, we got that contract. We got the, the next one too. We got, we got this last one. I think we're doing some extra work here. Well, what do you mean? Well, here's the form that we're gonna fill out and blah, blah, blah. So, there you go. Little bit counterintuitive, but you'll win in the end. Probably a good place to stop for today. If you want to dig deeper into all these aspects of leadership, check out Dave, me, Leif, JP, Steve, Cody, I mean, the whole team, Jamie, the whole team. Come and check us out. Extreme Ownership Academy, extremeownership.com. We're having these conversations. Like if you heard something today and you said, you know what,

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  wait a second, Dave, that doesn't make any sense. Come on to the academy, add a live session and ask us these questions. You can ask us whatever you want. That's what it's for. And there's also a bunch of courses you can take if you want to get knowledge at a little bit of a deeper level. Also, we have a leadership consultancy, echelonfront.com. If you need us in your company to help with your leadership, we got a bunch of books on leadership, got another podcast called Jocko Podcasts. So if you want to check that out, check that out as well. And if you want to support any of these things, go to jockofuel.com, jockostore.com, originusa.com. And get yourself

• 40:11Jocko Willink?

  some food, some clothing, some jujitsu gees, you know, get you what you need. Thanks for listening to us debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.