256: An Hour Lost Today is an Hour Lost Forever. Time is Running Out.Guidelines for the Leader and Commander Pt.6

The final installment of "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" by Gen Bruce Clarke 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 256 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  And joining us once again is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. And tonight, we are going to wrap the final installment on Guidelines for the Leader and Commander by General Bruce Clark. This is the subject of podcasts, plural, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, and now finally 256. So much to learn, taking the lessons that were passed on to Colonel David Hackworth, who served in Korea, Vietnam, wrote the book about face, taught me many leadership lessons. Well, he learned those lessons from this book written by General Bruce Clark, who served in Korea, World War II, World War I,

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  who led many soldiers, trained even more, including one that he didn't even know about. Me.

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  And we are trying to pass those lessons on. So for the final installment,

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  let's get back to the book, Guidelines for the Leader and Commander, Chapter 11,

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  Physical Conditioning. There you go, Echo Charles. I'm sure your interest just got peaked. Here we go. I would like to pass on to you for such implementation as may be practicable within your several commands and within your various types of headquarters and units, some thoughts on the problem of physical exercise, physical condition, and physical training. This is a complex subject. Its success depends on the program each commander works out to fit his needs and facilities, and then enthusiastically and energetically pushes. While many of our units and individuals are in fine physical shape, this is not universally true in many commands. I believe it can be made more nearly universally true by a more general concept

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  as to its importance and to a consideration of the implementation of practical steps that can be taken in this field without materially interfering with our other activities. What grade are you giving General Clark for simplicity on that whole opening? I'm not giving him a good grade. Luckily, you're going to see he redeems himself in the end of this book with some real, simple, clear, concise.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  So he thinks that, you know, the simple statement is, people should be working out.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  I believe strongly that good physical condition is one of the evidences of a spree in a unit as well as of morale in an individual. So it helps both your team and you as a person. Now, here's where we have a serious beef, serious beef, probably one of the most serious beefs ever for me with General Clark. This topic is called calisthenics at end of day.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Echo, you're probably gonna wanna throw down with this one. You're gonna throw in with him. On one occasion, I visited a unit and observed calisthenics being conducted during the first period of the morning. This was being done in the normal way by a junior sergeant conducting the exercises with the senior non-commissioned officers and officers standing around to supervise and monitor. Possibly the ones who needed the exercise the most were the ones observing. That's a good one, right? You don't wanna be that guy. You don't wanna be that guy that's standing there with, uh, small arms telling people they need to do more pull-ups, right? You don't wanna find yourself in that situation, do you Echo?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  No, sir, I did not.

• 3:40Jocko Willink?

  But then he says this, "I do not think calisthenics or other physical training exercise in the first hour of the day is good." Of course, as we know, I definitely think that working out in the first hour of the day is good. "If they are done strenuously enough to be of any value so that the men work up perspiration, the men then wear the same wet clothes throughout the day or until such clothing dries on them. Similarly, if men perform exercises requiring them to sit on the ground or lie on the ground, they start off the day with dirty and maybe wet clothing." Now, for me, General Clark, all due respect, I think we can just take a shower and change clothes when we're done working out. I think we can overcome that in the modern era.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta admit, that kinda surprised me as being the first reason that he's talking about.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Why not to work out first thing in the morning?

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cuz we could just, we could just shower.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Seems easy to solve that problem, yeah.

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  I will say this, though, I think he's coming from a time period where they didn't have this full, like, this was only an idea that was just coming to fruition, right? So it wasn't a thing yet. It wasn't a thing to workout. So people didn't have workout clothes. People didn't have workout shoes. People didn't have workout bag. You know, these people didn't have a workout bag. They didn't have your, the little freaking Reebok bag or whatever the Echo Charles takes to 24 hour fitness.

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  Get your curls on. So they didn't have that back then. So he's thinking, yeah, you show up to work and the first thing we're gonna do is build up a sweat. Now we're gonna be wet clothes all day. All right, we will give you, we'll cut you some slack. And then he says, I believe it is far more reasonable to devote the last hour in the afternoon to physical exercising and physical training so that the men can go from it to the showers and get into other clothing for supper and the evening. This is the time when the mind is tired and training requiring mental attention is least effective. Okay, so that's, okay, so, all right, so we're just gonna jump past like all the whole thing about the when you're working out. Because I think it's just, I think we're beyond that now in the modern era.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  I don't think we're, I think we can work out whenever it makes the most sense, not based on our sweat and clothing. Can we put that, can we set that one aside?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I agree, yes, we can.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  So now this is interesting. This is the time when the mind is tired and training requiring mental attention is least effective. Doesn't it take a certain level of mental effort to do a hard workout?

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  Don't, don't you think? Dave?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yes. I wonder if he's thinking like intellectual effort.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  Right? I get that. And I get that too. Like, for instance, this might sound stupid.

• 6:27Jocko Willink?

  When I'm going to, when I'm going to,

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  let's say it's, it's late at night and I'm like tired and I've got some more reading to do.

• 6:39Jocko Willink?

  I'll read until I'm just gonna fall asleep and then I'll get up, brush my teeth, whatever. Take my supplements, as Echo likes to say. So I'll do my little evening routine. Floss.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then I'll have like, you know, I stood up. So now I'm, I can read a little bit longer. I can go a little bit longer and then I go to sleep. So when you do something, I guess that what I'm saying is you get bored. So maybe this is a good plan. Hey, it's the end of the day. You're kind of tired. You don't feel like focusing on this. What'd you call it, Dave? Intellectual work?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Efforts.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't, you don't, you've spent your intellectual energy, but you can still just go jack some steel, possibly.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Okay, I don't, I don't agree, think that that's the case for some of us. That like, no, man, when you're mentally exhausted, I mean, sure, there are some circumstances, but as a general sort of way, an approach to working out, I don't know, man, I don't know if I can get there quite yet.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  But we'll see.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  So you want to have, you want to be mentally fresh for your workout?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay. All right, back to the book. In two divisions and in a brigade in which I served, everyone stopped activities at four o'clock on two days a week. With the exception of the necessary duty officers, guards and everyone at the, from the commanding general. Everyone from the commanding general on down took physical exercises. This physical exercising consisted of activities that provided a real workout. None of this Echo Charles stuff. Real workout. Certain well organized selected games were allowed, provided that everyone played organized calisthenics were allowed, but the bulk of the units engaged in a four mile trot and fast walk to be completed in 50 minutes.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, bro, we're talking 12 minute miles or whatever. We're not, this is not, this is not a challenge. And here's what, as I thought through this, it started to make a little bit more sense. Combat boots with proper socks worn by all personnel in order to get the men used to and prevent damage to their feet. Right. Above the top of the boots, everyone was permitted to prescribe their own uniform within the realm of decency. This gave men a feeling of freedom, which added to the relaxation and benefit of exercise. Okay. So that's cool. I do not think this lack of uniformity hurt the discipline of the unit. It was not a show. Men, men traveled the previously laid out four mile courses as individuals being checked at the start and finish to record their times in order to motivate the slow ones by following.

• 9:11Jocko Willink?

  So this is just, we, you know, he just kind of prescribes this weird like four mile walk that everyone's going to go on, which tells me earlier, when I said they want that working out wasn't really like a thing yet.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:25Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause if they're thinking 50 minutes and four miles. But the only thing I can say about that also is if you're talking about a whole division or a whole brigade of people, like these are not all frontline soldiers, obviously, these are administrative people and whatever, the general himself. So yeah, I don't know.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  By following the course as individuals instead of for formation, no one exercised so strenuously as to do himself damage regardless of his physical condition or age. Care should be taken in starting such a program

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  to work into it reasonably so as not to increase the sick call rate.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  I, I, you, I think if you, if you imagine like a corporation, like a giant corporation, a division sized corporation with whatever 10 or 15,000 people in it, and they were going to start a physical training program, this might be an okay program. You got 50 minutes, you gotta go out, you gotta move four miles, go for a walk, whatever. I think that's, I think that's almost the perspective that he's coming from.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  I don't know though, cause didn't he just say a real workout?

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there should be sweating. I mean, I'm not sweating after a, after 12 minute miles for four miles. And I sweat a lot, as you know.

• 10:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, let's just be thankful that we are where we are. Where, where we've learned so much about physical training. And which has changed a lot. I mean, did you see that picture I posted the other day of? I was like yelling at one of my friends back in the day and he's doing cable crossovers.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  I couldn't tell what he was doing.

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Crazy, but he was doing just cable crossovers.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  Hardcore.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Sculpting the chest.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  Building the what? The lower pecs.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Leave it to you to try to yell at him while he's doing that exercise too. It sounded like he was doing deadlifts or something like that.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  I think we were just messing around, actually. Uh, physical exercise program, the secretary of the army has written to commanders about the tendency to, to move troops from barracks to work and from barracks to training areas by vehicle instead of marching them when it is practicable to march. He pointed out that it's very important that the troops retain the ability to march and especially was, and this was especially important in mechanized and motorized armor units. So, that's a great point. When you have the opportunity to march instead of riding a vehicle, you should march instead of riding a vehicle. That's one thing that's cool about BUDs. In BUDs, you run to den, you run to breakfast and back, you run to lunch and back, you run to dinner and back. It's a mile there, it's a mile back. So you're doing six miles a day?

• 12:10Jocko Willink?

  Before anything, like before the day, before you get credit for anything, you ran six miles.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. As a pilot, do you, cause I was, I was watching some videos of some pilots, you know? That I came across, um, and do you guys like, kinda have to stay in physical condition just to endure like? Flying a plane, essentially?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  I mean, the physical fitness standards are universal across the Marine Corps and all the same. There is a, um, There's a unique level of fitness that is associated with flying and it kind of comes and goes with how much flying you're doing, but there's not like a separate type of aviation fitness, other than there are things about aviation that will fatigue you that you you won't get fatigued doing other things and and that's true for other things as well. But like the PT in the Marine Corps, doesn't they don't care what your your job is.

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  Can you train for the like, let's say you did a disassociated tour and you weren't flying for 18 months and now you knew you were going back to a squadron you were going to be flying, is there any exercises that you could do to get ready for flying?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  You can't train for G tolerance, which is like the big thing. So that's like it's a perishable thing. You know, there's, there's, you know, aerobic and anaerobic, there's certain muscles that are good to to be strengthened. But if you haven't flown, it's the G's that will, that you cannot train for. You can't replicate those G's and you can't train for those G's.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  At all?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, let me challenge you.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Now, you can train for the technique and you can strengthen the muscles to do that, but you can't replicate the actual feeling of the G's.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  But that being said, if you take someone that's in really good shape versus someone that's not really good shape, the person that's in really good shape is going to do better.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  I mean, okay. I mean, you have to use your muscles.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, you you do, but like larger muscles don't, don't mean better G tolerance.

• 14:08Jocko Willink?

  But what about just conditioning?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, absolutely. Yes. A better conditioned person is going to be able to endure, all things being equal, be able to endure the rigors of flying more than the other person, but that doesn't mean he's going to have a higher G tolerance.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  Did I ever tell you about my, my buddy, when my platoons all went backseat in the F-18s? So we went through the whatever training you go through so you can get called to go to backseat. So we all go through, well, he showed up late and so he missed the whole briefing on how to, what is it called? How to push the blood to your brain? He missed all that and then he missed whatever. And they showed up, I think he was out, I think he was drinking the night before. And so there's a little cover and move and like we snuck him back into the class and put his name on the roster and it's all good. Well, then he showed, we get up to Fallon and he didn't know what to do. He just got in the plane. He's like, cool. I know, you know, whatever.

• 15:06Jocko Willink?

  And he passed out the entire time. He would just like wake up and then just pass out again because he didn't know to, to put the blood to his head. He didn't know to do that. So he's just passing out and they had video of it. Does that make sense that they had video of it?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 15:18Jocko Willink?

  He was just, he was just flopping around in the cockpit and, and we were laughing and he's like, I had no idea. And he just didn't remember anything. He was just passing out.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Bro, can't you get like hurt like that? Like if you're passed out all limp and can't your neck? Cause you know those, that video that you play at the muster of that guy in the, what do you, what do you call those?

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  Centrifuge.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he, he passes out and it's like, bro, he's still getting smashed from the, the force.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  I, I don't think there's any real risk of permanent injury from doing that. It's more just being denigrated.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  But yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that actually, that's what I was, that's what I meant. Like, do you guys train? Do you guys have a specific like training routine for that? Because man, it, you don't really realize that. I mean, maybe you do, maybe you don't, you know, but when you see guys flying planes and doing all that stuff, you don't really understand like what you're going through physically in there, you know?

• 16:09Jocko Willink?

  Right. Is there an ideal physical build for fighter pilot?

• 16:14Speaker 02

  I don't think so, man. I mean, just like with every Marine, they're just all shapes and sizes. I mean, my, my body type is drastically different than others and.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  If you were going to be an F-18 pilot, or let's say an F-35 pilot.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:28Jocko Willink?

  You were going to design an F-35 pilot, human.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  How tall would that human be?

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Six foot.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  How much, how much would they weigh?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  190 pounds.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's it. Does like, so there is an ideal. That's because if he's six, four, he's cramped in the cockpit. If he's six, if he's five, five, he can't reach the pedals or whatever. Right? I mean, there's issues.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  There are, there are legitimate anthropometric issues that is a true thing. Like you get measured, all these odd measurements like ankle to, or like elbow to wrist, like ankle to knee. There's all sorts of physical measurements. The, the window is pretty broad. And even, you know, for me to say six foot, one 90, I'm just talking about like a lean, strong guy. Does that mean a five foot six, 125 pound person can't be a good pilot? No, they totally, absolutely can, absolutely can. Would that person maybe struggle a little bit with like looking over their shoulder? Yeah, they would. Their body type is if you're six, four and you're banging your head against the canopy, which guys in my squadron, guys whose call signs were stretched because they were so tall. At the end of the day, I don't think any would come back and say, I'm better because of my build or my height.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  So even that answer is like, the, the window is broad enough to say that anybody, and there's pilots out there that are plenty of good pilots out there that aren't six foot 190.

• 17:44Jocko Willink?

  Is there, is there a cutoff? Height?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  I think technically, yeah, I think it's pretty small. I think it's, it's very short, like five, one, five, two. You know, you can accommodate someone that short. And I think I, I've known guys that are six, five, six, six flying fighters. So dang, they get, there's a big window in there.

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  Do they call them pedals?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  They do. They really call them pedals. They're adjustable. So the image of not being able to reach the pedals is more funny than anything. But I'll tell you what, as this, as a taller guy, you know, a taller dude and you know, when you get into an airplane that somebody else has flown and they're on the, the shorter side, you get in your, your, your knee, you know, it's like being in the backseat of a car and you immediately have to push those pedals all the way back because the dude in front of you was way shorter than you.

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  So it's adjustable like a Cadillac.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  It is. It's the adjustment is not too far away from the, the cockpit temperature adjuster.

• 18:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  So you know, you gotta adjust that little temperature.

• 18:40Jocko Willink?

  Jack. All right, going on, I do not wish to discourage anyone who gets exercise from golf, tennis, bowling, hunting, fishing, gardening, walking, skiing, et cetera. In fact, I encourage such activities during off time. When spring arrives and long daylight hours of the year with us, it's good time to start physical training program. He goes on, a commander should have no objection to, to the closing of any headquarters at four o'clock, two days a week in order to devote this time to physical exercising. Nor should he object to the stopping of other activities in most TOE units at four o'clock, two afternoons a week for this purpose. So he's talking about, you should always train two days a week, which once again, I mean.

• 19:25Jocko Willink?

  In the Marine Corps, you guys do PT every single day, right?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Well, not aviation units all the time. Yeah, I mean, when I was with the ground units, that was every single day and there was a time allocated to that.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  The squadrons that I would in, I was in, didn't do five day a week, five day a week PT.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  I thought that was pretty standard of the, in the whole military. Well, that's what he's saying. He's saying only two days a week.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think what he's saying is interesting because you mentioned the comment, this guy was, you know, steeped in World War I. This is a guy saying, you need to prioritize time for PT. Now, I mean, two days a week now, looking back as, you know, reflecting on that, but he was probably a pioneer saying, "Hey, commanders, shut your unit down to go work out and you should do that." Like, that's okay as opposed to, "Hey, we gotta get this paperwork done" or this, whatever other thing going on is. So, he might've been out in front of the curve for all I know, for the, for the era that he was in saying, "It's okay from the general down to the private, is it shut down normal ops to go do unit PT?"

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  No, absolutely. I, you're a hundred, I believe you're a hundred percent right. He was the guy that was spearheading, working out, "Look, you gotta get out there two days a week."

• 20:35Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't even say minimum, right? Because that would be sort of like, "Hey, minimum two days a week." He's just saying, "Two days a week, look, you gotta get out there."

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  "In connection with this physical exercise program, I think we might well give thought to delaying the evening meal on Monday through Friday in order to give the men more time to get cleaned up, showered, and dressed so they will not feel the urge to rush right to work, well, right from work to supper." This was, this, the reason I wanted to read this section is, "This would have advantages other than physical conditioning. By serving the evening meal in the enlisted messes as early as we do, we leave the soldier with over six hours of time after supper before he is scheduled to be in bed to do things that sometimes lead to trouble. More exercise in a later meal hour in the afternoon would tend to reduce free time in the evening and would absorb energies and would encourage the men to go to bed earlier.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  It has been found to be an overall advantage to serve the heavy meal at night instead of at noon on duty days. I believe we give enough time off to our food service people so they can live with these changes in the feeding program."

• 21:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's so classic.

• 21:47Jocko Willink?

  Alcohol, I've written before, chapter three, about the intemperate use of alcohol and the and of the desirability of cutting down on the quantity of consumption of alcohol. One of the reasons for this is to help improve the physical condition of our officers and men.

• 22:03Jocko Willink?

  Obesity, I would like to say a word about personnel being overweight. While there are not very many such personnel in most commands, there are some who are eating more than their physical activity burns up. The commander should bring this to the attention of such individuals with a view to more exercising or less eating or both. Other problems.

• 22:28Jocko Willink?

  This is the last section, other problems. This is just a broad statement. This is this, this is actually something that Echo that you used to say all the time on this podcast. Other problems, I believe that such a program as I suggested will automatically help to solve the problem in those units which have one of men in garrison changing out of fatigues for evening social activities. It should help reduce other unfavorable statistics as well. You used to say on this podcast all the time, Echo, that

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  the most universally helpful thing that a person can do is exercise. It will help you in all aspects of whatever you're doing.

• 23:07Jocko Willink?

  Which is a good point. And what he's saying is, hey, if you exercise, every problem that you have is going to be improved.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  So Echo was the pioneer on that one.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  There's something you said I was thinking about in my, my contrast between aviation, my, my time in a fighter squadron versus my time in Anglico, which is kind of the biggest contract. Contrast is, and I don't know how it is elsewhere, but the infantry or the ground units, when I was with them have a kind of pretty regimented, like their day is, it's kind of a typical workday. Whereas a fighter squadron operates 24 hours a day. So they're, they are running in shifts the whole time. So a standard work week is there's always a third or a half of the unit there from Sunday night till Friday afternoon. So that cycle is a little, it's in, I was kind of thinking in my head of just the, the, the, getting the whole unit together and in a squadron almost never happens. You're at best, you're going to have.

• 23:59Jocko Willink?

  Like even when you're doing your workup, you running that?

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Workup is, workup is probably even worse because workups, you know, the flying schedule shifts around a bunch to get all these different quals. But you, I would say routinely. The best you're ever gonna get is half your squadron there at any given time. Most of the time. Now, it's not always like that, but I would say ninety percent of a typical fighter squadron's cycle is you have two or three shifts and you'll never have more than half your squadron there at any given time.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, before the war in the nineties, at the team, we used to PT as a team, five days a week.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:32Jocko Willink?

  As a team. Maybe one day would be what they call the individual PT, which guys would legitimately individual PT. They'd go do whatever, you know, do jujitsu or whatever they were gonna do. But the other days, it was like, oh, Monday's a run, Tuesday's a swim, Wednesday's individual PT, Thursday's, oh, of course, Friday's Monster Mash. That was kind of a typical schedule at the, in the days back in the.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  What's the Monster Mash?

• 24:57Jocko Willink?

  Monster Mash is just oh, course boat paddle, just come up with some crazy sort of various, what would you call it? I don't know what you, it'd be like one of those, um, you ever see those TV, uh, physical competitions where they're doing all these? Like you'd run the obstacle course, then you would do berm runs, but you'd be in a little team. So it'd just be some kind of, I don't know, we called it a Monster Mash.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Like American Ninja Warrior?

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like American Ninja Warrior, but as teams.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Gotcha. And is, is the platoon back in the, this is obviously pre-war, but back in, was the platoon kind of together all the time?

• 25:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So the platoon was together, but the team wasn't. So there'd be two platoons out in the desert. There'd be, no, there'd be one platoon out of the desert, there'd be one platoon up at Fallon, there'd be another platoon in the jungle somewhere, but there'd still be three platoons back at the team and all the support people from the teams.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  The platoon is like, that was the element that at the lowest level, like they were together. You didn't really break up platoons very often.

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  Not very often.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  You're going through your workup together, but you gotta remember a SEAL platoon is small.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:59Jocko Willink?

  A SEAL platoon is only sixteen guys. Sometimes in the past, we bumped them up to eighteen. Sometimes we've even bumped them up to twenty-one, depending on manning and personnel and mission. But the general SEAL platoon, sixteen people.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  And post, post-war, did that become, the task unit was together for the most part?

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Almost like elevate up that they?

• 26:21Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Then they, all of a sudden, they, they made the task unit, which is two platoons together with a headquarters unit over it. And they, and they had the idea, it took them a while to like actually make it happen. So there was some good vision on the, on behalf of Naval Special Warfare. commanders to say, actually, you know what? We should probably put a bigger unit together. Because 16 guys is is very limiting, right? What can you do with 16 guys? I mean, if you man up vehicles with 16 guys, you man up, whatever, you man up three vehicles. Now you now there's six people in those vehicles, driver gunner, driver gunner, driver gunner. You put the rest of the guys in there, that gives you 10 assaulters. What can you take down with 10 assaulters?

• 27:02Jocko Willink?

  The answer is not very many. So went into a task unit mode with now you had two platoons, plus you had headquarters, and then you get attachments of EOD, and maybe you get a some kind of a radio man to help you out. So all of a sudden, you know, you got 35 or 40 guys going out the door. So it turns into a a better situation. It was a really good call. I remember one of the one of the first things,

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  I was in a platoon. I was in an ARG platoon, which meant we were going out on a ship and we had to do hydrographic reconnaissance, which is old school lead line and slate. Lead line and slate, meaning you had a lead line, you had a piece of rope with a piece of lead on the bottom, and you you tied little knots every six feet for fathoms, and you would go and swim in a line and dip that lead line and see how deep the water was. And then you dive for obstacles before the Marines came in. This is World War II, straight up UDT, underwater demolition team stuff. Well, when you're in the ARG platoon, you actually did that a lot because you were supporting Marine Corps landings. So so we were, we had a 16 man platoon. And I did an ARG like that with 16 guys, and it was really hard because you have a

• 28:12Jocko Willink?

  you have a boat party of guys. And then you have like a radio man. So there's two or three guys that aren't in the water and somebody's staying with the boat. So there's another two guys that are not in the water. So all of a sudden, you've got, you've only got seven guys to do the recon, or nine guys to do the recon or whatever. So that's that's not good. So I remember writing a point paper. I was like an E4 and I wrote a point paper to my commanding officer that the ARG platoons should have four more personnel in the platoon. And I think we actually got like, they gave us like two more guys. Pretty cool.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Young.

• 28:50Jocko Willink?

  I mean, who did I think I was such a, it's pretty funny. I look back at that now.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Standard naval letter format when I sent it to your.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  I know I tried. I know I tried, but the cool thing was, you know, my commanding officer at the time was like, yeah, you know, that makes sense. Hey, well, we can't give you four, but we can give you two. Make it an 18 man platoon. We had an 18 man platoon. I'm pretty sure. I can't even remember. You know what's weird is I can't even remember what. Yeah, I can't remember if he gave us two more people. Maybe he gave us one more. I think he gave us at least one more person because I think I know exactly who it was. But anyways. All right. So there's the physical conditioning thing.

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  The next section. Is called chapter 12, the creating of superior units.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  Four basic principles. I have found that there are four basic principles which apply to the problem of creating army units which are considered superior. First, the superior unit must be created from the ordinary run of personnel. How awesome is that? You're going to make a superior unit. But anybody that's ever served in the military knows that you're going to get what you get.

• 30:09Jocko Willink?

  And yet we all know that there's units that are freaking awesome and there's units that are horrible. And both the awesome units and the horrible units. Have run of the mill people in them.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  They came from the, they come from the same pool of soldiers in this case. It's all the same people. You don't get to pick your, your little team of your superstar athletes in this case.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and it's the same thing in business, right? It's the same thing in business. You get businesses that are in the same market.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  And one of them is crushing and the other one's not. Well, why is that? Why is that? You're both getting to hire from the same group of human beings and in the country, whatever country you're in. So the superior unit must be created from the ordinary run of personnel. Second, classified according to ability. The men in a unit fall naturally into three groupings, upper, middle and lower. The excellence of a unit depends upon the ability of the commander to bring the men of the lower group to a degree of proficiency, which makes them an asset to his unit team. So this is, we're going to get into some stuff where I'm. I'm not sure about. I'm not sure about, and this is one of them.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about a little bit more. I mean, he talks about your focus being making the people that are. He's basically saying you got really good people, middle people and bad people. He's saying the focus is like, make the bad people better, make the bad people a, a, a, a plus for the unit. I don't necessarily agree with that. I, I agree with that, it should be a focus, a singular focus. I don't think it should be the full. I would rather take my people that are up the top and make them totally awesome. And make my people that are in the middle like really, really good. I'm not going to focus my efforts on the turds.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  The, the reason I didn't say anything when you, when you read that, cause I had a little like, mm, is. I'm going to listen what General Clark has to say before I, but, but on its face, though, when you said that, my first instinct was, was. Uh huh. Okay. I don't think that's right, but I'm, obviously he's going to say something about it. But we, we get this question in business all the time. Is, is they, leaders will devote all their attention to their bottom performers, like. Almost all of their attention. It's like, why would you invest all of your time? In your least productive people? Why wouldn't you invest most of your, most of your time in your most productive people? Again, you don't, you don't ignore those people. But if you're devoting, and again, he's going to say something, I'm sure.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  But when you said that, I had that reaction of huh.

• 32:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's like if you, let's say on a, on a level of one to five. You're a five and Echo's a one.

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  One being the worst, five being the best.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  So if I take my efforts and I'm able to.

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm able to double your power, I can turn you into a 10, I can only turn Echo into a two. Exponentially positive returns on Dave Berke.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  Kinda not on that.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  We'll just say less.

• 33:12Jocko Willink?

  All right, next. Third, all men to dis, this is such, this is such an interesting one. Third, all men desire to do what is wanted of them.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  All men desire to do what is wanted of them. Okay, so that's, that's the first part. So let's, let's absorb that. And then he goes on to just take some ownership here. When they do not, it is because they have not been adequately motivated and instructed. So have you ever had anybody in your squadron? That straight up just didn't want to do what was, what was wanted of them?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  You know, I would say yes, in the sense that, yeah, there are people that I've had in my units that fit that bill. And we did something about that. His point, I understand his point though. And the idea that, that I'm going to write that person off as unwilling to do it.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  To me, it's, it was more of like, how, how much of my, how much energy am I going to devote to try to find the way that gets you to where you need to be? So while I don't disagree with that comment, yeah, I've had people in my, in my sphere multiple times throughout my career that simply didn't get where they needed to be. And could you say, hey, that's part of the fault of leader? Yes, 100%. But the leader also still has to make a little measurement of, am I going to devote 100% of my time to getting that guy from a one to a two? Or am I going to go, hey, man, this investment in you right now is going to take away from all this other stuff and I'm going to cut you loose?

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, what's, what's, what's 10 times zero?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  If the person's a zero, well now, you, so, so listen, I think all men is an overstatement. I think you could throw a percentage on there that's upwards of 97%.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  97% that want to do, they want to do a good job. They want to do a good job. And to his point.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  As a leader, your default should be is they're not the problem. Your default to be is the percentage is so high that you might as well just go in the assumption that the problem isn't with them. So that 97% is, I think, actually correct, not all. But I think his point too is like, hey, if you're in charge of people and they're not, they're not up to standards, you need to spend most of your time figuring out what you're doing wrong.

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, most people don't need to be fired, they need to be led. To think we wrote that in Extreme Ownership or in Dichotomy of Leadership. I think it's in Dichotomy of Leadership, most people don't need to be fired, they need to be led. Most people.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:49Jocko Willink?

  All people? No, you're gonna get, and you know what? You know, when you see this, and I don't, well, you didn't get to see this because you were an officer. And you went through OCS. When you go through like Navy boot camp, you see some people that don't want to be there. They do not want to be there. They're there for 15 minutes, like this ain't for me. And they're gonna do whatever they gotta do to get, they don't want to do what is wanted of them.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  They don't.

• 36:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They want out. Uh, fourth, the best unit in an organization is always the one which is excellent or better in all things.

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  If you agree with these precepts, let us analyze and apply them to the basic problem of the commander who is striving for a superior unit. Application to the units, applications of the principles to the unit. The problems of polishing ordinary units until they emerge as superior are primarily the problems of raising individual performance and capabilities to a superior level. The many truly outstanding units which have been produced in our army given, give ample evidence that these problems can be solved.

• 36:54Jocko Willink?

  Based on the fact that their percentile scores on the AFQT, which is like the ASVAB, which is the, it's the basic intelligence test that you take when you're coming in the military as an enlisted guy, do you take it to become an officer? The ASVAB?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, I took it, took the ASVAB. Yes, absolutely.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  So you take like a basic test. It's sort of a an SAT, an ACT type test. Totally. How smart are you is basically what it is. And then he ranks it out into three groups. And it's the upper third, the middle third, the lower third. But he's got this little thing in here and he's got the scores listed and I'm not gonna uh go into those, but the upper third is 11% and 34. So the upper, the top two groups combined make up 45%. So 45% of people are in the are in the 65 percentile and higher of that testing. 43% are in the middle. So you're almost done. And then the last 12% is people that are in not the lowest group,

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  but the second to the lowest group. So if you get between zero and nine on the, on the ASVAB. And these aren't, this is, this is actually the AFQT, which is the old ASVAB. So the scores won't correlate to what we know about since we didn't take the ASVAB in 19, or we didn't take the ASQT in 1958. So what he's saying is you're gonna get mostly people that are either in the middle group or in the higher group, which is great. Now I'm sure that there's some people that are thinking, well, that's the difference, you know? Uh, you know, I'm in the civilian world and we get these people. They're, they're, they're not, no. When you start talking about people that are in the lowest scoring brackets of the, of the ASVAB. Like they, they can't get in the military, but they're also not gonna be

• 38:41Jocko Willink?

  applying for a job with, that's gonna take some, some high level cognitive abilities. They're, they're just not gonna be there. So I've got a very interesting book that I'm gonna cover on the podcast and, and

• 38:56Jocko Willink?

  it's, it's really, it's, I've been reading it for a while. I've actually, I actually showed it to you several months ago because I've been stewing on it, but it's during the Vietnam War, they they needed people. Yeah. They needed people to be in the military. They needed people to be in the military to go to Vietnam. And so they started to lower the standards and the, the main standard that they lowered was the, the IQ level. Or I don't know if you wanna call it the IQ level, but that's basically what's the intellectual level, the, the, the intelligence level. And they started getting these, these people in the military that were

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  Just they just didn't have the mental capacity to to do really any job. Even and you know, you know, you think about in the military, there's some pretty, there's some pretty, there's some jobs that don't take a lot of intellectual horsepower. Right? I mean, you need people that are going to clean the the toilets, you know, you got, you got some, you know, you got a people that are gonna. And look, these are what we, this is what I did when I got in the military, right? When I got the SEAL Teams, I was cleaning toilets. But then you you're you're gonna move up and you're gonna move on. But at some place, you need some people that are gonna have some pretty fundamentally.

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  Non-high cognitive skill requirement jobs.

• 40:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, they started letting people in that just didn't have the capability. It's really sad. And these guys, a lot of these guys went to Vietnam. They had, obviously, they had a higher casualty rate. They had a higher, more of them got killed. Because they just didn't, they just didn't understand things. And the guy that wrote this book that I'm reading, he went, he's talking about going through boot camp. And he basically gets paired up with one of these guys. And all the drill instructors knew it. They they called them like McNamara's morons. That's what they'd call these guys when they'd come in.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  And he got assigned one of these guys, basically, to to to help get him through boot camp. And one of the most, like, one of the opening scenes is they're telling him. Hey. You know, write, write your address on this postcard and write a message to your family. And not only did he not know how to write, but he didn't even know what his address was. He didn't even know what his, what street he lived on. It didn't, he didn't know. They had to teach him how to tie his shoes. And and they had to teach him how to tie shoes, not just, hey, this is how you do it. No, like, they had to teach him. For extended periods of time, how to tie his shoes. So these are people that are really in a, really, you know, in a low intellectual level.

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  And we we brought, I think it was about 100,000 of them into the military, which is just uns, just, just horrible, just horrible.

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  So my point in saying all that is. We're talking about, you know, you in in the civilian sector. You're not getting that person either to apply for your job in accounting, right? So don't think to yourself, well, you know, my accounting department. That my guys, my people are there, they don't, they're not smart either. No, we're not talking about that. We're not talking about that. So he goes on to say that those in the upper groupings are the best educated and quickest to learn, can be well motivated, but need to be challenged to develop their full potential. The middle groupings are average run of American youth, they are easily controlled, take well to discipline, learn easily, respond to good leadership, but are usually capable

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  of more, and they must be pushed. The lower groupings are the ones that need special attention. And again, this is where you and I are kind of like, hmm, the lower groupings are the ones who need special attention. The disciplinary problem in this group is higher than average. I agree with that. The individuals require special motivation instruction. I agree with that. Their attitude constitutes a special barometer of the esprit de corps of the unit. This group contains also many of the misfits who, if they cannot be assimilated, must be eliminated. So it's interesting that that he's calling for like special attention on this lower group.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, in a single squad, crew, go.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Well, I was just, I'm thinking in my mind, as I'm hearing you talk about this, just things that I've heard you say on this podcast, things we've talked about on your podcast. And I'm trying to kind of consider what's in General Clark's head as I'm hearing this. Obviously, I'm trying to put myself in his position. You know, we've talked about this before, and I think the way you said it was, anybody on your team has the potential to undo your entire plan. You know, and so I'm trying to make this connection in my head of the things he's talking about, why you devote so much effort to these people. And I'm just trying to place in my head why he's saying it the way he's saying it, which there is, if they're on your team and you keep them on your team, these aren't people you get rid of, but they're on your team and they are underperformers, a low performance,

• 43:54Speaker 02

  they still have the potential of undoing your plan. And so I'm trying to piece the things that he's thinking almost in, I don't know what he's going to say. But I do understand that, you know, the flip side of that, the other thing I've been thinking about, we work with companies that, some of the companies we work with have this philosophy is, hey, we're going to pay more. And we're going to attract a higher, higher, higher bar, a higher average level. Because we are a higher paying organization, and you know, there's a bunch of economic theory behind that. And their belief is that they're going to attract better talent. And you know what they end up with? The exact same problems as all other organizations. They still have a bell curve. They still have underperformers. And this is something you said too, is even in the SEAL teams and people create this image on their mind of

• 44:36Speaker 02

  what a SEAL is and they're, you know, they're superhuman. And how many times have you said, no, they're people? The exact same thing at Top Gun where people place these guys on a pedestal as if they're somehow all of them uniquely capable. And we had a bottom 12% at Top Gun too. We had underperformers at Top Gun, just like everywhere else. So for me to think about it, if you're in a leadership role, the takeaway from this is that what is required for all this is your leadership more than anything. Now, I do want to hear his thoughts on that, but your underperformance can still undo your plan. And there's no like free pass of, hey, we just have a better screening process. We don't, we weed out those people.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  We know that that's not true. Those problems exist in the same bell curve in any, every organization.

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the other thing that affects the bell curve is the bar that everyone has to be staying above. So the bottom 12% at Top Gun, they're the bottom 12% at Top Gun. They may be the top tier of some other organization somewhere. But at Top Gun, they're the bottom 12% and, and they're making the same kind of mistakes relative to their job. It's the same thing in the SEAL teams. Like, oh yeah. The SEAL teams, they have a, we have a bottom part of the bell curve. Now those people might be really good if they had some other job somewhere.

• 46:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, in Task Unit Bruiser, we, we had to get rid of one guy. It was a great guy. He was a hard worker. He just didn't quite have the capacity to get the job done. I guarantee he went to his next unit in the Navy and was the best sailor they had. I can, I can, I can guarantee that. Because he was a hard worker. He wanted to do a good job. Didn't quite have that decision-making process. And maybe I shouldn't have said the best sailor, but he's gonna be a really good guy, a really good guy. And, and so, but the bar

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:33Jocko Willink?

  Is, is, is higher for what you're being required to do. Right? This is what you're, like at Top Gun. You're being required to fly this jet at these, at these G's and make these decisions and maneuver and remember what's happening and debrief and communicate and, and pay attention to nine different things at the same. You're required to do all that stuff.

• 46:54Jocko Willink?

  And the, the people that are barely able to do it, they're the bottom of the bell curve. You put them, you know, driving an Uber and they're gonna be the best freaking Uber driver, you know? In, well, at least in the top, let's say the top 5% of Uber driver. Cause I've had some damn good Uber drivers before. So, so yes, that, that bell curve exists everywhere. You're not gonna get away from it and you do have to lead. And I, and I agree with your point. Why General Clark might be saying, hey, you gotta pay attention to that bottom 12%? Because no one in the top 88% is gonna, well,

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  there's a much less, there's much less chance of them torpedoing your whole mission, right? Those knuckleheads, they, they're holding the freaking trigger to the torpedo and they could fire that thing off at any moment. So you gotta pay attention to them. That might be the, the, the genesis of his, of his focus on these individuals.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  That probably where the, what's the saying? You're only as strong as your weakest link, kind of a philosophy, right?

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe that's where it came from.

• 48:06Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's from that, definitely from that concept, that broad concept.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  He goes on here, "A single squad, crew, or section will probably contain men of all three groupings. Certainly, they will appear in any platoon or company. This presents a practical problem in the handling and instructing of men in perfecting the teamwork of the squad, crew, section, or platoon. The leader can afford to adopt only one approach to handling his men. He must assume that they all want to do what he wants done. When any number do not respond to this assumption, the fault is more probably his than theirs." So his assumption is everyone wants, that's a great assumption to make. The assumption, and that's what I like about this assumption, that all men want to do what, what is wanted them to do, what, what we want them to do. That's a great assumption to make because that means

• 48:58Jocko Willink?

  when they don't, it's our fault. And that's exactly what he's saying. He's taking full ownership. And then he says, this is like almost word for word for something that I brief on, almost on a daily basis at companies. If they don't respond, he should check his procedures, instructions, and subordinate leaders to determine wherein lies the trouble. When only one or two individuals are involved, punitive action or elimination may be indicated. So if you've got a platoon or a company, you've got a company of 150 people and everyone gets it except for two guys, okay, well, maybe I need to check those two guys and maybe I need to get rid of them. But if you've got, whatever, 20 people that don't understand what they're supposed to be doing, guess what? It's on you.

• 49:38Jocko Willink?

  We arrive now at the fourth precept, the best unit in the organization is always the one which is excellent or better than all things, which is based upon the premise that no unit commander has enough time to make his unit superior in all things at all times. How therefore should he spread his efforts? It's obvious that his unit must be proficient in marksmanship, communication, supply administration, tactics, physical fitness, techniques, maintenance, etc., etc., etc. If his unit is not proficient in any one of these things, his team is not sound and will fail him when the test comes. How then must he manage? So we got all these things and you obviously can't be, and he's, he's making a difference

• 50:19Jocko Willink?

  or, or making a, um, a break between superior, which means you're awesome at this thing, and being good at it.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  First, he should avoid putting too much stress on any one thing so as to overemphasize it in order to make a show of it. If he practices this method, he will do so at the expense of other important things. This is a common error. So you're not, you shouldn't be the master of anything. You should be the jack of all trades. Second, he must stress adequately all of the many facets of the training job. Even though he is not an expert in each, he must direct a subordinate to be an expert and the commander must then supervise and check his subordinate's work. The latter is important. So you're not going to be an expert as the leader, not going to be the expert. You've got some, you've got some nugs under you that are going to be the expert in that thing.

• 51:13Jocko Willink?

  Next section is called motivation. Woven into the entire pattern are the threads of motivation. This motivation is manifestly important because it comes from a spree enthusiasm, morale, effort, competition, and accomplishment. The people in each of the top, middle, and lower groupings need to be motivated in different ways and in varying degrees, which is a little different than when he said earlier, says the leader can only afford to adopt the one approach when handling his men. Little, little dichotomy. You've got different people. They're going to get motivated in different ways. In encouraging students to learn, we motivate them by one or more of the following. One, show a need. Two, develop an interest. Both those are explaining why, right? This is why this is important. This is what the need is. Here's how you get someone

• 51:58Jocko Willink?

  to develop an interest in something. You explain to them how it's going to help them.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  Maintain the interest. That's also explaining why. And then he's got some other things, encouraging early success, giving recognition and credit, using competition, giving rewards, awarding punishments. These same things may be used to incite a body of men or a military unit into action. Undoubtedly, every commander sometime during his career, after being assigned a difficult task, has soon thereafter considered how he would present this task to his subordinates, how he would appeal them to get the job done. In short, on what he would base his efforts to motivate them to tackle the job with the will necessary to attain the goal sought.

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  He will probably use many factors to motivate his unit. Some of them may be specifically mentioned and some may be implied. For instance, except as a last resort. He would not mention punishment in this case of failure. His men would know him well enough to know that he would not stand for failure. The real art in motivating a group of men to accomplish a common mission is to reach each man in such a way that all men in the unit are incited to the extent of their several capabilities. Of course, the kind of mission to be performed by the men will be, will determine the motivating factors used, but there is one element that must be kept in mind and that is that no amount of motivation will incite a man to undertake zealously that which he knows is

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  manifestly beyond his capabilities. So, big chunk about motivation there. And you know, I was talking, I can't remember who's the client or if it was EF online the other day. But you know, when you get told that the proverbial, you know, you get tasked with something that doesn't make any sense and the boss just says, shut up and have your team do it. And then what do you do? How do you, how do you handle that? What do you say to the troops? And, and I'm like, I will find a reason why all day long that is awesome. You know, I will go and I'm not gonna lie to him. I'm gonna say, hey, listen, boss just told us this is how we're doing it and you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna knock this thing out of the park. That way, I'm gonna build some trust with the boss. He's gonna realize that we can get the job done.

• 54:11Jocko Willink?

  When he realizes that we can get the job done, he's gonna start to listen to me. Once he starts to listen to me, I'm gonna get this changed. So, right now, we're gonna crush this thing. And the guys go, yes. Or I'm gonna say, hey, look, no one else is able to do this. We're the only people that can get this done. The boss knows it, we know it, so we're gonna knock this thing out of the park. Like, I'm gonna figure out a reason, there's gotta be a reason why, that makes sense to do this thing. And believe me, if I can't find a reason that we're getting told to do something that makes no sense whatsoever, is gonna get people unnecessarily wounded or killed, or it's unethical, or it's immoral, or it's illegal. That's what's going on. Otherwise, I can figure out a reason. And I'm talking about a good, I'm not talking about making something up to trick people.

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm talking about, I will figure out a good freaking reason to go forward and make this happen. And that's what you need to do as a boss. That's, that's why the why is so important.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  Talks about awards. In the army, we use freely a system of awards and prizes in order to motivate men. Too often, these go to the men in the top of the upper group. They provide no incentive for improvement to those in the lower group and little for those in the middle group because the men know that the award is beyond their ability to achieve. These prizes make good articles for the unit papers, but their overall effect on the unit is negligible.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  It is well to recognize the outstanding men and we do this through proficiency pay and promotion. However, our system awards must go beyond this recognition of individuals. This is a great point, you know, so often we're sitting there rewarding the people that are kind of doing well, who actually probably don't need any additional motivation. Look, should we recognize them? Absolutely. But what are we doing for the the middle group and even the lower group to make sure that they're feeling like they're moving forward in a positive way?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, when you're like in elementary school and you'd have like the award for most improved. That's like kind of alleviates that issue, right? A little bit. Because usually it's like someone in the middle, maybe even the bottom, a lot of the times where you still get that cool like trophy or award or whatever because you improved so much.

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  Is that a little backhanded smack though?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  I guess you could.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  Did you rack up some most improved?

• 56:42Speaker 01

  I've gotten them before, yes. No, I don't think it is though. I don't think it's a backhanded thing because it's true. Like, you know, when you get like, um, you know, MVP of the football game, it's always the same guy. The quarterback, whatever, the guy in, you know, obviously depends on the team, but.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  It's that guy that's, he's already training, by the way, and he's already talented and gifted and he's working hard and he's focused.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the award.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  The guys in the middle, you do run that risk big time, where it's like guys in the middle is like, oh yeah, well, I don't even have an expectation of the award, you know, but if you get, if you get most improved, bro, you can get most improved. That's good, you know, especially if everyone respects it because everyone typically does respect that if you're improving.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  I had, uh, there's something called a Navy Achievement Medal. Did you ever get a Navy Achievement Medal? So Navy Achievement Medal is like, you know, it's, it's sort of like, it's a, it's a strong pat on the back, we'll say. And you know, you might, you might get one when something happens, you know, you're a young enlisted guy. I think I had six Navy Achievement Medals, which is totally ridiculous. I would get those things all the time from like,

• 57:48Speaker 01

  What's it for though? Like,

• 57:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I would run a communications course when I, these are all from the nineties. It'd be like, you know, Petty Officer Willing Grant, an outstanding, you know, communications course. He organized, led and developed the blah, blah, blah, blah. NAM. Stoner used to like laugh every time I put my, my dress uniform on because I had five Navy Achievement Medals. Where I'm like the big rack of stars across my Navy, across my NAMs. Get some.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:14Jocko Willink?

  But I feel like, I feel, no, but I feel like I was kind of that guy. Like I was working hard and they were just giving me awards and I was like, cool, whatever. I don't care. I didn't care at all.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:23Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't like, hey, check out my NAMs.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Well then, okay, then I guess if you kind of go into it, I mean, in all kinds of environments, right? There's all kinds of different awards like that, that are, that are, you can get without being the top like producer or whatever. Like you got, okay, you got most improved. Then you got like hardest worker or something like that, you know?

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever get that one?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I was gonna say.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  As far as like expectations of medal, that was, that was one I never really, but the, but you get those.

• 58:53Jocko Willink?

  How many NAMs do you have, Dave?

• 58:55Speaker 02

  One.

• 58:55Jocko Willink?

  What did you get a NAM for?

• 58:57Speaker 02

  I got an end of tour NAM.

• 58:58Jocko Willink?

  Dang. So was this when you were like an ensign or a second lieutenant?

• 59:02Speaker 02

  First tour, yeah, first, first tour in a squadron. So as you're thinking, I was, I'm laughing because you know, when you're talking about even the way you're saying NAM, like anybody in the Navy and the Marine Corps knows like the NAM is like this thing, this Navy Achievement Medal is like,

• 59:16Jocko Willink?

  And I racked up five of those things, bro.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  But you know, it's something that's, something that's actually cool that you said is there's a couple of different ways to view, like the award system in the military can be a little questionable. There's people can kind of peel that back and go, man, is that, is that legit or not? We had two different categories of the same award. We had what we called an end to tour award, which went, okay, you know, Petey Osterwink has been with us for three years. He's leaving the squad or the unit or whatever, and he's going and we want to recognize his body of work. It's kind of like a participation award. It doesn't have a ton of meaning other than you survived your three years. We want to thank you on your way out. There was something else we called was an impact NAMM, or we had a term called a drive by NAMM.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Oh, we called him a spot NAMM.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, same thing. It's the same. It's the same thing.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  I was racking up spot NAMMs like it was going out of style.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  There's no way to make this, make this serious. So this five NAMMs. But the point behind that is like you can take a middle of the road dude, middle road guy who's, who's not your all-star quarterback, not your top tier guy, and he's over there doing some good work.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  So maybe that was me, dude.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Five's a bit ridiculous. Um, I don't have five of anything, but there is a way to, to, when you, when you recognize somebody for their work, it's a heck of a lot better to recognize it for something they're doing when we call the impact or the spot as opposed to, well, you've been with us for five years. You get a watch. Like that's our thing. So here's your, here's your, you've been here for five years as opposed to, hey, that thing you did, that specific thing, if you could recognize people for that, in, in this leadership little system you're trying to create is it's really good to recognize people for the work that they do when they do it as opposed to, well, we just sort of have

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  this process that by these wickets or these little checkpoints, you get recognition, which over time sort of undermines the value of it. And, and again, five's a, well, that's a lot, dude.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  But the NAMM is not a, I mean, you're talking about straight up essentially a participation trophy. Like you, oh, you've been here five years.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  My NAMM was a participation award. I was leaving. Captain's got NAMs. I don't care if you were the number one captain or the number 12 captain. When you left, you got a NAM. And, and the number one guy didn't go, well, I actually earned this one. And the number 12 guy didn't think, well, this is garbage. It had no real meaning. The, the impact, what'd you call it?

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Spot.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  The spot NAM?

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  I think it was called the spot.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  That's a, that's, there's a lot more legitimacy to that than, hey, thanks for being here.

• 1:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you gotta look on your face, bro, like you're all fired up from my name.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Here's the thing, but that's a perfect point right there because if they're, if a spot NAM and a regular participation trophy NAM is the same sort of thing, then it's like, oh, wait, you gotta differentiate those two. Cause if you're over here saying you got five.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  There is a differentiation on the NAM and that is you can get a V, which is when it becomes a combat award. So a NAM with a combat V or a, a combat distinguishing device is what they call it. So it has a V on it. And that's, that's a legit award. And I, a lot of guys in Task Unit Bruiser got NAMs with Vs. And those NAMs with Vs that the guys got in Task Unit Bruiser were hard earned. They weren't like, oh, you're just gonna, you, you, there was some gunfire near, but no, like these guys were in 18 firefights and they got a NAM with a V. And, and you know, the, some of the guys in, in Task Unit Bruiser, some of Stoner's guys, they got the R COM, which is the Army Commendation Medal with a V.

• 1:02:48Jocko Willink?

  That was a huge deal because those things are tough to get. The Marine Corps does not give out those things.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  And that came from the, from the Army recognizing what you were doing, which, which added that, which added to that as well. There's a couple of things in the military have a little bit of sanctity. The V, whether it's a NAM, a COM, whatever it is, the V that has, there, there's me, you can't just get a V. You gotta earn that combat distinguishing device. The other one in the Marine Corps that, shouldn't say the Marine Corps, Navy and the Marine Corps is what we call the CAR, the Combat Action Ribbon. They don't like to just, you don't just, that's not a participation award. You, you gotta earn that CAR.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the CIB in the army, which is the Combat Infantryman Badge, which means you, you've been in combat.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:03:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's, that's what, that's what Hackworth called out.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  The Admiral for Admiral Borda for wearing a combat V on his NAM. It was actually, I think it was, it was a NAM with a V on it. And he and Hackworth said, this guy was in Vietnam, but he wasn't, he was on a ship. He wasn't in direct combat with the, and Admiral Borda killed himself.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Jocko Willink?

  Over this drama over it. It's crazy. Now that I'm, you know, we're sitting here laughing. You're like, oh, this, we can't ever get serious again. All we have to do is talk about Admiral Borda and, and, and Colonel Hackworth calling him out for wearing a combat V and he kills himself in the Navy Yard.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Back to your five NAMs though. If some of those were like for some solid work you did on this little thing that you thought maybe wasn't that huge of a deal, but you did some good work and people saw what you did and you're like, hey, hey, look, you didn't save the world, but you did really good with that little whatever you did. That's different than a participation trophy type situation.

• 1:04:33Jocko Willink?

  All fired up. I'm, I was stoked, you know, I was trying to work hard, trying to do a good job and people were giving me cool recognition and I appreciated it. I'm just saying when you fast forward it from 1995 to like 2009 and we're back from Ramadi and I'm putting my dress uniform on and Stoner sees me and he's, and we're laughing because I have five NAMs, which is really, it's, it's also especially ridiculous. I was an officer and it's like an officer's, if you were an officer, you got five. I mean, Dave Berke, you know, who was in the Marine Corps for 24 years, had one NAM.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  And there I was walking around with five. That's kind of, it's just something funny about it.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  So, so to the officers and chiefs that gave me recognition as a young enlisted guy, I appreciate it. Uh, it, it meant a lot to me, but over time it did become a little bit funny and a little bit ridiculous that I was walking around with five NAMs. I'm going to have to now post a picture. I don't think I have any of this stuff anymore, but.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  I realize that I'm probably coming off as NAM obsessed at this point.

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  You are a little bit.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  But should I say, and?

• 1:05:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to write you up for one.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  So you ever got employee of the month at, you know?

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  I was in the military my whole life, Brad.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  No, you worked at Wendy's.

• 1:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. I was never employee of the month.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Okay, but isn't that the same thing? Employee of the month?

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  I would rather get a NAM than employee of the month at Wendy's.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  But it's the same thing. It's just not in the military, you see what I'm saying?

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  It's a similar thing. NAMs were harder to get than employee of the month. There was no guarantee that a NAM was being issued.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Right. They gotta choose somebody, but still same deal as far as like the structure, you see what I'm saying? Where it's like you're getting awarded for something you did, even though in your mind, it might not be that big of a deal. But as an individual like process, it's kind of a thing. It's something. It's just not nothing, you see?

• 1:06:24Jocko Willink?

  We'll go with it. We'll go with it.

• 1:06:28Jocko Willink?

  All right, back to the book. Summary and conclusion, the job of those of us who are privileged to command to create superior units from the run of the, from the ordinary run of manpower made available to us. This manpower falls into upper middle and lower groups about equal in strength that have different capabilities, present different problems, and need to be handled differently. All of the men in a unit must be assumed to desire to do what is wanted. And when they do not, they have not been properly handled and instructed. And I would add the word led there. The best and most reliable unit is usually the one that is excellent in all things, even though it might not be superior in any way.

• 1:07:10Jocko Willink?

  So that's the difference. He breaks out the hierarchy of adjectives, the highest adjective being superior. And then below that is excellent and excellent is better to be at excellent and everything than superior in one thing.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Throughout the whole job runs the problem of motivation. This problem is not solved unless steps are made to motivate the unit, carefully thought out and applied in such a way that their effect is felt by all men in the unit. Finally, excellence of the unit is measured by the extent to which those of the lower third of the unit are developed to play their part of the unit team, you know? Still not a hundred percent on board with that one.

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  As far as I'm concerned, motivation is about understanding why you're doing what you're doing and giving people ownership. You want to motivate people? Tell them why they're doing what they're doing and let them take ownership of it and run with it.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  I feel like motivation is like kinda, there's like short term and long term. And you know how like, I was thinking of something very specific at the time where, you know, people get mad when they get angry at something, it motivates them like super hardcore, but only short term. And then if some, but if someone's the opposite, if someone's really happy, or I don't know, thankful, or whatever, that like keeps them sort of motivated long term.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  That's good. I, I would agree with that.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Unless they have like some sort of weird underlying fear of something that might, you know, sustain them long term. I don't know.

• 1:08:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you could get into some details, but I think a broad statement that like some kind of an anger would be a short, more of a short term motivation. And a, uh, uh, happiness, a satisfaction, a gratification would be more of a long term. I would, I would agree with that. I would tend to agree with that. All right. Now we're going to get into, um, man, I thought those were kinda like, hey, we'll just burn through some of those chapters. I'm sorry. Cause I wanted to get to this chapter, which is called chapter 13, mission type orders, the problem of control. In World War II, those who served in armored divisions and probably in other units as well, learned that mission type orders were a requirement if the most was to be obtained from a command.

• 1:09:14Jocko Willink?

  Since then, we have had, and mission type, so what mission types orders are, just in a nutshell, is you tell somebody what needs to happen and you let them go figure out how to do it.

• 1:09:25Jocko Willink?

  It's very, it's, it's the, it's the basis of decentralized command. Since then, we've had to consider the control of operations in the fluidity and unpredictability of nuclear battle. As battle becomes more complex and unpredictable, responsibilities must be more and more decentralized. Thus, mission type orders often will be used at all echelons of command and probably will be the rule at the division and higher levels. This will require all commanders to exercise initiative, resourcefulness, and imagination, operating with relative freedom of action. And this is what's weird, you know, he, he oscillates between these sort of like.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Everyone should be, you know, how do we control the men? And he literally says in that earlier chapter, the, the, the middle group is easier to control. And now he's saying, hey, you need to let them go and operate. And it's really scary. I thought he was gonna start talking about nuclear war. What do you, when you think about nuclear war, I think centralized control. I want 17 people to make sure that that is the right move before that freaking fire button gets hit. And those two keys get simultaneously turned. But he's like, no, decentralized command. That's pretty scary to me.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  In our tactical, in our tactical forces, we have built in organizational flexibility. We must recognize this and capitalize it in our orders. To get maximum combat power, we must have plans flexible enough to meet rapidly changing situations. But careful planning is not enough. This must be coupled with the readiness to change and adapt to situations as they are, not as they are expected to be. Awesome. What's interesting about that is he says, we need to make, uh, plans flexible enough to meet rapidly changing situations. And he says, but careful planning is not enough. When I think of careful planning, I think all this guy's gonna sit there and plan every detail. I don't think of somebody that's thinking, hey, we're gonna come up with a very flexible plan. A flexible plan to me is not careful planning.

• 1:11:30Jocko Willink?

  I, I guess I might be reading too much into that. But I always felt like I cheated all the time because I came up with flexible plans for things.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like a carefully plan or a, a plan, plan carefully is like you care, you carefully plan for like contingencies.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess carefully plan doesn't necessarily mean to be, doesn't need to be overly detailed. In fact, carefully plan could be like, hey, we want to be careful that we don't put too much detail in here.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  And then, yes, being able to adapt to situations as they are, not as they were expected to be, that's a critical way to operate. To train commanders and staff officers for operations in war where mission type orders will be widely used, it is necessary that tactical courses in our schools teach the use of such orders and that we widely employ mission type orders in our peacetime operations.

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  I love that. So when you're gonna give people assignments to clean up the building, you don't say, "You mop and you scrub and you clean and you go..." No, you say, "I want the building cleaned. This is what time it needs to be done by," and you let them go execute it. Boom. Decentralized command mission type order.

• 1:12:43Jocko Willink?

  And think about that. I just kinda blew that off, but that's a real thing. Like, if you don't train people and you don't live like this, then you won't get good at it. You have to actually live like this. This has to be your way of life.

• 1:13:03Jocko Willink?

  If the way that you run your day-to-day operations is micromanagement, how can you expect anybody to do anything other than be micromanaged when you get into a bad situation, get into a combat situation?

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  You said something really solid on EF Online that I was exposed to when you were like, "Hey, when you're in a meeting or you're having a meeting or something and everyone's there with their pen and paper waiting for you to say something, to write stuff down, and then when you start talking, then they start writing stuff down or whatever."

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Bad sign.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a bad sign, but it feels good.

• 1:13:35Jocko Willink?

  It feels good.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  No one can do anything unless Big Jocko rolls in.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  The man with the big ego and the plan. You're really a horrible leader if they're all sitting there waiting.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  We've got two or three questions. We already know what we're doing. We know where we're going.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  We're good.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, this is beautiful.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Scope of a mission type order. Basically, a mission type order needs to cover only three important things. One, it should clearly state what the commander issuing the order wants to have accomplished. That's number one. This is what you need to accomplish. Number two, it should point out the limiting or control factors that must be observed for coordinating factors.

• 1:14:22Jocko Willink?

  So, okay, you can't go across this area. You can't fly over this region. You can't enter into this zone. Here's the limitations. And then finally, it should delineate the resources made available to the subordinate commander and the support which he can expect or count on from sources outside of his command. That's all you need to know. Tell me what to do. Tell me what the limitations are and tell me what resources I have. Other than that, leave me alone. I'm gonna go make it happen.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  That might be the clearest definition of a mission type order I've ever read in my life. That's all you need.

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  I got asked one time, I was in my first deployment to Iraq, and my boss is like, "What information do you need and how much time do you need to launch on a mission?" And I was like, "I need to know where the location of the target, the frequencies of the friendly forces, and I need 15 minutes and we'll go."

• 1:15:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Confidence in subordinate commanders. There is a strong reluctance at every headquarters to relinquish the authority to direct the details of an operation. This reluctance is clearly seen in the embellishments added to an order as it threads its way down to company level. Careful judgment must be made at every echelon of command in stating the limiting and controlling factors of a mission type order. Confidence must be placed in judgment and ability of the subordinate commander. Too often, what starts off as a broad mission type order at the high echelon ends up with volumes of minute, detailed, and restricting instructions specifying how to get the job done, when it finally gets down to company level.

• 1:16:16Jocko Willink?

  Many officers hearing this may think they would like to have a command functioning under such a system, meaning I would love it if people would just do exactly what I told them to do, but you don't want that. Others who may say they would like to work under such a system really are disturbed by thoughts of it. There are some officers who require something in writing before they will take significant action. A mission type order requires the subordinate commander and his staff to make basic decisions and plans based upon a careful analysis of the situation. If the basic decisions or plans are not successful, there is no paper foxhole into which they can crawl. Mission type orders require initiative, promptness, and resourcefulness, which are not always forthcoming. Problems in service schools based upon such orders

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  bring forth a variety of solutions which are difficult for the faculty to grade, sometimes looms as a very important problem. What do you got?

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  That, there is so much there. You even gave this example of just cleaning the building, just that little example of cleaning the building. The worst thing I can do as a leader is to tell you how to do that. Because the minute I tell you how, you know what you're gonna do? Exactly what I told you. And I'm gonna say this, this, this, and this. What are the chances I get it all as a leader? Zero, right? So what you're actually gonna do is what I told you to do. But I'm gonna miss a couple of things. And actually, the outcome is not gonna be what I want. Then I, as a leader, I'm gonna go out and inspect, and I'm like, hey, you didn't do this, you didn't do that. And what happens is I trust you less. So I'm gonna micromanage you even more, which means you have even less initiative the next time. And the connection from how to initiative, and what I wrote down was how, by me telling you how to do what I

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  want you to do. And I'm not saying like, teaching you how to do something. I'm telling you how I want it done. That's the how you're talking about. Of course, I want to teach you how to do a task or a job. I need to train you. He's talking about, I want, this is how I want you to do this task, which is totally different. That is the exact opposite of initiative. Because if I tell you how to do it, you're gonna do exactly how I told you to do it. And then the things that I've missed, the things that I as a commander don't know, because I'm farther away from the problem than you are. I'm gonna trust you less because the outcomes are gonna be the one I want. I'm gonna micromanage more, I'm gonna undermine your initiative even more. And then when you're out there doing it on your own and I actually can't get to you, which is the connection from the training to the real world, which is why you have to live this all the time. That's when teams and organizations fail.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Because I'm not gonna be there to solve all these problems for you, but I've bred this in you the entire time because I'm always telling you how I want you to do it. And you're like, cool, I'll do exactly how you told me to do it. And I'm not gonna do this, I'm not gonna do that. You don't even know about this over here, I'm just not even touching that because you didn't tell me about that at all. But if you go the exact opposite, which was, hey, however you want to get this done, that's all good. What we need to get it done is by sixteen hundred on Wednesday. Because what happens at seventeen hundred on Wednesday is this, this and this, it impacts all that. Go make it happen.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  All of that is your initiative to go make that happen. Just the connection between me telling you how I want it done versus your initiative and the inverse relationship between those two and how often we see that done wrong.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Bro, that's so true. Like you ever drive with a micromanager, like direction giver, you know? Like, you know, driving with you, you're just like, whatever, take this here, whatever kind of thing. And that's a good move. Even if I make wrong turns, whatever, you know, you'll help or occasionally, you know, and you'll help whatever. But you get in, you ever drive with somebody who's like, hey, don't be in this lane, this lane is like too slow or whatever. And it's like, okay, make this turn, it's got, you know, like a micromanager, what do you call them? Front seat driver, backseat driver, whatever, that kind of person.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Let's say it's your significant other. I'm not saying it's my significant other.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  For a friend, hypothetically.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  Hypothetically, yes. Someone who you drive with a lot is what I'm saying. So, and every time it's like, hey, you know, we're gonna go this route. Hey, get out of this lane, go in this lane. Okay, take this turn, you know, okay, it's coming, you know, like really kind of micromanaging your driving situation. After a while, you sort, you kind of get used to that.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and now, and now all of a sudden, you're not paying attention. They go, wait a second, you were supposed to take that turn, you're like, oh, why didn't you tell me?

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a weird subconscious.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Why didn't you tell me, Sarah, Charles?

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  It's a subconscious almost dependence now.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  For sure. That's a hundred percent what it is. Yeah. A hundred percent.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  That's the initiative comment that I'm the connection to is like, I got, I'm gonna take no initiative because I'm, I'm.

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  You've been trained.

• 1:20:41Speaker 02

  I've been, yeah.

• 1:20:42Jocko Willink?

  To just wait to be told what to do.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So just like how you're saying where now if let's say I'm dependent on you to give me directions, you don't, you know, the leader, whatever, he doesn't always get it right or whatever. I make the wrong call or you don't give me direction. Well, say you don't give me direction. I take no action and then of course it's done wrong. Now you trust me less and now and around and around we go, you know?

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  And I micromanage you more and I stifle even more of your initiative.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Even more. Exactly right.

• 1:21:12Jocko Willink?

  You, you know what's crazy about this? And Dave, you and I were talking about this before we pressed record is like, I basically think in commander's intent. Like I, I think the way my mind works, I think in end states and I, and everything else to me is just sort of this almost like an annoyance of reality. And I'm so far, like when I want to do something, I'm so there that everything else is just sort of gonna fall into place and I'm not even thinking about it. You know, whether it's like when I'm starting to write a book, like I know where the, I know what that book is. I know the end state. I know what it looks like. And now I just have to get those words out of my system when we're gonna launch something. It's like, I already know what's gonna happen. Even if you think about something as stupid as this

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  podcast of me being like, Echo, can you make a podcast? And you're like, well, let me go figure it out. You figure it out. I'm like, I don't even, I care nothing. I care zero. You show up with, you could have shown up with a, with a freaking, a tape recorder and I would have been like, okay, is that what we're doing? Sounds good. All right. We're, we're good. Because I know what, I know where this is gonna go. I know where we're going. And so where, however, we're gonna get there. It's like an annoyance to me. And it's, it's the annoyance of reality.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Because of where my mind is, what I'm thinking about where we're going. And that's, that's a positive thing for a couple of reasons. Number one, if you're working for me, if you're making stuff happen, you're, you're good to go. I mean, you, you could just, you make stuff happen. We're good. We're, we're good. We're totally good. I'm never gonna bother you. Never gonna bother you. So that's rad. And then also, the, the.

• 1:22:50Jocko Willink?

  I'm not getting caught up in these details, which means that step that I take is gonna be a big one. It's gonna be a big step. It's not gonna be a little. I'm not gonna take half measures.

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're going the distance. So I'm thinking and acting and kind of living in like a commander's intent kinda way.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kinda.

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  For those of us that are inside that sphere, the byproduct of you as a leader, thinking in outcomes and end states. If that's how you're thinking and, and leading your people, the natural reaction of the people around you is to fill in all those things to make sure that happens. And if you can take it a step further, if you can take it a step further as a leader, and also be comfortable with the other side of it, which is a phrase that you use all the time, which I love, which is, you gotta expect those things to happen. Then it's no factor if exactly how you have this picture in your mind, you got a little detour, a little roadblock, a little problem here. Yeah, those things are gonna happen. And, and we, and we can solve those things too, using the exact same approach, which is, if you have that attitude as a leader, when your people run into problems,

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  they're not gonna be panic stricken about what is the boss gonna think? Cause he's gonna say, hey, I, I expect those things to happen. Those things are gonna happen. And I'm gonna end up solving that as well. And so if you can connect the idea of thinking in end states around your people, and also letting your people know, you're not gonna fly off the handle and jump right in there and start to micromanage them when get these little hiccups, these little deviations. Cause you actually in your mind, Jaco, haven't thought about all the things that happen between here and here. You don't really care what's going on in here. Cool, you go off the, cool. I expect those things to happen. But the minute you lay that all out, like all these 30 steps to get there, and one doesn't go right, and then you're involved in that, what that does to stifle your people makes it so much harder for them to get to your end state. So just, combine the two of thinking in those end states,

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  and then letting your people solve those things along the way and not overreacting to the problems that occur as you're getting there, cause things are messy. Those little things are messy, but.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  By the way, if you're thinking about all those things in between, you don't even, you're not even gonna think about

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  You're not gonna think about the end stage.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  A bigger picture. You're gonna be thinking like, hey, we need to move to this next rid line. You're not thinking about where you're gonna end up in two days on this operation, or we're gonna end up strategically in three months. You're like, you're not even thinking about that. You're thinking about, wait a second, there's an obstacle right in front of us. What are we gonna do? And meanwhile, I'm like, I don't care. I literally don't care. There's 19 different ways to solve that problem. Pick one of them and roll with it. And oh, you, oh, you, oh, it didn't work? Then you gotta try again? Cool. Whatever. I'm still over here. And guess where? I'm looking off in the distance. So we're good.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  That's a good point. And maybe, I don't know, maybe in my experience, which is nothing, but in my experience is like, underappreciated or whatever, like not flying off the handle when things go wrong. Like if you

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  like, you know, you're like, hey, but it's true though. Like, you know, people have this misconception of you like, oh, what if Jocko gets mad at you for making this or doing that? The reality is you don't really get mad at mistakes, you know? Like you might tease me a little bit of whatever, but yeah, like you don't get mad that, but what that does is, and when I was listening to you, Dave, say that and stuff, it made me remember, yeah, that's true. Like, I don't have a fear of making the wrong move if we both know where we're sort of going, you know?

• 1:26:13Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? That means you can move.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  That means you can, you can make two, three, four, seven moves. You can make seven moves. And you never had to talk to me. And six of them were right. Nine of them were right. 11 out of 12 were right. There was one wrong one. It set you back a half a move. And then you pressed forward and it was no factor.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  If, if I was concerned that Jocko was gonna get mad at me for, I don't know, what if I make the wrong decision on this? Like, should we do this? Or should I do this? Or should I not do this or whatever? But I'd be like

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  You wouldn't be making decisions.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it would work way worse.

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, somebody quoted you on Twitter. It was like, a great way to not waste your people's time is to not make the, every, not make sure that you're the one that's making all the decisions for them.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Not make them reliant on you to make those decisions. That's a great way to not waste their time.

• 1:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  And the beauty of that is that they're gonna get you to where you wanna go faster.

• 1:27:05Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  For sure. Alright, so this is how they close out the section. This is, once again, this is such a, there's a dichotomy with General Clark, and this is part of that dichotomy right now. And he's talked about it before. The channel of suggestion.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  I have said many times that a commander has two channels within which to operate. He has the channel of command, barking orders, and the channel of suggestion. I believe that a good commander who has subordinates, who are trained and have the confidence to use mission-type orders, can operate almost exclusively using the channel of suggestion, reserving the channel of command for use only when he wants to give special emphasis to an order, to relieve someone, or to take disciplinary action. That's the only time he's talking. Other than that, it's like, well, how do you want to do it? What do you think we should do?

• 1:28:05Jocko Willink?

  The only time he's gonna bark orders is when he's gonna fire someone, which is what relieve means, by the way, in the military. Relieve someone means you're firing them. Or to give disciplinary actions. Every other time, almost exclusively, it's channel of suggestion.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  You just made the leap by saying it. It was in my head as when I'm hearing suggestion. I'm not even hearing suggestion. I'm hearing questions. Hey, what do you think? How do you think? Which isn't even what is that in saying in word, because suggestion means like, hey, maybe we should do this. You're taking it a step further, which is, how do you think we should do this? And then the flip side is that the hammer of, you know, as a commander, you have that hammer. You can drop that hammer. I can fire somebody. I can relieve somebody. I could reduce their rank. I could take their pay. There was a lot of authority in command. How often do you want to pull out that hammer? Man, the more, you know...

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, you just pulled out the big hammer, right? What about the little hammer? The little hammer's even worse. The little hammer of like, actually, Dave, we need to do it this way. Smack.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  A little...

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, actually, Dave, I don't like your idea. Smack. And meanwhile, you're getting all dinged up, and now you don't want to make any moves anymore.

• 1:29:16Jocko Willink?

  The suggestion is actually question. How should we do this? Yeah. Channel of suggestion. Uh, here's the final little section. And this is, I, I briefed you earlier, Dave. I said, there's going to be something I'm going to read that you're going to say, yes. So this is that section. Further the mission of the higher headquarters. I went to Leavenworth and people think Leavenworth, they think of going to prison because there is a military prison there, but there's also the war college. I went to Leavenworth over 20 years ago, so it is difficult for me to remember all the things which I must have learned then at the command and general staff college. The one thing that I have never forgotten and which has stood me in good stead was the teaching of General McNair, then Commandant, when he stated, quote,

• 1:30:02Jocko Willink?

  "When you receive an order or a directive from your next higher commander, do everything you can and in the best way you can to further the mission which he wants to accomplish." End quote. An officer who follows his advice and uses it to interpret his instructions will find that he can act wisely, promptly and aggressively with confidence. He will have no problem in operating in, in an environment with mission type orders. So when your boss tells you to do something, freaking do it. And do it to the best of your ability. Uh, uh, leadership, strategy and tactics.

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  I always have to go to this page, but, uh, it's, it's, it's the, the things that says how to succeed as a new leader. Page 157. And then on page 158, it says, lastly, get the job done. Get the job done. That's what you're supposed to do. And that's what he's talking about. When you get told to do something, do it. People talk to me and how do I build a good relationship with my boss? Do the job and do it well. Kick ass. Give your boss credit. You'll be start building a good relationship with him.

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 14. Organization for Performing Tasks on the Company and Small-Unit Level. The purpose of this chapter is to set forth the concept of which I have found from experience improves training, uses time devoted to training more efficiently, and increases responsibility, prestige, and morale of the non-commissioned officer, leader, and platoon leader.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Organization- user organizational units or teams even for work details. And I'm not going to read this section, but what he says, we're using this example today of cleaning the building. What he's saying is, when you clean the building, do it as a platoon.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  So use mission-type orders and then do it as a platoon. And, and that just helps them get used to how operating together, what people are like, what it's like for that leader, when that leader, what, what, how that leader relates to the, to the troops, how the troops relate back to the leader. You train how you operate. You work how you train.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  And then there's the, the last section in this part is, let the leader lead his men, which is the same thing. Under the detailed procedure of performing necessary unit tasks, all training teams are represented at all scheduled training. This may make a good showing in their training accomplished records, but it does not necessarily mean that they have actually received as teams the training that is shown on record. However, maintaining unit integrity while performing daily tasks will also enhance real benefits which we derive from our team training. So every day, you should live, you should operate the way you are going to live and operate.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 15. Wasting Soldiers' Time. The Value of Time. We Americans have always been conscious of the value of time. Benjamin Franklin expressed this by saying that time is money. In our country, the efficiency expert who comes in to examine ways of doing things to eliminate wasted motion is highly paid for his services. He commands that high price because he is a saver of time. In the army, we speak of resources in terms of the three Ms. Men, money, and materials. To these three, we must add time. However, there is a distinct difference between time and the other three resources. If we do not use our money or materials today, they are available tomorrow. To a lesser degree, this is also true of men.

• 1:33:47Jocko Willink?

  It is not at all true of time. For the time, for time is a highly perishable commodity. An hour lost today is lost forever. Echo Charles.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:34:00Jocko Willink?

  I feel like he's training a lot of soldiers today on certain.

• 1:34:07Jocko Willink?

  It costs several thousand dollars a year to maintain each soldier in the army. I consider that is probably a cost of $5 per hour per man for the soldier's training time. That is available to the company commander. Thus, when the commander wastes an hour of his company's time, he may be wasting as much as a thousand dollars. We would not want to be embarrassed if some agency became interested in investigating this in the field. That's an interesting way to think about. Think about, you know, companies 150 men, but think about your company. Think about your business. Think about your team. You've got people sitting and you weren't prepared for the meeting or the meeting starts late or whatever. Whatever it is, you think about what you're throwing away. You're wasting people's time.

• 1:34:49Jocko Willink?

  We are engaged in a contest with the communists in which there is no civil metal, in which no silver medal will be awarded for second place. I'm certain that it is unnecessary for me to dwell on the importance of the role of the US Army in this contest. Our mission is to be combat ready. To my way of thinking, combat readiness has no upper limit.

• 1:35:13Jocko Willink?

  A unit is never 100% combat ready because there is always room for improvement in the development of military skills, reaction time, marksmanship, and the like. Combat readiness is a goal toward which we are constantly moving, but which we should never feel we have wholly achieved. Our progress will depend on our use of the resources which I mentioned previously. I want to stress the importance of using time wisely.

• 1:35:40Jocko Willink?

  And then he goes through a bunch of, you know, how we waste time. Time is wasted in administration and paperwork and red tape. And

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  he says this, "You should consider it unforgivable.

• 1:35:57Jocko Willink?

  You should consider it unforgivable to remove a man from a scheduled formal period of instruction or practical work to take care of administrative matters.

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  You cannot requisition a replacement for a lost hour of training."

• 1:36:13Jocko Willink?

  He also says here, "We waste time when we over commit our units." Or perhaps I should say, "We do not make the best use of our time." That's something we gotta pay attention to on an individual level. You over schedule yourself and you actually end up wasting time.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  "The same wastage is presented on the individual level when the strength of a unit is filtered away to participate in contests of non-military skills, to paint rocks, or plant flower beds in a likeness of the unit's insignia." That's a shot right there. You go around military paces in America, there's some painted rocks out there, people. There's some white painted rocks that are lining some roads. And I'm gonna tell you, some privates painted those rocks. They probably got in trouble. It's a little bit of a punitive measure.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Oh, like punishment.

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Jocko Willink?

  "It is training activities themselves which have the greatest potential for wasting a soldier's time. This comes about mainly because of inadequate planning, lack of foresight, and lack of preparedness. Soldiers expect to be well-trained. They feel short-changed if they're not. If you're in charge of training people, which if you're in a leadership, you are positioned, you are in charge of training people, and you're wasting your time, you are completely wrong." Here's another section I gotta read. "Were the instructions clear?"

• 1:37:38Jocko Willink?

  There is no end of time wasted when one who is to perform a mission or job is not fully and clearly instructed. The instructions are misunderstood. The end result is not what was desired. It must be done over. In fact, if things go wrong, the leader... In fact, when things go wrong, the leader should check first to see if his instructions were not the cause. It is said that General Grant assigned his adjutant the mentally slowest officer he could find. Grant read his orders to his adjutant, and if the adjutant could not understand, Grant rewarded his orders until he could.

• 1:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Ask yourself, are your instructions and orders so clear that every man... Underlined every... He doesn't underline much in here. Every man in your unit can understand them. When you issue orders, you are instructing someone. Remember that as an instructor, you only teach when someone learns. That's the... I always tell that story about the lowest common denominator, right? It's... Matter of fact, it's in... I think it's in dichotomy. Well, hey, Leif and Seth, I'm telling them, "Hey, I want you to brief to the lowest common denominator in the platoon.

• 1:39:02Jocko Willink?

  Whoever you think is gonna have the hardest time, brief to your machine gunners, your new guy machine gunners. I want them to fully understand the plan."

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  I mean, that is the entire Second Law of Combat brief, almost verbatim, that he just described about the plan that's understandable, the way he communicated, and then to the lowest common denominator, and then to me in my mind, that actually comes back to the comment he made earlier, which was the effort you gotta expend for have your lowest, you know, people in the, you know, the bottom of your folks, for them to understand it, that comment he made before about devoting time to that, that's the time he's talking about. So it takes his adjutant, who he considers to be of the lowest intellectual level, you know, his bottom third guy, and I'll spend as much time as I need until that guy gets it. And if he gets it, then we are good to go. And so even pulling that together, that comment made, I mean, that is...

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  That is simple, right there. So good.

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  Do you fully, this is the last section here, do you fully utilize your soldier's time? I am not optimistic as to believe that we can eliminate wasting of time as we have yellow fever, but we can improve our performance in this regard. We can control this problem by the exercise of sound leadership techniques, among which are planning, good job management, issuance of clear instructions and thorough follow-up. The most valuable resource available to a commander in the army is the soldier's time. As leaders, we must use this resource to the best advantage. I know of no better reputation for an officer or non-commissioned officer to have with his men than that he is a good manager and does not waste his soldier's time.

• 1:40:46Jocko Willink?

  If he has that reputation, he will probably not waste his men's lives in battle either. That's powerful because I've been doing a lot of talking about leadership capital on EF Online. In fact, I've been going kind of berserk talking about leadership capital on EF Online and I've been talking about how to build leadership capital, how to lose leadership capital. And this is one that I haven't mentioned yet, and it's probably one, it's probably a little bit of a blind spot to me because I am a freak when it comes to time and wasting time. And so it's one of those things where I wouldn't, it's so important to me that I've never, I've never, you know, walked into a meeting two hours late to have a bunch of people waiting around for me to show up like that, that hasn't, that's not happening.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  But if you want to expend leadership capital unnecessarily and lots of it, make people wait around for you, make them waste time.

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  The phrase being late is unacceptable. The reason it's unacceptable is because it wastes people's time. You could be the best pilot in the squadron and if you waste people's time, you're going to lose leadership capital. You could be an average pilot and if your reputation is that you don't waste people's time, they don't care if you're an average pilot. You actually, your leadership capital is, is directly correlated to how you treat them and how you respect them and how you respect their time. Time wasted was always the, it was always the most frustrating and the most obvious thing that would happen. And I think I've said this on the podcast before.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  Everybody who's had their time wasted by someone else knows exactly what that feels like. You can think about it right now, sitting around in the auditorium, sitting around, whatever this, that time of yours that's being wasted because of somebody else. I don't care how good that somebody else is at their job, their task, or anything else. If they are a time waster, you are losing leadership capital.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this about being late.

• 1:42:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man, here we go. Talk to me.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  I need your opinion on, what if it's, let's say, a Halloween party?

• 1:42:52Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  And they're like, hey, Halloween party, you know, there's gonna be, I don't know, a hundred people. It's a lot of people.

• 1:42:57Speaker 02

  This is a fashionably late scenario you're getting to?

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Or what have you, you know? So there's a hundred people invited or whatever, a hundred plus, cause bring who you want. If, you know, it's not like a guest list, you're not invited, it's not that, it's just we're having a party, whatever.

• 1:43:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  And starts at, I don't know.

• 1:43:15Jocko Willink?

  Wasting time, how long is this gonna take?

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  Sneaky, or it starts at five, we'll say, you know, 5:00 PM.

• 1:43:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  And goes all night, I don't know, whatever. And you're like, alright, and you get there at 6:30.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Other people are there, but you get there at 6:30. Is that what you've seen people say? Is that bad, as far as being late?

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  If I send you an invitation to my Halloween party, and I say, the party starts at five and goes till midnight. I don't care when you show up. If I say, echo, be there by seven, and you show up at 7:30?

• 1:43:52Speaker 02

  Is there a difference between those two?

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  I think so, yes. Yeah. But yeah, so my question is more about that first scenario, whatever, like, if it's like, hey, it's, the party starts at five.

• 1:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, the party starts with or without you, so I'm not super concerned about you.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 02

  Nobody's sitting around waiting for you to get there.

• 1:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Exactly, right. Contrarily, the podcast starts when you're here. So when you're not here, the- Podcast doesn't start. You're the ones with the S D memory cards that go in the little machines over there. So when you're not here at three o'clock, the party's not starting. We're waiting.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  I understand. You're talking like it's for real. I was here at two fifty eight. What up?

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  You made it in.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was legit today.

• 1:44:33Jocko Willink?

  As much hassle I give you about Hawaiian time and being late.

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  You're not late very often.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  No, sir.

• 1:44:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you, do you play with fire?

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Yeah, every day, I think.

• 1:44:45Jocko Willink?

  And technically, a lot of times there's a minute, maybe, maybe if you set, you were one of those people, if you set your watch like five minutes fast, you'd probably be on time all the time.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I, if I believe it, or if I didn't know I set the watch. Yeah, I've done that before too. Well, you know how I used to tell you like, oh, I come from a long line of late people. Remember we were saying, bro, my dad was.

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Somebody cracked up because I said like you got your D N A. You said you got your twenty three and me. I said it came back late.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  But, and you know, you kind of look into it. I'm like, why am I late or whatever? So, because I would, I would go to work late. When I used to work at the club, I would be there late. I was there late, one minute, two minutes, five minutes, sometimes probably more time than I was on time. Probably for real.

• 1:45:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm not finding this hard to believe. It doesn't seem like a stretch.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  The thing is technically you are right. Like I'm wasting people's time, especially if I, if people depend on me to get there at that time, you know? Um, I'm not getting paid, you know, it's the kind you gotta clock in. So you're not getting paid, um, if you're not there. So it's not that. It's like if people were depending on you to be there.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  But is there like a briefing to start the night?

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  No, negative. It's all independent, like clock in and you're there.

• 1:45:56Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it would piss me off, you know, I'd view you as an unreliable person that I put no, I put no value in as a human.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I dig it, but. So I analyzed like, why am I like that? Cause even if I'm like, I need to be late less, you know, it just wouldn't change. Why am I like?

• 1:46:16Jocko Willink?

  You should change the statement, I need to be late less. I'm not going to be late. You need to draw a little bit of a harder line in the sand.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  I understand and you're right. The thing is you're, you're right, but when I, when I really be truthful, it's because I don't care about what's going on there, you know? Like, why am I gonna prepare, like, take thirty minutes to prepare this and prepare that for something that I don't have to be there at that? I have to be there at a certain time. So of course I'm running the risk. In fact, if I were to have my way, I would never be late at all, but I would never be early at all either. For things I don't care about, you know? Like, like that.

• 1:46:53Jocko Willink?

  I had one time in my life, uh, when I was going to college at, and it was really hard to get parking. And eventually I figured out a system, but I had a SEAL buddy that he was going to college to and we would study together and we are both, we were both on time, all the time for everything. And eventually we made a, a deal where we gave ourselves like a waiver to be five minutes or eight minutes late because if you were gonna be there at two o'clock, in order to be there at two o'clock, you had to show up at one. And drive around. And so we were just like, you know what? Hey, if you're five minutes late, ten minutes late, doesn't matter. Like, I don't care. I don't want you being here an hour early. So that you're not one minute late.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  So we made a little pact and just said, hey, bro, I'll be there between one and one fifteen. Boom, all good. And I'd try and get there in one and maybe I'd get there at one oh eight, maybe he'd get there at one twelve or whatever. Eventually I figured out I would just put my bike in the back of the car and just park at the top of the hill and just bike, no factor.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, now you're thinking.

• 1:47:53Jocko Willink?

  Figure out how to solve these problems.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  So on the flip side, and this is all in the spirit of getting down to the whole late thing. Cause I agree with you at the end of the day, and if you think, if you really be honest, like, I'm not late, really, you know? Anymore. Back in my day, for real, I was late.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  What, are you trying to think of when I was late?

• 1:48:13Jocko Willink?

  No, you were late a little bit in the beginning, but then, but then like it didn't, I probably remember you being late three times total.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  And this is like. Not, not including a four minute grace period.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  Which sometimes I think you do just to, just to, you know.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  What do you mean grace period?

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, like sometimes if you're supposed to be here at one, you're here at 104.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It's possible. Yeah, the late times will tell you, hey, I'm late because of this specific reason or whatever, but that's already. But nonetheless, like that is, I agree with you where you're wasting other people's time. People are waiting for you. Like that's, it's, it's kinda inexcusable in a way. But if you show up 15 minutes early.

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  Aren't you wasting your own time a little bit?

• 1:48:58Jocko Willink?

  No, because what are you gonna do when you get there? You're gonna prep.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that depends. I guess it depends on who you are.

• 1:49:04Jocko Willink?

  Sun Tzu told us 2,500 years ago that the one that shows up to the battlefield first wins.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, as far as battlefields go for sure. Um, but certain circumstances, if you're there, let's say, okay, yeah, I'm gonna meet you for brunch.

• 1:49:20Jocko Willink?

  You know what's in my bag right now?

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I could probably.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the next book I'm reading on the podcast, when I show up here early, if there's no one here, cool, I get to read, I get to get ahead.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Okay. So that's a good point. Okay. Yes. Question answered because yeah, if you show up fit and you gotta be thinking, I guess, at the end of the day. So if you show up 15 minutes early, you're not wasting your time because you can still choose what to do. You're not forced to wait around for anyone. Yeah.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  You should be proactively making something happen.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you have that option. I mean, technically, I guess if you're waiting for someone, you have that option, but like they're putting you in that position. Rather than you making the decision, putting yourself in that position potentially. I understand. I understand.

• 1:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, chapter 16. So I was super fired up when I read this chapter title. And then to be honest with you, I got a little less fired up when I got into it, but because the chapter is, will you wait for it? Or will you go get it? And I was like, oh damn, this is the chapter I've been waiting for. But what he's talking about is information.

• 1:50:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm still fired up for gathering information and are you gonna wait for information to come to you? Or are you gonna go get it? I'm still, I'm still fired up about it, but I'm not as fired up as I was. It's just like, we're just gonna make things happen. But, uh, he goes in here. There's more than one school of thought concerning how a commander can acquire reliable information. One school contends that the commander should analyze reports that come to him from his subordinate units and staff. The other advocates that the commander should go see for himself. Yet another endorses a combination of these methods.

• 1:51:00Jocko Willink?

  As a commander from company to army group and as observer of others holding such positions in three wars. That's gotta feel a little bit cool to write.

• 1:51:12Jocko Willink?

  I have come to certain conclusions myself. Moreover, since my retirement from the army, I have worked as a consultant to research organizations, making studies of command, control and communication problems for the army. The result of this active and retired experience might be helpful to students and practitioners who should, who would like to excel in the art and techniques of commandership and generalship.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  And then he goes here. Looking back, it seems to me more than ever that my best information on both our own forces and the enemies was obtained by visiting or observing subordinate commanders. So there you go. I guess he's saying, go get it.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  This is done either by jeep or fixed wing airplane borrowed from the artillery, small radios. He goes on. He says this. As a corps commander in Korea with five divisions on the line. I often left my headquarters by chopper, by chopper after morning staff briefing, and I visited the five division headquarters in turn from left to right. The divisions knew when I was coming. The division commanders were told that they need not wait for me and that I would talk to the chiefs of staff. Over a cup of coffee, we discussed the latest situations. Then we discussed the problems which had been presented by them on a previous day. Then I noted what they wanted my corps headquarters to do to help them. So that's all good. He's gathering information.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, I told them the situation of the eighth army and of the I Corps as I knew it. So not only is he out there receiving information, he is telling them what is going on. So, and he ends up saying that he, that he did that. And it's funny, I was, I was, I was reading this and he says, uh, generally the next day I repeated this as a result. I was not only the corps commander, but the corps commander liaison officer. And to a large extent, the corps communicator with the lower units. And I put in parentheses, when I was reading this, it was a static war. Because at this point in Korea, you know, it was, it was almost trench warfare, like they weren't moving. And then what's interesting, Fast Forward Little B says, this was in a static situation,

• 1:53:19Jocko Willink?

  but such command techniques are not unusable in mobile warfare. So get out there, get that information.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  He's got this section in here. History is full of instances where the commander being at the critical point, at the critical time, turned the tide of battle to victory. Or conversely, the commander not being on scene, his force was defeated. Few such examples have been related so dramatically as in the poem Sheridan's Ride by Thomas Buchanan Reed. So we're talking Civil War, we're talking General Philip Sheridan. Union general, who was five foot five. We were talking about height a little bit earlier. Well, he was known as Little Phil. Also known as Fighting Phil. And the Battle of Cedar Creek, October 19th, 1864 is when this went down. One will recall that early in the morning,

• 1:54:13Jocko Willink?

  Sheridan was at Winchester, Virginia, 20 miles away from his command, when news of a new battle arrived. He mounted his horse and took off at full speed for the field of combat. Reed's stirring verse traces Sheridan's progress through five stanzas, giving equal credit to both him and his horse. The six stanzas shows what happens when the commander arrives at the critical point of battle and at a critical time. Quote, "The first the general saw were the groups of stragglers, and then the retreating troops. What was done, what to do? A glance told him both. Then, striking his spurs with a terrible oath,

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  he dashed down the line mid a storm of huzzas." Which I had to look up. That's an old form of hooray. So that the people started, "Ah!"

• 1:55:08Jocko Willink?

  And the wave of retreat checked its course there because the sight of the master compelled it to pause. So, there you go. The commander shows up on the battlefield and he turns this retreat into an advance and they ended up kind of smashing the Confederates in that battle.

• 1:55:27Jocko Willink?

  It's, it is inconceivable that the same result could have been attained on an automated battlefield.

• 1:55:35Jocko Willink?

  Nor could Sheridan have been brought, could have, nor could Sheridan have brought order out of chaos while seated before a display panel 20 miles away. You need to get there. Need to get there. And then he talks about why commanders should be forward.

• 1:55:56Jocko Willink?

  He talks about the, the like computer stuff and, and again, he's writing this, this originally came out, I think in 1963 and then this version was 1973. So he's talking about computers. So, God only knows what that consisted of in 1973, uh, like a mobile command computer. Uh, we need to get a, I need to do some research on that one. And he says, these are fine until disorderly and confusing conditions, uh, that occur so often in battle materialize. They do not realize the roles of judgment. So he's talking about all these computations and these things that they set up and he's saying once, those are, those are cool when everything's cool. But then

• 1:56:37Jocko Willink?

  once the mayhem happens, they do not realize the roles of the judgment and experience factors, which must be used in handling tactical battle reports. Inevitably, these lead to a working principle such as, and so here, here's, here's what the commanders are using to judge their information when they're using computer-based data. Discount by 50%, all very favorable or unfavorable operational reports which come into your headquarters from your subordinate units and then question the remainder. So it's basically like this, just junk. It's just junk.

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  And then he talks about the helicopter and using that to stay forward, which is effective as well. He's got this whole, this whole chapter. ADP in war. Will it work?

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  Automatic data processing. So we're not going to cover much of this. And he sets up this sort of hypothetical situation where he starts asking a bunch of questions about how well this ADP, how well it's going to work to use ADP during war. And a lot of this,

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  you know, he's talking, he's literally talking about like, are there going to be power sources available? So it's really kind of nitty gritty stuff. But then he says, I wouldn't, I would not be honest with you if I did not point out that commanders at all echelons are apprehensive of the tendency to use ADP to facilitate centralization of command and control. I can foresee disastrous effects from indiscriminate, from indiscriminate centralization or over centralization and loss of flexibility in modern fluid war. Why is that? Because now all of a sudden, the leader can track everything that everyone's doing. Hey, like Dave's in his aircraft and he's like, wait a second, go a little bit further to the right, go a little bit further to the left. We know exactly where you are.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  Wait, don't drop the bomb yet. Okay, drop it now. And we're trying to micromanage.

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  Will ADP cause the commander to be more command post bound and thus reduce his ability to be at critical points at critical times? I turned it up being a yes. With its increased speed and capacity for information, will ADP in the hands of staff officers or of higher headquarters tend to encourage them to put increased burden of reporting on lower echelons who are often busily engaged in the vital conduct of battle? How crazy is that, Dave?

• 1:59:05Speaker 02

  It's nuts picturing what I saw, you know, from the talk in the, in the command center, you know, picturing this being 19, what was it, 76, where you said, yes, the answer to that question is yes, it will.

• 1:59:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's what happened in the military. All of a sudden, we have the ability to get information. So we're going to require it. We're going to want more of it.

• 1:59:23Speaker 02

  And you're going to demand it at a time that is totally incompatible with when they should be giving you the information. They want to know what's going on. Yeah. Well, the reason you don't know what's going on is I'm in the middle of doing something right now.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  I got a little situation I'm trying to handle.

• 1:59:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's, that's how he, uh, explains the whole ADP thing.

• 1:59:46Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 18, Making Progress and Improving a Military Organization. It is the aim of anyone who is privileged to command a company battalion, brigadier, division, to leave it in much better shape than he found it. And to be sure, his superiors recognize that fact. And he goes through this little pluses method, which he's gone through before in one of the earlier podcasts, which you're going to make little incremental changes to get better. He goes over this section about protecting your image as a commander. A word about headlines. Most commanders who have sought headlines to establish their image, and I'm using those, he's putting those in quotes. "In the minds of their men and their superiors have sooner or later have been plagued by unfavorable headlines.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Produce a superior, well-rounded and solid unit and your image as a commander will be secure, as will your military future."

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  And then this is the last thing that we are going to cover, I think. Oh, no, it's not, not yet, not quite here that.

• 2:00:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is. All right, so, Chapter 19. Techniques of Troop Orientation and Informed Education. "One of the most important duties of a commander is to keep his troops informed and oriented. This is done in many different ways with varying degrees of effectiveness. A technique I found very effective was to inform and orient by posters and personal visits." So he's talking about posters, literally posters that you hang on the wall. And this is why, when you were talking about simplicity earlier, Dave, this is kind of knocking it out of the park. And when I said earlier on this podcast, when I was giving him a grade of a D minus for his simplicity of language in his opening, he makes up for it here with these posters.

• 2:01:35Jocko Willink?

  "In 1956, I took command of the 7th US Army in Europe at a time when the relationship of the troops with their German neighbors was at a low ebb due to a number of things." I think this is also when Hackworth was working for him. "After studying the situation, I concluded that the transition from an army of occupation to the status of a guest army in a host nation had not been accomplished." So there's the wrong culture. There's the wrong culture. From occupation status to like host. To a guest to a host nation. This is in Germany. So we went in there, we're occupying force. These were our enemies and now all of a sudden we're saying, all right, that's not the deal anymore. Now they're the host nation and we're the guest.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  So can you imagine trying to shift that culture? That's a tough culture shift. I set out to bring about this transition, not only for the soldiers, but for the dependents and US civilian employees in Germany. And so he comes up with this poster. That the poster is called Soldier. And the poster just has this picture of a soldier who looks badass. And it says, Soldier, this is why you're in Germany.

• 2:02:46Jocko Willink?

  And it's got bullet points. To play your part on the NATO team, to help maintain peace by being constantly combat ready, to be a good neighbor to our German neighbors, to fight if necessary for the rights of free men in the world.

• 2:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Simplicity score? Dave, what are you giving him?

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  That's a significant improvement.

• 2:03:13Jocko Willink?

  Most improved award. So, so very obvious. So that's what he did. He made this poster. And, and then he did these visits. He did these visits where he would take the troops and, and send them to check out what was happening at the Berlin Wall. So it's another way to make people understand why. And not only would he send the troops, but he would, if he could, send the dependents there as well. So they understood why. You go see the Berlin Wall and then he made, and this is the last thing we're going to cover. Again, he's making this so simple and so clear. So along with that campaign to get people to see the wall, to understand what

• 2:03:58Jocko Willink?

  the purpose of being there was, to understand why we were there. He made this poster. There's a couple of pictures of the wall. And it says, why?

• 2:04:09Jocko Willink?

  And it says, "Have you ever wondered, "Why must the communists build walls and fences to keep people from fleeing the land where they were born? "Why must they charge their fences with electricity which can kill people who try to escape? "Why armed guards along these walls and fences shoot and kill their own people who try to escape from their homes? "Why, despite these walls and fences and guns, have over 4 million people left their homes, "property and friends and risked their lives to escape in the past 15 years?

• 2:04:53Jocko Willink?

  "Why the communists surround themselves with walls and fences when history shows "that this has often been the first step in the self-destruction of an empire?"

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, "Why, why were these effectives? "These posters and Operation Looksee, which was actually traveling to the Berlin Wall, "were effective because they used the most efficient techniques of informing and orienting the soldier "and of having his commander tell him in basic and simple terms "about situations which are close to him and affect or could affect him personally."

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  He gets it across as simply as possible.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. That is the, that wraps up our review of Guidelines for the Leader and Commander. I have initiated the publication through Jaco Publishing of this book. We are reaching out to try and figure out what, what needs to happen there. But it's underway. Bozak has it for action.

• 2:06:04Jocko Willink?

  So we'll get it out. We'll get it published. I'm sure that we will continue to refer to it.

• 2:06:10Jocko Willink?

  There's so many good lessons here, even that last lesson that the that these posters were effective because they used the most simple terms to explain to the soldiers why they were doing what they're doing. Something that I've been talking about for 20 years, explaining people why they're doing what they're doing. And that is such an off, that's such a, such a, it's a response we use all the time at Echelon Front. All the time. My people aren't doing this. My people, my people don't want to get on board with that. Tell them why they're doing what they're doing. Explain it to them in terms that they can understand.

• 2:06:50Jocko Willink?

  That's what he did. That's what he's telling us to do. Telling us to be more effective, telling us to be more efficient, telling us to not waste time. Telling us to be in good physical condition. And to strive always. Remember what he said. You're never 100% combat effective. You never get there. You always have to strive to be better. So, thank you, General Clark, for that.

• 2:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles?

• 2:07:27Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:07:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, speaking of getting better?

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Or at least always trying to get better, striving to get better?

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  Striving to, yes.

• 2:07:34Jocko Willink?

  Do we have any recommendations on, you know, making that happen?

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  Yes, we do, Dave. We do.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  I just saw Dave look at his watch.

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:07:43Jocko Willink?

  He was looking at his watch thinking, alright, I know I have work to do. You know what's, you know what's funny? You know what? I know Dave has work to do. I know I have work to do. I know there's one person. I'm not saying they don't have work to do, but they might have less work to do. They might have a less of a stringent timeline to follow.

• 2:08:05Speaker 01

  Well, you did say might, because, you know, you never do know.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Alright, alright, okay, so getting better.

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  All the work I have to do, I'll tell you, part of the work I have to do is inform my people, our people.

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Alright, let's do it.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  On how to get through, or should I say move forward on this path we're all on. Boom. We're working out, we're taking jujitsu if we can, we're reading, we're, we're surrounding ourselves with good people. It's a sliding scale, I understand. Nonetheless, these are things we're trying to do on this path. We need supplementation. Don't worry, Jaco is fuel. It's called Jaco Fuel. Supplementation for your whole body, all the way up to your brain, the last cell in your brain. Anyway, what we got? Joint warfare?

• 2:08:54Jocko Willink?

  We got joint warfare.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  I told you, my wife has an injury.

• 2:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Not anymore.

• 2:08:58Speaker 01

  Feeding her joint warfare. She's on her feet.

• 2:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm, that's what I'm talking about.

• 2:09:01Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, every day. So joint warfare, super krill oil, these are for your joints, free bones, keep yourself in the game. Don't even have to worry about them anymore. You take this stuff. Also, we have discipline, which is for your brain-ish. It's not just for your brain, is what I'm saying.

• 2:09:19Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  For your body too. So, discipline, discipline go, and then discipline go in the cans. It's all the same family, we'll say. Is that an accurate way to put it?

• 2:09:29Jocko Willink?

  Accurate.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:09:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a little note on discipline go in the cans. So, look, are we at war?

• 2:09:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  I would say yes. I mean, from a business sense, we're at war. We've had, we've been attacked, we had an act, let's just say this at a minimum, we've had an act of war against us. Another very large energy drink company has spotted an insurgency happening. They didn't like it. They're trying to maneuver to shut down some of our manufacturing. But, guess who had contingency planning?

• 2:10:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes, us, but we're at war. So right now, hey, we are in Wawa in Florida. We want to be all over the east coast in Wawa and then we want to hit the rest of the stores across the country. If you're in Florida, go to Wawa. Get some go. Try some go. What flavors do you recommend, Dave?

• 2:10:39Speaker 02

  All of them.

• 2:10:41Jocko Willink?

  Let me ask you this, are you, how, how, how many?

• 2:10:46Jocko Willink?

  Are you, have you drank one flavor enough where you shifted to another flavor? Like I've done that with mulk where I'll go on mulk. I'll go on mint mulk for three weeks. Then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, that's strawberry. But right now I'm on that pumpkins. I'm on that smashing pumpkin, pumpkin spice. That stuff is crazy good. So have you? Have you gone, do you go, do you rotate daily? Are you doing random out of the box? What are you doing?

• 2:11:10Speaker 02

  I, I try to go random out of the box or out of the fridge. I try to go random out of the fridge. I have not done that the last seven days.

• 2:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're just straight.

• 2:11:18Speaker 02

  Dude, I am straight afterburner orange. That's what I'm right now.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  So my, my older two daughters kind of speak their own language. And one of the words that they've been using a lot lately is if something is very good, then it's a fantasy. And they say it in various funny ways. But then they've shortened it to say fant. Oh, that's a fant.

• 2:11:44Jocko Willink?

  And so the other day, my middle daughter took a drink of afterburner orange. And she said, oh, that's a fant. Like a fanta.

• 2:11:58Jocko Willink?

  So there you go.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  There's a little, yeah, like an orange fanta, right?

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to agree with that one. The orange, the afterburner orange. Yeah, that's the kind of the number one right now.

• 2:12:09Jocko Willink?

  It's good.

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  Factually.

• 2:12:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm still just, just Jaco Palmer all day.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I understand.

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I, I've, I will have, probably for every four Jaco Palmer, I will have one orange, or one sour apple sniper, maybe a DAK Savage, even though DAK Savage, people like my wife's DAK Savage all day.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 2:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I just want to get a little like Dakota Meyer mindset.

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Just go get some of that.

• 2:12:37Speaker 01

  The DAK can, just the DAK can is legit.

• 2:12:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, sir. But yes, so, yes, discipline, energy drink, essentially, I said it.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Speaker 01

  I said what I said.

• 2:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:51Speaker 01

  Energy drink-ish, health, and it's a health energy drink.

• 2:12:54Jocko Willink?

  It's real energy is what it is. It's real energy.

• 2:12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So nonetheless, yes, these are the supplementation elements that we can call upon

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  on this path. Also, Jaco, you mentioned milk. So you got all these different flavors of milk, protein in the form of a dessert. You just meant the Smashing Pumpkin. I'm with it. I'm with the Smashing Pumpkin. It's good.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  What about?

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  Kid approved too, by the way.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, kids, kids are all over that. It, it was declared a, a full fantasy in my house.

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  Full fantasy. Is that the?

• 2:13:26Jocko Willink?

  My daughter's declared, uh, Smashing Pumpkin a full fantasy.

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  Full fantasy, okay. I'm, I'm gonna kind of remember that, see if it sticks. Well, actually, I don't know if I want to do that. Nonetheless, it does sound cool when you say that your daughters say it.

• 2:13:37Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  But you can't start bringing that up that much.

• 2:13:41Jocko Willink?

  I won't start calling things like, oh, that move in UFC was a full fantasy.

• 2:13:48Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you.

• 2:13:49Jocko Willink?

  It's not really gonna flow.

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  No, probably not. So, speaking of full fantasy.

• 2:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that was cool.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, stick with cool. Speaking of cool and full fantasy, Jaco Whitey is also out there. Another light, refreshing element that we haven't spent that much time talking about, but that's fine. It's still out there and it's still going strong, of course. Um, you can get that in a can as well.

• 2:14:10Jocko Willink?

  Right. You can get all this stuff at originmaine.com. You can get it at Vitamin Shop, nationwide. You can get it at Wawa, Florida. This is what, what is it right now? It's, uh, November. Hopefully we'll get that whole east coast taken. Now, look, when I posted that we were in Wawa the other day, everyone's all fired up and like, okay, what about 7-Eleven? What about AMP? And what? Look, well, that's what that's the goal. Like I said, Florida's a little bit of a battleground state.

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  So we hope, you know, when you you're hoping, but people in Florida will get after it.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. Wait, is Jaco White tea in Wawa or just the discipline?

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Well, there you go. Boom. Also at originmaine.com, you can get this stuff. Also at originmaine.com, you can get other stuff. Jiu-Jitsu stuff, geese, rash guards, uh, some various, you know, whether it be workout clothes, clothing, shirts. But on top of that, American-made denim jeans also.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you get new deltas?

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  No, not yet.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Did you get new deltas? Yeah.

• 2:15:13Jocko Willink?

  So the new deltas, they're freaking legit. And yeah, they're just. The old deltas, I thought were the best thing that you could put on your legs. But now the the new deltas, which if you're ordering deltas now, they're the new deltas. And they're freaking the best thing ever.

• 2:15:31Speaker 01

  And they're what? They're kind of like stretchy-ish. I mean, obviously they're not.

• 2:15:35Jocko Willink?

  They do have, they do have stretch to them. That way, when you throw that full fantasy roundhouse kick. You're good. You're not ripping your pants.

• 2:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good for sure. Okay. Well, then you have it full fantasy stuff. Um, yeah, jeans, boots, all American-made stuff. This is a big deal. And and I think we all know that and we all know why. Also, we have our own store. Yeah, I said it. I said what I said. All right. It's still Jaco's store.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  So that thing, what you just said, I said what I said. You know, that's kind of a thing too, right?

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  From I, yeah, I don't know.

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, that's another thing that my daughters are saying.

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:16:18Jocko Willink?

  Older daughters.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  I like that one. I think it's very funny.

• 2:16:21Jocko Willink?

  They'll be like, I said what I said.

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  There is this joke, like, you know, the memes online. There's this joke that it was like, I forget even the joke, but it was, it was really funny. And since, since then, I started.

• 2:16:36Jocko Willink?

  I appreciate memes.

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:16:38Jocko Willink?

  I appreciate memes and I even appreciate people that have, you know, like a hat that says veteran of the meme wars and they have, they've awarded, they've been awarded whatever awards you get for the meme. Maybe they got a nam with five, five nams.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  Spot nams.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, the memes are good.

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I agree.

• 2:16:59Jocko Willink?

  But somehow I don't, the memes don't flow to me. It's always my son that shows me memes.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what the hell he subscribes to on the gram, as you call it, but he shows me some memes that are funny.

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  They're really funny.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, whoever's making it, they're smart people. Like, you know how you can, you know, some jokes are like, brother, that's like not even, it's like a cheap joke that's not funny. And then some are like, you gotta be, whoever thought of that, made that joke up is like a smart, funny person.

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  You know, like there's some impressive stuff on there for real. Like I inadvertently, well, or advertently, whatever, subscribe to like a bunch of them. It's really good. It's really good. And yeah, full grown man, fully memes all day. Uh, but yes, I said what I said. It's our store.

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  Still called Jaco's store. So anyway, yes, Jaco's store is where you can represent with clothing, t-shirts, hoodies, discipline equals freedom. Good. All this stuff. Here's the thing. I said this last week, I'm gonna say it again. It's a big deal.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  We have a t-shirt club. Okay, so this is what the t-shirt club kinda is. It's like, okay, look.

• 2:18:10Jocko Willink?

  The t-shirt club is Echo coming up with a lot of different t-shirts and me saying, dude, we can't make a million different t-shirts because how are we gonna keep a million different t-shirts in stock? And how many? And all that stuff?

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  And then you come up with a big creative idea.

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  Yes, that, well, you know, I guess it depends on what you.

• 2:18:34Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you had the end state in mind.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Jocko Willink?

  Right? You figured a way to solve that problem.

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's good because also on top of that, which, um, yes, that's true. But on top of it, it's like, sometimes we like, even you'll be like, hey, put this on a T-shirt. Or I'll be like, oh, you know, like suggesting like a T-shirt and it's a good, it's fun. It's a fun, good idea.

• 2:18:55Jocko Willink?

  Or cool.

• 2:18:56Speaker 01

  Or cool.

• 2:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Because let's face it, you come up with ideas for T-shirts that are fun and I come up with ideas for T-shirts that are cool.

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Super cool, extra cool fantasy.

• 2:19:07Jocko Willink?

  Are you denying about that?

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. All good. It's true. It's hundred percent true, actually. But we can't just start, like you said, just throwing these shirts on like, or whatever. But the idea of, you know, so these ideas for shirts, they, they, they're doable.

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Also people, the people always say, can you make this T-shirt? Can you make that T-shirt? That'd be a cool T-shirt.

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's some that I'm like, that are shirts that we talk about. And then someone be, hey, you should do this shirt. Be like, yeah, we just talked about that kind of thing, you know? So it's like all these ideas, hey, we'll throw it in one month, we'll have it, you know, you can have it. And it just goes on and on. It's good. A little subscription situation. Anyway, it's good T-shirt club. Real fun.

• 2:19:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so because you're kind of, kind of just giving me a look when I said I come up with cool T-shirt ideas. I'm gonna say one that will be available through the T-shirt. What is it? Subscription?

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So here's one. A podcast number 53. There's one part, this is the chosen reservoir. We're talking about the book. Colder than hell. And there's one point where the Marines are fighting for their lives. And they're assaulting down a hill. And there's a guy, the guy that's writing the book is writing what he's seeing. And he sees these guys getting up and charging and one of the Marines is not holding a gun. He's holding a freaking axe and he's charging at the Chinese communists and assaults their position.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  And so that's what I want to put it on a T-shirt, a silhouette somehow of a crazy picture where you can tell that there is a marine with an axe running down assaulting a communist position. And all it's going to say is on that is like colder than hell podcast 53. That's it. You know, I want that T-shirt.

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. That is actually

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Dave?

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  impressively awesome.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  That's a cool shirt.

• 2:21:13Speaker 01

  Boom. Good deal, Dave. Approved. Yeah. Agreed. So anyway, yes. So, you know, stuff like that. Anyway, check it out if you want. It's that's on Jaco store.com as well. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. You don't, I mean, I don't know. Don't subscribe. Subscribe, right? That's the thing.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  It'd be cool if you subscribe. Yeah, that way you're listening to it.

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:35Jocko Willink?

  We're making them.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:36Jocko Willink?

  We're probably making them faster and you can listen to them, which is interesting.

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  Awesome. Yeah. Yes, you are cuz you have, we have Jocko Podcast.

• 2:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:21:47Speaker 01

  The unraveling podcast. Well, that's, that's on a different thread now, by the way.

• 2:21:51Jocko Willink?

  We moved it off to a different thread.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're like, hey, you, you haven't unloaded unraveling, whatever, even though you said you did. Here's the thing. It's a different thread. So you gotta look for it or whatever.

• 2:22:01Jocko Willink?

  So it's called the unraveling. It's actually called the Jaco unraveling podcast. So search for Jaco unraveling and you'll find it. It's Daryl Cooper and me talking about, I've been listening to them. They're freaking legit. It's, it's awesome. So check that one out. We also have the grounded podcast, which we haven't recorded one in months. You know, because we've been on quarantine, so we haven't had, oh, wait.

• 2:22:25Jocko Willink?

  We haven't recorded ground grounded podcasts, so we'll, we'll knock one of those. And I know I owe Warrior Kid. And I got Warrior Kid four coming out, so we'll get some Warrior Kid ones done as well. We got a YouTube channel. If you want to see Echo's videos that he's super proud of, where he makes a bunch of stuff blow up and whatever.

• 2:22:43Speaker 01

  Or with airplanes, whichever. Yeah, it's good. Also, the video version of this pod podcast, by the way.

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  If you want to see what good deal Dave Berke looks like.

• 2:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Nonetheless, yes, YouTube channel. Good.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  You can subscribe to that.

• 2:22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, subscribe to that one as well.

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you say we're like official or whatever on there?

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  Official, yeah, we're, oh, yeah, yeah, they're like verified.

• 2:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Verified, yeah.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's how you can tell that that's the real one.

• 2:23:07Jocko Willink?

  So it's just Jocko Podcast.

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. All good. Boom. Also Psychological Warfare.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Debrief Podcast. Did we say it?

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, we didn't. Okay. Yes. Debrief Podcast. Jaco and Dave Berke.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Jaco's reading my notes. Yeah, well, I can see, you know, I see you write something. I'm like, oh, wait a second. We got another podcast, but it comes out on this thread. We haven't broken it out yet onto another thread. I don't know if we will. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see what happens. But anyways, it's really, it's us talking about what we do at Echelon Front. Working with clients and it's just all, it's like 100% leadership, right? It's a leadership injection directly into your veins. There's no, there's no books to be read. They're short or they're like a half an hour, 45 minutes.

• 2:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Would you call it like a case analysis kind of situation?

• 2:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Some of them are case analysis. Some are just lessons learned.

• 2:23:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:23:55Jocko Willink?

  Feel, you know what it's like? It's like some of those books that, that I've covered. Actually, I've been covering them recently, those direct reports from combat. From World War II, they're like, this is an interview. We want to get this information to the troops as quickly as possible. That's what the debrief, it's a freaking debrief. It's Dave and I debriefing. What we do on a daily basis to help companies and help leaders lead their companies. So that's what the debrief podcast is.

• 2:24:22Speaker 01

  Yep. Also Psychological Warfare. It's an album with tracks Jaco getting, helping you pass your moments of weakness straight up. In whatever capacity that you might run into moments of weakness.

• 2:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Flipside Canvas, Dakota Myers Company, making cool stuff to hang on your walls that will keep you on the path. Written a bunch of books and got a bunch of books. Uh, we got a book called About Face. I wrote the foreword for that. It's by Hackworth. This whole series of whatever we just did, six podcasts. About Guidelines for the Leader and Commander. I found that through About Face, which is my favorite book, which I wrote the foreword to. So you can check that out. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual.

• 2:25:00Jocko Willink?

  We got the code, the evaluation, the protocols. We got the new edition of the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. This is the Christmas, New Year's gift book. This is what your people want. Wrong? Am I right? You're correct. I'm correct. A bunch of new material in there. It's like something like 40 new pages in there. And if someone you know wants to get on the path, back on the path, needs to get on the path. If you want to stay on the path, get them that new version of the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Got Way of the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual coming out. How the kids liking it, Dave? My kids are so stoked on that. That's one section that they really like. Oh, right on. Right on. Uh, that's good.

• 2:25:46Jocko Willink?

  There's, let's just say there's layers in the book. Layers. Let's say that there's layers. So Way the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual. Young Mark meets a kid like last day of school. The kid wants to be a warrior kid, but he's leaving. He hasn't said anything because he's shy. He comes up and says, oh, Mark, I really wanted to hang out with you and your friends and be a warrior kid like you. But I'm leaving, I'm moving. And so Mark goes home, last day of school. Now Uncle Jake's there and he says, ah, you know, I met this kid. He wanted to be a warrior kid, but I can't help him. And Uncle Jake, of course, says, yes, you can. You're going to write him a field manual. What's that? It's instructions on how to be a warrior kid. So that's what the book is. Way the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual. Don't forget about Warrior Kid, Way the Warrior Kid One, Two, and Three.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about Mikey and the Dragons. And of course, don't forget about Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. Don't forget that I have a consulting company. Leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Whatever problems you have in your organization, it's a leadership problem. And what we do is we solve those problems through leadership. Go to ashlandfront.com for details. Go to EF Online if you want to ask me a question. If you want to ask Dave a question live, we will be sitting there answering your questions. If you want to go deeper on the materials that we talk about, we have video courses on there. So check out EFOnline.com. We only have one muster in 2020. It's in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th.

• 2:27:13Jocko Willink?

  Go to ExtremeOwnership.com for details.

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  This is our leadership conference where we get granular, where we interact, where we explain these principles so you can take them and make your business and your life better. We have efoverwatch.com. If you need executive leadership inside your company, you need middle management inside your company. You want people that understand the principles that we talk about here, go to efoverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members, if you want to help active duty people, you want to help retired people, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families around the world, then check out Mark Lee's Moms Charity Organization, Mama Lee. She has an organization called Americas Mighty Warriors.org.

• 2:28:02Jocko Willink?

  You can check that out if you want to donate or if you want to get involved. And if you, let's say you want more pain. You just want more pain, we can deliver. You can get more of my distressing diatribes. You can get more of Echo's misplaced monologues. And obviously you can get some more of Dave's concentrated confabulations.

• 2:28:29Jocko Willink?

  You can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as The Gram. And on Facebook.

• 2:28:41Jocko Willink?

  Dave is at David R. Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to General Bruce Clark and Colonel David Hackworth for passing these lessons on to us and for your service to this great nation and to everyone out there in uniform. Thank you for standing the watch and for keeping us safe. And also to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service.

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to all of you for standing the watch here at home. And everyone else out there.

• 2:29:18Jocko Willink?

  Remember this one thing from General Bruce C. Clark. An hour lost today is an hour lost forever.

• 2:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Don't waste time.

• 2:29:36Jocko Willink?

  It is running out. And with that, until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.