264: PAY ATTENTION. You're Competing All The Time. MCDP 1-4: Competing, with Dave Berke

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:00 - MCDP 1-4: Competing 1:52:19 - Final Thoughts and Take-Aways. 2:00:08 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:17:35 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 264 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So, why is Dave Berke joining us? Well, there could be a multitude of reasons, but one of my favorite reasons is when the Marine Corps releases a new doctrinal publication, which they just did. It came out on December 16th, 2020. And as soon as it came out, I sent Dave a text and said, hey, there's a new pub out. And he texted me back, tell me when we're recording a podcast on it. So here we are. Now you're going to see

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  as we dive into this, that

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  if you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. And there was a sub-context of this manual that came to my mind almost as soon as I started reading it, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  And it took me about 10 pages deep before I realized what this thing was floating around in my head and what I was seeing

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  underneath the surface, which this, this publication, Marine Corps doctrinal publication, one Tac 4, the title of it is competing.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  But there's something just underneath the surface of competing that I saw throughout. And I saw it almost immediately, but it took me, it took me a little longer than I would have liked to identify, which is a bummer, but it happened. So what was I seeing underneath competing? What I was seeing was influencing.

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  And as soon as I identified that correlation, I kept seeing it. And, and we'll share it with you today.

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  Not just the aspects of competing with others, but how this continuum of competition reflects the continuum of influence.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  And of course, if you better understand both of them, you will be able to do both of these things better. You'll not only get better at competing against your enemy or against your rival, but you'll also become better at leading, leading the teammates you have inside your own organization. So with that, let's get to it. The Marine Corps doctrinal publication, one tac four, competing. And it starts off with a forward. And in the forward, it says this, "Western conceptions of the international struggle among nations and other political actors often use

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  binary, war or peace labels to describe it." The actual truth is more complicated. So out of the gate, we're already getting somewhere. Out of the gate, we have to recognize that you can be competing with someone, but you're not at war with them. And there's an infinite degree of gray area in there. And guess what? Right out of the gate, that's what struck me right out of the gate. Guess what? When you're influencing someone, there's a whole degree of levels of pressure that you can exert to go from influencing. Because let's face it, if I put a gun to your

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  head, is that influence? Yes, it is. So influence and competing, very, very similar. Continuing on, "Actors on the world stage are always trying to create a relative advantage for themselves and for their group. Sometimes this maneuvering leads to violence. But the use of violence to achieve goals is more often the exception than the rule." Now, here's, here's where this, again,

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  if I'm trying to influence Echo Charles, there's levels of influence. Could, could one of those levels be?

• 4:04Jocko Willink?

  A double leg takedown? Yes. And ground and pound? Yes, it could. We, how often does that happen? I mean, how often do people physically fight?

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  Not very often. When you, when you think of all the human interactions that we have, we're trying to influence each other or trying to compete with each other. See, it's a weird thing, though, because on the one side, you've got competition, on the other side, you've got influence. And the continuum of how you apply these pressures are all over the place. Uh, so it continues on. Instead, most actors use other means in their competitive interactions, right? To achieve their goals. So we're not looking to go to war.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  The competition continuum encompasses all of these efforts, including the use of violence. Okay. So there you go. Continues on. And by the way,

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  this idea of competitive interactions

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  and influence interactions, this is what's happening. This is what is happening. Right? When, when we're interacting, so many of the interactions that we have with people are either competitive or they're influence. Right? We're constantly trying to get someone to do something, get someone to come on our side, get someone to give us the support that we need. Get them to move in this direction. That's what people are doing.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, there are several reasons for explaining the competition continuum to Marines. The first is to make them aware that from recruitment to retirement, they are an integral part of the nation's strategic competition with other actors. Marines are always competing even when they are not fighting in combat. So this is something to think about as a person. As a leader. As a leader, you're always influencing. Even when you're not standing up in front of the troops, giving a speech about where you're going or what the strategic, even then, even when you're sitting down to eat chow, guess what you're doing? You're influencing. You're competing. This is always happening.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  Then it rolls into this. When you understand those things, it says next, "Understanding unleashes creativity."

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps are coming at you with unleashing creativity. Right? When you go to art school, do you think they say, well, listen, the goal of this art school is to get you to unleash your creativity? No, the Marine Corps will say that. And isn't it interesting? We're two paragraphs in and we're talking about the creative aspects of competition.

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  And then hand in hand with that, the creative aspects of influence. Carrying on. Once Marines understand the nature and form of competition, their innovative spirit will lead to the development of new kinds of competition, new kinds of competitive advantages. Finally, this publication expands the discussion on how and where Marines fit into the continuum and where to look for their natural partners in competition. By design, this is a small book.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  With a construction that parallels Marine Corps doctrinal publication one, Warfighting, which is one of the first publications we covered on this podcast. It is not intended as a reference manual, but it is designed to be read from cover to cover. This publication does not contain specific techniques or procedures we should adopt. Rather, it provides broad guidance in the form of concepts with illustrations intended to stimulate thinking and encourage additional learning. It requires judgment in application.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  This is, uh, this is the way I like to learn. This is the way I like to teach. So when I, and the really easy thing to talk about is jujitsu, right? You want to be able to teach the advantage of this broad position is this. The thing you need to do when you're in this situation broadly is win this underhook, whatever, whatever the thing is. And that's what this book is. It's not like, hey, here's, uh, in this situation, it's not formulaic.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, "We live in a time of renewed great power competition in the era of exponential technological and social change. Marines enjoy a rich heritage of advancing our nation's interests in these kinds of struggles. As we look to the future, we must ensure today's and tomorrow's Marines do the same. Like maneuver warfare..." And just that statement followed by anything kind of warms my heart. "Like maneuver warfare, competing is a way of thinking. It's a way of thinking." And man, Dave, I kind of went berserk on like decentralized command as a way of thinking not

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  too long ago. Right? I mean, I went on EF Online, I spent two or three days of the sessions talking about decentralized command as a way of thinking. And it's so interesting how much that changes your perspective about something. When you think of it not in a linear way, like, oh, this is what you're gonna do, but this is the entire way of thinking. It's like saying, oh, when you fight someone, you can get them to the ground and you can grapple with them instead of punching them. That's just a whole new way of thinking. You don't even know one single move about it, but you know

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  this idea that you can then utilize. "We must understand the importance of strategic competition and the essential role Marines play in it for our nation." Only, I missed this line. It says, "We all need to read, study, and debate this publication with our fellow Marines." You chimed in on that one, didn't you, Dave?

• 10:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  What do you like about that?

• 10:03Dave Berke?

  I like that, I like the explanation of this. I went through the same thing initially when I was kind of looking at this. There was parts of it that I was thinking it was gonna be like warfighting, but it had this kind of intellectual, this thought process thing, this idea that what he's saying, the guy in charge of the Marine Corps, "You need to go out there and debate this and think about this." And he's using words like creativity and intellect. Those are not the words you would normally think of when you think of the Marine Corps. Creativity, intellectual, and debate, those are just not the things you'd think of, and those are things he's saying that you need to do.

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  And what I really like about it... Is we think of the Marine Corps, we think of the military in general, and then we think of the Marine Corps, of course, of being this hierarchy that is just as strict as you can imagine. And here's a document and, and General David H. Berger, the Commandant of Marine Corps, is saying the purpose of this document is to make you debate, not to, not to just obey what it says, but to make you debate. We want you to think. And that's a beautiful thing. So there we are. We are now done with the foreword. Let's get into what the book actually says.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  The nature of competition, chapter one. Total war and perfect peace rarely exist in practice. Instead, they are the extremes between which exist the relations among most political groups. This range includes routine economic competition, more or less permanent political or ideological tension, and occasional crisis among groups. So what's that? That's from, that's from warfighting, the Marine Corps manual, number one. And by the way, these things that we're talking about tensions, competition, not, not violent competition, but just competition. Where do those things exist? They exist. Sure, they exist between countries, but guess where

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  else they exist? They exist between companies. And guess where else they exist? Between departments inside of companies. And guess where they exist? Between people inside of departments inside of companies. Inside your family, there's competition going on.

• 12:18Jocko Willink?

  These words from the Marine Corps' warfighting philosophy frame the idea of competition for Marines. They also serve as a springboard for Marines to think about how they can contribute to winning the nation's competitions, including the ones taking place below the threshold of violence, which, by the way, is 99.999% of competitions. Violence is rare.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  And when we get into influence, look, it's almost cheesy for me to talk about influence of like, well, I could put, if I put a gun to your head, or I beat you with a baseball bat to get you to do what I want you to do, right? That's, that's, that's a rare form of influence that doesn't happen all the time. But there's a threat, there is a threshold of violence. And I think as we talk about it, and I haven't fully, I haven't fully hashed out these ideas in my head, but there's a transition time when it, when, when you're influencing, there's a transition time when you go from indirect to direct form of influence. There's a transition that you cross. And it's not quite a threshold of violence, but there's a, there's a transition that takes

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  place. And I think we'll find some comparisons to it in here, but I think about that all the time. How, how much, at what point do you go from indirect to direct? And it's funny, we, we had somebody on EF online the other day, and this type of question came up. But what I was explaining was the, the, the escalation of counseling, right? And you start off by saying, hey, bro, are you good? You know, are you okay? And then it goes to like, hey, this is a problem. And then it goes to, hey, I'm gonna write you up. And then you get written up and, and then you fire somebody if you have to. And then I'm sitting there talking, I go, you know how many times in my life, I made it past the lowest level of escalation of counseling? The times

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  that I said, hey, Dave, it doesn't look like the gear was ready in time. And Dave was like, dude, sorry, we, we lay blah, blah, blah. And it never happens again. That's 97%. There's another 2% where it was like, hey, bro, that's the second time we almost missed our movement because the gear wasn't ready. Do you need help? No, I got it. And it never happens again. That's another 2%. Now we're at 99%. There's another point, whatever percent where I actually had to write somebody up. And then there's point 00 whatever, where I had to take, you know, action to fire somebody or get rid of them. The same thing as you go through this escalation of war. You should be able to get people to do what you want them to do through non-war,

• 14:55Jocko Willink?

  without breaking the threshold of violence.

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, "Competition happens constantly in many forms amongst nations of the world in diplomatic, informational, military, and economic arenas. Rivals often challenge each other in one of them while they cooperate in a different one." "Well, that's good to know, isn't it? Isn't it good to know that we can be competing in one thing and cooperating in something else simultaneously?" Competitors include a wide range of political actors, from nation-states to groups organized around a single cause. While discussion below will often refer to state versus state rivalries, in most cases, the ideas apply equally to challenges with non-state actors. Competition in various forms among various different actors is the norm in international relations.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  So that's great that they're talking about international relations, and we're talking about these, I keep throwing all these percentages out today. Is that a good thing? I don't think it's a good thing. It's a little questionable. Is anyone going to be able to check me on my 97% facts? No. All right. Well, I'm gonna estimate that a vast majority of people that are listening to this podcast are not engaged at a policy level with interstate rivalries. So, what's important to recognize is that everything that we're talking about doesn't only apply to this country versus that country. It applies everywhere. Continuing on, "The Marine Corps participates in the competitions of the United States in many ways.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  Foremost among them is to fight and win our nation's battles and be ready to do so at all times." And then it says this, "War itself is a special kind of competition," which is a classic line, right? To say that war itself is a special kind of competition, we salute the Marine Corps for that statement, because it certainly is a special type of competition. How it fits in the overall continuum will be explored in detail. "The very existence of the Marine Corps is a competitive act, as it signals to potential rivals that there are vital interests our nations will go to war to protect, and that those of a maritime nature are important enough that we have invested in a dedicated naval expeditionary force to protect them."

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  So, that's a big statement, and one thing that I love about this entire manual. Is this entire manual written by the Marine Corps? And I just want you to pay attention to this and you kind of have to know what's going on between all the different services. You've got the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard and all of them are in competition at all times. And not just, hey, our planes are better than yours and our pilots are better. Not, no, not that competition. They're competing for money, for money. And so I hate to do this to Marine Corps because I do love the Marine Corps, but there are so many maneuvers in this book that, that if you read it, you go, well, we better take care of the Marine Corps.

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  We better give them a little edge. And that's one of those lines right there. Vital interest in our nation.

• 18:01Dave Berke?

  Just in case you care about the ocean.

• 18:03Jocko Willink?

  Just in case you care about the ocean, you might want a Marine Corps. They get that in there. But what's interesting about this is the very existence of the Marine Corps is a competitive act. So how many things do you do or have or say that just, just being there is a competitive act? Go.

• 18:18Dave Berke?

  To your point, I mean, look, I think it's cool. The Marine Corps wrote this. I'm stoked that it's a Marine Corps pub. I was a Marine. But just like what you said, you could change the words Marine Corps, you could put any word you want in there, the existence of the military. You just made a connection to family, this idea of competition. So when, when I was looking at this at first, not knowing what to expect, the connection that I was making of when they're talking about competing, the first thing is competition doesn't have to be a bad thing. That word shouldn't mean, oh, that means conflict and we're fighting. That, that isn't what it means. And it doesn't have to be about two nations going to war. It doesn't even have to be about the Marine Corps and the fact the Marine Corps wrote it is cool. That's not the point. And something else that you've

• 18:59Dave Berke?

  been talking about a lot lately, and I've been, I've been, I've been stealing it. You've been talking a lot about alignment. And when there's conflict in an organization, we see this at companies we work with all the time, what you need to do is find alignment. And the thing I was just thinking in that first couple of sentences is competition, the more aligned you and I are, the healthier the competition is, meaning the less likely the outcome is going to be some sort of conflict or a fight. If we're aligned, really aligned, we might be competing all the time just to make each other better, just to do a better job for our clients, whatever it is. And the likelihood of you and I competing, and we might be competing every day, the likelihood of you and I competing, turning it into a conflict is almost zero.

• 19:43Dave Berke?

  Now, if we are highly misaligned, misaligned, then that competition has the potential of the outcome being much different. But competition by itself, where it applies and what it means, five minutes into it, you're talking family. So there's a connection here that is way deeper than that first couple of sentences at face values. I'm looking, oh, the Marine Corps pub on competition, this can be cool. There's a lot more to it. It doesn't have to be about the Marine Corps as you're listening to it either.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, one of the notes that I took down early on, when I started talking about 99%, the note that I took down when I was reading it for the first time was 99% of the time, you don't have to resort to violence because you can find alignment. Because as long as you can find, and you've heard me say that on EF Online, if you can find alignment, well, then we can work together. If you and I are aligned, if you and I are not aligned on 48 different things that are lower level things, but we're aligned at the most important thing, we're good.

• 20:42Dave Berke?

  We're good.

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  And the example of that, what I bring up with companies is, hey, you know, Jaco and Dave can't get along. Oh, okay. Well, they can't get along about what? Well, Dave wants to invest in that, Jaco wants to invest in that, Dave wants to move here, Jaco wants to move there. Okay, so they can't get along. Okay, well, let's ask this question. Do Dave and Jaco, who work at the same company, do they want the company to make money? Yes. Do they want to be able to serve their customers? Yes. If we can get aligned on those things, then the rest of it is just figuring out the details.

• 21:12Dave Berke?

  And if you do what you were just talking about, the more you think in decentralized command, the more you think in commander's intent, the more you think strategically, the less you care about those details. You go, oh, wait, oh, you want the same thing? Dude, go do whatever you want. Let me know how I can help. Because then I think, oh, none of those details matter at all because you want what I want. And if I can just check my ego and go, oh, you know what? Dude, yeah, go do that. Can I back you up? Give me a call if I can help you. The competition part or the conflict part goes away and it allows you to accomplish so many more things if you think in decentralized command rather than just the action of, oh, well, I'm a leader, I have to push some decisions down to my next layer down. That's the actions of decentralized command.

• 21:56Dave Berke?

  You were talking about thinking in decentralized command. That's what lets you not worry about all those details.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, if I want Dave to be at point A.

• 22:06Jocko Willink?

  And I know that Dave knows to go to point A. I don't care how he gets there, but what's important is that allows me to look forward, to look to the next point, to look to point B or C or D. Because I'm not worried about how Dave's gonna get there. He's gonna get there. And if he needs some help, he knows to call me. Cool. No factor.

• 22:29Jocko Willink?

  The capabilities the Marine Corps generates in preparation for battle are also competitive as these capabilities are what deter a potential rival from selecting a course of action above the threshold of violence. So what they're saying there, what the United States Marine Corps is saying there is even if you want peace more than anything else, you better have a Marine Corps. You better have a Marine Corps to deter potential rival from selecting a course of action that's violent. If you want peace, you better have a Marine Corps.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  Are they gonna be mad at me for deciphering all this? Just go easy.

• 23:03Jocko Willink?

  God bless them. The Marine Corps, however, does not win our nation's competitions alone. In fact, the Marine Corps is most likely to support or contribute to advancing US interests as a part of a much larger competitive strategy. The Marine Corps can do a great deal to help the United States compete successfully, but it will do so as part of a larger national effort. That extends well beyond military national power. So the Marine Corps has to cover and move with all the other elements of the military. We're team players. Yeah, not just the military, but the State Department and the economy and everything else. The Marine Corps, despite looking after themselves a little bit with this manual, they are team players. From recruitment to retirement, Marines have the potential to help the nation compete successfully

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  in many ways. It starts with the right mindset, one that recognizes the Marine Corps' top priorities to win battles.

• 23:54Jocko Willink?

  While also recognizing that war and warfare are segments of a larger spectrum known as the competition continuum. Marines need to be clear-eyed about this spectrum. Even when the Marines are not at war, in one of its many forms, they are still in a state of competition. While demonstrating the ability to fight and win wars is crucial for deterrence, a successful foreign policy will avoid wars, especially against great power rivals whenever possible. Great. Competition continuum.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  This whole thing, it escalates.

• 24:31Jocko Willink?

  Competition is a fundamental aspect of international relations as state and non-state actors seek to protect and advance their own interests. They continually compete for the advantage. Okay, so that's what everyone is doing. Am I paranoid? I might be. I might be. I might be a little bit paranoid. People are competing. People are maneuvering. And that's what we're doing, right? That's what that other company is doing. That's what that other department is doing. That's what that other country is doing. They're maneuvering. What are they doing that for? They're doing it to further their own interests. Now,

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  going back to the idea of alignment, this also falls into agendas, right? Because if Dave is trying to make some maneuver inside of our company and I'm trying to make some maneuver inside of our company, as long as those maneuvers still get us to the point we want to go to, I don't care. We're good with it. We're good with it. We're fine. So people trying to advance their own, their own interests, most of the time is fine as long as they're not undercutting the strategic goals that we have.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  But people are always competing. They're always making that little move. Some people a little bit more obvious than others.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  And here's what you gotta watch out for.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  What you gotta watch out for is when people have an agenda that helps them, but it doesn't move you in your strategic direction. That's what you're watching out for. What you're watching out for is when Dave and his department, hey, it's great when Dave and his department are trying to get money so they can get more funds, so they can hire more people, so they can grow, so they can get bigger production and they can move us toward the strategic goal of growing our business. That's all good. Dave is literally competing to get more money for his department so he can grow his department, which will help him create more income, so our whole business moves forward. That's great. But there's a chance that Dave wants to, you know, set up a, he wants to set up a, an office

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  in, happens to be point two miles down the road from his house, happens to be in a building that he owns, happens to want to charge a certain amount of rent. We don't need anything in that area, but he's doing it for himself. That's what we gotta watch out for. And I'll tell you.

• 26:51Jocko Willink?

  When you're making those maneuvers for yourself,

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  everybody sees it. You think you're smart. You think you're getting away with it. You think no one notices. You think, you think, oh, you know, I do own the building, but it's really a great spot. Nobody believes you. Nobody believes you. So don't do it. Don't do things for your self-interests that undermine and that aren't aligned with the strategic goal. Whenever I get somebody that I can't figure out quite why they're doing what they're doing. Dave, what do you mean? Why would, explain to me why you want this building there again? Why, why you want to put an office there? Well, I'm telling you, there's a really, a good market and Dave, we, we're already in that market. We can control this other area. Yeah, but it's a, you know, I think it'd be really good for the company. Okay. Well, tell me what would be good. Well, you know, we could, we could have some offices there.

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  I know. I, I understand what, what you want to do. Why is it good? So when I, when we can't, when I can't understand why it is you want to do something, there's a chance I need to say, wait a second. Is Dave doing this for some reason, some agenda that is not for the good of the organization? Is he competing against what we're doing?

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's a problem and I'll see through it every single time and so will everybody else. It's so obvious, man. It's so obvious.

• 28:15Jocko Willink?

  Nations and other political actors pursue their interests constantly and in a variety of ways. Competition results when the interests of one political group interact in some way with another group. These interactions take place in a dynamic environment. Each move, each move an actor makes towards fulfilling an interest changes that ecosystem.

• 28:36Jocko Willink?

  Any interaction of interests changes the situation as well. So what does that mean? We got to track that OODA loop, right? Cause every move you make or every move your competitor makes, makes everything a little bit different.

• 28:48Jocko Willink?

  Competitions are often labeled as zero sum or positive sum. Zero sum rivalry means that if one group achieves its goal, then the rival group cannot achieve its own. A good example of zero sum competition is when two nations struggle over the ownership of an island. In most cases, only one of them can physically control it at a time. Positive sum means that more than one group can make progress towards fulfilling interests or achieving goals at the same time. For example, two nations may compete economically, but both may see their gross domestic product increase simultaneously. That's what I think we commonly refer to as a win-win situation, which I love, which I love. I prefer. We don't want to do zero sum. We want to say, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to

• 29:34Jocko Willink?

  do something to Dave's division that shuts his division down. I want him to win and I want us, me to win. It's fine, it's positive.

• 29:42Jocko Willink?

  Why is it positive?

• 29:45Jocko Willink?

  Why is it positive? It's positive because I'm not just thinking tactically, I'm thinking strategically. And if what I do right now is burn Dave and burn his efforts to the ground, what is Dave going to do? In two years, in five years, or in 10 years, he's coming back at me.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, are there times when you have to do scoredirt policy? Yes, there are.

• 30:11Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time, you don't have to. Most of the time, it's better to build than destroy.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  Competition manifests itself in several ways, such as when one actor attempts to impose its will on the other. Another way is when one actor acts to frustrate another's plans, preventing them from achieving their goals. Think of when these little things happen to you. Think of when you feel that someone like, wait a second, why is Echo, why is this another roadblock? Why does Echo, why hasn't he done this little task yet? What's going on? Well, guess what? Sabotage is what's going on. Trying to frustrate the goals. Both of these mainly apply to zero sum struggles. In a positive sum example, two economic rivals will try to best each other, like when they try to increase their market share in a particular industry at the expense of their rival, while both of their economies grow. So that's fine.

• 31:08Jocko Willink?

  Competition, especially at the nation state level, is complex and it is systemic. For example, auto manufacturers in the United States compete with rival companies. Isn't this interesting, Dave? As often as we talk to businesses. And I've also, I've often, well, I've not often, but I've talked about this before. What came first? The military learning from industry or industry learning from the military? Because it goes back and forth. It's like a continuous cycle. So here we are in the Marine Corps manual that they just released. And what do they use for an example? Not a war example. They use a business example.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps uses a business example. For example, auto manufacturers in the United States compete with rival companies in the European Union and Japan. But this does not mean the US government is also in direct competition with these governments, even though the auto manufacturers are based in their respective territories.

• 32:01Jocko Willink?

  Indirectly, the auto manufacturers may lobby their governments, asking them to take actions that favor their company in the global competition for auto sales. The individual actors are intertwined and interact with each other in many different ways. The details of this brief example are less important than it is for Marines to understand. So there's an example, but here's what you got to understand. Strategic competition among international political actors is multi-layered and networked. Each competitor consists of many parts that interact in complex ways. As we see from these examples, competition and cooperation can coexist. And competition does not need to lead to conflict. So there's all so many factors at play.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  And that's on a national level, but there's so many factors at play in the way you talk to someone else. The way you treat somebody else and the facial expressions that you make.

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  Now we get into the continuum.

• 33:01Jocko Willink?

  When I was a tradet, training people, I would start off by giving them a problem and then a little bit of space to work through that problem, then another problem, and then a little bit of space to work through, and, and physical space like, okay, there's a problem that's gonna happen before you get to the target. Then there's gonna be a problem on target, then there's gonna be a problem as you leave the target, then there's gonna be a problem as you're at your extract point. And so they're separated by time and space. So I, I remember telling the leadership of this one task, you know, I said, now, I go, that did, you did a pretty good job. But what you're gonna see happen now is I am going to compress the time-space continuum that these problems occur, meaning they're gonna occur at the same time in the same location. And that causes problems.

• 33:46Jocko Willink?

  So the continuum that we're talking about here, this is no perfect model to use. There is no perfect model to use in explaining the competition continuum. The many feedback loops it contains make it very complex. So models will omit some details. However, the models are useful because they help explain specific concepts and assist Marines in building their own visualization of the continuum. So they, they have this, basically a line on the one, on the one far side is pure peace, the other far side is total war.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  So it starts with pure peace. Then it goes to economic competition, classic diplomacy and geopolitics. So that's sort of like, hey, we're at peace, but oh, wait, we're not quite at peace anymore. Now we're moving to economic competition, maybe some classic diplomacy, some geopolitics. And then you get into this area called political warfare.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  At the, at the far end of economic competition is political warfare, meaning I'm putting tariffs on you. So now we're getting more aggressive. Then you get to this area called the gray zone, which is now maybe it's sanctions. And now we're being really aggressive. Then you get to a hybrid war. And then you get to the threat of violence. And then you get to use of violence. There's a threshold.

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  And once you get past the threshold of violence, you can go further right, which is conventional war. Okay, we're gonna go to war, we're gonna have your tanks against my tanks and your airplanes against my planes. And then we get to total war, which is whatever it takes to survive and win. No mercy of any kind.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  So that's a linear model of this. There's also a circular model that they have. And by the way, you can get this, this manual. You can just go on the Google, you know, one tac four competing, and you'll find it. And you can download it and print it. What's up?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  What's an example of total war and versus conventional war? Like which war was like a total war?

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  The closest I would say we got is World War II.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  To total war?

• 35:51Jocko Willink?

  To total war. But we were still, let's face it, we were still following the Geneva Convention.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:56Jocko Willink?

  But imagine if things were so bad that you just were, were just outright just killed, destroyed in chemical weapons and just total war. I mean, in, in World War II, you know, we dropped, we dropped the atom bomb. That's, that's freaking, that's just total war, right? You're, you're killing everyone. We firebombed Dresden, 250,000 civilians or 250,000 people, many civilians dead, an entire city destroyed. Go Google Dresden before and after. I mean, it's not quite as shocking as Hiroshima and Nagasaki before and after, but it's complete and utter devastation. It's as much devastation as we could possibly cause with the weapons we had at hand.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Is there like a scenario where like one side is that total war and the other side is like, hey, we're gonna keep this kind of conventional? Because it kind of seems like, right, like certain, we'll say groups, whether it be nations, whatever, have a certain philosophy.

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  I would say that, yeah. I mean, I think we, I don't, I don't know if we could get to where someone was at total war. I mean, I think the Japanese were pretty close. I think the Nazis were pretty close to total war. They would do whatever they, you know, they'd do whatever they could. But even, even, um, yeah, they, even they had limits, you know? But, I mean, let's face it, they were close. They were close. I mean, Japan was doing their best to develop chemical and biological weapons that they could use. They were on that path and would, if they had gotten them, you think they would have done it? Eh, I'm gonna say affirmative.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  So they might have been a total war. You know, you can maybe look at some of these, some of these non-state actors, right? I mean ISIS, was ISIS at total war? They don't have, didn't have the capabilities or the means, but if they had the opportunity to just kill indiscriminately kill as many people as they possibly could, would they? Yeah, probably.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I mean. So like, yeah, these groups like, yeah, they don't have the physical capability, but that was their approach. Like that they in their mind, they're in that zone.

• 38:13Jocko Willink?

  The next thing was talking about a circular model. A circular model shows conflict above violence threshold and competition below it. And they kind of go through these. One of the things that brings up here, one of the actors could be deterred. So you might think you're going towards war, but then you get deterred.

• 38:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the threat of violence could have been significant sufficient leverage and other rivals decided, you know what? I don't want none of this. Tension recedes. Negotiations of some kind may have succeeded, bringing the actors back from the threshold of violence. These are all things that, think about a, uh, for you as a bouncer, right? Think about as you approach a level of like, there's a threshold of violence where someone's taking a swing. Think about all the little things that could happen that could de-escalate that, you know? Maybe it's negotiation. Hey, look, man, you just need to get out of here. Maybe it's, hey, we're calling the cops. How often does that one work? Pretty often, right?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a, when you, whatever you go through this training and the, that's part of it. That whole thing, that escalation of force, right? And there's like many thresholds. You know, like first it's like straight up friendly and the better.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  Are we going to get Roadhouse quotes in here?

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Well, in Roadhouse, they do kind of go over it a little bit.

• 39:29Jocko Willink?

  Sorry, the trading you went to, man. I'm having some like real positive flashbacks about, or images of you and, and, and what's his name? Bodhi?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  No, Dalton.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  Bodhi's from, uh, Bodhi's from Point Break.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I respect by the way. So yeah, well, in a way, yeah, because, okay, so Dalton, that wasn't really a training. That was more of a lecture and that was a very specific philosophy, which was cool. I dig it, whatever.

• 39:51Jocko Willink?

  So there's different philosophies in the.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  I would say so, yeah.

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  Continuum of violence. Spectrum of the continuum.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully. But each, yeah, each level has like a little threshold, like I said. But yes, the most prominent one is like, yeah, and it's kind of the same thing. It reflects that total war kind of situation where, you know, like, let's go to that end part of the spectrum. Right. You go like total war is like, we don't have time for the police to come. We gotta like, we gotta act because this person is violent towards us or whatever. And then it's a straight up fight where you can expect like laws to be broken within that fight kind of thing. And then there's like one before where it's like, okay, we gotta like put our hands on him. We gotta whether be restrain him or whatever, but we're, we're not trying to be violent towards this person. We have to use what they used to call it the minimum force necessary.

• 40:43Jocko Willink?

  Do we still? I use that term all the time.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  Minimum force required or minimum force necessary?

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think a more appropriate term would be, you know, uh,

• 40:54Speaker 02

  we'll say an appropriate amount of force.

• 40:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  You know, because the minimum, I don't know, there's just a lot of wiggle room for some, some stuff to not go right for us. You know, for the good guys.

• 41:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  But, um, you know, but that's like the conventional war kind of scenario, you know?

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you're telling the police that the minimum force was, the minimum force required was what was used.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:15Jocko Willink?

  Even though you may have used the appropriate.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Appropriate.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  So there's maybe a little linguistics, jujitsu, jujitsu happening.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:24Jocko Willink?

  Cause we want to, you know, we don't want to see Echo Charles locked up.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:28Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  No, you don't. But I mean, you could, it could be argued that they're the same thing. You know, where it's like inappropriate amount of force, meaning like you're not abusing this guy. No matter how much he's verbally whatever, whatever drunk or whatever. But yeah, it's, but there is that convention, those rules like, yeah, put your hands on them. Use force, knock them out if you have to, you know, you like, you can do these kinds of things. But you can't be just like violating all kinds of, you know, situations.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's not total war.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  It's not total war.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  There's a line in here, it says, there are many possibilities on how rivals can turn away from the violence threshold and return to steady state competition. And I made a note in here for myself.

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  That crossing that line is almost always a tactical move. A tactical meaning it is an immediate. It's solving this immediate problem, but it is seldom a strategic move. Because think about it, when if you're in the street and you get into a fight, you want to do everything you can to avoid that fight. And if you have to engage in that fight, it's almost guaranteed to be a tactical win. And a strategic loss. Now you gotta go to jail, now you gotta pay this guy money, now you gotta get arrested, now you got cuts on your hands. You've got all these little problems. And it would have been infinitely better to have just said, you know what? This guy's not worth it, or whatever, you walk away. From a leadership perspective.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  It is almost always, almost always, if you cross. If you cross the line and there's some gap. But indirect, when you go from from indirect influence to direct.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  It's almost always a attack, it might be a tactical win, it's gonna be a strategic loss. So the minute I say, you know what, Dave, I'm not talking about this anymore. Here's what you're gonna do. That's almost guaranteed to be a tactical win, because you're gonna go and execute whatever I told you to do. But guess what strategically? I just took a step back, I took a strategic hit. I'm not saying I can't recover from it. But strategically, it's a negative. So we have to be careful of that.

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  It says here, we also see that sometimes the threshold is crossed for a short time, only to jump back down into a state of competition below the violence threshold. That's great. Just as described above, note that deterrence is not the only thing that causes a movement in this model. A competitor could also move below the violence threshold again if he achieves its goals, negotiated a bargain. A thoughtful review of this model shows it has many uses. So always look to not cross that. That threshold from violence into violence or into direct orders if you're in a leadership position. And you use direct orders, you use your rank to influence bad.

• 44:19Jocko Willink?

  However, make no mistake that the above models simply offer us different views to consider, and this is the circular and the linear model, they offer different views on how to consider as we study strategic competition. All of the terms we use, including conflict, competition, violence, and even war are part of an organic whole. All of these terms reside on a single continuum that describes the relationship between and among states in international relations. But it's not just states, I just have to remind you this. It's different divisions inside your company. It's different personalities inside your team. There's all these levels on this continuum.

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  These political actors use activities at various points in the continuum to advance their interests and also to set conditions to make it easier for them to achieve their interests in the future. This behavior is like a judo competition. When a competitor constantly tries to put the opponent off balance, sometimes through the application of violence, sometimes by moving a position of advantage, or moving to a position of advantage. War itself is an integral part of this continuum. So, that's judo, right? Every move is not war, every move is a setup.

• 45:40Jocko Willink?

  A little setup here, and then you're looking for that e-pal. Here is, here is some of the work of the State Department's George F. Kennan following World War II. Kennan was the author of the famous long telegram that described the nature of the Soviet Union and alerted decision makers to the emerging Cold War and the need for the US government to organize itself for political warfare. And here's what he wrote. "Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in a time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all means of a nation's

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  command, at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives." That's George Kennan, that's what he wrote. And it says, "These opening words to Kennan's paper were directed to the National Security Council. The paper advocated for both overt and covert means to compete internationally, short of using violence."

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  In the Cold War struggle that was just beginning, Kennan stated that the United States was handicapped by a belief, and this is why I had to include this part, because this is a mistake that we make as people. Kennan stated that the United States was handicapped by a belief that there was, that there is a basic difference between war and peace. To view war as a sort of sporting context, contest outside the political context. So, in America, we just look like you're either at war or you're not. And he's like, "No, you're competing all the time." His work helped decision makers understand ideas like political warfare, which then helped the United States build the capability successful to compete in the Cold War.

• 47:27Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you're gonna need more than tanks and planes if you're gonna win.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's a whole thing that's happening.

• 47:36Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and it's happening, it's happening all the time.

• 47:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's happening all the time. So when you're in a leadership position, guess what? There is an infinite number of things that you need to be ready to do, and doing to lead besides war, which is shut up and do what I told you to do.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  Kennan's diagnosis of the competition significantly shaped the way it unfolded across the whole of the United States government in the decades that followed. This highlights two important points for Marines. The first is the importance of accurately identifying the nature of the competition one faces. Imagine that.

• 48:19Jocko Willink?

  Accurately identifying the nature of competition one faces. You know, Dave caught me on the end of a call with a client. And I was like, "We need to be at war." And I guess I always refer to my clients as "we," you know, whenever I'm talking to one of our clients, it's "we," it's "us."

• 48:38Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 48:38Jocko Willink?

  Like, "We are at war with you." I said, "We gotta, we gotta go to war with them, but we don't want them to know it." So that means there's not gonna be any overt actions, it's all gonna be covert. Here's some methodology that we can do that. We went through some of these ways that we could go to war without going to war. Ways that we could compete without going to war.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  That way it is understood, the way that is understood will affect the choices made in how to pursue the competition. An accurate appreciation will increase the chances for success. Marines have an important but supporting role in strategic competition. This shapes the way we approach our competitive efforts. So now we get into this section. Did you have something on that?

• 49:24Dave Berke?

  I was just thinking, you know, making the connection to the conversations we have with our clients, or even just in any leadership role. How often, how often does my ego let me jump to the conclusion of, you're doing something different than what I'm doing, that's a problem, and I gotta attack it like it's a problem? And I gotta treat you like now we're competitors? As opposed to, hey, you know what? I need to, what is it? I need to accurately identify the nature of this situation. Which means I gotta look at it and go, oh, hang on. Why is Jaco making this move? Why is he doing that? And if I can figure that out, if there actually is the situation that you're at the same company, more often than not, there's gonna be a positive reason for that. I just gotta figure that out. Or I can just say, oh, that's not what I would've done, let's fight.

• 50:09Dave Berke?

  And then we can compete with each other, and go at each other. And the, the ability, the, the need to be able to strategically understand what is really going on, and how often your ego gets in the way, go, oh, well, that's a problem. Jaco's doing this? That's a problem. And now we're fighting, now we're competing, and now we're going at each other. Instead of me just taking a little step back and go, hey, hey, help, this move you just made, help me understand that. Oh, yeah, I did this for these couple of reasons. Oh, okay, good to go. So we're actually not competing here. We're on the same page. That is a, when we talk about, people ask us questions all the time, but I'm having this problem, this person, that person, it's almost always comes back to, well, what is it that's really going on? And, and you talk about climbing up the ladder of alignment. Can you just find where what he's doing, what you're doing, actually achieve the same

• 50:54Dave Berke?

  end?

• 50:55Jocko Willink?

  Or at least are heading in the same direction.

• 50:57Dave Berke?

  Yeah, something that it's not automatically, immediately a problem that you gotta now go to war over.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next section, and again, my salute to the Marine Corps for just even having this thought, war is a special kind of competition.

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  That's the name of this section. Our warfighting philosophy informs us that war is a violent clash of interest between or among organized groups characterized by the use of military force. War is fundamentally an interactive social process.

• 51:29Jocko Willink?

  Hold on.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  I've been studying war for a long time. I've never really thought of it as a fundamentally interactive social process, but I guess we'll go with it.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Its essence is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. That I agree with. That to me is not really an interactive social process. That's a freaking scrap. War? So what am I missing there?

• 52:03Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I guess what I'm missing there is that there is this aspect that you need to have two elements that are, that are interacting

• 52:19Jocko Willink?

  to have this, to have a war take place. I mean, it takes two to tango, right? I guess.

• 52:24Dave Berke?

  I'm just picturing who of the six authors that got locked in a room to write this pub, which who, who was the guy that got that line?

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  Held on to that line? Who was like, no, no, no, no, really? I'm thinking, I'm telling you, it's an interactive social process.

• 52:36Dave Berke?

  And the other five are like, fine, just put it in there, whatever.

• 52:38Jocko Willink?

  Dude, yeah. Wait, did Colonel Pogue get his, get his pause on this thing? I don't know. Well, who knows? Maybe they'll revise it. Maybe someone will explain it to me. Cause, cause you can tell, look, when you read these Marine Corps field manuals, they're so well-written, they're so clean, they don't leave things in there that aren't in there for a reason. That's why I question myself here. I don't know what I'm missing. But it's just a, let, at a minimum, it's a strange way to describe war as an interactive social process.

• 53:10Jocko Willink?

  But we'll go with it. War's character, war's character can take many forms from using military force to simply restore order during disaster relief operations to completely overturning the existing order within a society. War resides on the competition continuum above the threshold of violence. From a military perspective, we also call the points along this scale above the threshold various forms of armed conflict. There are many descriptors of the form that war takes such as insurgency, hybrid, conventional. When we think of competition and war, the main points are to acknowledge that war is a political act that uses violence to achieve its aims, but is also part of a spectrum of other competitive acts that do not use violence.

• 53:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So war isn't just what's happening on the battlefield, it's everything else as well. In the circular model of competition, conflict feeds back into competition. War sets the conditions for the character of the competition that follows it. War is like a violent move in judo contest, in a judo contest. It's use can put a competitor into an advantageous position relative to the opponent. Okay. Those, those things are pretty straightforward. Obviously had a judo player in the room, one of the six people that wrote this thing. Competition contains, competition contains many of the same attributes as war. Ambiguity, ambiguity.

• 54:40Jocko Willink?

  Ambiguity, sorry. Ambiguity. Competition contains many of the same attributes as war. Isn't that interesting? Ambiguity, just like in war, ambiguity seems to be everywhere we turn in competition. And I just did a, kind of went off on, on EF online about the fact that we don't know what's going to happen. There's ambiguity in everything and yet people will, people will just dig in. And Dave says, hey, we should attack from the west and I say, no, we should attack from the north. We don't know where the enemy is. Why am I so hostile towards Dave because he wants to attack from the west and I want to attack from the north?

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  I have no idea where the enemy is going to be. Why am I digging in on that? Cause I'm an idiot and I let my ego run it.

• 55:33Jocko Willink?

  As noted, two groups may try to best each other in one area while they cooperate in another, which can make the nature of the relationship between them unclear. The differences among rivals often clouds the pictures as well. If the interests of two groups collide, but the interests of the first group are vital, while those of the second group are a lower priority, there will be a mismatch between how the two groups view the competition.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  First thing about the differences cloud the picture, for sure. And that's why we always want to understand what someone else's perspective is. Because otherwise, we're looking at two different things and we can't comprehend how to come to some kind of a solution.

• 56:18Jocko Willink?

  And then this is an interesting one, and something you need to pay attention to as a leader. You know, someone comes to you and says, "Hey, we really want to do this." And to you, you're like, "Ah, it's .00, it's a rounding error on our bottom line. Whatever. We don't need to do that."

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  But man, for whatever group that is, that might be the highest priority thing they've gotten, you're just throwing it away. So pay attention to what the priorities are, and what priorities seem to you might be different. And not just the priorities, the importance. How do you say that word? Importance, you said it correctly. Okay. The importance of the way somebody feels the level of some element is. I think something super important and Echo doesn't think it's a big deal, we're going to have a hard time communicating and coming to a good resolution that makes sense to both of us. If he can understand, "Oh, this is really important to Jaco because of these things." Okay, got it. "Dave, Dave comes to me, it's critical that we get this office building up in this area."

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  "Why is that so important to Dave?" "Oh, because Dave lives two blocks away." "Oh, cool, got it. At least I understand that." But it could be that Dave has some big project that he's, you know, company that's going to come on board and blah, blah, blah. Then you could have a really important reason. And if I don't understand that or see that, we're not going to be able to connect and figure things out.

• 57:36Dave Berke?

  You talk about that with kids all the time. When kids will come to you with a problem, it'll sound like the end of the world. And you're looking at them like, dude, this is, this is no big deal. But actually to them, it's a huge deal. And the connection you can actually make is just understanding, oh, I got it. This is a big deal to you. Let me understand a little bit better. No big deal. We can sort it out. But you make that connection even at that level, all the time. At that level, they say, this is the end of the world for me. And in your mind, like, you're not going to remember this in two months.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you know, it's weird is, we talk about kids. That includes people that are 32 years old. That includes people that are 27 years old. Right? When your world's falling apart,

• 58:14Jocko Willink?

  you have to understand how important things are to people. And that's what this is talking about.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  What's a rounding error? It seemed like a small thing, but what is that? A rounding?

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  It's like, let's say, let's say Echo Charles was making $400 million a year. And as they calculate all the money, there's $200,000. They're like, ah, whatever. Like it's just a little rounding error. It's a little tiny bit of money in the big scheme of things. So if you came to me like, hey, I really want to, you know, really want some more money for this. And I'm like, whatever. It's a rounding error. We're not doing that. And you're mad, but it's something that was very important to you.

• 58:52Dave Berke?

  Right. My team's entire annual budget's 200 grand and this is my entire six month project is on this. You're like, whatever. I can't even count that low.

• 59:03Dave Berke?

  And you just dismiss it like it's useless. And I'm over here thinking, bro, this is my whole thing.

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  Don't be that guy.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes the scale of two rivals are so different, it leads to ambiguity. For example, it took many years of the 1990s for the United States to conclude it was in a struggle with Al Qaeda, even as the competition bounced above and below the threshold of violence. Rivals often use or create ambiguity to cloak their actions. They do this intentionally to obscure their aims until it's too late for their competitors to react effectively. They want to use ambiguous acts to cause indecision, confusion and hesitation.

• 59:46Jocko Willink?

  That is going on all the time with people that you work with, with your wife, with your husband. You know, it's like, oh, where are you going? I'm just gonna head out.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  Like, there's all these little ambiguous responses that happen. And then the next thing you know, you look up and it's like, wait, wait a second. Where did we get this new car from? Oh, I thought, I thought you said you needed it. I didn't say anything about that.

• 1:00:13Dave Berke?

  I told you I was heading out.

• 1:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I told you I was heading out. So.

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  And I must say, ambiguous acts are good to recognize, they're also good to utilize in, you know, put that in your toolbox.

• 1:00:30Dave Berke?

  And if you're a leader too, you see those words indecision, confusion, hesitation. If you're a leader, those, those are problems. Those are, those are not good things for you and you or your people are dealing with those. You gotta, those are the things you have to address and fix and clarify.

• 1:00:48Dave Berke?

  I suppose it's like, okay. And then, and then things start to get away from you and people are operating, they don't know what's going on.

• 1:00:54Jocko Willink?

  I like it when I catch somebody, when I catch somebody trying to throw some ambiguity at me. And then, big word and blah, blah, blah, and figures and blah, and then all of a sudden, you just, and you just let him do it. And then right, I, when I let them do it, I usually, I usually give them like a, like, I give them enough time, maybe even, maybe even another two, three, four minutes, maybe even seven minutes of discussion about something else. And, but I, you ever see me on, on, like when I'm doing a Zoom meeting and I, I always have a pad right next to me, you know? And I'll be writing something down and I'll be like, um, you know, whatever, I'll write down a note about what Dave said. And then what he ambiguously threw in there.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  And then seven minutes later, he thinks he's clean.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Thinks he's got away with it. And I go, hey, when you said earlier, what did you mean by this? And it's such a good thing to give him a little bit of time because then it catches him off guard. And they're not ready for it. If you ask them immediately, they're ready to maneuver some more. And if you catch him with it, and it's fun.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  That's funny you mention that because I noticed that early on, way, a long time ago, years ago. And one of the things, I remember concluding that you were like that, not so much that you liked it, but that like, that was the thing. If you throw some ambiguous stuff at you, like you're gonna be like, okay, and then cut right through and then ask like a direct question. And one of the, one of the situations, this is a long time ago.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  There was a guy, a guy came into the gym and just, you know, he's a visitor. He's like, hey, you know, I've been training. You know, I'm a, I'm a jujitsu guy and I've been this. And you know how a lot of like visitors might say that kind of stuff? You know, like, it's almost comparable with the guy who says, I got 500 street fights. You know, it's almost like that, that behavior is comparable to that. And he'd be like, yeah, you know, I'm, you know, I'm, I forget what he said, but he, he was real ambiguous about his training, but he implied that he had a lot. And I remember thinking like, oh, this, this guy, what he said still leaves a huge question mark of how experienced this person is. And you were just looking at him, you go, what belt are you in jujitsu? Cause like he, cause he'd mentioned the jujitsu, right?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  And he let him talk and he finished his whole spiel about his, you know, experience here like straight up dead, deadpan. What belt are you in jujitsu? And he was like, oh, well, I don't have a belt or whatever. And you're walk away. Damn. And you did it like a couple of other times.

• 1:03:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is no offense to people that don't have a belt because there's people that don't have any belt in jujitsu and they're awesome, but there must've been other characteristics about this guy that made me think like, oh, this guy's a whack.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  It totally wasn't about that. It wasn't about what belt he was. It was about, he was being ambiguous with his training. And he mentioned jujitsu, that he had training in jujitsu. So you wanted to maybe get a little bit of clarification. But it was real direct. I was like, oh damn.

• 1:03:43Jocko Willink?

  Gave him those three minutes of talking to think he got through with that, that he was a jujitsu guy.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:53Jocko Willink?

  Some actors appear ambiguous because they have both internal divisions, multiple internal centers of power or both. This includes national governments reflecting the internal political competition taking place within them. These actors often do not speak with a single voice. From the outside, their intentions can appear confusing or conflicting. This, this happens in every organization. You know, you get the answer from mom gives a different answer than dad. Well, and it's confusing.

• 1:04:24Jocko Willink?

  Just as warfighting states, uncertainty is a perv- oh, this whole section is called uncertainty. Uncertainty is a pervasive trait of war. It is also a pervasive trait of competition. We make estimates of our competitors' designs and act accordingly.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Now, what's been funny about this is I talk to a lot of clients about this. What you have to do and what the Marine Corps is talking about right there is take a guess. And no one wants to hear that. They, even the Marine Corps didn't want to use that. They say, make estimates of our competitors' designs and act accordingly. What does that mean? It means take a guess at what you're gonna do. Take a guess at what they're gonna do and then take a guess at what you should do afterwards.

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  Uncertainty in international relations cannot be eliminated. It is nonlinear, meaning that a small amount of uncertainty can have a large effect on the situation. Dealing with it means one is also dealing with risk. Often, a competitor's goal is to use ambiguity to inject uncertainty, uncertainty into a situation so their rival will hesitate to act, using it to take incremental steps toward their ultimate goal. This approach is known as gradualism or salami slicing.

• 1:05:41Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting that the Marine Corps decided to throw salami slicing into, which I've never, have you ever heard that term before? No. Echo Charles?

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  No, not in this context.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  In any context. I mean, other than making a sandwich.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Then no.

• 1:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so we get this approach known as gradualism or salami slicing, which is each step taken is by itself so small, it does not cause a significant reaction from the opposing group. Eventually, the sum of small steps will result in reaching the goal.

• 1:06:10Jocko Willink?

  Actors, now what's important about this is, look, there's two things that you should, we should be learning from every one of these techniques that we hear. One is, what do we need to look out for? And one is, what can we utilize? Right? So, yes, we want to use gradualism. Like, oh, Echo doesn't really notice that I'm doing this. Just adding a little bit every day, you know, this little thing, I'm making this little adjustment. Next thing you know, Echo looks up and things totally changed and there's, he didn't even notice it happening. Boiling the frog, right? The water, the frog doesn't notice that the water's getting hotter. So we want to know to utilize that as a technique, as a strategy, we also need to know to look out for it.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  And Echo's making these little adjustments and I go, hey Echo, that's four days in a row, you did this. What's happening? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to get? Trying to make happen? What's going on, bro?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  So salami slicing is literally another expression like boiling the frog.

• 1:07:11Jocko Willink?

  Like same deal. A little bit at a time.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  Actors also make use of ambiguity and uncertainty to cause enough hesitation so they can reach their goal while their competitor tries to make sense of the situation. Love that. Love that.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  It's almost interesting that the Marine Corps doesn't talk about, we need to utilize these things. And it's also very interesting how two times in this one paragraph, they talk about hesitation. There's hesitation, hesitation kills, hesitation is, is waiting and reacting instead of making things happen. And just using these techniques to get people to hesitate. Just get them to hesitate a little bit. Good move. We like that move.

• 1:08:01Dave Berke?

  There's also, as I, as I listen to this, I, it's, it's crazy how similar this is to so many things that you have said just on the podcast countless of times, if you just kind of change the view of this is uncertainty with your opponent, that if you change the lens a little bit, that just in leadership in general, in any situation, even with your own team, I think it says something like, uh, what was the quote, you have to take a guess, they had some fancy word for that, guess what, you don't know the future, so should we make some big massive move, 50, no, why don't we just, and you talk about incremental decision making, because we actually don't know what's going on, I guess that's what salami slicing is, is one little step at a time, it allows you to react to what's going on, and even how, the way you talk about that from a leadership perspective,

• 1:08:44Dave Berke?

  it's not a big stretch to go from this description of the Marine Corps and a competitor to just you in a leadership role, you don't have a crystal ball, you don't know the future, don't follow up your plan, just take steps, just salami slicing steps in a row, and you will actually get to where you need to be with so much less conflict than if you say, we have to take this giant move all the way to the end, right now, go.

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Dave Berke?

  And you're, what is it, you're a degree off, and by the end, you're 100 degrees off.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, my reputation for being a decisive leader, and I cheated, I cheat, I, I'm super decisive, but I cheat because I only make little tiny decisions, but no one knows that, they're just like, wow, he made the decision quick, it's like, oh yeah, because it's a little tiny decision with almost no risk, but we're gonna do it immediately, and then we're gonna get feedback, and then we're gonna figure out what to do next, and I'll make that decision quickly as well, so I'm gonna make decisions very quickly, but they're little decisions, and I'm gonna make them rapidly, and that's how I'm gonna beat you.

• 1:09:36Dave Berke?

  I guess Jaco's a salami slicer.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Salami slicer. Uh, by the time the competitor figures it out, the goal is achieved, which is called fate accompli, something already done. Little thing here called boundary stretching. Boundary or threshold stretching occurs when an actor uses measures short of war to force movement or change in the nature of a boundary to gain greater regional influence, access, and control. Oh, man. Man, as a leader, you're always dealing with pushing that boundary on you, right? They're just, mm, sorry, I was a little bit late, yeah. Echo Charles, just a little bit, right? A little boundary stretch. Maybe if two minutes is okay, maybe three minutes are good to go.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  What's funny is that's absolutely true with being late. I come from a long line of late people. We all know that. But, yeah, like if I was one minute late and I didn't hear about it, like, okay, cool. One minute is kind of the standard. It's more subconscious, but it's like when you're running like one minute late, whatever, the next time, you don't feel that stress at all. You're like, oh, I was one minute late before, nothing, so no problem, right? Then you're like a minute, half, two minutes, three minutes, and then you kind of like probe, you know, you're kind of like, wait, am I going to hear about it? No, whoa, that's no problem. Then obviously, there's a, there's a pretty solid threshold of lateness that, that I can kind of exist in, you know? And then when you get to 10 minutes, 20 minutes late, then you start hearing about it, you say, okay, I know.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  Now we know what the boundaries are.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  Exactly, right.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  Habitual line stepper.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  That might be a different thing, but, yeah.

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  By boundary, we mean the limit of, a limit of some kind that if crossed would normally trigger a significant reaction. But before, but before the boundary stretching events occur, most people would assume crossing a red line would cause a violent response of some kind. The goal of the actor using boundary stretching is to achieve their goals in such a way that a response is not triggered. Or if a response happens, it does not result in a state of war between the two actors. This is, when this happens, we often see a new limit established. The boundary has been stretched. You've got to be careful of this. Hey, in a leadership position, you're going to have people doing this. This is 24/7 from your troops. They're stretching those boundaries. And what you have to do is you have to be consistent. You have to be consistent.

• 1:12:02Jocko Willink?

  You can't, and look, I'm not saying it's like, no slack, nothing, no, you're one minute late. No, but if you, if you let that line stepping become habitual, it will develop into a problem. So you, and the way that you, well, this is what's good.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  First of all, you don't draw lines in the sand. Which I got asked a question about this the other day, like, how often, what do you draw a line in the sand? It's very, very seldom. Very seldom do I draw a line in the sand. Across this line, you do not, right? We're not doing that. Now, is there a border to things that if you cross, you're gonna, like, it's gonna be a real problem, but that's a real significant thing. So, here's what, we're talking about minimum force required.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Minimum force required is good. It's a good way to keep the boundary stretching in check. So, if you're, if, look, the punishment for being late is, you know, your pay is docked for a week, and you're one minute late, do I necessarily need to dock your pay? No, but can I just let it go? No. I give you a appropriate response. Hey Echo, you, you know what the punishment is for being late, right? Cause you were a minute late today, and look,

• 1:13:23Jocko Willink?

  that's a one week. No pay. You know that, right?

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I was just making sure, cause, I mean, time is time, and I know you come from a long line of people that are late, but sometime we gotta, we gotta take ownership of that, and we gotta be on time. So, when people start to stretch the boundaries, you push them back. You push them back in there, not with violence of action, but with the subtlest form of leadership, and the minimum force that you can to get them back in where they know that they crossed the line, and that it's not okay.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  So, actually, let me ask you this.

• 1:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  So, my, what call my boss, supervisor, whatever, when I did hear about it, he would, I see what he was trying to do, I think he was trying to do that, right, the minimum, but he'd almost like giggle about it. Kinda like, oh, you're late. And I'm thinking back on my feelings about it, where it caused me to not take it seriously, cause like, we were both laughing at it, kinda like, uh huh.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  So, more force was required.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, or maybe like a twist of like, just don't giggle about it, just be like, hey.

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  I agree with

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Obviously not a huge deal, but

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Guy, I think it was at the muster. He's like, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a funny guy. I like to joke around a lot. And you know, I, I, I like to crack jokes. I've always been kind of the class clown kind of guy. And, and you know, sometimes it seems like my people aren't taking me seriously. And I was like, bro, okay, do we need to go on with this or are we just gonna stop making jokes when it's not appropriate? How's that sound? So yes, it's not appropriate. If you're trying to. Now listen, hey, what about when I joke with you if you're late? Like, bro, what's up? Right? It's like.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be honest, it's the same thing.

• 1:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Same thing.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  The thing is, I'm not really late.

• 1:15:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. It's a bad example. Everyone thinks you're, everyone thinks you're late now because I talk so much smack to you.

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Jocko Willink?

  Like I have people on What about when Echo's late? Yeah. Well, actually, and I had to say this the other day. I'm like, actually, cause I was like, whoa, yo, what do you do with Echo when he's late all the time? And I go, actually, he's not late all the time. Just kidding.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  It's a joke. Yeah.

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  So guess what? What does that tell you? You're sitting here saying, oh, the jokes don't really affect me. They do affect you and they affect you perfectly. Because you're not late, because you know that little bit of ribbing is just enough to let you know, we don't, we're not late around here.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:39Jocko Willink?

  We're not late for the podcast.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's, and that's not to mention that you and Dave Berke, good deal, Dave, have effectively and successfully, by the way, cultivated an atmosphere of, uh, late being a for real bad thing. Cause on Koi Late, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I'm saying it's not under most, you know, a lot of circumstances like this bad thing to be late.

• 1:16:05Jocko Willink?

  It's sort of like we got other things going on and we all kind of know that.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  Let's just say the culture isn't cultivated the way it is here. We'll say that.

• 1:16:13Jocko Willink?

  In this particular room.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Right. Let's say it's cultivated in a way where a lot of us make psychological, mental, physical adjustments that may accommodate these things to, you know, when they do happen.

• 1:16:27Dave Berke?

  On a slightly more serious note, if I can ruin this for a second. There's actually another reason why, when you were talking about escalation of counseling, why the first part of, "Hey, are you okay? Hey, what's going on?" There's another reason why that is, especially if that is actually a thing you actually meet, that it's not like some game you're playing, you're like, "Hey, bro."

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it should, it should, it better be something.

• 1:16:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it has to be, right.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  It's not even, if you're, no, if you don't mean, "Hey, bro, are you okay? You were late, is everything alright?" If you don't mean that, and you're just doing a little manipulation, I guess.

• 1:16:57Dave Berke?

  No, you're not, you're not, you're not a good leader. Exactly. And, and that first step of that, which is rather than go right to the, "Hey, you broke the rules, here's the paper you gotta sign, cause you violated the rules." It's, it's, it's partially my way of saying, "Hey, I'm paying attention to this, this is important to me." But it's my way of letting you know, this is important, not because I want you to be on time, but because I want to know what's going on with you. You now know, "Hey, Dave's paying attention to this stuff." And so by me saying, "Hey, Echo, man, everything cool at home?" Isn't the mental jujitsu of, "Don't ever be late." It's actually, you realizing, this guy actually is paying attention to my life, and cares about my life in a, in a positive way. That if I gotta get to step three, you, you don't ever want, you don't want that to happen. You don't want to put me in that spot.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Dave Berke?

  Because you know, I care about you. I'm like, "Hey, man, what's going on? If I gotta get to level three and you're now signing paperwork." I mean, come on, bro, like, what's going on here? And the, starting with that accomplishes a lot, and just exactly what you're saying was my point, is if you actually care and paying attention to that, that other person sees that. You go, "Oh dude, Dave's, Dave's got my best interests in mind, not like he cares about the one minute, it's not even about that, it's, there's other pieces of that in the escalation of counseling, of me paying attention to what's going on in your world." Cause chances are, if we're on the same page, you being late, there actually probably is something going on in your world, or else you wouldn't be late.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  Right. That's so true. Look, so this might be, no, I think this is a good example. So, when I lived in Honolulu, I ran a, technically I ran a yellow light, but it was one of those, like, I pushed it, you know, the kind like, I had way, it was probably more appropriate to stop than run, you know, you just, anyway. So I do that, get pulled over. Cops looking at me and he of course he explains it to me. I'm trying to play it off like no, no, it was yellow. All good. He's like, but he that's how he acted. The way you're talking, Dave, where he'd be like, hey, he didn't give me a ticket either, but he gave me a little warning. But it was like he cared, you know? So he was like, hey, he's like, I get it, you know, you wanna, you

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  you don't want to stop at the red light. I get it, whatever. He's like, but man, like, I don't want, I don't want to have to give you a ticket, you know, for running red lights. And I for sure don't want any accidents happening. And you know, I don't want to be in that spot to have to do that to you, you know, as far as the ticket goes. But that's how he was talking to me. And I remember thinking, bro, you're so right. I'm so sorry, you know? I will, I will never do it again for, for us, you know, like it was that feeling that I got from the guy. He let me go. He could have gave me a ticket. Straight up. And I would have been, hey, man, I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. Like, that's the way he talked to me.

• 1:19:26Jocko Willink?

  If he gave you a ticket, you would have been angry.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  And you might have been, I'm gonna run red lights on purpose.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. If he had a bad attitude or, or an attitude that let's say I didn't like, um, then yeah, for sure. But his attitude was the thing that won me over. Of course, not getting a ticket is a thing for sure. But the way he talked to me, it made me like, we'll say, it compelled compliance in a very nice way.

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  Check. Case in point.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Yep. Perfect example.

• 1:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Fluidity. Next section. Fluidity, disorder, complexity.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  While interest usually remains stable for long periods of time. Okay, that's important, right? We normally, we focus on the same thing for a long period of time. The ways and means groups use to reach them can't change constantly. The efforts by, by groups to try different approaches produces fluidity. While each action changes the environment as well. Once again, this is Oodle Loop, right? We gotta, every action you take changes the situation.

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  Actors see the new structure and adapt to it. Changes that often increase the level dis- Changes that often increase the level of disorder. So, every little move you make creates a change, and then you adapt to that, it creates another change. This is constantly happening. We change the system whenever we interact with it, often in unpredictable ways. That's the way it goes. These factors and their constant change create a great deal of complexity in the environment. The complexity, this complexity also is also systemic and therefore nonlinear, as small changes in one aspect of competition can cause big impacts in other areas. Because change is a constant

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  and actors continually adapt to changes in an effort to achieve competitive advantages, complexity runs throughout the competition continuum. And I read all that so I could read this. I read all of that so I could read this. Marines must learn to thrive in this environment. And I read that in order to say this. Instead of trying to create order in the vain hope of avoiding complexity. So, all the, there's, look, things are gonna change. The adaptations you make to change is gonna cause even more change. Change is gonna happen randomly. It's gonna be complex, it's nonlinear. All these things are changing. And you have to learn how to thrive in that environment.

• 1:21:59Jocko Willink?

  Instead of saying, "No, wait, just keep it the way it was." Just keep things the way they were. Keep on that same path. We can't change, we can't change. It's a vain hope. The human dimension. In case all that didn't cause enough chaos, there's the human dimension. As the nation's force in readiness- Once again, the Marine Corps. Just making sure everybody knows. As the nation's force in readiness, Marines will often find themselves involved in competitions that are close to the threshold of violence. The threat of violence, this section is. The threat of violence acts on the human brain

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  in much the same way as experiencing actual violence acts on it.

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  The two are not synonymous because actually experiencing violence is clearly more coercive than the threat of it. Yet, we must be aware of how the threat of violence affects human decision making because even its threat can cause a physical and emotional response in people.

• 1:23:12Jocko Willink?

  This increases the potential for misjudgment, overreaction, and other mistakes. It could also be a, it could also be a source of competitive advantage for those who can control their emotions in the heat of the moment so they can make sound decisions. Boom. What? What?

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  This is what's interesting here. Okay, obviously you've got what's on the surface, which the face of it is, listen, even the threat of violence can make people freak out.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  Violence will definitely make, or can definitely make people freak out. So you've got to realize that the threat of violence can make people freak out. Actual violence can make people freak out. Here's what's interesting. When you, when you throw the influence continuum over this, me barking the order at Dave, you know what, Dave, shut up and do what I told you to do, that creates an emotional response from you. And it's not a good one. Taking away someone's control over their destiny, taking away their ownership from them, imposing your will onto someone creates an emotional reaction in many cases. And by the

• 1:24:26Jocko Willink?

  way, if I work for Dave and Dave imposes his will on me and I allow it to make me mad, I'm being weak. It's causing an emotional response to me. I need to be like, okay, you know what, Dave is just, he can't, he doesn't have a good plan and he's forcing this plan on top of me. Okay, got it. I'm gonna go do the best I can with it. That's the right attitude to have. Just like if someone's trying to get violent with me, if I freak out and get emotional, that's a problem. You look confused, Echo Charles.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  No, sir. Makes sense to me.

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:25:00Jocko Willink?

  Detached from your emotions.

• 1:25:04Jocko Willink?

  Now we get into this. A nation's culture and its effect on how people think also affects the choices they make. For example, some cultures promote holistic thinking while others value a more analytical thought process. Some value action, which can create an implicit bias toward regularly choosing the most aggressive course of action. The list of potential cultural influences is a long one. Thus, culture will have an impact on many aspects of competition, including decision-making and how information is perceived. Understanding the human dimension of competition is an area needing constant study by Marines.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  So, hey Marines and hey everyone else in the world, you better understand human beings and human nature.

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what you need to do. Now you know what I love about this?

• 1:26:01Jocko Willink?

  Think about this. Team leaders, CEOs, business people of the world, think about this. If a nation's culture affects how you think and the choices you make, guess what's going on inside your business? If you haven't developed the culture that you want to drive people to make the decisions that you want them to make, you're letting that fly out the window. You're leaving it up to chance to what Dave thinks Dave should do. I don't want Dave to think about what Dave should do. I want Dave to think, oh yeah, you know what? I know that in this company, we take care of our clients. Okay, got it. When the client calls up and has a complaint or wants something or needs something, Dave doesn't go, hey, you know what, I'm off the clock right now. Sorry, can't help you. No, Dave goes, hey, what do you need? How can I help you?

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  We're here, we're here to help. That's what we do. So if you run an organization or you're part of an organization, that culture, if you don't focus on that culture, you are wasting your time. You're wasting your efforts. And wasting is the wrong word. You're hurting your efficiency is what you're doing. And look, we talked about this on the debrief podcast. The, and I talked about it a bunch on EF online. The highest form of decentralized command

• 1:27:16Jocko Willink?

  is culture. If you have, if, if everyone in the organization understands what the culture is, they can make decisions all day long. They can make 99.9% of decisions based on just knowing what the culture is.

• 1:27:33Jocko Willink?

  And when people don't understand the culture inside your organization, that's when they do the stuff that makes you go, what the hell was Dave thinking? What was Dave thinking? What was that frontline cash register individual thinking? When they did that? What was that? Whatever. You name it. What was that frontline person do thinking? Well, how the hell did they do that? Well, that's crazy. It's because you haven't, you haven't built the culture that guides their actions.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  Invest in your culture. Build it. Make it part of everything that you do. And you know what? Had to answer this question today on EF online. Somebody asked me like, oh, how do you do a good job? I'm not doing a good job of building culture. What stories are you telling?

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  What stories are you telling to the team? That's where culture comes from, by the way. That's where it comes from is the stories that fuel the culture. Stories fuel the culture of your organization.

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  And if you want people, if you want to develop a culture, you got to have the stories to back it up. That's what the Marine Corps does in such an outstanding way. I got this thing I'm going to cover on the podcast. I think the name, it's a, it's a, it's a field manual.

• 1:28:53Jocko Willink?

  Or maybe it's just a, some issued thing. It's called, it's called The Squad Leader Makes a Difference, Volume One.

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  So you want to talk about how you develop a culture? Well, you know what? It would be nice if our squad leaders really stepped up and made things happen. Oh, cool. I'm going to write a book. It's called "The Squad Leader Makes a Difference." I'm going to highlight historical factual things that took place where the squad leader saved the division, saved the battalion, saved the effort, saved the mission. The squad leader did it. We're going to tell everybody in the Marine Corps that that's what happened. And guess what that new squad leader is going to think? He's going to think, "I'm going to make a difference. I'm important, my decision." And this is the truth. So that's what the Marine Corps does. They do it. They do it just in such an impeccable way.

• 1:29:48Jocko Willink?

  And really good companies do that well. Really good companies, they tell that story inside the company. So everybody knows what that company is. They get that culture. So if you want to build culture, you better invest in telling the story, capturing the story, telling the story. That's what you need to do.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  "The Squad Leader Makes a Difference." I might have to do that one. Such a cool.

• 1:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Such a perfect, such a perfect example of how you build culture.

• 1:30:24Jocko Willink?

  You tell mythical. They're not mythical, they're historical.

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  Next, "The Art, Science, and Dynamic of Competition." "The Art, Science, and Dynamic of Competition." "The Marine Corps, as part of the joint force, plays an essential role in securing national aims and conditions sometimes regarded as outside the military sphere. Competition below the threshold of armed conflict and often the lengthy consolidation of gains that inevitably follows war. To play this role successfully, Marines need the ability to see and understand the competitive forces in the environment, understand what tools are available to them, and be able to envision how they can contribute to a campaign of competition."

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  The Marines have to understand how they're gonna contribute to a campaign of competition that takes place through this entire continuum.

• 1:31:29Jocko Willink?

  And then the next sentence is creativity or art is necessary to imagine different ways and means for Marines to contribute to reaching these aims. Again, what's the focus in the United States Marine Corps? Apparently creativity and art.

• 1:31:47Jocko Willink?

  Constructing a set of steps along a timeline to help reach them along with the necessary feedback loops to improve performance over time are abilities that align with the science of competition.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  In many ways, this is nothing new. And then they break it down. It comes down to sizing up your opponent with a critical eye and then coming up with a creative solution that allows you to achieve your goal despite the opponent's resistance.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Marines have done this for ages.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  And I think ages is a strong word. I don't, I, we have to, I didn't look it up, but the definition of ages to me means longer than, how old is the Marine Corps, 240 years? Yeah, 245 years. 245 years. Ages? Yeah. Seems a little bit bigger, but you know what? The Marines is gonna put that in your head. You know why? They're telling a story. They're developing the culture that as long as time has existed, Marines have used art and creativity to figure out how to size up their opponent and crush them. Yeah. And you wanna be, you wanna be in on that? You wanna be part of that? Yeah. Yeah, I'm in. I mean, this is, this whole, there's so many things inside here, so crazy. I was thinking of just the idea of, of, as a leader, the power of culture.

• 1:33:02Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you could look at, on this very tiny little selfish level of, the stronger that culture is, if you're in a leadership, the more free time you have, the more things will happen without you having to get involved in those things. And that free time, obviously, is not so you can do nothing. It's so you can think about other more long range, more strategic things. And then he's telling these guys, carrying a rifle or flying an airplane, that's not enough. That's not what you're doing. And that seemingly insignificant little micro task of one of hundreds of thousands of Marines.

• 1:33:33Dave Berke?

  The squad leader is a corporal. It's a corporal rifleman with a couple other corporals working for him. I mean, on paper, it seems so small and so insignificant, but it's not. It's huge. And as a leader, do you want people at that level in the organization thinking the entire weight of the organization rests on their shoulders? Yes, because that's what guides them to make those decisions. So you don't have to do it. There's so much in there, man, and it echoes so many of the things that you talk about. And it's just a very slight variation of this competition with other armies, but it's all the same thing. As a leader, it's the exact same thing.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  And that's why I started off in the opening of this podcast by saying that if you know the way broadly, you see it in all things.

• 1:34:23Jocko Willink?

  The nature of these campaigns will require Marines to get comfortable asking for authorities to use tools in new domains like cyber or support to public diplomacy. These campaigns combine cooperation and competition with other DIME instruments of power, including armed conflict if necessary, to achieve and sustain strategic objectives. DIME, and I don't even know if people say that the way I is D-I-M-E. It means diplomatic, information, military, and economic. So we have to be able to work in all those domains. Diplomatic, information, military, that's the obvious one, and then economic. We're playing a role in all those things.

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  The evolution of competition, next section.

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  International competition is never static. It constantly evolves. In fact, it is co-evolutionary because as one actor develops a competitive tool, other actors adapt to it by trying to either counter it or develop another tool that displaces it.

• 1:35:30Jocko Willink?

  This co-evolution is seen clearly when technology changes. And once again, guess what they use here for an example? Do they use a military battle? Do they use? No, they don't use that. They use Henry Ford. Henry Ford's invention of the assembly line caused dramatic efforts to adapt among other automakers. In today's world, firms increasingly try to automate their assembly lines in an effort to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace.

• 1:36:00Jocko Willink?

  In much the same way, the choices political actors make in developing new concepts and technology to support them are competitive acts.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  They develop them because they seek an advantage over a particular rival or rivals. So, look, the battlefield changes all the time. The market changes all the time. Your competitors are doing things to adapt to that. You have to do things to adapt to what their adaptations are. This is, what does it say? Never static. This is never static.

• 1:36:31Jocko Willink?

  I used to tell the, the young SEALs out in the field during training exercises would, big firefight would break out with paintball and all of a sudden it would go quiet. And the tendency was, oh, cool. They're not shooting at us. We can rest. And I'd go over and whisper in the leader's ear and I'd say, hey, when you're not getting shot at, it means the enemy is maneuvering on you. Never static. What can you do? How can you improve your position right now?

• 1:37:04Jocko Willink?

  The speed of this evolution usually rests on the rate of technological change because new technologies create opportunities to develop concepts. New concepts or new concepts may stimulate the development of new technology. In some cases though, new concepts emerge when mature technologies are combined with new organizations and new operating methods.

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  As militaries wrestle with the questions of how to build and keep an edge over their potential opponents, they juggle factors like switching costs, which is how much money and effort does it take to make a change? That's a good term. Switching costs. So how much money is going to take us to make a change? And how much effort is it going to take? That's a switching cost. The cost curve. Will I spend more or less than my opponent? How long can I sustain this level of spending? The level of spending that this change requires? That's a cost curve. And then opportunity cost, which I think most people know, if I put, and this is Marine Corps explaining it, if I put effort into this change, then I will not be able to do something else instead. So we always have to weigh the opportunity cost. If I focus on this thing over here, that means I'm not focusing on some other thing

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  over here. What's that, what's that going to mean? Marines know that in combat, sometimes we fight to gain information about the enemy. Once we obtain this information, we then inject into, we then inject it into our plans so that we can increase the effectiveness of our operation. So we're constantly out trying to figure out what the enemy's doing, trying to gain information on them. Once we gain information, we inject it into our plans so we can be more effective. The same dynamic exists in competition. Clearly. We gain information as we compete with a rival and must use this to our advantage.

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Here's what I think we got to remember about this. Sometimes we're gaining information. Well, oftentimes, a great way to gain information is to proactively probe for it. You know, what's, what's, what's Echo's base like? I'll try a little sweep. Oh, you've got some good base. Oh, but he exposes his arms sometimes. Oh, that's good to know. Little information. I tried a little something, got, learned some information. We're constantly doing that. Warfighting teaches that, and that's the book, Warfighting, teaches that we should try to get inside the enemy's thought processes and see the enemy as they see themselves.

• 1:39:38Jocko Willink?

  That's why.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  That's why Colonel David Hackworth had his troopers read Mao Zedong to figure out what they were thinking, how they're gonna fight this war. He explains Mao explains how to fight the guerrilla war. Why would you not be studying that? Why would you not be trying to get inside the enemy's head?

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  This holds equally for getting inside our competitors' thought processes.

• 1:40:10Jocko Willink?

  So we should be doing the same thing. Not just about war. What are you thinking?

• 1:40:16Jocko Willink?

  And this goes back to this one, that one, I've been, it's funny how everything ties together. Daryl and I did an unraveling podcast and the title of podcast is what's your story? And just about how we create stories in our heads.

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  And they're very malleable. You can be very easily influenced and you, you go through, it's a, it's almost like a survival mechanism to create a story inside your head so that you can comprehend the world. And we do that. And there's all kinds of psychological experiments that we talk about on that, on that particular podcast that proves that you'll just kind of make things up. Like if there's not a good explanation, you'll just be like, well, hey, that's what happened and you'll believe it. And so we're doing that all the time. We're doing that. We're telling ourselves little stories. So it's important, and I've been saying this on EF online as well. It's one thing for me to try and understand Dave's perspective. Well, you know, Dave's in that division over here and they've got this as

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  a priority. So his perspective must be this. That's great. That's a great, that's a great thing to do. Please understand people's perspective. Let's go deeper though. What I really want to do is I want to know what's Dave's story? What? Where, where, where's he come from? What's his background? How long's he been here? Who's he worked for? Who's he got on his team? What's his family doing? What's his family situation?

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  What's his financial situation? Where is he at? What is his story? You ever, you ever, like you're with your buddy and you know, Echo and I are hanging out and then Dave comes over and Echo's never met Echo before and hey, Dave, what's up? How's it going? Boom. And then Dave leaves and Echo goes, what's that guy's story?

• 1:42:02Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully.

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  We wanna know what people's stories are. And if we can understand what someone's story is, then we can better predict what they're going to do. Not just their perspective. Look, their perspective will be part of the story. You can understand their story. You understand their perspective. Now I can do a much better job of predicting, not with 100% accuracy, but with more accuracy. So I can make a better guess, better anticipation of what their move is going to be. So we are always trying to get inside our competitors' thought process, trying to know what their story is. Powerful tool.

• 1:42:43Jocko Willink?

  And then we get into this conclusion.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  Competition is the normal state of the relationship between political actors in international relations. Right? And obviously, it's not just that. It's between human beings, there's competition happening. Echo, you always talk about that thing where you like, you're like, when I see someone, kinda sizing them up. Like, you've talked about this in jujitsu, where you say, basically, if someone, that's an equivalent kinda height, weight, age scenario as you, what's your thoughts? You're sizing them up, right?

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Sizing them up, sure.

• 1:43:23Jocko Willink?

  There's competition, but we don't even know this person. This person may not even train. They might not even care.

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:43:28Jocko Willink?

  But you're looking at them like you're in the game.

• 1:43:32Speaker 02

  You said that real like, in passing there, like, they might not even care. My hypothesis is that they do care, in one way or another. A physical situational evaluation takes place when you meet someone within that realm of whatever. You know, some kinda thing. Not to say you wanna beat them up, not to say you wanna fight with them, not to say you wanna whatever. I'm just saying that evaluation process is a real thing, and it happens, I think, most of the time. Again, if a guy's so far out of the scope of like your, we'll say your orbit, right? We'll call it, for lack of a better term, like, your age, your size, if it's a jujitsu situation or whatever, then, yeah, it kinda, it kinda doesn't happen that much.

• 1:44:17Speaker 02

  But, yes, I still believe that.

• 1:44:20Jocko Willink?

  Dave.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  When you were in the United States Marine Corps? And you met? Someone that was also a fighter pilot? What's the thought process?

• 1:44:34Dave Berke?

  Same, I mean, totally man, for sure.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  Hey, how can you? How can you? What's the, what's the, what's the pecking order? If we haven't got to dogfight against each other? How's that work?

• 1:44:46Dave Berke?

  I mean, you know, at the, at the most basic level is what's that guy fly? You know, and you can, in your mind, and, and.

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Wait, wait, wait, meaning? Oh, is this guy flying an F-18?

• 1:44:56Dave Berke?

  That guy flies Hornets, he flies Harriers, you know, and, and. I'm not defending this train of thought, but you will draw some conclusions in your mind.

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:45:06Dave Berke?

  And backtrack, you'll create his story for him in your own head, like, oh, Jocko flies this? Okay, well, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. And you'll trace it back to him when he's five. And you got them all figured out. Cause you're sizing them up a little bit and you'll, you'll create, and the more similar the scenario is? The more? I guess the more friction could be there in your mind, I'm like, oh, this guy, hmm, interesting. Okay, this, this could be, this could be a thing. We might, you know, we might have to, we might have to figure this out, you know? Up in the air, so the, just the way you described it, I mean, it's, it's very similar.

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  Do you figure it out in the air?

• 1:45:41Dave Berke?

  I mean, that's the easiest way to do it.

• 1:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Can you, I mean, is it, is it like? Cause one thing that's great about jiu-jitsu, oh? I'm sizing this guy up.

• 1:45:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, wanna roll? We're about to find out. We're about to find out.

• 1:45:53Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:53Jocko Willink?

  Can you do that?

• 1:45:54Dave Berke?

  You can, but you can see in a whole, you can, how does this guy brief? How does this guy get along, you know, when he first shows up at a squadron? How does he do other types of flying? Uh, there's a bunch of different ways, it doesn't just have to be you? And one other person in a, in a dogfight, but? Especially at Top Gun, what's cool is you get to do that a lot? And that's probably the most fun way to just? I don't know what I say, settle it, cause this, you know? That sounds pretty crazy, but? You, you can create? You can resolve a lot of things by doing that.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  We'll say it helps establish.

• 1:46:25Dave Berke?

  It does.

• 1:46:25Jocko Willink?

  The hierarchy.

• 1:46:26Dave Berke?

  It, it absolutely does, and, and. If that's, if that's all you go on, then you're going to create problems by doing that. But there is a hierarchy. There is a hierarchy in there and it is always better to be towards the top of that hierarchy. That's a better place to be than at the bottom of it.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  How often is a guy a freaking awesome pilot and just a turd leader?

• 1:46:47Dave Berke?

  Not very often.

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  Most of the time, yeah, it can't happen, but most of the time.

• 1:46:51Dave Berke?

  Usually there's a, there's a correlation. And as a matter of fact, you know, I'd rather have a guy who's, who's an awesome leader, is a great person to be around, a great teacher and is kind of a top third than a dude who's, you know, just really good at flying an airplane and he sucks at everything else. Uh, and so, you know, hierarchy is not just who won in that particular fight. There's a whole bunch of things, but it's, I think it's the same, very similar.

• 1:47:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the hierarchy is not just that, but let's face it.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. And the culture, the hierarchy of a culture is kind of like, people understand it, even though it might not be able to be like a hundred percent tangible. You know, you kind of like in jujitsu, I'm sure it's like that as well in flying and all other activities.

• 1:47:31Dave Berke?

  I always like telling these stories though, because I know Jaco's over there thinking, I don't like to rely on machines. And he's just over there like, whatever. It's a machine. Don't care.

• 1:47:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your machine can beat my machine. Cool. Well, the, the other thing that's also from a leadership perspective is you've got to recognize that inside your team, when you've got 12 people working for you, there's competition going on between those two people and the little subtle, the little subtle preferences or statements or comments that you make, impact that competition and can create animosity where you should be as a leader, trying to unify your team. So, so pay attention to that competition. Look, and, and then there's times where we want to seed and fuel competition, right? Oh yeah. Echo versus, hey, who's a better shot? You or you or Dave? And it's, oh, I'm better. Okay. Let's see. And now we're

• 1:48:23Jocko Willink?

  creating some stress so that we get better training. It's great. So we want to fuel that, but we don't want to have a negative impact. We don't want to take away from the team by fueling competition. Competition, just like anything else, guess what? There's a dichotomy. You can go too far with competition. Now we've got the team attacking each other, but if we don't have any competition, now the team's not staying sharp.

• 1:48:42Dave Berke?

  And we see this all the time. I mean, I think in my mind, like the simplest example is when we work with companies and we talk about their sales departments, there's, there's absolute competition among sales. And do we want that? Yeah, absolutely. I want sales teams pushing each other. And so the, the connection from this, this publication about, you know, competing, the recognition, like you said, that exists everywhere. And what a good leader does is actually harness that. So everybody benefits and wins from that is critical. And if you don't think that's going on as a leader, if you're like, oh, no, no, we're all just harmonious, we're all just fully aligned on the same page all the time. And there is no competition here. You're missing a whole bunch of those dynamics. There's a lot of power in that. And if you're not paying attention to it, that can spiral out of control. And you get this, you get this

• 1:49:25Dave Berke?

  friction to the point that people on the same team are actually sabotaging each other.

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, I'm not giving Dave my lead because I'm not turning this over. I'm not going to give him the back brief on what that client's like, because I don't want him to get another mark on the board.

• 1:49:37Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 1:49:39Jocko Willink?

  So once again, conclusion, competition is the normal state of the relationships between political actors in international relations. It occurs as the interests of these actors come into conflict as they try and advance them in the world. Right? Everyone's working on their own little gig. Oftentimes, two political actors will compete in one area and cooperate in another. Thus, there is a competition continuum that extends from relatively benign efforts to advance interests to the violent efforts that include war. War then is a special kind of competition. They just can't get away from that statement. One that sets the conditions for the mostly nine nonviolent struggle that always follows the row, the end of armed conflict.

• 1:50:23Jocko Willink?

  Like war, and again, this is all just the conclusion, like war, this is, by the way, this is the conclusion of chapter one.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  Like war, competition is characterized by ambiguity, uncertainty, fluidity, disorder, and complexity. Rivals will try to use these attributes to obscure their aims and achieve their advantages over opponents. Competitors naturally apply creativity and science to develop advantages as well, which causes the form of competition to constantly evolve. The history of competition is also a history of change. Marines and the Marine Corps have an important but supporting role in the nation's competitions. The activities of Marines take place all along the continuum, including on both sides of the violence threshold. The competition continuum is therefore something Marines must understand. And that continuum,

• 1:51:17Jocko Willink?

  if you take that idea of this continuum and you also then overlay the idea of leading and the idea of influence, there's also a continuum. I sort of talk about it, the escalation of counseling. It's a very similar thing. The escalation of counseling is how much influence? What are you doing to influence? How are you doing this? How are you making this happen? At what point do you cross the threshold from indirect to direct? Minimizing the amount of time that you spend on the direct influence, the coercion, the forcefulness. That's not what we're looking to do.

• 1:51:57Jocko Willink?

  Very important stuff to think about. And with that,

• 1:52:02Jocko Willink?

  I figured we could make it through two chapters, but I don't even want to jump into the next chapter because we'll be in here for another three hours.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  So with that, we will pick up the rest of this, I guess, on the next one.

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I got asked a question the other day is on EF Online. And the question was basically, how do I train the leadership principles? You know, the leadership principles that we teach? How do I train those leadership principles? Person's asking me, how do I get better at these leadership principles? If I'm working all the time in a leadership position? In other words, I'm leading. How do I have time to train? How do I have time to get better? And

• 1:52:50Jocko Willink?

  I answered the question. I said, listen, here's the answer.

• 1:52:57Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not going to get it exact, but there's two components to it. One of them is being intentional about what you're going to do. Right? Paying attention and intention. Those were the two words I used. Paying attention and then having intention. You need to pay attention to what's going on around you. Because there's no better way to train leadership than leading. But it only works if you pay attention to it. And then the intention part comes from, I said, listen, you're going into a meeting, you're going to counsel someone, you're going to meet with your supervisor, or you're going to meet with a subordinate, or you're going to present, or whatever you're going to do from a leadership perspective. Take three minutes before, three minutes. Hey, I know we're all pressed for time. You can take three minutes.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  Take three minutes and figure out

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  what is your intention from a leadership perspective going into this meeting? Write them down. Like, what are you going to do in this meeting? Hey, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna meet with Dave, and it's a subject that we disagree on. Dave wants to meet with me about some, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna detach. I'm gonna listen. I'm gonna find some common ground.

• 1:54:06Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna ask for some time to think about his perspective. That, that's what I'm gonna do. Write that down. Takes three minutes. Three minutes to figure out what a good course of action is. Then you, then you go. Then you go to the meeting. So that's, that's your training. Your initial part of the training is intention. What do you intend to do?

• 1:54:24Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Then you go to the meeting. So that's, that's the intention part. Now, how do you, now you gotta pay attention to how you actually did. You gotta detach a little bit. When you get done with the meeting, how did you do? Did you get emotional?

• 1:54:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you talk more than you listened? Which, by the way, to me, if I have a meeting where I talk more than I listen, it's probably it was a bad meeting. Did I lose my temper? Did I tell Dave, there's no way we're doing it your way, right? Is that where I went?

• 1:54:52Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta be honest with yourself.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  And then you gotta make adjustments and that's how you're gonna improve. And, and that's why, one of the reasons that I'm saying this is that, that these manuals, they can be so helpful to us and for us because we, they can, they can,

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  they can tell us what it is we should be doing so we can actually do it. And, and this is a subject I talked about on EF Online today. I heard this interview with Gary Kasparov, who's a 20-year chess champion and he was talking about chess. And he got asked about Magnus Carlsen, who's this young, well, he was 19 when he won the world champion, became the best in the world and total dominant prodigy in the game. And, and the guy basically said, you know, well, who, kinda who's better? And he didn't come right out and say it, but it was implied and, and Gary Kasparov understood the implication. And, and there was a couple of things that he said. One, one thing that he said that was interesting, he said, basically he said, "I'm too old to compete."

• 1:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Which is interesting, because you think about maybe in jiu-jitsu, you can get too old to compete, but chess? You should get better. But he talked about the physical fitness aspect of even playing chess and how sharp your mind is and that tied into how sharp your body is and if you're younger, you have an advantage, which was very, I didn't expect that at all. But more important, he said that Magnus, even though he's been playing chess for much shorter time, he's only 30 years old and Kasparov is 57. He's been playing chess for way less time. But Magnus has been able to learn everything that Kasparov has done throughout his whole career. Because they take, when, when a chess game happens, they document every single move

• 1:56:39Jocko Willink?

  and they, they put it in a book and you can read that book and you can know exactly what the move was, what the outcome was. And so Magnus got to study those. He got to study those things. He got lifted up on the shoulders of Kasparov. So how could, how could Kasparov compete?

• 1:56:59Jocko Willink?

  Because it wasn't just, Magnus just didn't just get to study Kasparov, he got to study all the, all the masters of all time. And Kasparov, who dominated for 20 freaking straight years.

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  And I was talking about this with you Dave the other day. I'm like, hey Dave, I'm reading a book right now and this guy's giving information about leadership. And this is, he's giving information about leadership that I thought I kind of figured out from, and I had to figure out for myself. And he's giving information and the book was published in 1973. And I never got to stand on the shoulders of that giant to learn that lesson. Why? Because I didn't approach it with the right attitude. So these books, these documents, whether historical documents, whether it's a first person account of what happened in battle and what that leader did, we have to understand

• 1:57:51Jocko Willink?

  that we can take those things and we can learn from them. We can literally take moves, just like moves on a chessboard, and we can be a better leader because we understand how things occurred in the past.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  We get to study leadership. We get to study human nature. We get to study interactions between people when they fight, when they go to war, when they lead, when they influence, when they compete.

• 1:58:19Jocko Willink?

  And that,

• 1:58:21Jocko Willink?

  paying attention and having intention and recognizing that everything you see is an opportunity for you to learn and take and put that in your playbook and make you better.

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  And we miss that opportunity all the time.

• 1:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Cause we're not paying attention and we don't have the right intention.

• 1:58:54Dave Berke?

  Dude, I mean,

• 1:58:57Dave Berke?

  there's so, there's so much there. And I think my favorite part about even just this first chapter, because I had a tiny suspicion like we're never going to get through this.

• 1:59:09Dave Berke?

  How easy it was to connect all those comments, all the things they're saying to so many other areas, so many other places in life. And you started it.

• 1:59:21Dave Berke?

  And that saying, when you, when you, when you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. As, as much as that, as much as you say that, it's, it's so true. It's such an important. So just hearing that and, and, and you come out of the gate and in three minutes, you're talking about parenting and kids and family on a, on a manual about, you know, total war competition between nation states. And inside that is all these, these, these, these pieces of leadership of, of human nature and yeah, I probably should just, I can stop at this point because I get so fired up thinking about how much is in there. And then I think,

• 1:59:58Dave Berke?

  then I think I look back on my 40, coming up on 40 something, 49 years, like, man, how much have I missed? How many opportunities have been out there to not see these things in other places? Uh, so there's so much in there. Um, yeah.

• 2:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Chapter one.

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Making us better. Echo Charles. Speaking of getting better, what suggestions do you have for us?

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Uh, well. To be honest, the, you, you covered it, or a big part of it, I say, I, to be honest with you, but sure, I can add maybe, hopefully, hopefully I can add a little.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  Little something. You did mention physical fitness in chess, which was interesting.

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  That is interesting. You burn three X the number of calories you would normally burn, burn. In a, so if you had a day of just normal activity. Or you did a chess tournament, chess tournament, three X the number of calories.

• 2:01:01Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Heart rate goes up, breathing goes up.

• 2:01:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Jocko Willink?

  Tense muscles.

• 2:01:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. I wonder why, I wonder what, like just the stress of the company.

• 2:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Stress of the company.

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  Thinking.

• 2:01:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering how much of it was just brain power getting used. I don't know the answer to that.

• 2:01:19Speaker 02

  Dang and it's like, you know, you mentioned muscles tensing up, but, but, okay.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:25Speaker 02

  Okay, but, you know, okay.

• 2:01:28Jocko Willink?

  We really can't just throw out.

• 2:01:30Speaker 02

  That, that's the significant, you know, like, all right, we'll go do a Metcon for, how long is a chess match? You'd say, I don't know, tournament?

• 2:01:37Jocko Willink?

  Depends what type of chess match it is.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Different types.

• 2:01:41Speaker 02

  So if you get, okay.

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  There's blitz chess. Then there's just some kind of timed chess and then there's.

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  Speed chess.

• 2:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's called speed chess. Yeah. Okay, all right, well, let's think scientifically then. Okay, you got one booth, I don't know, booth of two guys playing chess. This is gonna last two hours. You got another booth, a guy doing your everyday run of the mill Metcon for two hours.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, the Metcon guy is obviously burning a lot.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  The Metcon guy's gonna burn all, literally all his calories before the chess, you know. So I'm just saying the muscle tense thing may not be that as much of a thing, we'll see. All right, speaking of.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  I'm not recommending chess as your new physical workout. It's not what I'm doing here.

• 2:02:22Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, that, that seems, seems correct for sure. Nonetheless, as far as fitness goes, look, it's not to say that chess is like not a way to get better because it's straight up is.

• 2:02:37Speaker 02

  But as far as physical fitness goes, maybe not, but.

• 2:02:40Jocko Willink?

  Not the best avenue.

• 2:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Many other avenues, jujitsu, that's one of them. Just general workouts, right? Workouts, you know, there's all kinds of workouts, whatever. Nonetheless, you do have to work out, I think.

• 2:02:56Jocko Willink?

  I concur.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  Dave Berke. Same, concur. All right, well, we're working out. Every once in a while, we might have issues that we, that concern us. Joint issues, lower back issues, depending on who you are. A shoulder, elbow issues, as the case may or may not be. But we don't want to worry about this kind of issue, so we got some supplementation for, well, for a lot of stuff, really. But as far as joints and stuff, we got joint warfarin. We got super cruel oil. We also have vitamin D for immune. I don't even want to say issues. I want to say your whole immune situation, really? To prevent issues.

• 2:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Check this out. Here's, I gotta, uh, uh, wait. I gotta some good news for everybody. Look, there's plenty of bad news out there in the world right now. Right? I got some good news for everybody. Here's the good news. All these different type of supplements that you're talking about. Things that I take every single day. Joint Warfare, I take every single day. Krill, take every single day. Discipline, take every single day. Vitamin D3, take every single day. Cold War, take every single day. Every single day I take this stuff. Check this out. Mulk. Yes, I can't say I take it every day, but I take it six days, no, five days out of seven. Maybe six days out of seven. I have a lot of mulk. Any of these items that you want.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  If you want to get them, you can get them from originmaine.com. And when you get them, if you subscribe to them. Meaning if you just get a subscription for Joint Warfare, you get a subscription for krill oil.

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  You will get free shipping. Yeah, look, we, because listen, there's, there's people out there, rightfully so, that

• 2:04:47Jocko Willink?

  don't necessarily want to support some of the companies that sell our products. For whatever reason. But some of those companies have free shipping, which makes it real, you know, you can save a lot of money. So in order to take care of everyone. If you want to

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  subscribe to this stuff. Any of it. If you subscribe to one thing, you'll get free shipping on whatever you order. So, so come, subscribe. Also, you get like 10% off if you subscribe. So subscription, what I'm saying is if you want this stuff and you take it all the time, like I do, like Echo does. Dave, what do you take every day?

• 2:05:32Dave Berke?

  The list is the list. Uh, I'm probably like, I'm probably maybe, maybe four or five uh, Mols a week. I'm, I'm, I'm over the threshold on, on Discipline Go. So whatever, eight out of seven, if that's a math problem. Um, and then I, I will, the only thing I will say is that Cold War had, has kind of moved to the top of my, like, I never forget Cold War, ever. And I'm probably beneficial, benefit because my, I have a subscription. I get it. I don't even think about it. I've, I don't run out. But look, man, lately, that's been on, that's, I don't ever miss it, ever. So.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to support, your very good way to support, that one.

• 2:06:14Dave Berke?

  Support the whole situation.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  Support the whole situation. Subscribe, get free shipping, save money 10%. We're here to hook it up.

• 2:06:22Dave Berke?

  You're supporting yourself, by the way.

• 2:06:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you're supporting yourself. You're supporting yourself. That's kind of the original tagline, wasn't it, Echo Charles?

• 2:06:29Dave Berke?

  Yes, sir.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Support yourself.

• 2:06:30Dave Berke?

  I still, as you support us.

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  You can also get the stuff at Vitamin Shoppe. You can also get the stuff at Wawa. Well, you can get Discipline Go at Wawa. And by the way, you can get it. They're, they're, they're infusing it into every Wawa on the East Coast as we speak right now. It's not in every store yet, but yeah, look, January 4th, they started infusing it. January 4th, 2020 is the day that everyone will remember.

• 2:06:55Dave Berke?

  21.

• 2:06:57Jocko Willink?

  2021, sorry. January 4th, 2021 is the day that Wawa started to infuse Discipline Go into all their stores. So appreciate the support at Wawa. Appreciate the support from Wawa.

• 2:07:13Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's a, yeah, that's a good situation where, let's, let's face it, sometimes we don't want to order online. Seems crazy.

• 2:07:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, sometimes we're driving.

• 2:07:24Dave Berke?

  Exactly. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

• 2:07:26Jocko Willink?

  We're tired.

• 2:07:27Dave Berke?

  I want my Discipline Go between right now and when I get home. That's what I want it. And currently, there's none at my house.

• 2:07:34Jocko Willink?

  You can't order that. Ordering it from originmaine.com, subscription or not, is not going to help you in that particular moment.

• 2:07:40Dave Berke?

  It doesn't work that way.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  You need a Wawa.

• 2:07:42Dave Berke?

  Yes, sir. You do. Um, so yeah, Discipline Go, boom. There's also Discipline, the powder and the capsule.

• 2:07:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:07:51Speaker 02

  If that's your preferred method, you know, the cans are kind of a thing. Let's face it. So I'm kind of doing those a lot. But discipline go the powder. That's a daily for me as well. Especially if I'm working out 100% guaranteed. That's the thing.

• 2:08:05Jocko Willink?

  It's on.

• 2:08:07Speaker 02

  So yes, these things will help us in our developmental journey on this path to stay in the game.

• 2:08:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even on the path.

• 2:08:16Speaker 02

  The path. It'll make you better as it were. Also. Origin Maine, speaking of originmaine.com as far as dot com goes, Jiu Jitsu stuff on there. Some good American made stuff. By the way, 100% American made. Jiu Jitsu stuff, American denim and boots.

• 2:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Jeans. You might want to get a pair of American made jeans.

• 2:08:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:41Jocko Willink?

  Made here. Where's the, oh, but you think, oh, but where's the cotton from? Oh, the cotton's from here. Wait, where was it woven? Oh, it's woven here. Oh, who died? Oh, it's died here in America. Wait, what about the thread? Well, that's American.

• 2:08:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what about the rivets? Certainly it must be, oh, those rivets are from America.

• 2:08:57Speaker 02

  Yep. What about the buttons?

• 2:09:00Jocko Willink?

  The buttons? Those, yeah. Where do we get those? Oh, we got them in America.

• 2:09:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:09:04Jocko Willink?

  And then who took all that stuff and put it together into something you can cover your legs with?

• 2:09:10Speaker 02

  Cover your legs.

• 2:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Guess, guess where, guess where that happened in America.

• 2:09:15Speaker 02

  Dig it. Yep. From top to bottom.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  Support the podcast, support yourself and support America.

• 2:09:25Speaker 02

  America. It's true. Also speaking of support, Jaco has a store. Called Jaco Store. So you go to jacostore.com. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts, hoodies, hats, all that stuff. So represent on the path. You want to get these things? Jacostore.com. We have a subscription thing too. Working on the name. It's like a T-shirt club.

• 2:09:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, I got, I got the name. Something from a, from a supporter.

• 2:09:54Jocko Willink?

  And I think, well, I have a, I have a candidate for the name that I think is good to go.

• 2:09:59Speaker 02

  All right, Liam. Or are we, are we disclosing?

• 2:10:01Jocko Willink?

  I'll disclose it right now.

• 2:10:03Speaker 02

  Cause I have one too. Yeah.

• 2:10:04Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, I'll leave it in your, okay, you tell me your first.

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  Jaco Layers.

• 2:10:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay, don't like it, appreciate it, get it.

• 2:10:12Speaker 02

  I like, okay.

• 2:10:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay, here's, what about this? The Shirt Locker. Oh, bought and sold, you're good. Alright, so officially, the Jaco Shirt Locker. So now you can, yeah, there you go.

• 2:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, alright. To be honest, I was expecting like-

• 2:10:29Jocko Willink?

  It's better than T-shirt Club.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  T-shirt Club's fine. Shirt Locker, okay, approved, approved, straight up. Okay, Shirt Locker, kinda the same deal, free shipping, you know, subscription, you know, it's a different approach, really. It's not so you don't run out of shirts, it's not that, it's just, you know, it's a T-shirt Locker. Anyway, check that out, it's cool. Little bit different designs for us that are, you know, in the game. Nonetheless, JacoStore.com, good spot.

• 2:10:56Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, and also on top of this podcast, you can join us in the Jaco Underground, JacoUnderground.com, we have

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  an alternative podcast. It's a podcast with amplifying information to this podcast, sort of some behind the scenes stuff, some Q and A stuff, some some things that didn't quite fit the mold of Jocko Podcast, let's just face it, I didn't want the Jocko Podcast to stay what it is. Someone puts in their headphones, I want them to get what they expect, I want to deliver that product, that information. So, however, art and creativity, what do we learn from the Marine Corps? You can't just keep doing the same thing. So, I like to get a little bit artistic and creative. Want to do some different things, so now we have a way to do that.

• 2:11:54Jocko Willink?

  It's JacoUnderground.com.

• 2:11:58Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, and there's, look, there's censorship things happening right now, we want to at least be ready in case something crazy happens. We also don't want to take on sponsors, because we don't want to start off every podcast by saying, "Welcome to Jocko Podcast, this podcast is brought to me."

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  I don't want to do that. And I also don't want to, in the middle of the podcast, talking about the Korean War. And some firefight and be like, and this podcast was, but no, we're not doing that. So if you want to help out, if you want to join the Jaco Underground, Jaco Underground, ground.com, go there. It costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month, which is a number that has

• 2:12:37Speaker 02

  Layers.

• 2:12:37Jocko Willink?

  Layers.

• 2:12:38Speaker 02

  And bro, I didn't even know how many layers that number has.

• 2:12:40Jocko Willink?

  There's so many layers. There's so many layers. We're getting layers on layers.

• 2:12:43Speaker 02

  Layers on layers.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to, if you want to support, that's one way to do it. That way we, we make sure we can keep this podcast up and running no matter what happens. If you, hey, look, and if, if you can't afford that, if you're tight on money, that's okay. We, we still want to have you in the game with us. Email assistance at Jaco Underground.com and, and we'll have you taken care of. But if you can afford to support, that's awesome too. Eight dollars and 18 cents a month. Also, we have the Jaco Unraveling Podcast, which is me and Daryl, Daryl Cooper. We have the Grounded and the Warrior Kid Podcast, which I am severely delinquent on.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  It's lingering in the winds.

• 2:13:26Jocko Willink?

  My daughter, my youngest daughter today was harassing me about the Warrior Kid Podcast. That's where it starts to hurt. She lives with Uncle Jake and she wants that podcast. So I apologize. I got one more book due January 31st.

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  A book like that you're writing?

• 2:13:46Jocko Willink?

  A real.

• 2:13:47Speaker 02

  Straight up.

• 2:13:47Jocko Willink?

  And so when that book is done, we're going to make this happen. So, um, yeah, subscribe to those as well. We got a YouTube channel if you want to see Echo's videos. And more important than seeing Echo's videos, it's important to understand who the assistant director is on many of those videos, and that's me. So if you like the videos, it's probably because the assistant, assistant directing was strong. If you don't like them, it's probably one I wasn't working on and Echo screwed it up.

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

  I'm over here doing the best I can. Anyway, thank you for that, by the way. Uh, also Psychological Warfare. It's a, uh, an MP3 album with tracks of Jaco letting you know, hey, don't skip this workout, right? Cause you know, when you want to skip the workout?

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Dave doesn't know.

• 2:14:29Speaker 02

  Why? Cause he doesn't work out?

• 2:14:30Jocko Willink?

  He's disciplined.

• 2:14:31Speaker 02

  Skip the workout?

• 2:14:31Jocko Willink?

  He's disciplined. He's getting it done.

• 2:14:34Speaker 02

  Is that factually true?

• 2:14:36Dave Berke?

  My wife will not, I will not hear the end of it. I will not hear the end of it. So I have some motivation just to not put up with the harassment.

• 2:14:44Jocko Willink?

  We need to make an album with your wife.

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wanna say, your, your wife is the psychological warfare.

• 2:14:50Dave Berke?

  The worst day in the Burke household is when I don't work out and she does.

• 2:14:56Dave Berke?

  There's enough motivation there to make sure that doesn't happen very often.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  Perfect. And that's kinda like a little example.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  You know what I like about that is like,

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  hey, it doesn't matter. You work from four o'clock in the morning until whenever. It's like, oh, oh, didn't work out today, did you?

• 2:15:10Dave Berke?

  Doesn't care.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  Skipped it.

• 2:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't care about that.

• 2:15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, for those of us who do entertain the notion of skipping a workout, you know, fudging on the diet, all that kind of stuff, which is in psychological warfare. And it'll get you through it a hundred percent, like a little spot. Get it, you know, Amazon, wherever you buy MP3s, that's where you can get it.

• 2:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Also, flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer. He's making all kinds of cool stuff for you to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. About Face by Hackworth. I wrote the foreword to the new version of that. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We got the code, the evaluation, the protocols. We got Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, brand new version. We got Way of the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual. How are the kids liking that, Dave?

• 2:15:49Dave Berke?

  Book was awesome. It immediately supplanted all the other ones and now it's just in the cycle. My son, that was, he's just super stoked on that one.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding to hear. Also, Way of the Warrior Kid One, Two, and Three, Mike and the Dragons, Extreme Ownership, and the Decade of Leadership. We got Echelon Front. You heard us, when, when, when Dave and I are talking about, oh, a client, or talking to one of our clients, that's because we have a leadership consulting company and we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details there. And we have EF Online. You also heard us refer to that a bunch today. It's leadership training online. There's question and answer sessions. There's actual courses you can take about leadership that cover these subjects. Really granular, in detail. So check out efonline.com if you want.

• 2:16:40Jocko Willink?

  We got the muster in 2021. Look, that is a shifting target right now. Go to extremeownership.com. If you want to come to a muster, it's our, it's our leadership event. We have EF Overwatch, where we have executive leadership for your company. Go to EFOverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members, if you want to help active duty and retired families, members, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to, if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you didn't quite get enough of my annoying anecdotes,

• 2:17:21Jocko Willink?

  or you need more of Echo's labyrinthine lectures, or more of Dave's devoted diatribes, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which Echo will only and strictly refer to as The Gram. And on Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all the military folks out there, and all the branches of service, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, and yes, a little extra credit to the Marine Corps today. Thank you all for continually competing with forces of darkness and evil in

• 2:18:02Jocko Willink?

  the world. And thanks also to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe when we call on you in our worst moments. And to everyone else out there, you are competing all the time. Know that. Pay attention to it. Pay attention to it so you can learn, and you can get better, and you can be better, and you can make the things in your world a little bit better. A little bit better for you, and for the people around you. And you

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  do that by going out there every single day, and getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave, and Echo, and Jaco. Out.