Jocko Underground: "This New Generation Is To Blame."

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 122, sitting here with Echo Charles. Have you ever heard of the idea, the concept of taking ownership, maybe taking extreme ownership?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I'm at an event the other day and I just get done talking, I walk off the stage at this event where I had just concluded and a one hour presentation talking about the laws of combat leadership and closing with the concept of extreme ownership, how important it was, where it came from, why it was important, what happens when you don't have that attitude, what happens when you do have that attitude? So I go through the whole thing, all of it. I get done and I get off stage, just talking to some people.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  And maybe the second or third person that comes to me, a woman comes up to me and she says, "You get asked a lot of questions about this new generation."

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  This new generation, this has become an all encompassing term for both, for, for three groups. I don't know if you're tracking on these three groups, millennials, Gen Z, and you know what the current is?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, uh, what?

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  Alpha.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I don't know.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  Gen Alpha. So Gen Alpha is the, is the group right now. So these, but people kind of lump all them together. Just like anyone that's not in one of those three groups gets called a boomer, right? So you're familiar with that term, right?

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  Boomer officially would be a baby boomer, but right now it's just anybody that's like older than you is a boomer.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  Are you tracking that?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not, I haven't heard that, but I know the okay boomer thing. That's like a thing like, oh, you're just old.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So my kids will call me a boomer, even though I'm technically, and really very technically, I'm Gen X 100%. I'm right in the middle of the Gen X zone.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm not, oh, maybe Gen X turn, no, no, no. But my kids will, you know, they'll be like, oh, boomer, okay, boomer. So the same way that anyone that's older gets called boomer, sometimes boomers call anyone that's younger.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  A millennial or or Gen Z. I haven't heard any of the boomers say Gen Alpha yet because they don't know because they're boomers. Yeah. So this woman asked me, she's like, do you get asked a lot of questions about, you know, this new generation?

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, and I said, oh, what do you mean? She goes, well, you know, they don't like to work as hard and they want to question everything and if they don't like a job, they'll just leave and they don't stay at a particular place for very long. And they have this whole idea of of work-life balance and and they like remote work and they don't want to come into the office. So there was this whole litany of accusations. All about they, they, they, they. And so I'm sitting there and I'm kind of smiling and nodding my head, you know, almost as an affirmation. I'm giving her the indication that I'm sort of like nodding my head, oh, yeah, oh, gosh, yeah, they don't like to work as hard. Yeah, they don't want to come into the office.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're concerned about, I'm kind of nodding my head, not in an extreme way, but she's basically continuing, she's getting encouraged by my reaction. And then she said, you get asked a lot of questions about that. And I said, oh, yeah, I get asked that question all the time. And I looked at her, I said, hey, you remember the thing that I was just talking about three minutes ago? That whole concept, that the whole name of the event that we're at, by the way, is called this extreme ownership event. It wasn't one of my events, it was another company running an event based around the principle of extreme ownership. I said, so the name of the event, extreme, and then the last 15 minutes when I was up

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  there and I told a bunch of different applications and shortfalls and how to properly take ownership, remember that? And she said, yeah. And I said, well, how does that sound if I'm supposed to have that attitude? And now I come down here and say, they are the problem. This new generation is the problem.

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  Is that, does that sound, does that, does that mesh with what I just got done saying? If I got up there and said, hey, when you have a problem, you need to take ownership of the problem and get the problem solved. And now I come down here and say, yeah, there's something wrong with that generation. I can't work with them. Is that, does that sound like that even comes remotely close to being in the same lane? And she's kind of nodded her head, yeah, okay, I understand. So I said, listen, it's not their problem.

• 4:47Jocko Willink?

  It's a leadership problem. Like all problems are leadership problems. And then, of course, I went down the whole road because this is a question I've answered over and over again because people have this question over and over again. And by the way, sometimes it is, what do you do with all these boomers that think they know everything? I get that question. It's all the same. It's all the same. What do I do with my peers that they graduated from college? And now they, everyone's got these questions about them. They, they, they, they. But I liked, one of the, one of the things that I bring up is the Vietnam War. You have an unpopular war. You have draftees conscripted into the military into a job that

• 5:26Jocko Willink?

  they don't want to do in a war that they don't believe in, thousands of miles away from their home with no correlation to their future. And all of that is doing a job that might get them killed. And you can find plenty of military leaders that will blame all the problems of Vietnam. Oh, we had these draftees that weren't dead. Yeah, you can find those leaders or you can find guys like Hackworth. You can find guys like Mukuyama. You can find guys like Hal Moore that had draftees and loved their draftees. Why is that? Because their draftees would push back if they didn't agree with something and they actually had to lead their draftees. So bad leaders blamed the draftees. Good leaders.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  Stepped up and led. Now, it's the same thing here, but that's not why I'm talking about that.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  The reason I'm talking about that is because

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  I'm not doing a good job. I clearly didn't do a good job with that woman of conveying to her that this idea applies to you and it applies to everything that you do. It's such an obvious example. This is a warning. It's a warning because I know there's a bunch of people listening right now that are thinking, oh yeah, clearly this, this woman, she doesn't understand extreme ownership yet, clearly.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  But the idea of extreme ownership is so counterintuitive that you have to truly pay attention. If you don't truly pay attention, if you don't aim the idea of extreme ownership at yourself and you don't put a filter over your mouth. You should have a filter over your mouth and one of the words that should get at least, at least held up a little bit to run a reconfirmation check on is the word they. Because the minute you say they, you're, you're, you're, you're talking about someone else. You're not talking about yourself anymore. So when you say they don't want to come to work, the filter should catch that and say, hold on, run a re-screen on that.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm doing a bad job of explaining why it's important to come into the office of work. That's the 180 difference.

• 7:49Jocko Willink?

  And if you're not careful, if you don't run a filter on your mouth and run a filter on your mind, the whole concept of extreme ownership

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  will have very limited value. Very limited value. So be careful. Aim the concept of extreme ownership at yourself.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I got.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I uh, I know this friend that he was, she was, uh, we're talking about social media and these young kids nowadays, right? And they're on social media.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  Them, yep, yep. They are, yep.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh, so this, um, so my friend was like, oh, you know, so we're kind of the subject of how much, uh, how many, how many issues come from social media and kids using it, right? And all the stuff, um, and then it's like, okay, so the idea of, hey, why, why, you know, like, why are they on social media then, right? Like this, this person's specific kids. And she was like, no, no, that's, that's, that's how, kind of real, kind of dismissive, but just, that's how kids are communicating nowadays. So I was thinking, hmm, well, yeah, if you let them make that decision, just like, that's like saying, oh, hey, why are you feeding your kids Oreo cookies for breakfast every morning? He goes, well, that's what they're eating nowadays.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, if you make, let them make that decision, yes, they're, they're kids, you know?

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  What you got in the cupboard, bro?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. So which, that kind of reminds me of like, yeah, that whole thing where it's like, yeah, they are acting this way or whatever, well, yeah, but why though?

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and if they are acting that way and it's on them, what can you do about it? Not much, but if you're allowing that behavior, you're the one that can adjust it.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  So you, if you, if you don't take any ownership of it and you go, that's just the way the kids are. Okay, then that's what the kids are gonna do. If you say, oh, I, how much influence do I have over these kids? Oh, I don't have very much influence. Oh, why is that? Oh, it's because I don't have a relation, good relationship with them. Why don't have a good relationship with them? Oh, it's because I don't spend any time with them. Or it's because I, oh, I don't allow them to influence me, so therefore I can't influence them. Okay, so I need to allow them to influence me more and then they will be more influenced by me. Oh, well, they're not listening to me. Oh, how can I get them to listen to me? Oh, I need to listen more. So it's, it's just, it's, it all works.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  It works if it works.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  You know when you teach jujitsu and you get to the point where you someone's mounted and you say, okay, now you trapped their leg and you roll them over and now you're in their garden. It's it's this whole thing. You go, oh.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  That's how it is when you say, oh, well. How's your relationship?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 10:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, they don't they don't listen to me. Oh, why don't they listen to you? Oh, it's because you don't listen to them. You if you pull that thread, it will connect back together to the fundamental principles that we talk about all the time. And you'll be able to solve these problems.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I found that to be the case.

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  But if you just cut the thread at it's them. You won't solve any problems.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And especially the it and obviously doubt this is more like conceptually, even though I'm sure this is absolutely true. Down on the streets. But you know, anytime you're dealing with older generation frowning upon a younger generation. It's like, bro, you gotta show them how then if they're doing it wrong, show them what's right. Show them the right way to do it then, you know? And then at the same time, if you apply like what you're saying, and even the idea of building the relationship. I think that and I know you say it and I'm not saying you, but I still think it feels a little bit underrated.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yeah, it's underrated.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  To me, that's like, that is one of the catalysts for the that's like the biggest. If you can just do that. Like other stuff you can sort of just figure out on your own in a lot of ways, not it's not perfect. But that'll solve so many of your problems rather than, hey, do this. You should be able to do this already. You should be acting this way already.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  Interesting idea of setting an example. Because you could be, let's say you're a parent. And you have this job and you work really hard, but you don't really like it. And your kid is starting to listen to rock and roll music. And he not work doesn't want to go to college. And wants to do something else. And you say, well, why don't you go to college? You need to do, you need to get an education so you can get a job like me. And they're looking at you and dude, you're not happy. You're miserable.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  Why don't I want to be like you?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  So what you should do is when you when your kid goes, oh, I I think I'm I don't want to do what you do. Oh, okay. Well, what do you want to do? Well, or why don't you want to? Well, it doesn't seem like you're really that happy.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Well, that's a good point. Now, do you have a plan? Because you're gonna need money. So now we can start having, instead of saying, "You don't know what it's like."

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:49Jocko Willink?

  But you gotta pay attention to the example that you're setting. If you're setting an example of being miserable, of course, your kid's gonna look at you and say, "I'm not really gonna follow those footprints." If you're setting an example of... So, that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacood underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms, so we are not subject to their control. And we're doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as-is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

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