The Debrief w/ Jocko And Dave Berke #24: Don't Be The Easy Button and Keep Your Opinions to Yourself

Jocko and Dave Berke breakdown challenges of companies and solutions from Echelon Front. 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 the Jocko debrief podcast episode 24 with Dave Berke, me Jocko Willink. Dave, what's going on? Let's debrief. What's happening? What do we got?

• 0:10Dave Berke?

  I always like to start these off like a little, like a little phrase that helps me think about the shortest way to describe what's going on.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What'd you pick for this time?

• 0:19Dave Berke?

  Don't be the easy button and keep your opinions to yourself.

• 0:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So don't be the easy button, very cliche, even though we use it and it's cliche for a reason. Cause there's, it's a good piece of advice to give to people, but keep your opinions to yourself. A lot of times people don't want to hear that. A lot of times they need to hear that. There's some true benefits to keeping your opinion to yourself. I know in the book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, I talked about, don't give up your position. Right? We don't announce to the enemy where we're going to attack from. We don't put a flag up while we're on reconnaissance, right? To tell, hey, we're here. Why would you do that? So there's a one aspect of keeping your opinions to yourself. And of course, right now, as we say that, there's at least,

• 1:09Jocko Willink?

  at least, well, let's just say 50%, it could be 70, it could be 30. There's a large percentage of people that go, that's crap.

• 1:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  What do you, you got an opinion? You need to voice it. You need to let people know what you're thinking. That's what needs to happen. So you people that it, that your hair stood up when Dave said, keep your opinion to yourself. If your hair stood up a little bit, if you thought, you know what, I'm going to go listen to a different podcast now. If, then that's actually you, you maybe should be listening to this. Okay. So what's the, what's the scenario?

• 1:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And the whole point behind that is just like you described is, yeah, there's always truths of the way we explain this, but there's much more to it than just that phrase of keep your opinions to yourself. There, there's so many times to share your opinion.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 1:50Dave Berke?

  But in this, it sort of summarizes this particular case. So I've got this company where we've been working with for a while. The person, individual, the individual we're working with is the CEO. She started this company. It's her company founded it from the get go. She does like marketing and design. She works with a bunch of bigger companies. She started as a one person show and now she's got 20 plus people at her company. She's doing really great.

• 2:13Dave Berke?

  Her frustration or what she's saying to me as she's working through this is, hey, I'm frustrated with my team and my subordinates keep coming to me with questions that they can answer for themselves. How do I get them to stop coming to me for every little thing? So she's in charge, she's got a bunch of people working for her, good people. Her frustration is they seem to be coming to her for everything. And she wants them to be making decisions on their own. So my immediate thought is, hey, I want to make sure we're not talking about an easy button scenario, which again is a cliche, like you said, but people come to you and if you solve their problems for them, over time you become the easy button. In fact, if you can solve my problems and like you're helpful to me, I'm going to come to you and go, hey, I've got this problem. Can you fix it? And if you fix it, that will become a habit.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right. We got Pavlov's dogs here, right? So every time Dave comes to me and says, hey, Jocko, what should I do here? And I tell him exactly what to do and it gets the problem solved. Eventually Dave gets trained to not think for himself, but to come and, and press the easy button, which is me with this solution. So you wanted to make sure that that this wasn't the scenario?

• 3:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I wanted to kind of explore that because if you are the easy button, like you described, that's the predicament you'll find yourself in is people keep coming to me to solve their problems. So I solve them and they keep coming back. And if you're in charge of the company, the CEO, like you don't want to be solving all these problems. You want them out there operating independently because you need some free time and some bandwidth to do some other things.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, not only that, if you want to develop the people below you in the chain of command, then you need to let them do that. And if you think that while the person is at a sales meeting 250 miles away in a different time zone, and now it's after work hours and they're calling you and you're at your kid's rehearsal and they can't make any decisions, that's a problem. So we want to build decentralized command with insider organizations that we can operate more effectively and more efficiently. And if we're the only person that can solve problems, we're not going to have that.

• 4:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And it's super inefficient, especially if you come to me and I'm going to solve it, I got to ask you a whole bunch of questions that you actually already know the answer to. So it takes a lot of time to get to a solution, just like you described. So start with that. It's always important to look at the different reasons why. The thing that was interesting about this one is I know a lot of this team. We've been working with them for a while. So these people she's talking about, her downstream leaders, and there's you know, a couple layers in there. Some are relatively new, but they've been around for a while. We know these people and these are like smart, talented people. These aren't people that you would think. Habitually want other people to solve their problems or that they're not capable of doing it. So you put that in the category of I got smart people, they're capable. This one is probably not just her tendency to like to solve problems.

• 4:48Dave Berke?

  And the fact that she's frustrated led me to just talk to some other situations. Uh, talk more about the situation, kind of find what's going on. So I asked her, I'm like, hey, walk me through like, what are these conversations like? How does, how does this happen where somebody comes to you? And they say, hey, can you solve this problem for me? And her version of the story is they want to have this discussion around ideas. And so you'll come to me, I'm, I'm, I'm the CEO, you, you come to me and we've got this strategy you want to apply, or this product we want to put together, or this thing we want to, we want to kind of solve. And the way that she has it in her mind is what she wants to do is create what she called, she used this phrase, the best idea win scenario.

• 5:30Dave Berke?

  You come with your ideas, I come with my ideas and four or five of us will sit down, we'll collaborate. And in the end, we'll all agree on what the best idea is. And so the concept of the best idea scenario sounds really cool. But there's a little bit of a problem with that. And there's a little bit of a problem in this one is that she was really vocal about her opinions. And what she would do is advocate for the way she wanted it, kind of aggressively. And in theory, that's fine, but if you're the CEO and the founder of a company, and you want things done a certain way, and I tell you down to the detail how I want things done. Eventually what you're going to do is acquiesce. Or there's a very high risk that what you're going to do is acquiesce. And

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  General Mead, Battle of Gettysburg, he's the guy that ran the, the Northern Union troops. And we talk about this when we go to Gettysburg, the way he would run his meetings, when he'd ask for opinions, start with the junior man to prevent exactly what you're talking about.

• 6:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  Right? So I'm the CEO and I say, hey, let's, how do you guys want to do this mission? This is what I think. At least half the team goes, okay, well, I'm on board with that. Sounds good. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna voice my opinion right now. I'm just gonna keep it to myself. So that's a good way to defeat that. People being hesitant and people being too influenced by you when you're in a leadership position. So General Mead would say, all right, I want to know what you guys think. Start with the junior guy.

• 6:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And you know, as I think about that and the connection you make to that, if, if I'm in a leadership role and we start with the junior guy. You, you talked about a concept called the, the minimally viable plan.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yes.

• 7:10Dave Berke?

  And so like.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  Looking for.

• 7:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  All I'm looking for.

• 7:12Dave Berke?

  The cool thing is if you start down, like you said with the junior guy, if he come up, comes up with the MVP, the minimum viable, you actually don't even know, need to go that high. What you actually want to avoid, and that really is what came out in this case is that's a great technique, especially if you can avoid getting up to your level where you have to then say what you think. One of the worst things you can do is, oh, hey, Jocko, I'd love to hear what you think about this. Here's what I think we should do. Cause you're going to be very inclined to go, oh, Dave, why don't we do it your way? And if you started to talk to some of the other folks, the way they felt about it, it wasn't a, an open forum of ideas to come up with the best idea wins. It was, she has opinions about everything, down to the details. And I don't think she trusts me to solve this on my own. So what they started doing is

• 7:59Dave Berke?

  kind of behind her back, like, hey, she's just going to push back anyway. Let's just go to her out of the gate. Cause what was happening is they were formulating these plans, putting these ideas together, putting some pieces into place, presenting them as part of this best idea wins. And they were losing every one of the conversations. So what they started to do, the, the habit started to be created is that they stopped doing that. They stopped doing that work. They started, they stopped putting in the thought behind it. They stopped thinking about their way of doing it. Cause they knew that in the end, they were going to lose the best idea debate.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  First of all, this is, look, is this critical? No, it's not critical, but think about the framing of best idea wins. Cause now it's your idea against my idea. We're in a competition and I want to win and you want to win and I'm the CEO and I'm going to win. So framing something as the best idea wins, that's probably a bad idea out of the gate. Cause it's going to put everyone, anyone that has any competitive nature whatsoever is going to go in there with this idea. The other thing is you might, if you, again, if we're engaged in competition to see who's got the best idea, that means, and look, a, a woman, any leader, woman, man, whoever, that's the CEO of a company. They're a competitive person by nature.

• 9:12Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  So there's a decent chance that if you work for me, Dave, there's a decent chance that maybe there's some info I hold out on you. Maybe there's some techniques that I could have taught you that I didn't. Maybe there's some information that I could have given you that I didn't. And now all of a sudden I'm able to win all the time. Well, that's because I'm withholding information or I'm not training you correctly. I am actually depressed and saddened if my subordinate can't come up with a freaking plan. That's it. That's, that's usable. That's, that's, that's pretty damn good. And it doesn't take, usually doesn't take that long before the person that works for you. Now they're in the field, they're doing this all the time where they go, hey, boss. And their, their plan is either equivalent to, or possibly better than what you would have come up with.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  Now, listen, you will have the advantage when you're in a leadership position. If you do it correctly, you'll have the advantage of being detached. So when Dave, you know, you're a platoon commander and you're running a mission and you run another mission and you run another mission and all of a sudden you get really good at planning those things. And if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm detached and I go, hey, let me look at your plan. And maybe one out of every three plans, I go, hey, Dave, you gotta remember that there's a piece of terrain feature over here. That's going to be a problem. So I should still be able to be a little bit of a tactical genius. But for the most part, I should get to a point where Dave, the plan that you come up with is not just a minimally viable plan, which is where we may have started six months ago or three months ago. Now your plans are actually totally legit. And the only thing I'm doing is I'm just giving them a strategic sort of 40,000 foot view

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  to make sure that nothing got missed, you know, make sure that you didn't get too close to the planning where you might've missed some bigger picture stuff. So that's, those are some things to work out as well and to think about is number one, are, do we really want to frame our planning sessions as people winning versus people losing? And listen, I've known thousands, have I known thousands? I've, I won't say, I won't put a number on, I've known many, many, many people that they relish. Winning with their idea. They relish when their idea is, is the winning idea when they, they frame it that way as a victory. And look, there, we could probably do a whole nother podcast about how you contend with people like that, that they've got the winning

• 11:27Jocko Willink?

  idea and there's, I mean, it's pretty obvious what you're gonna do. You can take the indirect approach. You're gonna ask them these questions. You're gonna make them think that your idea is their idea. And then they think that they're the greatest thing ever. And so their idea won. They don't know that it was your idea. We're all good with that. But those are just some things to watch out for. Watch out how you frame things. Look, if you frame with your, if I, if I told you and Leif and Jamie, hey, listen, I want each of you to come up with a plan on how to execute with this client and whoever comes up with the best plan wins. That's not a great environment to go into.

• 11:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  It also, it also, it also mitigates the idea of the collaboration of ideas, right? Cause your part of your idea is good, but part of my idea is good. And we take them both and mush them together and all of a sudden we got a really good plan. As opposed to 100% me or 100% you. I don't want 100% of your plan. Cause you miss some things. I don't want 100% of my plan. Cause I miss some things. So, open your mind, everybody. Open your mind.

• 12:23Dave Berke?

  I, I can't think of a, I, I can't think of a time where I've come back to you with a plan I've had about whatever it is that I want to do at Echelon Front, that hasn't included inputs from Jamie. I haven't talked to JP and go, hey, I gotta, you know, Jock was asking about this. Here's some thoughts I had. I can't think of a time where I've come back to you about something that really affects the company, something we really wanted to do from a planning standpoint, that didn't include a bunch of other people anyway. And I think to your point, the only way I'm going to be comfortable with that collaboration is if I don't feel like I'm competing and you're not tracking wins and losses of your subordinate leaders. Like, oh, Dave got the W on this one and Jamie lost or vice versa.

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  So, another thing that's going on is once I put myself into the category where I'm competing for best idea against you and I'm the boss and I'm competing against you and I'm competing against JP and I'm competing against Jamie.

• 13:12Dave Berke?

  You're gonna follow up with that plan?

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, not only am I gonna follow up with it, but- You know, Jamie pointed, we had an academy call today and I was talking about being self-aware. And when I got done talking about, one of the things that I talked about was, hey, listen, you are either talking or you're listening. It's very difficult to do both those things at the same time. And if you really want to know what's, if you want to really want to understand what's happening in a situation, if you're talking, you're not absorbing information, you're not collecting information, you, you're not processing what's really going on. You're not listening to other people. So talk less, shut your mouth, listen to what other people have to say. And when I got done with that, Jamie pointed out, you know, when we have me, when we have meetings at Echelon Front, she's like, she pointed out to everyone like, hey, Jocko doesn't really talk.

• 13:58Jocko Willink?

  He might say something at the end, he might chime in after all the arguments have been laid on the table by Jamie, by Leif, by Dave, by JP, everyone's put their word out. And I, I have not

• 14:11Jocko Willink?

  tried to formulate my own plan. Because as soon as I start trying to formulate my own plan, all of a sudden I'm in the weeds. And I don't want to be in the weeds. And it's the same thing with, you know, tactical operations. I wouldn't look at a target. Now, listen, I'd look at a target. And you know the deal. I mean, if you had to, if you had to figure out how to do a strike on a surface to air, you know, uh, what do you call it? IADS. What's IADS for you guys? Something different for you guys.

• 14:36Dave Berke?

  Was it?

• 14:36Jocko Willink?

  IADS.

• 14:37Dave Berke?

  Integrated Air Defense System?

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you guys, that's IADS for you guys. For me, it's immediate action drills. So IADS for you guys was an integrated air defense systems? So if you had to look at a coastline, you could look at it and be like, okay, here's the general plan. You could figure that out in 30 seconds because you did that for your whole life.

• 14:55Jocko Willink?

  But as soon, as soon as you start committing and like, okay, what's the altitude of this one and where's this one arrayed? Now all of a sudden you're getting in the weeds. It's better to say, all right, where's the lieutenants? Have the lieutenants come up with a plan. They come up with a plan to attack, to do a strike mission on these integrated air defense systems. And then you get to look at it with a second set of eyes and you're going to be infinitely better at catching any issues that might be there. So as soon as this CEO is presenting her ideas, she's already taken herself out of the altitude, out of the command position where she can see the most. And she's in the weeds with everybody else and slinging it out for the, for the victory of the idea.

• 15:37Dave Berke?

  All right. Well, you've, you've already hit both directly and indirectly. This is all about detachment. And, and one of the things I've discovered, the more I've done this, when I'm dealing with, we deal with layers of leadership at every level, every level of leader, from CEOs to the most junior frontline leader. When you're dealing with founders, people have literally, this is an idea that they've had in their mind that came up with on their own.

• 16:05Dave Berke?

  I have noticed that detaching for them can, can be harder. And you understand this, having founded, you know, multiple companies. And also, I know you've worked with companies that's led by the founder and CEO. The ability to detach sometimes can be harder for them.

• 16:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is the, the absolute analogy to that is people ask me, what's the difference between leading a team and leading a business and leading a family? And the, the thing is, in your family, it's your family. So it's much, much harder to detach and be unemotional because it's your kids and you care about them. You can't fire your kids. They're going to be with you. You can't fire your wife or your husband. They're going to be with you. And that's the way it is. So it's very difficult to detach. So that's why oftentimes when we have to deal with this situation, what we say is, hey, it's your baby. I get it. Yeah. No one wants to say their baby's ugly. No one wants to say their baby needs some help in something. No one wants to say their baby needs to move in a different direction because they were actually wrong about these various factors. So yes, it's very difficult for whether someone's the, whether it's the founder of a company.

• 17:04Jocko Willink?

  Sure. That's one thing. But when it's like, I have my idea, that idea is my baby. It's hard for me to say that, actually, you know what? I'm gonna, you know, leave this baby out in the woods because it's not going to make it. It's very difficult for people to do that.

• 17:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And that kind of covers it is that, that was the connection I was making from detachment is as a founder, it's really hard to detach from that thing that you literally gave birth to sometimes. And the same thing is if you foster this culture of competing so much so that I win and you lose, rather than we come up with the best idea for the company to, to help our clients. I'm gonna have a hard time detaching from my plan because I'm going, oh damn, Jocko's plan is better than mine, but I don't want anybody to know that. So I'll dig deeper into my plan, makes it even harder to detach. So you, you covered all those things. These are all conversations we had. And, and listen, it's important to say, all the things that she's doing were for all the right reasons. It's all the right reasons. It's not a nefarious plan to make your team feel like they don't trust you, or that you don't trust them, and

• 18:02Dave Berke?

  to make them miserable. It's also not a nefarious plan to waste your time, which is a lot of it was, her time was being wasted because she felt like she was answering questions that she shouldn't have had to answer, all stemming from, from that same thing there. So if you're going to build a team, don't build a team where the best idea wins. Build a team as often as you can where their idea wins. And let them come up with a plan, that minimally viable plan. And then just like you described, it puts you in a great position to ask a couple of earnest questions, to help them see something maybe they didn't see. But in the end, as often as possible, let them come up and go with their plan. And sometimes you can do that by keeping your opinions to yourself.

• 18:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's funny that one of the, I like to have, you know, my default settings. And my, you've got a bunch of different default settings, but one of the default settings that I have is like, I'm going with your plan. Now, here's the cool thing about your plan. I don't care if you're my boss. I don't care if you're my peer, and I don't care if you're my subordinate. If I have the opportunity and you come up with a minimally viable plan, regardless if you're my boss, you're my subordinate, or you're my peer, we're going with it. Sounds good. So Dave, you work for me, and we got a, a project that we need to do, and you come to me and say, hey Jocko, here's how I think we should do the project. I'm gonna look at you and go, oh, it's actually viable. Okay, cool. Let's go with it. If you're my peer, and you come to me and say, hey Jocko, here's how I think we should do this. I'm gonna say, oh, okay, that looks good. And if you're my boss, and you come to me and say, hey Jocko,

• 19:25Jocko Willink?

  here's the project, here's how I think you should do it. And it's a viable plan? Cool. We're going with it. What a beautiful thing. What a beautiful thing. It saves so much, uh, what's the word? Brain damage. It saves brain damage. The minute you say, you know what, your plan's pretty good. That's gonna work. And by the way, you gain so much leadership capital. And by the way, you don't know what's gonna happen in the future. So when, when Dave comes to me with his minimally viable plan to, uh, prepare a brief about, uh,

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  Reducing costs for this client. And I think, no, I don't think we should talk about reducing costs. I think we should talk about uh uh streamlining. And he goes, well, I think we should do cutting costs. And I said, I think we should present streamlining. And we get into a fight about it. Finally, say, you know what? You work for me. We're doing streamlining. And then we get to the client, they go, we we we're really interested in cost cutting, right? So now I look like an idiot because you know what? I can't predict the future. So why did I put all my all my money on this bet? That it was gonna be about streamlining. I'm an idiot. That's why. So you don't know what's gonna be in the future. So let's just come up with, let's use your plan. And that's such a such a black belt move. It really is such a black belt move. Let's use their idea.

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  Peer, subordinate, superior, you're gonna be, it's gonna save so much brain damage. And, look, we want to get influence with people. So the minute Dave presents a plan to me, and I say yes, all of a sudden, I am able to influence him more on everything. Even if Dave's plan was a little bit off. And you're my boss and your plan's a little bit off? And I said, Dave, your plan is off for the following reasons. Well, now all of a sudden, you're gonna be much more apt to force that thing down my throat. I suppose we say, okay, got it, boss. Let me take a look at it and we'll, I'll come back to you and and show you how we're gonna execute your vision.

• 21:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, thanks, Jocko. Great. Jocko's such a good guy. He just takes stuff and runs with it. Next day, I come back. Hey, boss, really like the plan you put together. Vision looks great. A couple little adjustments I want to talk to you about. Um, you know, I'm not sure I did a good job telling you about this and and this other thing over here. I want to make these adjustments. Does that make sense? Dave's like, yeah, sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, go ahead. As long as you've got that vision. Yeah, I do. Thank you. So that's what we're doing, man. Uh, so did you, when you talked to the CEO, how did she take it? Did she understand? Was it hard for her to understand? Did you give her any protocols to follow? Did you tell her to keep her mouth shut? For, you know, hey, when you go into the meeting, listen. Because that's a good protocol. There's a, we were talking today, again, on the Academy, and somebody asked about if you've got TBI. What protocols can you take?

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  And I said, these are physical protocols. Keeping your mouth shut is a physical protocol. Like, you will be able to see and hear and understand so much more if you go into a meeting and you keep your mouth shut.

• 22:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you give her some protocols like that?

• 22:12Dave Berke?

  So I gotta be really careful when I say this and I'll explain it, but this was kind of an easy one. And here's, let me explain why. And it's funny because it's same, you, you, you talked about this on the academy as well, about a totally different conversation you were having with a couple of people. And you have that moment where you look at somebody and you see them make the connection of, oh, is this what I've been doing? And she kind of put her hands in her face a little bit and it was her way, what I'm seeing is her way of going, oh. And honestly, especially when you're the CEO and the founder, it's so easy to not talk. It's so easy to just sit there and listen. This is not going to be some big hurdle for her if she can just go, hey, you know what, team? You guys have great ideas. I have not done a really good job of just hearing what they had to say.

• 22:57Dave Berke?

  And so when she had that recognition and I think that came from me saying, what are these conversations like? And as she's explaining it and I'm, and I'm kind of pulling the thread of, wait, and so do you tell them what you want? And so when she had that moment of, I realize what I'm doing, it's going to make it so, it's going to make it so much easier for her to not keep doing that. So I'll be cautious by saying this is an easy one. This stuff is hard to do, but she had that recognition and it was written all over her face and she put her head down. She's like, I think I know what I'm doing here. That, no, I know she's much closer in the path. And you had a conversation today where you had a couple of people on a zoom and because there's only two people, you can see their faces on the screen. She's like,

• 23:32Jocko Willink?

  You could see that they're like,

• 23:33Dave Berke?

  Oh, I got it. I'm an idiot.

• 23:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I actually opened up my computer today. I'd been writing yesterday. I had opened my computer day and my thesaurus, I have the little thesaurus, you know? And so I was writing and finished writing yesterday and I had a couple of windows open, whatever, three, four windows open, website, this, that, the other thing, email. And I started closing windows and I, and I had my, and I got down to my thesaurus window, which was open and I was looking for other words for the word idiot. So that shows you a good sign. That shows you that I'm going deep, really trying to help someone out, returning an email or something like that saying, and wanting to figure out a different way to tell someone that they're an idiot, or maybe I was off to go back and

• 24:19Jocko Willink?

  do a word search and figure out what I used and why I was using it.

• 24:22Dave Berke?

  That's awesome. If you can figure out that you're an idiot, it makes it a lot easier to solve these problems. And I think she came to the conclusion of like, oh, I see what I'm doing. I'm gonna stop doing that.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and this is where, to tie this back together, this is where the keeping your opinion to yourself is powerful. And the minute that you put your opinion out there, your influence, everything that's going on, especially well, leadership position or not, listen, this is the thing, leadership position or not, because if Dave, if I'm working for you, and I roll in and say, hey, Dave, here's what we got asked to do by the client, this is what I think we should do. I've already altered the playing field, a little bit of how you and I are about to interact. Because if you think my idea is really dumb, you're immediately like, Jocko doesn't get this, that I've got to overcome some obstacles here.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if I go, hey, you know, hey, Dave, here's this project we got tasked with, can you give me some thoughts on a good direction? And all of a sudden, you've got a blank canvas. I'm not messing with it at all. And there's nothing better than that. There's nothing better than that. And the reason is because I can't control what's going on in your head. I can only control what's going on in my head. I can't control what, when I say something stupid, or I put a stake in the ground on something, that's done. And I can't do anything to take it back. It's out there. Whereas if I give you a blank canvas and let your thoughts flow, now, now I can adjust the way I interpret them. I can adjust the way I react to them. I can adjust the way I interpret them. I can adjust the way I readdress them with you.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  All those things are, are things that I control now. Whereas when I go and put a stake in the ground. I might have offended you. I might have come at a totally different angle. I might have come at it at an angle that's fine, but it obscured your vision of another angle that you would have seen had I kept my freaking mouth shut in the beginning. So it's this idea of keeping your opinions yourself. This isn't an idea of, of, hey, you need to subdue your thoughts. No, it's actually a way to free your mind. It's actually a way to free your mind because now you're going to have more mobility with the people you're interacting with. And if, if you can utilize the indirect approach

• 26:37Jocko Willink?

  and you can now infuse your ideas with their ideas, all of a sudden it can stay their idea. It just has a little infusion of a little jocko in it. And we gotta, now we have the best idea, which is what we want.

• 26:47Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Keep some of those opinions to yourself as long as you can. As long as you can. Uh, all right. Is it my turn now?

• 26:59Dave Berke?

  It's your turn.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so.

• 27:05Jocko Willink?

  Similar, I'll try and give you a statement for the, that encompasses this a little bit. If you're not getting pushback, you're probably wrong. Well, you could be wrong on many different counts. If you're not getting pushback from your team, this is very, aligns very well with what we just talked about. So if I'm the CEO and I'm rolling in, I'm presenting my ideas and I'm basically getting in one son that says, that sounds great, then there's probably an issue with them offering up their ideas. There's probably an issue with the way that I speak to them. There's probably an issue with our relationships. So we want to have pushback. Now, that being said,

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  we can get into a scenario where the pushback that we're getting starts to get to a point where it's pushing us over.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  And that might scare some people.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  Might really scare some people because what's really going to hit the ground when your, when your idea gets pushed over, the thing that's going to fall is your ego. So I was out at FTX, our field training exercise, and I, and I came up with a tool that I think is a very helpful tool that can help everybody. It's a, it's a, it's a gauge. You know, you flew airplanes, you got various gauges, right? What gauges you got? Fuel gauge, altitude gauge.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  What else? Speed. Speed gauge, G gauge. Lots of gauges. Lots of gauges. So here's a gauge that I want you to put into your brain. If you're out there listening to this, it's the explanation effort meter. The E E M.

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  The E E M, the explanation effort meter. Which means if you are trying to convince, or you're trying to persuade, or you're trying to prove a point to someone on your team, up or down the chain of command, pay attention to the amount of effort that you are putting into your explanation. Check the E E M, check the explanation effort meter. Because

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  look, there is a chance

• 29:21Jocko Willink?

  that the person you are trying to convince is just a block headed, half witted, smooth brained idiot.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  Or some other word. Or some other word for idiot. There's a chance, right? There's a chance that you've, you know, you've gone out and you've hired and this person has gone through the schooling that they've gone through and they've been promoted to the position that that, but that they've done all that, but they're still got a smooth, their, their brain is smooth as a bowling ball. Right? That's possible.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  It's possible that they're just not, they just don't have the cognitive capacity to see the brilliance of your ideas. Or there's a chance that if it takes so much effort for you to explain something to someone, there's a chance that you might be wrong. And I know it's highly unlikely, but you just might be wrong about something.

• 30:14Jocko Willink?

  So as you are trying to explain to them over and over and over again, instead, once that meter goes into the red, why don't you stop talking and start listening?

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  Stop talking and start listening. I said on an early podcast that I have a limit for beating my head against the wall. It's 47 times. So if I bang my head against the wall 47 times, you don't go 48, 47 is the max. Like you're trying to get something done. You're trying to beat your head against the wall. You're trying to convince them. Don't go 48 times. Keep it at 47. This is the same thing, like how frustrated, how annoyed, how irritated should you get trying to explain your brilliant plan to your boss, to your peer, to your subordinate, to your wife, to your husband, to your kid?

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  You actually shouldn't get that frustrated. The EEM alarm should go off well before you lose your mind, well before you lose your temper, well before you you've wasted an epic amount of leadership capital.

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you, you should stop.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  Because if I have a freaking brilliant idea, Dave, on how to do something, and I can't convey it to you in a rational amount of time with a rational amount of words, without acting irrationally, there's a problem most likely with my idea. Sure, like I said, there's a chance that you're some undercover agent from another company. Or you have some alignment with evil that you're trying to carry out. That is possible. Right? It's possible that, but it is possible that you actually are getting paid by a competitor and you're trying to bring my company down, right? That's possible, right? It is possible.

• 32:18Jocko Willink?

  But chances are 99.999999% that you actually see something that I don't see, or you understanding something that I don't understand, or my idea doesn't make sense for any multitude of reasons.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  So by the way, this doesn't only apply to you and I in business or someone in business. This applies to like having a conversation with another human being. And this is very prevalent in this day and age, right? Having a, when you get into a vigorous debate, here's a good little catch word for you. This will help you out. If you get into a vigorous debate, I recommend vigorous listening. I actually recommend you listen to what the other person is saying. And then I, I recommend you ask earnest questions once you understand what they're saying. I recommend that your default mode, here's another default setting. My default setting, you and I are arguing about something. My default setting is where you're right and I'm wrong. That's my default setting, not where am I wrong, right?

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  And you're wrong. It's not what I'm looking to prove. I actually want to know where the common ground is. That's, that's what I want to have. I want to find that. I recently had a client, senior position, was complaining, they're, you know, they're running a project and they were complaining about, um, and this is just classic. You know, it's really hard when you're leading a bunch of chiefs, too many chiefs, not enough Indians, right? Everyone's got their own ideas. Notice my frustration. You could actually, I got some quotes written down here like, they want to run things themselves. They think they're in charge, right?

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  So if I say it with that voice, it's totally negative. If I say that, man, everyone has their own ideas. Like we've got a bunch of people on the team that have ideas about stuff. I'm overjoyed. Or everybody wants to run things. Is that exactly what we want? We literally say when we talk about decentralized command, it means everybody leads. That's what we want. And now we're complaining that everybody wants to run things? If I got people in my team, they want to run things, I am jumping for joy. That's my goal. They thought they were in charge. No, oh, they all think they're in charge. Yes. Praise be to the gods of business, because now I've got a bunch of people that actually want to be in charge.

• 34:42Jocko Willink?

  And they push back on everything. Good. You know, in a, in about face. That's one of the things that Colonel Hackworth said about the draftees. Everyone hated the draftees. Oh, actually, no, everyone didn't hate the draftees. What did he like about the draftees? He liked about the draftees. They pushed back. They called out his dumb ideas because they weren't getting promoted. They didn't care if they were getting out of the army and, you know, whatever it was, 214 more days, or 172 more days, or 19 more days. They didn't give a shit about the army.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  So when they, when he was coming up with a dumb plan, they're like, hey, Colonel, that's a dumb plan. We shouldn't do that. He's like, okay, thank you. He didn't say shut up and do what I told you. He said, oh, these guys might have a point. So I want my people to push back. That's actually what I'm looking forward to. That's why, when I started this thing off, I'm like, if you're getting put, if you're not getting any pushback, you're wrong.

• 35:36Jocko Willink?

  So I want people to push back. I want them to come up with ideas and run with them and I want them to take charge. That's exactly what I want. And if you're in a situation where people don't, and here's another piece of corporate jargon, or leadership jargon, if people don't get on board,

• 35:58Jocko Willink?

  if people don't get on board, no matter how hard you explain things, like I said, there's a chance that every person on your team is a cotton headed ninnymuggin, right? There's a chance of that. Reference Elf, thank you.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  There's a chance that everyone is smooth brained and they don't understand because they're all stupid. You have a whole team of people that do this for a living, that make money, that were educated in whatever subject this is, but they're, they all don't get it.

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  When that happens, when people aren't on board, I recommend you check your explanation effort meter because it's probably pinned in the red. And your plan isn't as good as you think it is, and you aren't explaining it clearly, and you're not listening to what they say.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  So take a step back and listen to what they have to say. And that is my recommendation, and I think it will make your life much easier.

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  Probably a good place to stop. Anything else, Dave? What'd I miss?

• 37:09Dave Berke?

  I like it.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  What about with kids?

• 37:12Dave Berke?

  Well, I was just, I'm always taking notes when you're writing. I wrote down counterintuitive, I had some, some notes to myself of things that I'm thinking about as you're talking and sort of the counterintuitive nature of leadership and, and everybody loves, uh, everybody loves a story about how hard you worked to get something done. It's a cool story. I worked so hard.

• 37:33Dave Berke?

  But I couldn't help but think the entire time is something you're, I've heard you say, if you're so smart, if you're so smart, why aren't you winning more? If your plan is so good, if your ideas are so good, why is it so hard for you to convince anybody else? Meaning if you're putting out so much effort.

• 37:55Dave Berke?

  And yeah, I guess by your math, point 00001% of the time, it actually is them. Fair. And the rest of the time is, man, the harder I'm working, the more I need to stop what I'm doing. And that counterintuitive component, like if this actually is as good as you think, this shouldn't be this hard. And how powerful the ego that, that voice convincing you.

• 38:21Dave Berke?

  And, uh, you know, go harder. So yeah, the counterintuitive nature of that, of, of what we are inclined to do. And if we can take a step, take a step back, I'm like, hey, Dave, if your plan is so brilliant, why doesn't anybody else understand it? Why are you working so hard to convince them? Maybe it's not, not so brilliant.

• 38:40Jocko Willink?

  There's a direct correlation to jujitsu where you're trying to get this move on someone. And it's, you have to work so hard. You have to use so much strength and power to make it work. You're not doing it right. When you're, when you're sweeping, a, a good thing that I do, other instructors do it too. But like, let's say I'm sweeping you, which is a movement that takes, let's say two and a half to three seconds. And I'll talk while I'm doing it. I'll say, okay, as you can see right now, I'm doing the sweep. Dave is falling over and yet my voice is not moving. I'm not straining. And now you're on your back. As opposed to like, okay, now watch me do this.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  There you go. It worked, right? I had to use all this strength. I'm doing it wrong. I'm missing something. That's the same. That's the effort meter is pegged, which means you're not doing it work. It means it's not going to work against a stronger person for sure. And that's what we're doing. We're trying to force our ideas down the down people's throat. If your ideas are good, they shouldn't really need to get forced.

• 39:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  So there you go.

• 39:40Dave Berke?

  Right on.

• 39:42Jocko Willink?

  Good place to stop. If you guys want to dig deeper into this stuff, you can join Dave, me, Leif, JP, Jamie, Steve, Cody, Sean, whom I'm missing, Corey.

• 39:56Dave Berke?

  Carlos, Corey.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  Carlos. Okay, we got a bunch of people. We got a whole team of people. Um, this is what we do. Extreme Ownership Academy, Extreme Ownership.com. If you've got questions you want to go, you will come on there and ask. We also have, we just put up some free courses. Our mission at Echelon Front is to teach these lessons to as many people as we can. And so we just put up a couple of free courses, ExtremeOwnership.com. Well, the first course is you, it's you and I did the first course, the framework of extreme ownership, and it's pretty pragmatic. Hey, how do I take ownership in tough situations? Literally, what words do I say? How do I set this up? So we go through that and then Jamie and I did a course, which is called The Barriers to Extreme Ownership,

• 40:42Jocko Willink?

  which there's a lot. That's why a lot of people have a hard time with it.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people have a hard time taking ownership. And they don't, they can't overcome those barriers. And therefore, if you can't take extreme ownership of what's going on in your world, you're not going to improve anything. Cause it's not your fault. It's someone else's fault. It's the market's fault. It's the weather's fault. It's your employee's fault. It's your boss's fault. It's your wife's fault. It's your husband's fault. It's your kids' fault. It's everyone else's fault but yours. So there's nothing you can do different. No, not the way it works. Overcome those barriers. Go check out this course, Barriers to Extreme Ownership, ExtremeOwnership.com. And then we have a bunch of other courses on there. So we got an assessment too, that you can take. Anyways, go to check it out, ExtremeOwnership.com. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, come check out our leadership consultancy, EchelonFront.com. And I've also written a bunch of books about leadership.

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  Extreme Ownership, The Economy of Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. We wrote the code. As well, got some other podcasts. Just put up two new Warrior Kid, three new Warrior Kid podcasts. So if you haven't checked that out, check that out. Got Jocko podcasts and Jocko Unraveling. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, you can get some gear at jacostore.com, originusa.com, or you can get some fuel for your system at jacofuel.com. And thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out.