267: Are You Competing In The Right Things? MCDP 1-4. Pt. 4

0:00:00 - Opening 0:09:49 - MCDP 1-4. Competing. 1:46:59 - Final thoughts 1:52:31 - How to stay on THE PATH 2:05:16 - 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 267 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  And also joining us once again, becoming a regular, perhaps? I don't know, it certainly seems that way, at least when we're dealing with the Marine Corps. Dave Berke, good evening, Dave. Good evening. All right, so we are three chapters down of Marine Corps doctoral publication one, Tac Four, called Competing. We're going to knock out the last two today. I feel like we can do it. I feel like we can push through these last two because there's some examples that I'm going to skip over.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  Last time, I started this off talking about how a tactical battle that can cause strategic defeat isn't a tactical battle at all. It's actually a strategic battle.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  You got a big smile on your face when I said that last time, Dave. And then I actually heard you talking about it to a client. So that was cool. So we're soaking up knowledge here.

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  And here's something else to think about. So we're competing all the time, right? That's sort of this theme. Or as Echo would say, that's sort of the theme.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  Here's the question.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  Are we competing in the right things?

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  And this is where strategic thinking comes in again. How much time and effort am I putting into a competition that doesn't matter?

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  We have to think strategically. How often are we competing?

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  And the sole reason that we are competing is because of our ego. How often is that happening? It's insanity, actually, and it happens all the time. New car. Got to get the new car. Got to get the new car.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  Got to get the Rolex watch. Look, I got nothing against Rolex watches, whatever. I kind of do have a fondness for Timex watches, perhaps. But there's people that they want, they're competing. They're looking at my watch as if I'm a lower human being. Legitimately, I'm a lower human being because their car is nicer than mine, because their watch is nicer than mine, because they have a title at their business, right?

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  And so now I gotta compete with them. Maybe I could try to get that title. Maybe I can try and get the better watch. Maybe I can try and use the plan that I came up with instead of the plan that you came up with.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  It seems so obvious that that's not, that none of those things are good moves.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  To get, to get caught in the ecosystem competition.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Because if we take one step outside of that ecosystem, one step outside of that ecosystem and no one cares. There's no one that cares.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  About whatever that thing that seems like you need to win, you need to pour your effort into to win. And you take one step outside of that ecosystem.

• 3:11Jocko Willink?

  And, and it's meaningless.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Like, I can't tell the difference between a Rolex watch and, and the Chinese made whatever, what is that called? A knockoff? A knockoff. I can't tell the difference. Doesn't matter to me. Some, some people would freak out about that.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  We all like to win. I get it.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  I get it.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  Our egos love to win.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  Our egos love to win at everything, at anything. Our egos are addicted to winning and, just think about this. Addicted to winning.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of people that kinda, they think, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm addicted to winning. It sounds cool. Actually sounds cool. Cause I wanna be a winner, right? Obviously, be a winner.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  Because if I'm, if I'm not a winner, what am I? You're a loser. I'm a loser and I don't wanna be a loser. I wanna be a winner. Well, let me ask you this. What are you winning?

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  What are you winning? And how does that victory that you just achieved?

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  Does it move you towards your long-term strategic goal? Does it?

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  I was talking about this on EF Online today. I was talking about ruthlessly destroying my youngest daughter in Monopoly.

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  To where she doesn't want to play anymore, right? Tactical victory. I like to win. I mean, we're talking about, I think she was probably nine or 10 at the time. Couple of years ago. Annihilated her, had the entire, had every property, hotels on everything, put her into debt.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Parking place?

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  Traded, when she would land on one of me, I'd trade, you know, rent for four of her properties. Just completely annihilated her, right? Okay, great. Now, she doesn't want to play Monopoly with me anymore. She's not going to play the game with me anymore. So, that's, how is that, was that a strategic good move for me? No. Because it could be, it's a great way to teach people, it's a great way to teach your kids about investing and real estates and mortgages and loans from the banks and interest. You can do all kinds of cool stuff with Monopoly. I took all that, threw it out the window. Took it all and just threw it out the window. Why? Because I was going to just win.

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  Now, was there some strategy behind it? A little bit.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  Don't mess with dad.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  But what, but what, but really?

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  Did that victory help me? The answer is no. No. I would have been better off to had a good time, had her win. Would have been, it would have been a better strategic move to play a good game.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  Let her get some moves, let, look, win or lose doesn't even really matter, but to have a good game. A more balanced game would have been a better strategic move. Now we have something fun to do, right? And, and again, there's all these teaching points that you can educate, you can negotiate, you can do negotiation training during Monopoly. There's all kinds of things that I threw away.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  So, that's bad. And when we look at, look, we all want to say, "Oh, I'm super competitive, I'm hyper competitive." I'm gonna tell you, I know I am, and I know a lot of people are. We're competing all the time, but don't waste your time competing in short-term contests that don't lead you towards your strategic goal.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  Remember that competing in the wrong arenas is bad.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Competing in the wrong arenas is bad. Pay attention to the arena that you're competing is in. It can be bad for you, it can be bad for your family, it can be bad for your business, it can be bad for your life, and it can be bad for the world.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  Because you're focused on things that do not matter at a strategic level. That's what you're competing at. And by the way, we can all name people that win and compete and win and compete and they compete and they compete and they win every single day.

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  Every single day they win. And when you assess at the end of the day, where they end up, they end up

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  losers. Despite all those wins, they end up losing. Because they're, they're winning and they're competing in the wrong things.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  So as much as, as much as, you know, we've been sitting here this whole time talking about, "You're always competing and being, being all fired up for that." Here's the caution. Pay attention. Pay attention to what you're competing in. Make sure it's heading you in the right direction.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  You got anything on that, Dave? I saw you scratching some down.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I scratched some down. So, when you were talking about addicted to winning, I wrote down, "At all costs." "I'm gonna win at all costs." And then, as I'm listening to you talk, I wrote down, "Even if the cost is you, the cost is to yourself." And, and, and you concluded with, "What do you end up being?" "You end up being a loser." When you do that, you win all the time. And it's the willingness to compete to win at all costs. And your ego is strong enough to let you compete at all costs, even if the cost is to your own success in the long run.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. I think we talked about on this or on the underground podcast, but the winning at all costs muster thing that I did, I should, we should, I should record, I should capture that and release it. The winning at all costs setup to make everyone think, yeah, win at all costs. And then realize, oh, he's talking about something totally different. Winning at all costs means subordinating your ego, means thinking strategically, means taking losses when it makes sense.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  All things to think about. All things to think about. And with that, let's jump into, back into the final day. I'm going to go ahead and predict this is the final day of Marine Corps doctrinal publication of one tac four competing. And this first chapter is how rivals approach competition.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  Starts off, a friend of mine says that to try to describe what life is like in Russia to someone who has never been there is like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it.

• 10:09Jocko Willink?

  That's from George Kennan. And then there's another quote here, complete, competing effectively requires knowing your competition intimately. How many hundreds of times have we heard that one? Only by understanding a competitor's worldview, decision-making and behavioral proclivities can one outmaneuver that competitor. Only by grasping a rival's weaknesses and fears can one exploit them. Such understanding in turn requires sustained intellectual and economic investment. That's from Hal Brands. He's a historian.

• 10:42Jocko Willink?

  Son of HW Brands, famous historian. I guess they're both famous.

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  That's a really long sentence. Perhaps we could have just quoted Sun Tzu in that one, but it's good to show some different angles. What, why are they doing that? Well, because it's worldview. It's decision-making, it's understanding, trying to, trying to show some things that you need to understand. Cause Sun Tzu would just say, no, you're enemy. Boom, done. We're done. Here's some details.

• 11:12Jocko Willink?

  First section is called "The Test." "This chapter explores how political actors who view themselves as rivals to the United States and its allies approach competition. Usually this means states with authoritarian governments or non-state actors who ascribe to an extremist ideology."

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  In "Leadership Strategy and Tactics", there's one section where it's on page 157 and 158 where I talk about what a good leader, a new leader stepping into a leadership role, and it actually ends up just applying to all leaders, but one of the things I say in there is, "Be balanced, extreme opinions and actions are usually bad." And what's interesting about this, America, the way America's supposed to be, is balanced. That's the way it's supposed to be. And you'll notice that when they're talking about who the rivals of America are, it's talking about authoritarian governments, that's an extreme, or non-state actors that ascribe to an extreme ideology.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  So, just a clue, when we're thinking about our country, about America, we are trying to have balance, we're trying to not be extreme. That's not a good thing. We're trying to, our rivals are extreme.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, "We label these actors rivals because they either use competitive methods that run counter to accepted international norms, or they pursue interests that clash with those of the United States and its allies. Frequently, they do both." "Truly understanding how our potential rivals approach competition requires serious reflection and critical thinking." Once again, Marine Corps telling us to be reflective, and telling us to apply critical thinking. We didn't hear, we didn't hear any talk of serious reflection and critical thinking from Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the first 45 minutes of Full Metal Jacket.

• 13:18Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, "With such intellectual discipline, it will be nearly impossible for Marines to see beyond their own patterns of thought, the patterns they develop from living in an American society and serving in an organization like the Marine Corps." So you have to break out of that box that you're in.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  However, those who do this kind of intellectual work, which is a strong word, work, give themselves the opportunity, as discussed in chapter two, to create a model representing rival approaches to competition. Okay. For people like Marines who carry 100-pound rucksacks up and down a hill, who hump machine guns, who come over the beach, who dig in to foxholes, to use the word "work" to describe how we're gonna think about things, that's an important thing to note. This is not easy. It's not easy. And I'm gonna give everyone a little hint here, myself included.

• 14:21Jocko Willink?

  You know how you can do intellectual work? Echo, you got any guesses? How do you do intellectual work? How do you think about something? What does that look like?

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Me?

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Echo Charles.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  How do I do intellectual work? So, if you read about something, or listen to somebody, people, talk, or whatever, and then try to think of other examples outside of their specific context.

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay, excellent. I like this answer.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  That's the first one that came to mind.

• 14:55Jocko Willink?

  I do that all the time. Obviously, you sit here and do that with me all the time, because we're sitting here reading books and talking about the context of that book, and then what it looks like from different angles. We study the same material from war over and over again, and should look at it from a different angle.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  So, the whole idea of trying to, and again, we talked about this before, but yes, one of my biggest take, no, straight up, my biggest takeaway from this whole thing, campaign, whatever, is recognizing that there's a short game in play and a long game in play.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  So to be able to see the long game in every little move you do, that takes work. That's a good exercise, we'll say, for the work.

• 15:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I like where you're at. You brought us closer to my answer.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  Dave Berke, any additional information?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the thing I would add is when I listen to other people talk, or read or hear, or whatever that is, and it's certainly a habit that I've picked up, haven't always had this habit, it's really not the beginning of my reading life, is just trying to figure out why people think what they think. Like, why do they see it that way? And not for the sake of finding out what's wrong with them, but by actually wondering if they're seeing something that I'm not seeing. Like, why does this guy see the same problem, the same problem that I think I'm looking at, and see it so differently? And what does he see that I don't see? And a lot of where that thought came in is, in my time in the military, is when I started flying up at Top Gun,

• 16:31Speaker 02

  was the first time we really got invested in our adversary capability. So, we always knew what our threats could do, but it's kind of pretty binary, pretty linear. They can do this, they can do that, we can do this, we can have this problem, you know, get solved by when you shoot a missile, or where you maneuver, things like that. When I went up to Top Gun, I became the adversary officer. Which, I mean, my job for about a year was to pretend to be a Russian pilot, basically. Build plans, build tactics, do things. And my, what I was supposed to do was see the world through their eyes. And that actually helped me learn that when I see what they're doing, or what other people are thinking or saying, is why are they seeing the same thing differently? And that, to me, leads to what are they trying to accomplish?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  One more example, which I think is important, though that's the only reason I bring it up, is the, the ability to separate your feelings from your behavior. Because usually, like, if you're just not doing any mental work, or whatever, whatever you feel, you're gonna, your behavior's gonna reflect that, typically, we'll say. That doesn't take much work. But if you're, and the more intense the feeling, the harder work it's gonna be to change your behavior, so it's not based on those emotions, feelings, whatever. So when you can separate those two, that's work.

• 17:39Jocko Willink?

  Wait, what are we separating?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  How you feel and how you behave.

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  So, you know, when you get angry, you don't have to act angry, like, that's hard, that's work right there, for, that's mental work.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep. So... There's one, there's one more thing that I would add to these ideas. So we have read, which I definitely like. Then we're gonna read, we're gonna question. Both you kinda said the same thing like, "Hey, we're gonna question, why is that like that?" Maybe it's a little overlay of my thoughts or feelings about that, or my experiences around that. And then what I would say, intellectual work kinda requires

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  is to write, is to actually write down what you're, what you're, what you're, where you're going. And one of the most powerful things about writing things down, and this is another thing I said on EF Online today, writing things down is de facto detaching from it. So if I, if Dave's having a hard time making a decision, and I could tell him, "Hey, you need to detach", or I can say, "Hey, make a pros and cons list." He makes a pros and cons, now he's, it literally comes out of his head onto a piece of paper and he's looking at it. It's actual detachment.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  The only way I can write a cons list of my own plan is to be detached from that plan. The only way I can come up with what's wrong with it is to detach from it.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, totally. So if you're out there and you're thinking, "Okay, I wanna do some intellectual work", well, what you should do is read, you should question, and you should write down what you think, because when you're trying to write down what you think, it detaches you from the problem. Even if you're trying to write down, even if Dave hands me, you know, 20 pages of his concept about how Russians fly, what I should do is go, "Hey, thanks, Dave. I should read it", and I should actually write down, "Hey, I think these were the major points that you hit",

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  and now I'm, now I'm seeing what I'm understanding, and I'm looking at it. And I go, "Oh, wait, he also said this. Oh, wait, there's a hole over here." Dave didn't see this really super obvious thing that any idiot would have seen. I'm just kidding. But it, but it allows me to look at it from a detached perspective. So even when you're, when you're, even if you read something, even if somebody explains something to you, to capture those things, you know, even when you take notes, taking notes is part of it. Taking notes is part of it. Taking notes is part of learning.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  In, in Way the Warrior Kid, you can't just buy flashcards with math, with math problems, with a timetable. You can't just buy flashcards. You need to make them. You need to write them yourself. That's part of it. That's part of the learning process.

• 20:22Jocko Willink?

  Continues on here. We return to the OODA loop to develop our understanding of why others approach competition differently and what the implications might be. We accept that the that OODA is more than a linear process. A person's orientation interacts dynamically with the other three elements of the OODA loop. Below, we examine how a rival's orientation may be different from ours and then how and then look at how to use this knowledge to build our understanding of rival approaches to competition. So, we're just going deep into Dave Berke world. How much did you guys focus on the OODA loop at like at Top Gun?

• 21:02Speaker 02

  We we talked about it. It's embedded in there. It's funny because I talk, I teach, I guess you could say it. I teach a version of the OODA loop now, especially at the muster. My connection to the OODA loop is much more aligned with the principles of extreme ownership. We talk about prioritize and execute, observe, orient, decide, relax, look around, make a call. So I make kind of a narrow connection and and the way I teach it is is narrow by design. It's a 25 minute class. I'm not going to spend hours on this thing. And one of the things that I focus on is the action, the A part of the loop. But when this, you know, the inception of this thing, when Boyd talked about it, and if you read Boyd's description of the loop, he talks about orientation and basically says, that's the most important part. That's the most critical step. And underneath that was his recognition of how

• 21:45Speaker 02

  hard it is to do what you just described, Jocko, how hard it is for me to go, all right, let me get out of my own head, my own eyes, my own vision of this, and see it from another person's perspective. How hard it is to detach. And so as we're talking OODA and the orientation piece, he emphasized that so much. Because I think he understood it's so difficult to detach and go, what are you seeing? How are you seeing this differently? Certainly, you know, great power of competition, you could go down to an airplane. But that orientation process is really difficult to do. And that was one of the things we talked about all the time is, we would teach from one perspective and fly from another. So if as a Top Gun instructor, I would go teach you offensive BFM.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  And I would fly defensive. Sorry, sorry, that's dog fighting, one against one, basic fighter maneuvers. So the whole class I would give before you and I go fly, I'm teaching you how to be behind me, offensive. And then I would fly the flight as the instructor, the opposite side.

• 22:43Jocko Willink?

  You're trying to be behind me.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I am, you're behind me. It's designed to be that. It's you to get that picture, but the instructor has to be able to have the vision. Looking over, looking behind me, but seeing it as if I'm behind you, the ability to have your orientation. So if I'm going to be a good, if I'm going to be a qualified top gun instructor, I have to teach you how to fly. Offensive, meaning you're behind me. I had to fly that whole flight defensive. But be able to explain what happened from your perspective, from your point of view. That's what makes it so hard. That's the orientation. Because in that fight, the way it is, is you're behind me and I'm defensive. But what I'm actually teaching is I'm behind you and offensive. And it's really hard to do that.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  So this, this idea here is important because now we're not just talking about orient. Myself, it's what's your orientation? What's my rival's orientation? And that's, that's a radically different ballgame. And it's, it's funny because I always use the term perspective, right? I want to know what my enemy's perspective, or, or what my, you know, what my coworkers perspective is what? How are they oriented towards this problem? What's their perspective on this? So this is something that I talk about all the time, but I haven't connected that. What we're really doing is we're, we're seeing the, their OODA loop. What does it look like for them?

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  Orientations affects on the OODA loop. Orientation influences all other elements of the OODA loop. Because it controls, because it controls how people make sense of what they observe and because it shapes their decisions and actions. Orientation consists of all things that affect how a person understands the world, such as language, culture, genetics. Education, previous experience, etc. Humans often use mental shortcuts. Called heuristics, which we talked about on the cognitive bias program on the, on the underground. They developed four orientation. Now, this is another crazy. Web of connection.

• 24:43Jocko Willink?

  When, and I've been going off on this. When Daryl Cooper and I did one of the unraveling podcasts and I talk about, we talked about what is your story? And this whole thing, and you take that what is your story? And then you apply it to leadership and you apply it to life. That's exactly what this is. Understanding the person's story, understanding the rival's story, understanding the enemy's story, understanding your competitor's story, and also understanding your coworker's story, understanding your subordinate's story, understanding your superior's story, understanding your peer's story. All those things are playing into how they are oriented in this situation. So I'm gonna throw this out there, just a little, just a little something for you.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  If I'm having trouble with Dave, if I'm having trouble with Dave as he's my subordinate, or he's my peer, you know what's a good little drill? Is to sit down and write out what is Dave's perspective? Because now I'm gonna detach, now I'm gonna take a step back, now I'm gonna have to actually do the intellectual work. Cause I can say, oh, Dave's problem is. That's cool, but that's not intellectual work. That's intellectual doodling. And I'm pointing at Echo Charles when I say that, because Echo Charles has a tendency to doodle sometimes during this podcast. Intellectual doodling is, oh, Dave's problem is. Intellectual work is, you know what?

• 26:09Jocko Willink?

  I need to sit down and write down what is Dave's perspective? Why does he care about this project? Why is he so concerned about the timeline? Why is he, say he needs more people when he's never asked for? Those are really good questions. If I answer those questions and do the intellectual work, I will actually make progress and do a better job of understanding what his perspective is and how he's oriented in this situation.

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  For example, back to the book, when people learn to drive a car, they gain experience in making a right turn. At first, they consciously look through, think through each step, such as engaging the turn signal, looking in their mirrors for other traffic, tapping the brake pedal, turning the wheel. In a relatively short time, this experience becomes a mental shortcut so that when a driver recognizes a pattern, their brain knows as right turn, they automatically go through the steps of making the right turn with little or no need for conscious thought about it. Apply that mental, a similar type of mental shortcut also happens with great frequency, often in more complex or dangerous situations. So we're not thinking, or we're taking shortcuts, mental shortcuts. What do you got, Dave?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  I gotta be careful, man. We might not get through this one.

• 27:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm starting to freak out.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  God, but this is, there's so much in here. You said this, I think, on the last podcast was this, I know this publication is about competing with our global rivals here, but this doesn't have to be about a competitor all the time, a competitor all the time. It can, it can be the people on your team.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  The people that you're trying to help. And I think the way you're describing it is, is, I mean, that's leadership at its core. And I was just thinking of how, what an advantage that you have. If you can understand from their perspective, why they're doing what they're doing. And of course, it helps with your competition. If you know why that chess player is moving the pieces the way that he is, that's a huge advantage. But think about how you can help your people. And this is just the idea that this understanding of their perspective, the leadership power that you have to understand that. And the impact you can have to help them make good decisions, or help them get to what they want to get, or accomplish what they want to accomplish, by understanding their perspective. And you use the example all the time. We talk about kids and,

• 28:21Speaker 02

  and that's actually one thing we can do is I remember what it's like to be that my 12 year old daughter and the thing, and it's easy to dismiss it and be like,

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Get annoyed with them for behaving or acting or reacting to a situation a certain way unless you go, oh, you know what? I actually remember what that feels like to be in her situation. I know where she's coming from. I know why she sees this thing as such a huge deal. And if I take that perspective, that orientation, it's so much easier for me to guide her to where I want her to be, to help her, not as a competitor, but someone I actually want to help. So just the connection between the orientation, the competition and the next piece is actually to lead them.

• 28:57Jocko Willink?

  The, that saying, hey, don't forget, don't forget where you came from. Like when I became an officer in the SEAL Teams, you know, don't forget where you came from, man. That's a real thing. That's a real thing and you don't want to forget where you came from. What is the thing that you don't want to forget? You don't want to forget that perspective. I wrote about leadership strategy and tactics. I remembered being the last guy on a patrol. No idea where we're going, no, no idea how much further we have to go until we get there. No idea when we're going to get a break, no idea if there's any streams up ahead where we can get water. No, I don't know anything and I hated it. And when I was in charge, I remembered, I didn't forget where I came from. I didn't forget what it was. I didn't forget the perspective of being an AW in the back of the train.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  So it's like the opposite of the curse of knowledge. Remember that cognitive bias, the curse of knowledge, when you kind of forget that you know everything and everyone else doesn't. It's the opposite of that.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  I wouldn't, I don't know if it's the opposite of that, but it's a similar thing where I think everybody knows what I know.

• 29:55Jocko Willink?

  And in this case, don't forget. Yeah, I guess it is. I guess it is. You could utilize that cognitive bias as a warning. Hey, make sure that everybody, not everybody knows what you know.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Continue on. It is essential for Marines to understand the role a person's orientation plays in the choices they make and how this relates to the actions they take in the world. This also applies to groups of people where a kind of collective orientation can work in a similar way. Oh, wow. If everyone on the team sees something the same way, it's going to be a better, it's going to be an easier team to lead and they're going to get more stuff done and they're going to get it done quicker.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the now that when you said all the earlier podcasts, the whole reason that I was so fired up for this podcast is because it's not just about competing. It's it's equally about leadership.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  My my note on the cover of this says, uh, competing and then or influencing, which is leadership.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  This.

• 30:59Jocko Willink?

  This also applies to groups of people where a kind of collective orientation can work in a similar way. We must constantly study the components of a rival's orientation if our understanding of their approach to competition is to be youthful, useful in crafting our own campaign. Keep in mind that two people can look at a set of facts and come to very different conclusions about what these facts mean. This applies to groups of people as well. As we learn in chapter two narratives, narratives, stories, narratives are what people use to give meaning to facts. Isn't that an interesting way of saying it? A narrative in this sense is a story that explains how the world works.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  This narrative or story is constructed from the components, language, culture, experience, found in orientation. Thus, people make sense of the world based on their orientation. And again, the the podcast that that Daryl and I did on this.

• 31:57Jocko Willink?

  Called what is your story on the on the unraveling podcast? The way that the mind works to formulate stories so that you can survive and make sense of the world. There's all these, we we covered them on the podcast, but these psychological experiments that that psychologists have done. That show clearly that we will connect the dots in our own head and just believe that to be the truth. We will, we will make up a story. It's the extreme of, you know, leadership strategy and tactics of, um, hey, if you, if you, if you don't tell the team what's going on, they're going to make up a story. It's not going to be a good one, by the way. That's what we do. So we do it in groups. We'll fill in the blanks all day long. You're if you're in a SEAL platoon and you don't know where you're going, believe me, guess where you're going?

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  You're going to to to Siberia for a six month deployment. That's what's happening.

• 32:52Jocko Willink?

  And then you know I got fired up with the title of this next section. Language shapes behavior. Isn't that interesting there? 1984, George Orwell. Which some people have commented, Echo Charles.

• 33:08Jocko Willink?

  That you didn't read that book in high school.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  Scary. We think it's scary.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  I don't even know if it was because they didn't assign it, or because I refused to read it after it was assigned.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  Refused or, or?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Failed to.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Just wanted to make sure the language that we were using was going to shape our behavior in a correct manner.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Did you unread it?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  We didn't have that book. I don't think we had that book.

• 33:35Jocko Willink?

  Check. It's a hard book to get. I mean, it's...

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm just kidding. People use words to describe things around them and to describe what is happening in the world. These words influence their actions. Language affects groups of people in a similar way as the words they choose provide the meaning they want to communicate to each other.

• 33:58Jocko Willink?

  The words they choose provide the meaning they want to communicate to each other. The meaning that is understood then causes the group to act in one way or another. Note that this applies to the word competition. In the Western world, the word has various meanings that bring to mind sporting events or perhaps two businesses trying to win market share. When we add descriptors to the word like great power competition or nation-state competition, the context the descriptors provide adjusts our understanding of the competition we face. Have you ever heard that?

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  The Eskimos have 100 different words for snow. Fact or fiction? Where you at?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. Oh, the fact that they have 100 different words? Hundred? 100? I don't think that that's true.

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  Dave? Fact or fiction?

• 34:49Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say it's not true. It's probably just a saying.

• 34:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  But it probably is rooted in something, yeah, maybe that is a lot more than just one word.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, like fourteen words or something like this.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  I don't know how many words. It's probably a lot.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  Um, this is really dumb of me to do this. I like did research and didn't write it down. I think the number is around fifty. There's around fifty words and but but it's words for like frost versus snow on the ground versus snow in the air versus hard pack snow versus soft powdery snow. They they do have different words.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I remember I was telling you in in Hawaiian, there's different words for water. It's for that exact same reason. There's ocean water. There's river water. There's a rain that, you know, it's different words.

• 35:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and those are really actually very different things. I mean, let's face it. Those are really different things. Why don't we have? Well, I guess we have the descriptor, ocean water, river water, lake water.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but why some things need the descriptor and one things kind of need a whole different word, you know? What's the differentiator really? I don't know. It's a mystery. Hey, look, if you're gonna be like, if you're gonna be like, hey, rainwater, river water, lake water, waterfall, ocean water, wave, these are all things may that have water in it. Why not just go go deeper? Go oxygen. There's oxygen in all these other things.

• 36:07Jocko Willink?

  I was I was trying to think of an example of like, well, what words actually are like that? Here's one. Road. We have a road.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  We have a highway. We have an exit.

• 36:21Jocko Willink?

  We have what? Okay, there's three words.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Well, then then there's street.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  Street. Okay, good, good. Yes, thank you.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  There's a bunch more. And the connection to it is like, yeah, it's like, it's about, I think it's about perspective and the orientation of it. Oh, by the way, like, I was thinking of, we said snow, I was like, well.

• 36:40Jocko Willink?

  If it's, is it, I don't know, is it, is it a dusting? Or is it like a dumping, like the perspective that actually really matters? Like what would you go do and what road? I don't know. Is it a like unpaved, single lane, you know, dirt?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Hardball.

• 36:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. Hey, and if you're gonna go on one of those crazy hikes, is it like? What kind of road is it?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  And that's the, the word you described is gonna matter a lot based on, on your perspective on that.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  Mysteries. We're never gonna get through this.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I'm saying where's, where's the line? You know, where do you draw the line? But yeah, you're right.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  Compare the Western use of the word competition to words authoritarian governments use to label the same relationship. The contrast helps us see how language might shape behavior. For example, some rivals use struggle. Or embracing while fighting.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  Which is a pretty cool thing. We call that jujitsu, by the way. Embracing while fighting to name what we know as competition. To most Marines, hearing something described as struggle or fighting would shape an initial reaction quite a bit different than if we had heard described as competition. Because of the mental shortcuts built into how we learn to use the words and what our experience tells us those words typically mean. This should alert us that we need to employ critical thinking. When considering the language our competitors use. It can and does cause them to approach the situation from a different perspective. Which leads them to consider using different tools than we might choose.

• 38:16Jocko Willink?

  That's just.

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  If you don't think through that right there, you're just gonna fall short. If you don't think about how your competitor or wait, more important.

• 38:28Jocko Willink?

  What is your, what is your subordinate? How, what words are they choosing? Wait.

• 38:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm getting, oh, I'm in charge of this? Oh, I'm in, hey, Echo, hey, why don't you take charge of this? And then I hear Echo in the locker room going, yeah, Jaco tasked me with.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you see, as opposed to like, yeah, I'm gonna be running this now. Oh.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:51Jocko Willink?

  We're saying the exact same thing, totally different meaning.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:54Jocko Willink?

  One Echo is happy about, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be running this now. And one is, hey, Jaco tasked me with doing this. Of course, I'm throwing some tone on there, I guess.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's true, though. Like, if, you know, if you tell me, hey, you're in charge of mowing the lawn.

• 39:08Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay, you know, I'll take some response, you know, that's the feeling, you know? But if you'd be like, hey, you gotta go do some chores and not, and one of them is going, that, that's your problem. How about that? Mowing the lawn, that's your problem now. Kind of like, I don't want to do it. You, you're gonna do it. Both situations, I gotta do it. Same deal, man.

• 39:29Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. Different attitude, though. Different approaches. If I understand the approach, if I understand that the words that I use when I ask you about it, and I understand that those words reveal the situation clear for me as a leader to make decisions, that's a powerful thing. And of course, it applies to our competition as well.

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  The words people pick to describe things can also reveal biases or tendencies, which is what I just said, and these things can be exploited. Our competitors across the globe recognize Western society's tendency to think of themselves as either in a condition of at peace or at war.

• 40:05Jocko Willink?

  This is a significant contrast from Mao Zedong's political, politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with, with bloodshed. Mao chose the word war.

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  He chose the word war to describe the enduring relationship between political actors, and in essence, said that while the relationship is violent some of the time, it's always at a state of war.

• 40:30Jocko Willink?

  Marines must consider how using words like these differs from how the United States describes it and the corresponding impact these differences might have on the ways and means a rival might use in competition.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  Man, they're think, you're thinking we're in competition, they're thinking we're at war.

• 40:56Jocko Willink?

  The culture of a group can be defined as the group's accumulated shared learning of how to solve internal and external problems. The group, this is culture, by the way, I missed that. The title of this is culture. The culture of a group can be defined as the group's accumulated shared learning of how to solve internal and external problems. The group then determines that this shared learning is valid, so the new members learn it as they, as the correct way to perceive it, to perceive, think, feel, and behave. That's what culture is. New members come on and that culture is going to tell them how to perceive things, how to think, how to feel, and how to behave. The group then starts to take this accumulated learning for granted as a system of beliefs, values, and behavioral norms. This is culture. This

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  is what you're trying to build inside your company. This is what you're trying to build inside your team. This is what you're trying to build inside your platoon. When this happens, the system turns into, turns into basic assumptions and eventually drops out of the, out of conscious awareness. You want that culture so ingrained that people aren't even thinking about it.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  What's the deal, uh, Dave? What's the deal with Marines wearing flip flops on base?

• 42:07Jocko Willink?

  Is that legal or illegal? Illegal.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  So, being that, when I was, you know, when I was in the derves, and I would go to MCRD, right? Yeah. And I would, you know, I would have like a, a short haircut, and I would be dressed, you know, just whatever. And I, you know, surf shorts, t-shirt, flip flops. And sometimes, occasionally, I would get a look, a second look. Oh, yeah. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you could see, and you, and I never actually had anybody say anything to me. I never had somebody cross over and say, "Hey, Marine."

• 42:48Jocko Willink?

  And maybe it's because by this point, I never really went to MCRD a lot until I was a little older. You know, if I would have been younger, I probably had gotten called out.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's good to know. So that's culture, right?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:00Jocko Willink?

  I mean, so that's the culture in the Marine Corps. You don't wear flip flops with civilian clothes.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Certainly not on base. I mean, I remember one of my first overseas deployments where my wife actually came and spent a little time with me, which is kind of uncommon. It was a Japan deployment. So, you know, not obviously a common deployment, but she came out and spent a little time and just up the road was the seven day store, which is like on every Marine base, you can get like, you know, sodas or whatever. And you can rent videos or do and there she was in there getting something and two young Marines walked in and there was like a Marine gunnery sergeant just standing there on a Saturday afternoon, not doing anything, but at the front door and every Marine that showed up with flip flops, he made him turn, made him leave. And it was like a three quarter mile walk. Getting up there was a total bummer. You know, it was like, I don't have vehicles. They're young

• 43:44Speaker 02

  kids are 18 years old. And just the looks on those young Marines faces, just the dejected look. And she came back and she's like, what is the deal? I'm like, Marines don't wear flip flops. That's the deal. But that's the, you know, that's, that's the culture.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  That's the culture.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  And, you know, you can argue all day long about, hey, you know, is this a big deal or is not a big deal? There's an argument that says like, dude, is it a big deal? You can make that argument. And then the other argument is, what is more important than the culture in the Marine Corps? So I of course was like, the Marines don't wear flip flops on base. Like that's, what else is there for me to say? Yeah, exactly.

• 44:19Jocko Willink?

  Marines don't wear flip flops. Thank you.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Period. Next question.

• 44:22Jocko Willink?

  Beer now.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  But yeah, that's a thing. That's absolutely a thing.

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that, so that's like the perfect culture, right? That's the perfect, exactly why I asked you that question. Cause what is more important than the culture of Marine Corps?

• 44:37Jocko Willink?

  Marines don't wear flip flops. Period. End of story. There's a level of professionalism that is, we don't go below.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  And I just use the word we to describe the Marine Corps.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  Culture is similar to a computer's operating system. It is the basic rule set about how the computer works, but it operates in the background. We have to purposefully examine the operating system if we want to learn how it affects the computer's operations. Culture is like this rule set, operating in the background while influencing a group's thoughts and actions.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  Culture like an operating system receives updates and adjustments over time as more is learned and as it adjusts to new threats and opportunities. Culture however changes organically while an operating system relies on human intervention. Now what's interesting about that is you have to check your culture sometimes. How do you check your culture? I'll give you one guess. What you do is you take a step back and you write down what the culture is. Now here's where you might be led astray. I might think, oh, I want to know about the culture of my platoon. So I write down, my platoon, you know, gets to work first. My platoon puts the job first. My platoon, we take care of each other. My platoon, we

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  look sharp all the time. Whatever, whatever these things are. That's the culture in your platoon.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  I can't just say, I can't just interject a new culture line into that and have it just be, well, that's the new, that's, that's now the culture. You can't do that. Cultures, how are they describing it? Cultures organic. Now, listen, over time, you can make it, you know, hardcore Ricondos, hardcore Ricondos, right? The 439th with Hackworth. He interjected, hey, from now on, the, the salutation is hardcore Ricondos, no fucking slack. And he says, at first, what did they do? They laughed. Go, go lifer. Who's this freaking lifer? Right?

• 46:46Jocko Willink?

  And then it started to creep in, started to creep into the consciousness. So you can't interject something and just expect it to be accepted. And, and, but as he, as you interject something, and if you are a good leader, and you set a good example, and you start keeping your troops alive, which Hackworth did, and you start going on offense, and you start winning, and people start to embrace these things that you brought on board, you can make that culture have a shift. So what you have to be careful of, though, what you have to be careful of, and why it's good to step back and do an assessment and write down what you think your culture is, is so you can make sure there's nothing in there that says, platoon comes first, screw everyone else. We don't want that culture. Now we need

• 47:28Jocko Willink?

  to start thinking, okay, I know I can't just line out, screw everyone else, and now we're good. I have to say, how am I gonna slowly, organically change this culture into what it should be?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Dude, that's not easy, man. I mean, like you're describing that, I mean, God, I'm almost embarrassed to give my version of that or my example of that as a commander because compared to Hackor, that's just so ridiculous. But when I took command, my, my first operational command as an F-35 squadron commander was the very first F-35 squadron in the Marine Corps, ever. And what I was given in that squadron were Hornet guys and Harrier guys. And there were West Coast Hornet guys and East Coast Hornet guys. And you know this probably similar in the teams, East Coast and West Coast, they're actually, in a lot of ways, very different. So if you flew Hornets on the West Coast, you got a lot of cultural norms that are different than Hornets on the East Coast. And then I got a whole different, so I had four different cultures, really. Hornets, Harriers, East Coast, West Coast.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  And the first thing, one of the first things I instituted when I got there as the commander, it's always like, we're F-35 guys. There's no more Hornet guy, there's no, and I don't care if your background, if you flew Harriers in Cherry Point or Hornets in Japan, it doesn't matter. Because there was some connotation like, oh, the Hornet guys were better air to air, the Harrier guys are better to air to ground because that's where they came from. Well, this new airplane, we need to do it all. So it was, there was some resistance of, that's where I came from. That's my identity and that's what we are. And it took some time to resist against, to push against that. But what I wanted the rest of the world to know about us was this is what we do. Not, this is where we used to do, this is where it came from. And so even some simple resistance of that, where I thought, everyone's going to be on board with that.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  It took some time for guys to release that, that former identity of what, what we were. And I think in some ways it's good because it speaks to how strong the culture is. But the bigger issue is how hard it is to change the culture. And if they don't buy into it, it's not, it's never going to happen. If they don't buy into that, that change, that change will not happen.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  Has to be, has to be organic. It has to take, it's going to take time. You have to plant the seeds. You have to let, you have to let it grow inside their own minds, right? You can do your best to plant seeds, but it's going to have to come from inside. You can't really impose, it's very difficult. Can't say you can't. It's difficult to impose culture.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  Although culture has a wide variety of attributes, we will highlight time, risk, and mindset as we consider how culture might affect the way our rivals approach competition. Collectivists, or group-focused cultures, emphasize the importance of the group over the individual and often feel compelled to reach decisions by gaining consensus, which frequently takes time to develop. From an American orientation, this may appear to take too long. From a collective culture orientation, achieving consensus might be considered so important that taking months or even years to reach a decision is given higher priority. Neither perspective is objectively right or wrong, but each is logically consistent

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  when viewed from its respective cultural orientation.

• 50:42Jocko Willink?

  I have a note here. My note says both these are wrong from a leadership perspective.

• 50:49Jocko Willink?

  Let them come up with the plan, let them come up with the idea, and provide support to it. That's a lot faster. It's a lot faster for me to say, "Hey, Dave, you know, hey, what does your team want to do here? I'll tell you what, come up with a plan and brief me on the plan." I'm not arguing. I'm not looking for consensus. I'm just looking for a good idea that's pretty close and we're going to run with it.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Just think, how much easier does it get consensus when you're not trying to create the consensus?

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, wait, I agree. Okay, we're done, we're done trying, we're done trying to get consensus.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I love your idea.

• 51:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, your idea is awesome.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  What about when there's nine people? Cool, help guide those, guide those nine people to give consensus to each other. Consensus is, consensus becomes a battle when you inject ego into it.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, we just ask some questions and we figure out what the best solution is and we move forward.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  I had a question the other day, two days ago.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  What do you do when you keep, when you check your ego, but you still want to do your plan? So someone talking about two people on their team. They both had different plans, same outcome, but the different ways to do it. What happens when you check your ego and still want to do your plan? Like, well, actually, if you check your ego and you see that their plan is going to get to the same outcome, you'll do their plan. And it was kind of like, how often would you do that? My answer was 100% of the time. Or, or at a minute, like, as often as humanly possible.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  And just the only, how many, the only barrier to the things you're trying to accomplish, the barrier to consensus is you. It's if, as long as you're aligned, as long as you're going to the same place, the only reason why you won't do it their way is your ego. And the minute you agree to do it their way, you have alignment and consensus and you're moving. And it's, your life gets so much better.

• 52:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because when I want to do it my way and Dave wants to do it Dave's way, and I spend nine hours trying to present my case and he's arguing against me and he's actually going to do some research and bringing back some facts and figures. We already executed the plan. And I said, hey, Dave, that looks pretty good. Go with it. And by the way, also now, when I say, hey, Dave, dude, your plan looks awesome. Let's roll with it. How can I support? And then two hours later, go, hey, Dave, there's this thing over here. Do you think I could adjust this? What's your attitude? Your attitude's up. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Make my plan even better. Right? That's what we're doing. And, and you mentioned it, the only time that we're, the only time I can't come to consensus with you, if like, I'm not getting there. If we can't figure out like my plan or your plan, I need to say, okay, wait, wait, wait a second.

• 53:35Jocko Willink?

  Where, where, where do you actually want to go? Well, you know, are we aligned? Because if we're not actually going to the wrong, to the same place, if we're going to the same place, subordinate your ego and let's go. I'm good.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 53:44Jocko Willink?

  This sounds like a great plan, Dave.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  It's gonna take an extra two hours.

• 53:48Jocko Willink?

  Cool. I'm net five hours gained because I didn't spend seven hours arguing.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  Different orientations also result in different attitudes towards identifying and weighing risk. This may lead to behavior that is surprising to us. For example, Chinese and Russian ships and aircraft have maneuvered in close proximity to US forces, which appears to us as unnecessarily dangerous and operating against agreed international protocols. We may especially view such behavior as strange when we think of ourselves as at peace with them. Taking these risks might look quite different from another viewpoint. Operating this way may seem justified to those who see themselves in a condition of war without bloodshed or embracing without fighting.

• 54:38Jocko Willink?

  Finally, different cultures produce different mindsets. As mentioned above, culture is a system of beliefs, values, and behavioral norms that operate in the background below the level of conscious awareness. This produces a frame of mind that seeks to make the right choice in a given situation with "right" being defined by these background factors. They have both those "rights" in quotes. This produces a frame of mind that seeks to make the "right" this choice in a given situation with "right" being defined by those background factors. This is also often labeled intuition. When somebody makes an intuitive choice while within

• 55:21Jocko Willink?

  their own culture, the choice is often judged as correct by others from that culture. This is because the criteria they use to determine if correct aligns with the beliefs, values, and norms that originally informed the intuitive choice. However, people from a different culture have different judging criteria originating from different values, beliefs, and norms, which leads them to intuitive choices likely quite different from ours. It will be difficult for people to explain why they made these choices because the criteria they used are below conscious thoughts.

• 56:00Jocko Willink?

  That's why when you are building a team, that's why culture is the purest form of decentralized command. Because, because they're making decisions without even, without even thinking about it. And they're making the right decisions. If the culture is there, they can make a decision without even thinking about it. Without even thinking about it. They're making the right decision with, with no thought because the culture is strong. That's what we're trying to do. Hey, should I, should I cut corners on this safety protocol? No, actually, I'm not even thinking about it. I'm going to do the right thing. Hey, Dave, actually, hey, you can't go out there without your proper PPE. Oh yeah, sorry, got it. Nah, you know what?

• 56:45Jocko Willink?

  I'm not going to say anything. Well, if the culture's there, the decision's already made. The decision's already made. We're doing the right thing. Think about that with everything that you're doing inside your organization. Your culture should drive decision-making all the way down to the frontline troops. And if you don't have good culture, what do you end up? You end up with Abu Ghraib. You end up with some frontline troops that are out there on their own. They don't have good culture and they do dumb things. Dumb things that have a negative strategic impact. And I don't throw that around, that word around lightly.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and of course I wrote DC in the margins. As you're reading that, I write down DC and you're coming back to that. And you even went like, that's a, you're talking deep decentralized. I mean, all the way down at the highest level of your, if you're running a team and just the, the, the basic level of decentralized command is what that culture allows them to do is make decisions without asking you questions. You know, and the first step of a decentralized command is, well, I've got seven people on my team. I can't be with them all the time and I need them to do stuff without me. How do I make that happen? And the culture's what allows that to happen. So they don't go, hmm, maybe I should call Jaco to see what I should do in this situation. I don't have to call you because I know what to do. So at the most basic level there.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  And then that, there's just a little warning inside there though. That's just that tiny little warning that you highlighted is, oh, by the way, right is in quotes. So just, just. Let's not, let's not be so committed to our culture that we don't recognize that that has to evolve over time as well. And we don't have to, just like you said, write down and make sure, hey, are, are my people not even critically thinking about anything anymore? Those decisions that are subconscious and so natural, am I to the point now where, where they are almost like devoid of consciousness of contemplating, is this the right thing to do in the big picture? And that the orientation, and I'm just pulling it back to the orientation

• 58:50Speaker 02

  of when it's, it's almost perceived like an error. When somebody on my team, the team that has good culture, they do something that's, that's an outlier. It's like a, it's like the crash on the computer. Like it is so obvious in this operating system. You have a massive error and everybody sees it. But they made this point of like, that it might, they might not even be able to explain why they did it because it's below the level of consciousness. They are seeing something. Their perception is different. And you, that's a, that is a warning.

• 59:20Jocko Willink?

  It's a warning. It's a warning that their culture is not there.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  I, I got two things on this. Number one, this is just a classic example that happened today. Jamie, Operations Director, Echelon Front, I'm talking to Pete, Origin, and we're going over something. And Jamie calls me, I'm like, I'll call you back. You know, give me five. I text her. Talking to Pete, 45 seconds later, or two minutes later, she texts me, don't worry, made the call. And you know what I wrote back? Approved. I don't even know what the call was. I don't know what she was talking about. But I know that Jamie, she called me kind of probably as just like a basic check, but then she's like, I've

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  got this. Yeah. That's number one. Now, number two, I used to, I used to give this example of decentralized command, extreme ownership.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  Of, I try to think of the most extreme example of where I'm the CEO of a manufacturing company. And there's a thousand people that work in each one of my 10 factories. So we've got 10,000 people. And one of those people has a job where they're in a room by themselves. And their job is to take part A and put it on top of part B. And, and, and that's it. Take part A, put it on top of part B and let it go.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  And if that person screws that up and doesn't do it right, how can that be my fault? Right? How can that possibly be my fault? And there's, there's, it's, it's really easy to fall in the trap of, well, actually Doc, I mean, if you've got 10 factories, they have a thousand people each. This is one person that's literally the front line. This is a minimum wage individual. How can that possibly be your fault? And that's, that's a, that's a, the reasoning behind that is pretty, that's pretty good logic. Look, there's 10,000 people. In 10 factories, there's one guy in one room. He's the lowest paid guy and he screws up this, this job. How can that possibly be my fault?

• 1:01:42Jocko Willink?

  You know what? That can't be my fault. You know, fire the guy, move on. That's one thing. And I can fire the guy and move on. Right? Here's the problem with that. What did I change? What did I change? I didn't change anything. So if I, if I take extreme ownership of that and say, hey, listen, here's what's going on. I, I didn't get the guy trained upon as well as I should have. I didn't explain to, or you know, it's not in the system. It's not in the training. I haven't set up proper training. I don't have the manager explaining why it's important for A to go on top of B. I haven't given the training. I haven't screened my people properly because maybe this guy just isn't capable. Maybe he doesn't have the, the cognitive capacity to do that function. That's also my fault. So, so all these things, and all these things are things that I will change.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  And that's gonna make us move in the right direction. And look, am I gonna ever get to a point where no one's gonna make a mistake in that room on those? No, I'm not. But I'm gonna mitigate it as much as possible every single time. And that's infinitely better than saying, "Oh, it's not my fault. It's a frontline guy. Fire him and move on." No. Take ownership of it. How can we prevent this from happening? So I always, that was kind of my example of how I could really isolate someone that's just totally detached. I was talking to a company the other day. And I was like, I think this one might be even better. If one of my SEALs at my training command, where I've got 150 SEALs, one of my SEALs gets drunk out in town and gets into a

• 1:03:09Jocko Willink?

  fight and gets arrested. How can that possibly be my fault? And maybe it's easier to understand. Of course, what have I done wrong? I haven't explained why it's important not to get in trouble. I haven't explained the behavior. I haven't explained how it impacts negatively impacts the team. I haven't explained how it negatively impacts the training that you're supposed to be teaching. I haven't explained to him how important it is for his family and how this is gonna get him busted and how it's gonna get him to lose pay. And I haven't explained that your negative impact to the teams impacts America, by the way. And so, look, am I gonna prevent every person from, you know, every guy on my command from ever? No. But I'm at least going to make efforts to prevent that from happening. And what's the best way to do

• 1:03:54Jocko Willink?

  that? The best way to do that is through culture. The best way to do that is through culture, is by saying, "Listen, our mission here is to get these guys trained up so they can go and be prepared to go overseas, do their mission, and bring all the guys home as much as humanly possible." That's what our mission is. Everything else doesn't even, doesn't even come close. That's what we do. That's what we do every single day. We save our friends' lives every day by giving them the best training.

• 1:04:25Jocko Willink?

  You gotta get that culture. So that's on me. That's on me as a leader and I gotta, I gotta look at the culture. I gotta step, take a step back and say, what is the culture? And am I going to be able to change it overnight? No, I'm not. Is any leader gonna be able to change it overnight? No, we're not.

• 1:04:39Jocko Willink?

  But do you need to start shifting in the right direction? Yes, you do. And by the way, who's in charge of culture at an organization? Every single person that's there. If you're in a, if you're in an organization, you're, you are the culture. The way you act impacts the culture. The way you think impacts the culture. The way you behave impacts the culture.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that should be empowering. That should make you feel good. That look, my boss acts like an idiot. Doesn't matter. Our culture doesn't, I'm not gonna act like an idiot.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  What you tolerate impacts the culture. You're telling that story. I'm just thinking about why Marines don't wear flip flops on base.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  And what you tolerate impacts the culture. I mean, that, that whole story, I mean,

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Echo, what, what was, and I'm embarrassed, I'm losing the word. We're talking about last time, when you, when you eat a donut, you convince yourself it's okay. It's not justification. What's the word that, that you, you tell yourself?

• 1:05:38Jocko Willink?

  Negotiation?

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  No, when you, when you convince, yeah, the rationalization. And they talked about it last time. It's like how that's all, those are all lies you tell yourself. You rationalize it, you justify it as, hey, there are 10,000 people in this company. Come on, man. I'm one guy. What do you really expect from me? I'm supposed to now manage the junior guy at the, at the farthest away plant on a different time zone. It's just, and the, that scenario, we get asked that question, some form of that question all the time. And there's a rationalization of, I can't, I can't actually do that.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  And when you rationalize that or convince yourself of that, what happens is nothing changes.

• 1:06:18Jocko Willink?

  Nothing changes.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Nothing changes. And how easy it is to go, well, look at this scenario. Dude, it's not four people in the same room. It's, that's my overseas plant with a different country and a different, like, cool, you can rationalize your way out of it and guess what's gonna happen? A is not gonna go on top of B and that product isn't gonna work.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  There was a little uh like guideline that I kinda implemented, obviously on a very low level. But when you would you would talk about extreme a long time ago, when you talk about extreme ownership and those kinds of scenarios where it's like on the surface, it's real obvious that's not your responsibility seemingly, right?

• 1:06:53Jocko Willink?

  Right, okay. Just making sure we're saying seemingly, make sure it's the, okay, cool.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so basically the little guidelines would be like, okay, don't look at it like whose fault it is or isn't. Just consider that automatically it's your like, let's say you weren't even part of the whole situation. You're just some outside consultant, I don't know, consultant, whatever. Let's say you were tasked with, hey, from an external perspective, what moves can you make to be sure that that never happens again? So instead of like, cause you know, when you say extreme ownership, I'm gonna take the blame. That blame kinda indicates that like, oh, you should get in trouble, kind of a thing, which can kinda trigger some people, I think.

• 1:07:30Jocko Willink?

  It makes people scared.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Jocko Willink?

  It makes people scared, but you shouldn't be scared because who do I want? Who do I want working for me? Dave that comes in and says, hey, project failed because the contractors didn't do their job. Or Echoes that says, hey, project failed because I didn't do a good job managing the contractor to make sure they held the line.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. So the, so like I said, like an easier way to get to the point where you can understand, okay, this is on me, is to kinda use that guideline, like pretend in your head kinda thing, like what if you're tasked with making sure it never happened again? And that's when all those little things that you would always say start to make so much more sense where it's like, oh yeah, because there is a scenario where that guy who's putting, trying to put A on top of B where, where like he straight up just doesn't like you, he doesn't like this company, he doesn't even want the job. He just, his grandma told him to get it, you know, all this stuff, right? And he should not be there, right?

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  And whose fault is that that he's there?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Exactly, but again, let's not look at it, whose fault did I'm saying as far as my little guideline scenario.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  So no, this isn't a guideline. What this is, this is the little, this is a nice little crutch. Crutch, yeah. Nice little crutch to use that kinda helps you, that kinda helps you move towards this direction. So look, yes, if your ego has a hard time saying this was my fault, if you need the crutch of like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at this and just see what I can do to make sure that doesn't happen again.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  If you need that crutch, go for it. And maybe Echo Charles is gonna write a book called.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  How to sort of take ownership of some stuff without feeling bad about it.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, the last part was acceptable, but here's the thing. Okay, Dave, yeah, you like.

• 1:09:09Jocko Willink?

  I was just picturing the title, "The Crush: How Echo Sort of Leads a Win."

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Anyway, I'm just saying that will help solve the problem of these scenarios where it's like, "How could I possibly be responsible for XYZ?" Like, that, to me, made it like a lot more clear, way more automatically.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, made it easier for you to digest.

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of sugar with the medicine.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Next section, "How Rivals View the Competitive Environment." Rivals operating from within different systems often perceive that they are under threat, especially competitors with authoritarian governments. Regime survival is usually the top priority in these states. Yeah, look at, look at North Korea, how it's all just like, "We're, we are about to be attacked."

• 1:10:01Jocko Willink?

  "These rivals also look for opportunities to reduce perceived threats while also working to expand their competitive options. Our rivals constantly study the elements of US national power in an effort to exploit, to either, either to offset US advantages or to find scenes to exploit. For example, the Soviet Union during the Cold War developed an elaborate system to measure the correlation of forces between the United States and the USSR, which was further broken down into correlation of economic forces, the correlation of military forces, etc. The thought process heavily influences Russia today as they continue to deeply study the United States. Sun Tzu's famous statement, "Know your enemy, know yourself," highlights a perhaps even deeper cultural imperative for China to study the United States and the West." Damn, that's true.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  Finally, "Some rivals have a different outlook about the legitimacy of using aggressive action, like offensive cyber operations, interference in another state's internal politics, disinformation, etc." You can tell this is a recently written document. "to change the status quo in international relations." Their actions, their actions show they do not feel bound by standing international agreements and norms unless they can use those agreements.

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  To their advantage. Instead, their behavior shows they recognize resource constraints or hard power deterrence as the only kind of limits they might respect. This is when you're playing by different rules, basically. This is when two people, two, two countries are playing by two different rules. And there's just violations. I know that's one of your favorite words, Echo Charles. Violations. People do violations that they can kind of know that they can get away with.

• 1:11:43Jocko Willink?

  And we are sitting here like, you're not allowed to do that. And they're like, what, what, what do you think we're doing? Almost one of those. Well, what do you think I'm doing? Of course, of course, I'm gonna heel hook you. We're wearing gi. Oh, well, you know, we're grappling, kind of, right?

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  Differing approach to competition campaigning. This is the next section. All the above leads to a permanent struggle mindset. It's a good way to go through life with a permanent struggle mindset.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  This is like enduring competition is what we're calling it. Hey, we're always competing. They're calling it permanent struggle.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Do you think the word struggle has a kind of, what do you call it? Like a, like a, like a flavor of like you're losing? Does it kind of imply that you're kind of losing?

• 1:12:33Jocko Willink?

  I think I get what you're saying. Yes, I think, I think you get what you're saying. Yeah, it gives you the impression that we're the underdog. We are struggling, right? If you were to say we're, if you're, if you say I'm struggling, that, that doesn't mean I'm winning.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's a different, different scenario. Yeah, struggling. So, yes. So, so when you end up with a permanent struggle mindset, we are behind.

• 1:13:00Jocko Willink?

  And it continues on. There is no at peace condition, even when they choose to cooperate in a particular area. So even when we're, it's like, even when, oh, we're good, we'll do this trade deal. Cool. There's still a struggle going on behind the scenes. It will be question, it will, it becomes a question of when and how they will compete, not if they will be competing. With this as the mindset, the tools used to create competitive advantages are limited only by human creativity and available resources. These rivals might take an action primarily to advance their economy, but they also will attempt to leverage that action to gain an advantage. This mindset causes them to try and exploit at any chance they see emerging. When they believe their competitors are distracted by other world events, they will seize on

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  any opportunity this presents. Distraction, distracted by other events. It's so obvious how this stuff plays out every single day in the news. The following are common characteristics of our rivals' approach to competition. There's a bunch of bullet points. Strong central command and control. Clear strategic goals. You know, people talk about China and just these, they're like, they're playing this massively long strategic game. They're playing the way long game. They don't care. They're looking at their people like, oh yeah, kind of like, oh, it's a whatever.

• 1:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Look, we got some people that are working as slaves, or human rights are horrible, or we got to eliminate this group. No factor. We're playing the long strategic game here. We got a game to win. Clear strategic goals, powerful narratives. Hello propaganda, weaponizing benign activities. And they actually gave a big example of what that was all about, like weaponizing like tourists and cutting off tourists from going to certain areas. Recruitment of ethnic diasporas. So, those are fleeing ethnic groups. I'll find out who's kind of been hard done by and see if we can bring them into the fold.

• 1:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Domination of ethnic media, interference in local politics, strong enforcement action, fostering relationships with local groups, including criminal and terrorist organizations, assertion of extraterritorial rights. Intelligence and covert operations, encouragement of dependencies, powerful military cover, expanded concept of combined arms, acceptance of high levels of risk, postured for the long term.

• 1:15:37Jocko Willink?

  They combine these characteristics in a novel and innovative ways to pursue their goals while taking advantage of the United States and its allies blinds, blind spots. And then they have parentheses like being quote at peace. That's like a blind spot for us. At peace, we're not at war with them. And think what, you know, from, from this whole, this whole time we've been talking about winning without the enemy know that we're even fighting. They don't want to provoke us. They want us to be like thinking everything is cool. And meanwhile, there's maneuvers happening. A rival concept for competition. Next section, the idea of a theory of victory applied to competition.

• 1:16:21Jocko Willink?

  Warfighting explains how the Marine Corps uses maneuver warfare to shatter an enemy's cohesion throughout, through a variety of rapid focused and unexpected actions which create turbulent and rapid, turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope. That's a good idea. Rapid focused, unexpected actions. That's what we're trying to do. This is maneuver warfare's theory of victory to splinter the enemy's system so that it can no longer function effectively. We can apply the idea of a theory of victory to competition to discern how rivals approach it. Each rival uses its own theory of in competition, but we can make some useful generalizations

• 1:17:06Jocko Willink?

  Marines can use to analyze specific competitors. First, each of this class of rivals governs itself through an authoritarian power structure with regime survival as its top priority. This heavily influences all the other competitive choices made both domestically and internationally in these rivals theories. Next, these rivals strive to avoid war with the United States. That's what I just said. And its allies. Note that war is not the same as violence. These rivals will selectively cross over the threshold of violence against the United States or its allies and partners, but will be careful to keep a tight rein on it so it does not escalate into war.

• 1:17:47Jocko Willink?

  These discreet pulses of violence can be useful for boundary stretching and to create hesitation. This is not a fixed principle. As rivals continue to study the United States, there may come a time when when they believe baiting the United States or its allies into war gives them an advantage if they also believe they have developed the strength to prevail. A little warning there. A little warning. With these two principles as background, our rivals approach competition as a constant state of being, so every decision and action affects it. Thus, they are either setting conditions that will make it easier to achieve their goals, or they are reaching their goals through slow increments or opportunistic lunges.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're, they're, this is what they're doing. They're constantly paying attention to this.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  They constantly have this massive strategic goal way down the line that they're playing that long, long, long game.

• 1:18:46Jocko Willink?

  We can summarize their, their theory of victory and competition like this. These rivals think of the relationship as winning without fighting, or winning war before it starts, and not as competition. Regime survival is the number one goal, and they believe their regime is constantly under threat. So competition is one of perpetual struggle. Every action they take shapes the environment to make it easier to reach their goals, either domestically or internationally. In this environment, they are, they are either incrementally moving toward their goals, or on alert to seize one if an opportunity presents itself. So that's what we've got to pay attention to.

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Wrap up this chapter with the conclusion. To compete effectively, Marines need to focus their potential on their potential competitors, especially those who see themselves as rivals to the United States and its allies. Truly understanding these potential rivals requires serious reflection and critical thinking. The Oodle Loop offers a model to examine why and how rivals approach competition differently. The strength of orientation affects all aspects of the model. The elements contained in a person's groups or in a person or group's orientation work in the background. It takes deep study to first identify these elements and then learn how they affect the decisions and actions a rival takes.

• 1:20:08Jocko Willink?

  And then it just goes on. Their mindset of perpetual struggle means they are constantly shaping the environment to make it easier for them to reach their goals.

• 1:20:18Jocko Willink?

  It also means they constantly take incremental steps toward their goals while remaining alert for the chance to pounce on them if an opportunity arises. That's a tough competitor. That's a tough competitor. Constantly, constantly making maneuvers.

• 1:20:35Jocko Willink?

  And now we move into chapter five. The conduct of competition.

• 1:20:42Jocko Willink?

  The challenge. The challenge is to develop a concept of competition for Marines that stays in balance with our preparation for war, remains consistent with our understanding of the nature and theory of competition, and accounts for the realities of international strategic competition. So we've got to be, this is a big balancing thing we're working on.

• 1:21:02Jocko Willink?

  Maneuver warfare's influence. Marines can use maneuver warfare principles to great effect in competition. We still seek to achieve our goals in a flexible and opportunistic way. That's a beautiful statement about leadership. That's a beautiful statement about leadership. Not just about maneuver warfare, but about leadership. You seek to achieve your goals in a flexible and opportunistic way. Isn't it way better for me to say, oh, Dave, you want to? You want to go into that market area? Great. I'll tell you what. Run with it. That's an opportunity for me to grow the business based on Dave's drive.

• 1:21:44Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I was thinking about going somewhere else, but Dave wants to go there. Cool, flexible.

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  We seek to achieve a relative tempo advantage that we can gain the initiative. Marines in-depth understanding of the OODA loop is relevant everywhere on the competition continuum.

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  Marines should not seek to reinvent maneuver warfare for competition, but rather think through how it can be applied across the competition continuum and not just to the continuum's subset that deals with war and the various forms of warfare.

• 1:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Orienting on the competitor, next section. Orienting on the competitor is fundamental to successful competition. We develop our understanding of the competitor's system and then exploit the weaknesses we find in it.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  I'd read that with the wrong voice. Sorry. To the United States Marine Corps. Let me rehash that. We develop our understanding of the competitor's system and then exploit the weaknesses we find in it. Much better. We develop models of the rival system. And then use these models to share our understanding of it with others. We then develop ways to test our model in the real world. Real world. We observe our tests, then use feedback from these observations to improve the model. Marines learn about the OODA loop. Early in their service, which helps them move through this cycle smoothly. Warfighting teaches that we should try to get inside an adversary's thought processes. And see them as they see themselves.

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  So that we can set them up for defeat. There's Dave Berke. Adversary Wing Commander. What was your name?

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  Adversary Officer.

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  I kinda elevated you.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta like it. Wing Commander. It's good.

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a beautiful thing. We take you and we say, your job is to think like the enemy.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  It's cool. At Trade At, we did that too. We didn't do it on, in such an official manner. But it was, okay, Trade At. Opposing Force Guys, the guys that were working directly for me at Trade At. You're gonna go and act like the enemy.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  Did you call it Red Cell?

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  We called it OP-4.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  OP-4. Yeah. I've heard, I've heard the different terms. Yeah. I think it's all the same thing. It's you behave. Like the enemy. Partially is it's, it gives your guys realistic training. But it also is to think, why are they doing the things that they're doing? Why would they? Acquire the weapons and do the formations? There's a whole bunch of reasons why you would do that.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then what's cool is. Because we'd read ARs, what the enemy did. You know, the enemy started using false walls. We started using false walls. The enemy did barricade issues, we do. So we would follow the, the reports and do what they did. But what's really cool too is when you're, when you're OP-4.

• 1:24:29Jocko Willink?

  You can see what it looks like. You can see what our tactics look like. You see where the strengths and weaknesses are. See, you see how obvious it is when a guy's doing something stupid. You're like, I'm never gonna do that.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, it keeps you from falling into the trap of thinking everything they're doing is stupid. Because everything they're doing is different, right? Like, we see them.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're saying the enemy?

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  The enemy, yeah. I mean, that, that, so we don't fall in the trap of, oh, they're doing this, and that's dumb. We'd never do that. And being dismissive of the fact that that move that they are making, which we probably wouldn't make. Oh, hang on. Why are they, oh, that, ah, exactly. And there's those moments of, oh, hey, hang on a second. This is why they're doing that. And if you don't put yourself in their eyes, the easy trap, the ego trap is, that's dumb. What do they know? And that's the, and that's why it's all centered around orientation. Is if you understand their perspective, you're far less likely, we have this saying, like, when we see something that we don't think is a concern to us, we scoff it. Scoff. Hey, he did this. Scoff. No factor. Don't care.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  And over time, what you will do is everything that's sort of different from what you would do is wrong. That's like the classic ego responses. You didn't do it the way I would do it. You're wrong.

• 1:25:41Jocko Willink?

  What's the scoff term? Can you explain that to me again?

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  So let's say you and I are fighting in our airplanes, and you do some move, you beam out to the west, or you flank in some direction. And I think it's, it's not a concern to me. I'll scoff that move. I don't even acknowledge it. Don't even care. Do whatever you want. Scoff.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  No factor.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  No factor, because I'm going.

• 1:25:58Jocko Willink?

  Now, is it, isn't it, isn't it arrogant move?

• 1:26:00Speaker 02

  Well, it, it, it can be. There are times I actually don't wanna respond to what you're doing. You might be baiting me into something, making a bad decision. You might be pulling me into a place that I don't think I wanna go. So there are times that I wanna dismiss, just, I'm not gonna react to that. I am not going to respond to your move. But if it's habitual, and I determine every single time you do something, it's no factor. Sooner or later, it actually will be a factor. And one of the ways that we counter that is the orientation of, of recognizing while they're doing that. And that's what I got to do as the adversary officer, is think like them. And hey, this is why I did that. And we would build scenarios, the training scenarios against the students. I would create those, or help create those. We're turning this, we're turning that, we're doing all these things to try to get to this outcome. And if the student could dissect and understand that, then he understands what's going on.

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  And if not, then he doesn't, and that's a bad thing.

• 1:26:51Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, it is essential that we understand our adversary on their own terms. We should not assume that every adversary thinks as we do, competes as we do, or shares our values and objectives. Marines in the Marine Corps are strong tools for our nation to compel or deter our rivals. As discussed in Chapter 2, we know that the target of our compelance or deterrence must cooperate, even if they're unwilling, if we are to be effective. Our knowledge of the competitor's system will help us understand their thinking enough to make good judgments on how we can force this possible unwilling cooperation. That's such a good, such a strange way of putting it, unwilling cooperation.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  But it happens, it happens in Jiu-Jitsu. Like, I start to choke you, Echo, you have to defend your neck. It's unwilling, but you gotta do it.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  You gotta do it. Wait, that's the same as coercion, right?

• 1:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, similar. Marines in the Marine Corps are also strong tools in a strategy of attraction. We can demonstrate our national values through efforts such as humanitarian assistance programs, providing highly credible support to the informational element of national power. Marines regularly play a large role in building and then sustaining relationships with allies and partners. Strong networks such as these increase our competitive options and create challenges for our competitors. Next section, shaping the action. Our competition goals are derived from our vital national interests, and we must think ahead if Marines are to support reaching these goals. Boy, if you're in charge of a company, don't you hope and pray that everyone in your company,

• 1:28:30Jocko Willink?

  every division in your company, everyone on your team, is thinking about your vital interests inside your organization? In thinking ahead, we establish that what we want to accomplish, why and how. This provides a vision for succeeding in competition, which in turn helps align the actions taken towards reaching the goals.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  In both the near and long term, we orient on our competitor to develop our understanding of their system. We continually refine our models of their system so that we can focus on their weaknesses, including increasing our understanding of how their culture affects their decision-making process. Man, you gotta know what your competitor's thinking. They just say this over and over again. Similarly, we must try to see ourselves through our competitors' eyes in order to identify our own vulnerabilities that makes, that they may try to exploit. To influence the future, we consider how we can exploit our competitors' weakness while protecting our own. This usually takes the form of planning.

• 1:29:35Jocko Willink?

  I think beyond planning, it takes the, takes the form, should take the form, or at least extend to the form of war gaming, or red selling, or whatever you want to call it. Totally. Force on force training. Our plans will not always produce a detailed timetable of events, as we accept that competitions may unfold over a long time. Instead, we attempt to shape the general conditions of the competition. Since Marines support our larger national competitive effort, we first need to determine who we are supporting. This support, limited only by our imaginations and available resources, can take a variety of forms across all our operating domains. For example, our force posture exists in all domains and can contribute to the deterrence in these domains.

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  Through the diplomatic and informational elements of power, it can also improve relationships with our allies and partners. Force posture can help develop ties with partner militaries that lead to attracting top-performing international officers to our service schools, which further deepens the relationship. Expanding relationships like this shapes our camp, campaign of competition by increasing the potential number of competitive actions we can take. Think about what you can do inside your organization if you're in business. If you just take that section about working with other people, get training other, what if you took people from other companies, maybe, maybe not quite competitors, but maybe competitors, and you brought them on board, and you trained them, and you helped them, and you developed a relationship, and you find out that they have areas of weaknesses that you could help them, and maybe you have

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  some areas of weakness that they could do. Imagine if you took that long-term strategic vision of how to grow your influence.

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  Look, man, that's kind of, that's, that's kind of my career in a nutshell. This, this exchange thing or this, this sharing of information. Your Marine Corps. My Marine Corps career. So, as a Marine, I spent so much of my time not being in a traditional Marine Corps role. And, you know, early on in flight school, like, the Marine Corps goes to Navy flight training. So, we're, we're very similar and it's, it's not a Marine Corps centric thing. But even in my, my experience, you know, my first four years in the Marine Corps, I was in a Marine Corps squadron, but we were attached to a carrier. So, we spent a lot of time with the Navy, doing things the Navy way. And then when I went to Top Gun, that's a Navy command. I was basically kind of an exchange officer. So, then I'm kind of really seeing how the other services do it.

• 1:31:57Speaker 02

  I did a full Air Force exchange where I was basically in the Air Force for three and a half years. I commanded that Air Force division as a Marine to serve the Air Force. And then, my, all these different things that I did, I very much interacted as an exchange to other services. And what it got me out of is kind of that classic Marine Corps echo chamber of, this is how the Marine Corps operates. And I learned so much and just that sharing of information from, and rivals is a strong word. We were not rivals, but the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps are different. Certainly, we're all looking for the same end. But the, the point you just made of the power of that, I'm probably not going to go to a rival company that isn't going to want to give me their people, but inside different divisions that have kind of competing interests

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  inside your own organization and getting one guy from marketing to go spend six months on the operations side. Or one guy, you know, a couple of guys in the operations side spend some time with sales where they see it and, and truly understand what's going on, the power of that inside your organization. So, you don't just buy off on the narrative of, listen, you join the Marine Corps, you're not going to get a lot of feedback that the Marine Corps isn't doing everything right. Until you get out of the Marine Corps and go, oh, damn, you guys are doing things a lot differently than us. And that seems to be working really well. And of course, vice versa. But I think there's a ton of power that I was really lucky in my experience to get to do that way more than most Marines get to do. And it... It helped me individually, it helped the services and it helped the Marine Corps. It was awesome.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, old school shipboard deployments that I did working with the Marine Corps. That's so lucky. I was working with, you know, calling in battalions and working with the air wings on the, on the flat top and just was so awesome for me and I learned so much. It was ridiculous.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  It's so easy to create a story or a narrative in your mind of how dumb everything else is when you don't experience it. And it's so, it happens so naturally in your subconscious of the differences means they're wrong. And the minute you spend some time over there doing it and you see from the perspective, the orientation changes as you think, you see how valuable it is, whether it's your competitors, whether it's your peers, whatever it is, that change of perspective, that change in orientation immediately reveals a whole bunch of things you would never see if you just looked at it from your perspective and like dumb, I'm not doing that.

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  That's, I was very lucky in my career to get to see that over and over from different perspectives and changing my orientation of the problem all the time.

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. If you're in a leaders, a very simple way to do that, when you're in a leadership position, go down, check out some other areas, see what they're doing.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  Go, go run that thing through the line. Go operate that piece of equipment for a half an hour. Go check out that job site, see what's going on. So many good ways to change your perspective, improve your perspective. See more. Next section, combined arms. Combined arms is the full integration of arms in such a way that to counteract one, the enemy must be more vulnerable to another. We pose the enemy not just with a problem, but with a dilemma, a no win situation. This is the way Marines fight and win battles. This idea also governs how Marines compete, even though we broaden no win situations to include careful consideration of positive sum options, win-win options.

• 1:35:11Jocko Willink?

  The governing idea is to orchestrate all of our tools together in ways that are most favorable to us. A combined arms mindset leads one to consider how to use multi-domain tools for two, of all potential partners in an effort to reach one goals. The idea is to use all available resources to best advantage. Internal to Marine Corps, we look to combine complementary characteristics of different types of units to create a competitive advantage. Externally, we look to combine our capabilities with those of joint force to create advantage. We apply the same mindset in competition when we combine our capabilities with those of our joint and inter-agency partners. What is the Marine Corps saying here?

• 1:35:51Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna look and utilize and work with and cooperate with as many different elements as we possibly can to get the best advantage we can over our rivals. The same mindset applies to combining the complementary characteristics of Marines with other partners, whether they're from other US government department or from an allied country. We orient on the competitor because we want to make sure the combined arms dilemma we intend to present in competition is actually a problem for them. This mindset leads Marines to develop holistic plans designed to reach specific goals in both war and along the larger competition continuum.

• 1:36:35Jocko Willink?

  In competition, the idea of combined arms extends through joint force, inter-agency to allies and partners. So we don't necessarily have to, we don't have to be at war at all to go out and work and combine our efforts with other elements that can give us advantages. Next section, campaign of competition. Embracing the competition mindset leads to the realization that the Marine Corps plays an important but supporting role in our nation's various competitions. Now, I have to take a pause there because this idea of supporting role in the military...

• 1:37:22Jocko Willink?

  It's the, the word supporting in the military is, is, can be taken as offensive. Right? Because what it means is, you know, if Dave's got a platoon and I've got a platoon, Dave, and Dave is assigned as the supporting platoon and I'm the main effort. Dave is inferior to me.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  The backup.

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  That's the backup. That's the second string. He's the JV team. You can literally throw whatever you want to throw on him. The idea that you're in a supporting role is generally viewed as a negative. Especially in, in military doctrine. Well, if you let your ego get involved.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:38:05Jocko Willink?

  And what the Marine Corps is doing here is beautiful, which is saying, hey, we play, we play an important but supporting role. They get it. They're like, hey, we're supporting. It's fine. This forms our approach. And by the way, that was one of the best things that we did in tasking a bruiser in Ramadi. It was, hey, we're here to support. Hey, hey battalion commander, hey brigade commander, hey company commander, we're here to support you. By the way, we're going to kill a bunch of bad guys. We're going to have to freaking do the best operations we can possibly do. You want to call supporting? Cool. We're supporting. That's fine. And by the way, by, by us being, by us supporting a battalion,

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  that means that battalion is rolling out, Casavac is rolling out, tanks is rolling out, fire support. We're getting all the air we, we're getting everything we want. We're getting more assets than we could have ever imagined and we're, we're supporting them. It's even though we always said we were supporting. What? We had 13 guys in an overwatch position. Meanwhile, they have a battalion out there to help us get to that position, get out of that position. It's amazing.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  But the attitude of, hey, we're here to support.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  Well, that's the attitude that gave you all the flexibility to do what you wanted. It's the exact same approach that I took. And I remember when I first got there, I went around to all the units in the AOR that I had a connection to. And the literal question I asked all of the commanders was, how can I support you? And what they want to know is, well, what do you have? And you know what I had? I had 80 million dollars worth of airplanes. That they couldn't have. I'm like, hey, I've got this, this, I got Marines. I have, we had gun trucks. So I owned Humvees with 50 cows and Mark II 40. So I had a bunch of stuff. And it was just, any way you want to use these tools, I can provide them for you.

• 1:39:58Speaker 02

  And that attitude, coming to them as, I'm here to support you, is what led to me kind of being able to do whatever I wanted on the battlefield, almost anything. Had I walked in and be like, this is how I operate. This is the exact opposite thing. They, you know, and the other part of it too is, I didn't own any battle space. They could have just said, you can't come here. Get off the battlefield. They could, literally could have pushed me off. I had no authority at all to operate.

• 1:40:28Jocko Willink?

  We were in the same exact scenario, same exact approach. Back to the book. This forms our approach to developing our campaigns of competition campaign goals are established by analyzing enduring interests and how they are being affected by current policy. For Marines, these goals are further refined by aligning them with the theater combatant commanders objectives at every point on the competition continuum, both in day-to-day operations below the violence threshold and in the event contingencies. In the event of contingencies, ideally, the theater objectives will be aligned with inter-agency goals as well. So they're really paying attention and breaking things down.

• 1:41:12Jocko Willink?

  By orienting on the competitor, we start to develop theories on how we can reach our campaign goals, even though we are in competition with our rival. Marines' understanding of the OODA loop leads us to conclude that the campaign choices we make in the planning are hypothesis, the campaign actions we take test these hypothesis, and the OODA loops, and the OODA's many feedback loops help us refine our decisions. The disciplined yet creative application of this process is what allows us to gain the initiative in competition and set its tempo. Disciplined yet creative. Disciplined yet creative.

• 1:41:55Jocko Willink?

  Timelines associated with competitive campaigns are often quite long, some extend over several decades. Yeah, that's, that's, that's where it's tough on America. That's where it's tough on America, because our, our regimes only last four to eight years at a whack, right? And then generally, there's going to be a change in regimes, there's going to be a different, you know, a different campaign of competition happening.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, you were talking about the long game, and you were talking about China, I was thinking like, they measure it, and they call them dynasties, they're like thousands of years, and the history that they have compared to our history, and the recognition of, hey, you're here as part of the long game, their version of the long game is a lot different than our version of the long game.

• 1:42:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there's also the party.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, yes, absolutely.

• 1:42:49Jocko Willink?

  And that, that strategy's going to stay the same.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  Not, not a ton of infighting going on over there, yeah, on that. That's, that's a, that's a different viewpoint, different orientation.

• 1:42:58Jocko Willink?

  The iterative nature of competition matched to disciplined use of the OODA loop will help planners determine how aggressive one should be in pursuit of campaign goals. Acknowledging these long timelines leads us to consider the consistency of our competitive goals. If we believe we may need to take many small steps towards a goal over the course of months, years, decades, or decades, then our objectives should remain relatively stable during that time. This is why we look first to our national interests before we derive our competition and campaigning goals. Once those are determined, we then decide how Marines can support achieving them.

• 1:43:41Jocko Willink?

  The campaigning mindset needs to be applied when considering competitive activities, especially long-term thinking and integrating our actions with others. Consistency and sustainability lead us to consider the pace or tempo of competition. This tempo is often driven by a cycle of action and counteraction. Each campaign, and I'm skipping through some stuff here, each campaign has a narrative, which provides context and purpose for the competition. Our narrative competes with that of our rival. To defeat a competitor's narrative, we need to replace it with a more persuasive one.

• 1:44:23Jocko Willink?

  Simply denying someone's story may actually reinforce it in the minds of target audience. You can't just, you can't just, that rumor's gonna come. You gotta tell the story, you gotta tell the right story. That is why we need to replace it with a more compelling story. Sorry, next line. For example, two firms may sell an identical commodity. Their respective narratives will explain why they are the right choice to win the business of a particular customer. The stronger narrative will displace the weaker one. Conclusion. Our warfighting philosophy of maneuver warfare is the philosophy that animates our approach to competition as well.

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  So, for the Marine Corps, maneuver warfare is the way we are thinking about everything. Marines take the same flexible and opportunistic approach to competition as they do towards fighting battles. The most important tenet of maneuver warfare is to orient on the enemy, and this influence is also felt in competition. We orient on our competitor. Now, this one, when I read this, I was like immediately freaked out, because I said, wait, wait, the most important thing of maneuver warfare is to orient on the enemy? And I was like, oh, no, the most important tenet of maneuver warfare. Because maneuver warfare without leadership doesn't do anything. Leadership's the most important thing.

• 1:45:47Jocko Willink?

  But if we wanna talk tenets, I guess we can break it down, that orienting, orienting on the enemy.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Or on the competitor. Sorry, I'm going straight to war. I'm all the way there on the continuum. We need to develop an understanding of our rival if we are to create an effective plan that will help us prevail in competition. We must understand their system. Where it is strong and where it is weak, this allows us to shape the environment by developing a clear vision for our competitive activities. This vision also allows us to identify the partners with whom we need to coordinate.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  Marines fight using combined arms and we must compete in the same way. This is the foundational mindset for determining how we can present a dilemma to our competitor. Marines in the Marine Corps are essential tools in our nation's effort to advance our vital national interests. The Marine Corps makes its greatest contributions near the threshold of violence on the competition continuum. This means that individual Marines need to prepare themselves to act on both sides of that threshold and to do so in disciplined ways that advance the nation's interests.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Here's the closing paragraph for Podcast Deep. Competing is a way of thinking.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  Like maneuver warfare, it is a state of mind born of boldness, intellect, initiative, and opportunism. It's very interesting that you, they really start chiming in on this word opportunism. They really start chiming in on that word. And if you start to pay attention to that, if you start to pay attention to the fact that what you should be looking for is opportunities and how often do opportunities go to waste? You want to talk about a life lesson? Boldness, intellect, initiative, opportunities, where are they at?

• 1:47:51Jocko Willink?

  It is about understanding our competitor's system so that we can develop, sustain, and adapt our competitive advantage so that the Marine Corps will always be a useful tool for the nation in the enduring competition that is the normal state of international relations. One last little plug for the Marine Corps. Long game. They're playing the long game for sure. That is it. That wraps up, that wraps up this publication for us.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  I think we've probably spent eight or nine hours talking through this book and those, this is the fourth podcast. Didn't do too bad today. God, God only knows how much time and effort the Marine Corps took and put into putting this together. I mean, what's the man hours behind this?

• 1:48:43Jocko Willink?

  How many people? What, what were you saying? You think it's six, seven, eight people?

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  I, I, that's what I'm picturing.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  On the team, that's on the team.

• 1:48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Jocko Willink?

  That's in there. That's in the room. That's got the sections and, and then there's someone kind of overseeing the whole thing. And then it's getting signed off by, by the commandant. He's reading, he's, he's giving guidance. You can tell the commandant's in the game with this stuff. He's not, he's not just signing this off. He's making corrections. There's, there's red lines on this in the written with the commandant's pen. Am I wrong?

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  No, I think you're right. And I'm thinking too, like, how many of these pubs are out there, these Marine Corps doctrinal pubs? It's not a, I mean, it's not some massive number. It's not a thousand of these things. He's had two in the last two years.

• 1:49:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  Like, there are probably commandants that did their entire time as commandant and none of these pubs came out under their watch. He's done two in two years.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  Obviously, this is, this is clearly an important thing for General Berger. This is a thing for him.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, Learning was the first new pub in, it was like a decade or something. It was a long time.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  It was a long time.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  And this one came out one year later.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:46Speaker 02

  So this is, this is wheelhouse priority for him. And this isn't like some big giant stretch from Learning either. This competing pub is not like unrelated. Totally. This is.

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say that we're, we're, we got cousins here.

• 1:50:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Right? We got cousins.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:50:02Jocko Willink?

  We got Learning, we got Competing. Those are cousins.

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  There is a thread between those two, a clear thread.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  They, the, the leadership thread that's in both of these as well. The leadership thread is really important. When you start looking at that continuum of leadership and the continuum of influence and the, the mind, the way of thinking for competing. And you start thinking of that way of thinking for competing as also a way of leading.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  That's a huge, a huge asset to your toolbox of thought.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  To bring to the table as a leader.

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  That's, that's what has been on my mind this whole time. From the beginning to the conclusion is how tiny little tweak you need to make in reading just this pub about competing, which is really at least at the top level is the Marine Corps fighting against other countries. How tiny a tweak there is to make that this is a leadership public, this is a leadership book. And it applies to running a business, running a team. This, a tiny language change goes from fighting competitors to leading your own people. This is a leadership publication from beginning to end. You want to think on the third one? One of the previous two, you did the influence continuum. You've just pulled from that. I'm like, just listening to that, just eating that up of.

• 1:51:18Speaker 02

  And I remember thinking, man, the Marine Corps should have just said that in here. And yeah, they probably would have had to double the length of this thing. Cause every time I read something, there's a place to go diving deeper into that. But despite that, there's no question in my mind that they, the authors just recognize and the leadership influence that's sitting inside there. And even the examples they pull from, they're pulling all these examples. If you're running a business, this is what you should do. So there is that when you know the way broadly, you see it in all things and I'm watching and seeing and this thing, hearing you talk and just making the leadership piece to that. But from beginning to end, that connection is absolutely there. And it doesn't take some big change in perspective to see it inside here.

• 1:51:59Jocko Willink?

  And to learn from it.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  And you know, the fact that the Marine Corps, look, they could choose a bunch of different things to dive into. And the fact that they dove into this to run their organization and help their organization be prepared and grow.

• 1:52:20Jocko Willink?

  That, that's just an indication of the importance of this mindset, of this way of thinking of how to compete. How our rivals compete and how we can compete in a better way.

• 1:52:38Jocko Willink?

  And with that, you see that softball just get tossed up Echo Charles? With that, speaking of trying to compete better and do better, Echo Charles, do you have any suggestions on that?

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you. Softball, not very competitive. The, they said in a different chapter that competing and influence, right? It's like the same thing.

• 1:53:01Jocko Willink?

  No, that's me. That's what I said. That was my whole, that was my whole, um, that's what really made me think we need to cover this on the podcast was, hey, we talk about competition. That's good. That's, that's, if we eliminated all the leadership talk and influence talk out of this podcast, it would have been done in three hours, two hours, two and a half hours. Okay, I guess maybe, maybe half the time, maybe half the time. Once we started talking about leadership and influence and that, that, that, that definitely adds to it. But yes, so we have been talking about it from a leadership perspective and an influence perspective.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  So like competing can be even at the end of the continuum or the spectrum or whatever, where it's like war, it's like you're influencing them to submit essentially.

• 1:53:47Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I can beat you into doing what I want you to do, right? Which we don't want.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  No, we don't.

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  We don't even want to cross the threshold of violence. So that's the leadership continuum, the leadership influence continuum, which by the way, is also very closely related to leadership strategy and tactics, a little something called the escalation of counseling, which is, you know, I'm, I'm using the minimum force required. I'm just saying, hey, Dave, I noticed you were late today. Is everything okay? That's where it starts.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  I use the escalation of counseling, by the way, with one of the children in my household. And it was good because it was the kind where you don't really, it was basically, hey, do this chore, right? And or else, but I'm not the kind where I'm like, hey, do it now, you know, because I want it done now. Just say, just, you just do it, right? He straight up forgot, forgot next day, not done. And it's not the kind arbitrary chore. It's the kind.

• 1:54:48Jocko Willink?

  You just kind of gave away the child in question.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  Nonetheless.

• 1:54:52Jocko Willink?

  Gender reveal.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, the, so.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Busted.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  When I was a kid, that kind of stuff happened to me where I forgot to do the chore. Then not only did I get told to do, I agreed that I would do it by a scolding was coming.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  You put forgot in quotes. Does that mean you really didn't forget and you just gaffed it off? Or did you actually forget?

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  Not all the time, check. But you if um yeah, like that if you get scolded, that's crossing some threshold at some point, right? What is it? The cooperation? I don't know. I know there's a threshold you cross over when you start scolding them.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  Rather than, hey, like, hey, you all good? You need anything or whatever? Yep. Speaking of success, I've been taking joint warfare consistently for the last, I don't know, one month, two months. Joint warfare is what we're taking to take care of our joints. We're not slacking on the warfare or on the workouts or taking the joint warfare and super krill oil. Also, good ways to support your immunity, vitamin D, three, and cold war. Don't forget about these things. Very important. Also, discipline and discipline go in a can, capsules, powder. That's it.

• 1:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you know, I'm a little, let's just say disappointed in your whole approach on that section today. I don't know if you're like feeling down, or maybe you didn't drink enough discipline. I didn't feel any of that, what you just said.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  Oh, like my energy was off?

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  Energy was low. I'm not like, like, let me, let me, let me, let me give everyone a little something to be happy about since you're, you know, not feeling it today, apparently.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:56:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Check this out. Check this out. If you want to get any of this stuff with free shipping from originmaine.com, all you have to do is subscribe and that's a good call because then you're not gonna miss. You're not gonna look in your cupboard one day. Is cupboard an east coast word?

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you're not gonna look in your cupboard one day and see that there's no joint warfare. There's no super krill. There's no vitamin D. It's there. It's waiting to make you healthy and strong. So, there you go.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  It's like you'll never need to be reminded to get it.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  It's a free reminder. It just, it just shows up.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is a big deal too.

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  If only, if only your son could subscribe to doing chores. It would just got kind of like, oh, like a little reminder.

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Actually, that's a good idea. So, look, you just establish a system that you don't have to be told to do the chore. You just say, hey, every day at this very specific time, you check the trash.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  That's a system. That would work good.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:34Speaker 02

  The challenge you have is trying to get him to recognize how that's to his benefit. With this other stuff, it's it's sort of undeniable that it's to your benefit. So there's not some big negotiation going on like why this is good for you.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  That is, yeah, that is a challenge.

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Get it.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  I actually have a lot more challenges than that. Nonetheless.

• 1:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Like getting your spirit up a little bit.

• 1:57:53Speaker 01

  Anyway, speaking of the So you gotta look at me like that. You make it worse with the with the looking at me like that, by the way.

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  What are you gonna look at?

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  Look at Dave.

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  But you're talking.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  Look at Dave. Anyway, so yes, they sent me a whole thing, a whole

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  package of the discipline.

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  And and I understand what what you mean by when you're looking in the cupboard and seeing it like, oh. Yeah, you know, when you run low, you'll get like a little sense of.

• 1:58:23Jocko Willink?

  Panic.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  What's the one right before panic?

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, I thought.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  What's what's a tormenting like before pan, like not anxiety, like a little, you know.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Nagging.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  Nagging something. Yes. You see it full up when it fills up.

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  Satisfying.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Kind of like your gas tank, you know, when the gas tank goes all the way to empty and you're like, oh.

• 1:58:41Jocko Willink?

  No, I don't know what that's like.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  But so when you do fill, fill it back up, it's like a really like a satisfying kind of feeling.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  You know what's crazy? I I went in the cupboard the other day and and there was one super crow left. And I I actually walked in through my bedroom and I told my wife, emergency. I say, hey, emergency. There's only one super crow left. And she goes, what? And she walks out and then she comes in like, oh, no, it's in this other cupboard. You got a box.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Oh, see, okay. You're actually, that's the exact terminology I I use to fulfill my new Discingo package. To be little. Emergency.

• 1:59:21Jocko Willink?

  Emergency.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Right on it, too, by the way.

• 1:59:24Jocko Willink?

  So no, no need for emergencies.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  No need.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Go on there, originmaine.com, subscribe. That's free shipping. And you and it's 10. If you subscribe, it's 10% off. So it's a good deal. We're trying to trying to hook it up. Also, you can get this stuff at you can get the the cans at Wawa on the East Coast, full chain. Any Wawa, you can go in there.

• 1:59:46Jocko Willink?

  You can get some. Vitamin Shop, you get it there, too. So, hey, if you want something.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Get something. So we're gonna get, getting something. Get some jeans as well.

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  By the way, so this is American made denim from the roots to the, to the jeans. You understand what I'm saying? Dirt to the shit. You understand? Either way, boots, jeans, jujitsu stuff.

• 2:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Geez, rash guards.

• 2:00:13Speaker 01

  Yep. All these at Origin Maine.

• 2:00:16Jocko Willink?

  All made in America.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Also, we have our own store, JacoStore.com. This is where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom apparel, if you will. Shirts, hoodies, hats on there. Some more rash guards on there as well. Got some new stuff. Warrior Kids Soap. Got that on there. That's a critical one. Been getting reports that the Jaco soap is, okay, so there's three, how many flavors?

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  There's multiple flavors, bro.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  There's Killer Soap, Jaco Soap, Super Soap.

• 2:00:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  And Warrior Kids Soap.

• 2:00:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. The Warrior Kids Soap is yellow and blue.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:00:53Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid colors.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. The Jaco Soap smells the best as far as a consensus goes.

• 2:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  That's the deal. Anyway, JacoStore.com, that's where you can represent while you're on the path.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  What about the Shirt Locker that you're all excited about?

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  Yes, very excited. By the way, every month, new shirt. Every month. So, yeah, subscribe to that, you know, if you're into that.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  There's probably a lot of people that are saying, oh, wow, it's called the Shirt Locker. That's cool. I want to check that out as opposed to the old name.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, T-shirt club.

• 2:01:26Jocko Willink?

  All right, cool. Check that out. Subscribe to the podcast. You can, we also have some other podcasts.

• 2:01:33Jocko Willink?

  So subscribe to those. Well, the Unraveling, which Daryl and I are working on some new episodes of that. You can also go to JacoUnderground.com where we, we do a little alternative amplifying podcast.

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  And you can, you can listen to it there. It costs money. Costs $8.18 a month. But we're trying to sort of have a little contingency scenario in case things happen in the future.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  And also

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Eight dollars and eighteen cents, only one person has guessed it correctly.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Only one?

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  One that I know of, yes.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, I've seen one, must be the same one.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and through this, though, through this process, there are like so many different like

• 2:02:17Jocko Willink?

  No, people, people are putting layers on that I'm like, oh, that maybe that's cool.

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  I didn't know about it.

• 2:02:21Jocko Willink?

  More sense. Yeah, so eight dollars and eighteen cents, we actually, there's a reason for it, there's layers behind it, but now there's layers that we didn't know about that now are now layers, layers have been added.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  Yep, added.

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  We'll put it to you that way, but at some point, we gotta announce the official.

• 2:02:37Jocko Willink?

  So, hey, if you want to check that out, if you want to check out that podcast, go to JacoUnderground.com, eight dollars and eighteen cents a month, and if you, look, we want information out there, if you can't afford that, just email [email protected] and we will get you taken care of. Like I said, we also have the unraveling, we have the grounded podcast, we have the Warrior Kid podcast, we got a YouTube channel where Echo

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  Makes videos, that's cool.

• 2:03:05Jocko Willink?

  Echo's makes videos and it's cool, uh, psychological warfare, an album with tracks, MP3 availability there, flipsidecanvas.com, you can get stuff to hang on your wall, got some books, oh, I got a new book, it's called Final Spin, it's a story.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  It's a novel, it, it's a poem, it's, well, it's available for preorder now. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluations, The Protocol, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual, Field Manual, Warrior Kid One, Two, and Three, Mike and the Dragons, About Face, Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy, Leadership. We got Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy where we take all this information that we have learned and we help you apply it inside your organization to solve problems through leadership, go to echelonfront.com for that. We had EFonline.com where we are teaching leadership, there's courses that you can take.

• 2:04:05Jocko Willink?

  That will help you and everyone in your organization get aligned and win. Go to efonline.com for that. We've got musters, which are live events that we do. They've been shifting due to COVID. So check extremeownership.com if you want to come to one of our live events. They're freaking awesome.

• 2:04:26Jocko Willink?

  Just, just saying. EF Overwatch, executive leadership for your company. Go to efoverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members, if you want to help active duty, if you want to help retired service members, if you want to help their families, if you want to help Gold Star families, then check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want more of my tedious tales, and you certainly heard some today, or you need more of Echo's convoluted contemplations,

• 2:05:04Jocko Willink?

  or Dave's nascent narratives, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram. And if you only speak Echo Charles, that's also only known as Legram. And you can find us on Facebook. David is at David R Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all the servicemen and women out there on the front lines worldwide, worldwide, protecting us from forces of darkness and tyranny. And to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and first responders, thank you for standing on the lines here at home to keep us safe.

• 2:05:51Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, yes, you are competing all the time, but make sure you are competing in the right arenas for the right reasons. Don't waste your time and your resources and your effort on competitions that are driven by your ego. Make sure the competition makes sense.

• 2:06:11Jocko Willink?

  Make sure that you are competing not just to beat someone else,

• 2:06:16Jocko Willink?

  but infinitely more important, you are competing to get where you want to be. That is how you win.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, that and actually going out every day and getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.