266: Pay Attention to What You're Paying Attention To. MCD 1-4, w/ Dave Berke. Pt.3

0:00:00 - Opening 0:12:09 - MCDP 1-4 Competing. Chapter 3 1:36:11 - Final Thoughts. 1:51:59 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:08:31 - 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 266 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. And joining us again tonight is Dave Berke. Good deal, Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So we've knocked out two chapters of Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Tac 4, which is called Competing, and today we're going to delve into the third chapter. Now, we have had expectations in each one of these of doing more than one chapter.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  I don't think we're going to make it, especially because three has a lot of good stuff in it and four is longer, so I don't want to get halfway through four. Anyways, so we're going to delve into chapter three. And before we kind of kick that off, in the last chapter, and throughout the book thus far, the Marines have been calling competition or describing competition as an enduring conditioning, an enduring condition.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  It's enduring. It's always happening, always.

• 1:09Jocko Willink?

  And then when we got done, I think it was with the first chapter, and we did an underground podcast, and I talked about that clip from There Will Be Blood. I have a competition in me.

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  I want no one else to succeed. And I kind of talked about this fact that I related to that and that I can be really competitive in a lot of ways. And since competition is an enduring condition,

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  that must mean that I'm always competing with everyone all the time. And if I'm always in competition, well, then when do I get a break? When do I sleep? Well, we're not sleeping a lot, obviously, but how am I not getting burnt out?

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm always competing. How am I not getting burnt out?

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  And I was thinking about that because I, you know, I start to think about people hearing this. And I like to think through how people are going to interpret what I'm saying.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  And Dave, you and I see this a lot with just the title of the first book, Extreme Ownership. And people think Extreme Ownership, well, that would just mean we need to be extreme about stuff. And we have to write a whole nother book, had to write a whole nother book with Leif, called The Dichotomy of Leadership, saying, no, actually, you gotta be balanced. We don't want to be extreme. So when I think about talking, and I'm sitting here saying, I'm competing all the time and we're competing in everything as a competition. And I think of someone going, okay, well, we're going hard all the time. And then they're going to get burnt out. And how is it that I'm not getting burnt out? Am I superhuman? No. I'm just another person. So how is it that I'm competing all the time? Which I can tell you, I can tell you honestly, I am competing all the time.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  And I'm also telling you, I'm not superhuman. How is this happening? I can explain it. The kind of people that get burnt out and, and fall apart.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  The reason that that happens is because they are competing at a tactical level.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  That's what's going on. They are getting caught up in bar brawls and street fights and duels and arguments. And they want to win every altercation they see occurring anywhere around them. And their ego won't let them rest.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not doing that.

• 3:47Jocko Willink?

  I, I don't care about the bar brawl or the street fight or the argument. I don't care about those things. Don't care about them.

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  I'm in competition, but I'm not in competition at a tactical level. I'm competing strategically. At least I'm trying to, right? I'm not perfect. I'm trying to compete strategically. Do now, do you sometimes have to win tactical battles? Do you sometimes, do you have a battle, a tactical battle that you have to win? Some people will come to me with that argument. You know, there's some battles that you have to win. You know what? You're right. And you know what they call those battles? They call them strategic battles. That's not a tactical battle anymore. If I'm in a strategic battle, I'm gonna win that.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  And the point of saying this is as we talk about competition, and you hear Dave and me and Echo getting all fired up about competition and competing all the time. And I keep saying, you're always in competition and everything's a competition. As we talk about that, don't get wrapped around tactical competition. Think strategic. Think strategic all the time. And you know, you should get in some tactical scraps sometimes. So you don't lose your edge. I'm gonna go ahead and say that. You wanna get a little scrap? We're gonna go a little sparring session? Go on, let's do it. But I'll tell you what, I'm not gonna waste any resources.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  I'm definitely not gonna take any significant damage. Look, I might get a little dinged up. It's okay. But I'm not gonna waste resources, real resources. And here's another thing. If you're competing against me, I will have you in tactical fights all day long. I will put tactical things out there to distract you and fight you. And I put some minimum amount of resources against your whole deal and make you think you're achieving this big victory. And you're not.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  I will be watching you take damage. I'll be watching you waste resources. I'll be watching you expend leadership capital while I'm putting money in the bank.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  I'm putting money in the bank and I'm gonna win. I am going to win.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  So don't mistake that as we talk through this manual. Don't mistake tactical competition for strategic competition.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  And we have been saying you are competing and you should remember that you are competing and you are competing all the time. But you should be competing strategically.

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  And with that,

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  we can go into the book. What do you got, Dave?

• 6:48Dave Berke?

  Bro, I'm just over here taking notes.

• 6:51Dave Berke?

  I'm just trying to write down because I'm taking this home and thinking about it.

• 6:56Dave Berke?

  You could probably say that again. A tactical battle that you need to win isn't a tactical battle. Just thinking of it in those terms, like if you have to win that battle, meaning it's necessary. By definition, that's not tactical. It's a strategic thing because if you didn't, if it didn't matter, then it's not strategic.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 7:14Dave Berke?

  If it doesn't matter, then who cares? I just, the, just the concept of a tactical battle you need to win isn't tactical. And that, even on the leadership side, when people ask the question, hey, where do I hold the line? Where do I have to apply resources or expend capital? And the idea that even in reverse, like hey, if it has to be achieved, this is not a tactical thing. This is a strategic thing. And understanding that, again, that's just, some of that's just for me to think about because.

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  And then you ask yourself, or you see a client, or you see a human being, treating something as if it's a strategic battle and, and they don't think through it.

• 7:56Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  They don't see that, I mean, really, what's the deal? What happens? What's the worst case scenario if you lose that battle?

• 8:02Dave Berke?

  Well, I'm gonna, they're gonna get the op-

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  Whatever thing they've rationalized inside their head, which, which is dragging them to expend resources, to expend leadership capital to make someone do something because they're gonna look bad. Which is just insanity. It's total insanity. There's almost nothing. There's almost nothing that I need to make one of my subordinates do. There's almost, I can barely think of anything that I need to make one of my subordinates do. You know what I need to make one of my subordinates do? I need to make sure that all my subordinates knew how to program their radios before they went out by them, by, when, on an operation in Ramadi, because if they got stuck without a radio, not knowing how to program it, they would die.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  So on that, that's, you know why I always use that example? Because there's, it's one of the few that I can possibly think of.

• 8:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  It's one of the few that I can possibly think of where I was like, you know what? You have to do this. Now, here's why, and it's not like I had to have a big discussion. All I said was, "Hey, guys, if you can't program your radio and you get separated, you're gonna die. Therefore, you're not going out."

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  Did anyone say, "Well, actually, I don't think it's that big of a risk?" No, everyone went, "Yeah, Roger that." There was no, there was no discussion about it. It wasn't like an argument. It was, "Hey, guys, I should have done a better job explaining how easy it is to get separated in the urban environment, and if you get separated in this environment, the people that will be coming to get you, they won't be us. They'll be an army unit or a Marine Corps unit, and you'll need to know how to put those frequencies into your radio by yourself."

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, you'll be out there alone, and you'll get captured, and you'll have your head cut off. And it takes, by the way, 15 minutes to learn how to program a radio. Let's get it done. And everyone goes, "Yeah, Roger that."

• 9:55Jocko Willink?

  But there's not too many things that that that require that and like I said, even that didn't require so I that was that didn't even cost me leadership capital. It didn't it actually that that move actually didn't cost me leadership capital. Instead, people like me, yeah, man, I would venture to guess that my leadership my leadership capital went up a little bit. Because guys are thinking, I didn't really think of that. And by the way, this guy cares about me because he doesn't want me to be stuck in the middle of Ramadi without being able to communicate. This guy, the reason this guy wants me to do this is because he cares about me. It has nothing to do with my personal gain. Zero. What do I get out of it? Nothing.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess I'm taking care of my guys. But again, what is that? I'm taking care of my guys.

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  The discrimination between tactical and strategic is a huge area for growth for us as human beings. And I think Echo, this has been your constant theme since we started the podcast of the biggest lesson that you learned was long term versus short term, which is the civilian way of saying strategic, long term, tactical, short term, and the difference between those two.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  And the more you figure that out, the better your life got.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Yep, just like that.

• 11:24Jocko Willink?

  How old were you when we started this podcast?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Thirty eight, maybe nine.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  Thirty eight. Yeah, there's people that are listening to this podcast right now that are thinking, I'm thirty two, man, I already went, it's already too late. No, no, it doesn't matter. And I mean, I get messages from people that are fifty eight. And they say, yo, I'm starting to look at this long term and make these adjustments. And here's what I'm gonna do. It's never too late.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  It's never too late to start thinking strategic.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  What's the the expression about jujitsu? Like, when's the best time to plant a tree or start?

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  Best time to plant a tree? Either twenty eight years ago.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  Or today.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Same deal, man. Same exact, the exact same deal.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Check. All right. Chapter 3. It's a short chapter, but there's a lot in it. Chapter 3 is called "Preparing for Competition," so you know how that's gonna sound. The most important task for Marines and the Marine Corps is to recognize that we are always competing. Even choosing to do nothing is a competitive decision. It just happens to be one that surrenders the initiative to our competitors. Yes. When you choose to do nothing, you are surrendering your, the initiative to your competitor. Now, I gotta throw a caveat in there.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  That there are some times where tactical patience, which is the cool way of saying waiting, is a good thing. There's absolutely times where you wanna, you wanna give things a second to develop. We used to, we used to say that to young SEALs. If they were making calls too fast, hey, let it develop a little bit. You don't even know what's really happening. You've heard four gunshots and you're trying to make a decision on which way to go. No, let's wait till we hear some volume of fire from the enemy. So we actually have a more relevant and real idea as to where they are. But I think the number is seven out of 10 times.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  Maybe eight out of 10 times, action is better than inaction. So that's why the Marine Corps says, "Bias for action." That's why Echelon Front says, "Default aggressive." It's better to make a move. Eight out of 10 times, nine out of 10 times, it's better to make a move. And if you have an open mind and you're gonna read a feedback loop, it almost becomes 10 out of 10. And if you're gonna do iterative decision-making, meaning I'm gonna make a small move really quickly, then it becomes 100%. I'm gonna make a really quick move, I'm gonna then read the feedback loop and see what I've got. And if you can do that, which is what I do... That's how I cheated. That's how I cheat in decision making. I don't make a big decis- Why would I make a big decision?

• 14:18Jocko Willink?

  Make a little one. Make a little tiny decision.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does. Kind of the more you think about it, the more it becomes like, yeah, like a 10 out of 10. Especially when you think of it in those terms where, yeah, default aggressive, not meaning you're going all out, full speed, one direction every single time. It's not that. It's like you gotta be, cause it's kind of comes from my mindset, right? Where obviously default aggressive does, but

• 14:44Speaker 02

  if taking action versus not taking action, if you just reduce it just to the mindset, like then you can kind of understand like, oh yeah, to not take action is with very few, if any exceptions, the wrong thing to do.

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, especially when you consider what action, how small an action can be.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:05Jocko Willink?

  And still be action.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Right, exactly right, yeah. Yeah, cause like hesitation, right? That's what you don't want. The hesitation. That's like inaction. That's like, I'm not making any decision to hold here or anticipate that. I'm not making a decision. I'm just like hesitating kind of thing. Like just not doing that.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, when you think about like immediate action drills, which you'll have in a platoon, where if we get, if we get shot at, here's the immediate action's gonna happen without anything. There's action happening with no call being made. No decision's been made, but there's action happening. Dave, I apologize for not have, that I haven't memorized this immediate action that you have in a jet. And it's some move that you make when you don't know what else to do, but you just do it. What is it?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Lift vector on and pull.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  Yes, lift vector on and pull. That's an action. And that action, you can take that immediately and then you can figure out what you're gonna do.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  So it's good to think through those things. It's good if you can, if you can just, if you can just think about, if you can just have an SOP or standard operating procedure that, hey, if this happens, I know I'm at least gonna do this. That's a really positive thing.

• 16:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I'm racking my brain, trying to think of a time where doing nothing, and you already said it, I think, the thing I was thinking about is even the smallest move, even the smallest decision that to do anything, you interact with the environment somehow and get some feedback, you get something. Now, that something could be very little, and okay, cool, then I can do a little bit more. But even the smallest move gives you something. So, thinking of it in those terms, it's really hard, and I'm just thinking of an example. We're doing nothing, and I can't, I can't think of one, when the alternative is, hey, make a really small move, just to see what you get in that feedback loop, just to see what kind of return you get on that. And even if the return is like, all negative,

• 17:04Dave Berke?

  it's such a small move, that the risk of even that 100% negative feedback is like, hey, that's good information. That hasn't toppled us over or crushed us. So even if the response is all bad, the move is so small that's actually good for you. So I just can't piece something together and go, no, actually, here's a time where I really think doing nothing is right. When that is the alternative we're thinking about.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. And when you, when you factor in the small iterative decisions, it really eliminates a lot of inaction being good. And neither one of us, and none of us are saying that, that's never the case. But definitely lean towards a bias for action, definitely lean towards default aggressive. That's where you want to go, and then lean with little footsteps.

• 17:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and I think where people get hung up on this, and we talk about this a lot, the way you describe it, your iterative decision-making, the way you do it, happens so quickly and so rapidly, it appears that you're just going from here all the way to there. So from the outside, it looks like you're making these huge moves. And the reason you say you're cheating is, I know that's what it looks like, but that's not what's happening. If you look at it like, hey, you're going from here all the way to there, and you're thinking, I don't know how to do that yet, so I'm gonna do nothing. If that's your frame of reference, I understand why doing nothing is a reasonable alternative. What you don't understand is that you're not doing that. You never go from here all the way to there.

• 18:32Dave Berke?

  You have a thousand little moves along the way, but they happen so quickly and the maneuvers are so fast that it doesn't appear like that. And if that's all you think is, oh, Jaco just goes from here to there. You're like, that's actually not happening.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what's interesting about what you're saying is,

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't think anyone thinks I'm going all the way from here, from point A to point F. I don't think they think that. I think that they don't even know if we should go to point F, or point Z, or point Y. And so they're just, they haven't made any decision whatsoever. Meanwhile, I go, go to B.

• 19:09Dave Berke?

  That's right, you're not saying go to F.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying go to F, I'm saying go to B. And meanwhile, they don't even know where to go, but then I all of a sudden say, hey, we're going to B right now. And everyone goes, oh damn, how did he know to go to B? Because B is only a little tiny ways away, but everybody thinks that's a big move because they were trying to calculate, they were trying to do that calculus for a giant.

• 19:28Dave Berke?

  And that's what leads to doing nothing.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's what leads to doing nothing, because you can't do that calculus. And by the way, what helps you do the calculus? What helps you do the calculus when you start filling into the variables? What starts filling in the variables is when you start gathering information. And when you start gathering this information, you start filling in those variables. And like you said, even if that variable is negative, and we go, oh, there's more enemy to the west. Okay, cool, now guess what we know? We're not going west. We can start moving east, we can start moving south. Whereas if we just sat there, we still don't know where to go. We don't know where to go, east, west, north, south, we don't know where to go. So that small movement to the east, whoa, hey, we just identified more bad guys. Okay, cool, now we know not to go there.

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  So there's the opening sentence.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  Competition in the Marine Corps. Marines and the Marine Corps are tools for the nation to, by the way, you know, the,

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  you know, the people talk about like, what's the greatest speech that's ever been delivered? You know, is it Martin Luther King? Is it Winston Churchill? Is it Teddy Roosevelt? You know, we have nothing to fear, but which one of those speeches is the greatest speech ever? And no one's ever asked me this question in a public forum where I could answer this question the way I want to answer this question. But.

• 20:48Jocko Willink?

  Chesty Puller gave a speech at like some Marine Corps ball gathering and he was already retired. He was already Chesty Puller and you know, he, they, they, they call him up to give the speech that he's gonna give. And the freaking place goes completely nuts, obviously, and he gets up there and he, and he delivers what I believe to be

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  at least a strong contender, at least for me, the greatest speech of all time.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  And you know what he says?

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  He just says, "Marines."

• 21:32Jocko Willink?

  And that's it. The place went freaking nuts and he walked off the stage.

• 21:39Jocko Willink?

  So, whenever I see the word Marines, I think of that. That's all he needed to say.

• 21:47Jocko Willink?

  So, Marines and the Marine Corps are tools for the nation to use in the enduring competition that takes place in international relations. So what does that mean?

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean? That means every single thing that you do, every single thing that you do is, is playing into this competition that you're in, in all these different aspects. Every day, Marine capabilities and force posture affect the thinking of our competitors and potential adversaries. Again, this is propaganda for the Marine Corps. In case me talking about Chesty Puller saying Marines isn't good enough propaganda for the Marine Corps. The more credible the Marine Corps, the more attractive we are to allies and partners. The more credible the Marine Corps is as a deterrent force, the more we affect potential rivals' thinking. For Marines, participation in our nation's competitions starts at recruitment.

• 22:44Jocko Willink?

  The quality level of individuals brought into the service provides the raw material to build a credible force. Attributes like education level, physical fitness, and mental resilience determine how quickly these individuals can be transformed into members of a coherent, capable organization. These attributes also help establish the range of possibilities available to adapt the existing force or innovate to create a new one. How much do you know about Marine Corps recruiting, Dave?

• 23:13Dave Berke?

  I mean, I have my own personal experience with it. I don't know if I'm an expert on it, but I have a small sense of how it works.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  The rumor that I've always heard about the Marine Corps is that the Marine Corps spends like a fraction of the amount of money that the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force spend on recruiting. Do you know anything about that?

• 23:32Dave Berke?

  I can't give you any facts on that. That wouldn't surprise me, but I couldn't prove that.

• 23:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I've always heard. I believe it. Now, I know that they must spend some money because they have advertisements and they have, you know, commercials and stuff like that. But then they do a good job based on narrative alone.

• 23:53Dave Berke?

  I mean, my recollection of when I was like really getting into thinking about the Marine Corps was the way that, one of the ways I was convinced is it made it sound like it was probably impossible. Like they're recruiting like, you're probably not good enough.

• 24:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Dave Berke?

  But if you are, this is where you should be. And there was this sense of like, oh, man.

• 24:13Jocko Willink?

  Now, Dakota Meyer, almost the exact same story. You know, he showed up and I forget what kind of cra- he was talking about he had some crazy like haircut, whatever. He was a punk ass kid and he shows up and says, I want to be in the Marine Corps. And they said, you don't really look like you're Marine Corps material.

• 24:29Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, do you think this is, when you go to recruiting school, are they teaching you that as a recruiter?

• 24:37Dave Berke?

  I'm pretty sure that's a technique that they leverage.

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Now, what's interesting is JP Denell, same thing, walked into the Navy recruiter, I want to be a Navy SEAL. Or I should probably like, I want to be a Navy SEAL because he's 14 years old or whatever, whatever he was. And they said, eh, the wannabes need to come in on Thursday. What do you wannabe? And he was determined just to prove that freaking recruiter in Sacramento, California, that JP had what it took.

• 25:05Dave Berke?

  It's a great screening tool because I know the Marine Corps wants people that think that they want, they want people that have big egos in the sense that think they could do things that are hard. And a great way to test that is, hey, this is too hard for you. And if you go, yeah, you're right. They don't want you anyway. What they want is them to go, oh, really? So I, I would say I'm pretty sure that that is a technique that they proliferate throughout officer and enlisted recruiting is, you're probably not good enough, but, but we'll see.

• 25:32Jocko Willink?

  Now, what percentage of people does that backfire? The humble guy that's a super stud?

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  That says, hey, you know, probably I guess I'm not just, I'm probably not just cut out for it. And I guess maybe that is a good self-selection because now we got a dude that maybe at the moment a truth can't really believe in his capabilities. Very strange. Historically, the Marine Corps has been the nation's hybrid force, conducting activities that straddle the line between violence and non-violence. Marines have often deployed to places to help the local people in time of need, while being ready to restore order in those same places if required. The direction for the Marine Corps to be the most ready when the nation is least ready,

• 26:22Jocko Willink?

  applies as much to competition as it does to war. And this is another one of these statements where you think, well, that, that, that right there is a maneuver to the Department of Defense to give us money. Give, you need to allocate money to the Marine Corps because when the nation is least ready, the Marine Corps will be the most ready.

• 26:45Jocko Willink?

  In fact, this statement can be viewed as a competitive act in the informational element of national power.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  Next section is called campaigning mindset.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Competition is in, and I, you know, I love the word campaign. Why? Because, because that's the opposite of tactical battle. That's the opposite of a hack. It's the opposite of a shortcut. It's an opposite of this easy solution, the sweatless solution. As Colonel David Hackworth once said,

• 27:21Jocko Willink?

  it's a campaign. Campaigns don't happen overnight.

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  Competition is enduring in nature at the national level, and the military element normally plays a supporting role, especially on the spectrum of competition short of war. This leads us to develop a campaigning mindset about competition, which is characterized by long-term thinking and recognition that we need to integrate our actions with others. Marines compete as part of a naval and joint force, but also as part of the inter-agency in an approach that combines all the elements of national power. Now, it's sentences like this where I think this, this document is not aimed at a Lance Corporal. This document is aimed at the DOD. This is a campaign. This document is

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  a campaign. It's correct, but this document is a campaign to make sure that we keep the Marine Corps strong. Marines should strive to integrate our allies and partners into our competitions, as this will increase our options, while also increasing the potential number of dilemmas, dilemmas we can present to our rival, our rivals. What, what a, and we're going to get to this, I don't know if it's in this chapter or one of the later chapters, when we start talking about one of my favorite military terms, the combined arm dilemma, combined arms dilemma. But when you think about what you're doing is creating dilemmas for your rivals, even in, not necessarily in a wartime scenario, but even in a competitive scenario, or a threshold

• 28:55Jocko Willink?

  less than violence, you're trying to create dilemmas for them. It's a powerful thing.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  The cultivation of humility is also important for this mindset.

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  Humility is the most important characteristic for a leader to have. And even though we just had a little conversation about the fact that we want people in the Marine Corps that have at least some level of arrogance, you don't think I can do this? Watch this. That's why we got to remind them that the cultivation of humility is also important for this mindset. Marines learn early on about the observe, orient, decide, act, loop, or OODA loop. Understanding of OODA teaches us that each decision is a hypothesis that gets tested in the real world when we act.

• 29:50Jocko Willink?

  Lately, when I've been talking to clients and especially, well, I shouldn't say lately, as COVID kicked off. And I would be talking to clients.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  I would, I had this little, uh, this little spiel that I was giving them. And, and, and basically what I was saying is, hey, if you're in a leadership position and you're not sure what to do, what you gotta do in that situation, you gotta guess.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  And I've got, then I'd go off about guess, I'd say, listen, everybody, no one wants to hear the word guess. Like, hey, Dave, you're in charge. What do you want me to do? Oh, let me take a guess. No one wants to hear that. That sounds horrible. Who wants to follow somebody that I guess we should, have you ever heard a leader in your life that was inspiring with, with confidence when they said, hey, I'm guessing we should go over there. You don't say that as a leader. You don't use those words. And yet, and then I followed up and say, but when you're in a leadership position, when you are making a decision, what you're calling a decision, it is a guess. And what the Marine Corps did here, because they didn't want to use the word guess, they, they sent us up into the next level and just called it a hypothesis.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Well, that's what that is.

• 30:55Jocko Willink?

  Which is a guess.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Educated guess.

• 30:57Jocko Willink?

  Which is an educated guess, which is still a guess. But the amount of times that you are in a leadership position where you know for certain what's going to happen next is point zero zero zero one percent because we can't predict the future. We don't know what all these little variables are, how all these little variables are going to turn out. So that's what we're doing as leaders is we're making guesses. We're making hypotheses. We're taking, what'd you say? Educated guesses. That's like in between, right? A guess is just a guess. An educated guess, next level hypothesis.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yep.

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  So, we've got to understand that. We understand that that decision is a hypothesis that gets tested in the real world when we actually act. The campaigning mindset then includes the understanding that we base our plans on a model we created of our competitor. Okay? Our decisions about how to achieve our goals in competition are theories. They're guesses. A lot of guesswork going on.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  And what's good, what I like about using the word guess, what I like about that is I think, you know, Dave, you were talking earlier about hesitation if you're making a decision making process. Well, if I'm a young leader and I'm looking at my options A, B, or C, and I'm not sure which one to do, I might be thinking in my mind, well, what am I supposed to do? Just guess? Am I supposed to just take an educated guess with what we should do right now? I got all these resources, I got maybe lives at stake, or I got capital at stake, I got all these things going on. I don't feel comfortable just guessing, so I'm just gonna sit here.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna sit here and wait, cuz I'm scared. Cuz it doesn't seem right that I should be guessing what to do. Yes, you should.

• 32:41Jocko Willink?

  Now, what I recommend you do is you guess little. Just take a little guess. Hey, should I go indoor A, B, or C? You know what I'm gonna do immediately? Hey, I'm gonna walk up to that door and take a listen, what do I hear in there? Right? Is there a party going on, or is there gunfire? So, or is there no noise? Now, no noise, I'm a little scared about, but if I hear music, that's kind of a positive sign.

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  But I didn't enter the door, all I did was put my ear up to it. So that's what you do, you make a little guess. I guess we should check out that door. I hear gunfire, that doesn't sound like a good door. What about the next door? I hear nothing, not sure about that one. What about this door over here? I hear music.

• 33:24Jocko Willink?

  I hear music that Echo Charles plays in his vehicle from the islands, which means everyone in that room is kind of cruising. And I'm feeling pretty good about it. We're opening that door, no factor.

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  So if you're not comfortable taking a guess, then it's hard to make a decision.

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  Our plans then need to have feedback loops built into them to either confirm that our models and theories are correct enough to help us reach our goals, or that we need to modify them. And by the way, they don't bring this back up to humility, they should. Because if you're not humble, and you think, I'm guessing door C, and you walk up to it, you hear gunshots, you're like, well, I guess C, we're going in. Bad idea. So it takes humility to modify your plan. And if you're not humble, you won't be modifying your plan, you'll be sticking with your plan until it kills you.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  Competition campaigning introduces the idea of persistence. Strategic competition is more like a marathon than a sprint. Competitions enduring nature means that any campaign will require long-term commitment to achieve its goals. We also need to be alert for how our competitive advantages and those of our rivals will shift over time.

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  This is what's scary about

• 34:49Jocko Willink?

  wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, where your enemy is home. They're not on deployment. They're going to be there. And when the wars, they'll wait, they'll, they'll be there for a hundred years. There's not an American that wants to be there. There's not an American that's, hey, I'm stoked, I'm in Al Qaeda.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I'm stoked, I'm in cut. Hey, I'm stoked, wherever. They want to be back in Nebraska. They want to be back in Iowa. But the people that we're fighting against, they are, they are home. So before you get into that combat, you got to figure out who's got the home field advantage. It's a big deal. It's a way bigger deal than it is in sports.

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  This next section is professionalism.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  As military professionals charged with the defense of the nation, marine leaders must be true experts in the conduct of war.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  This statement from warfighting, the MCDP one warfighting establishes the first priority for Marines, which is defend the nation.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  As professionals, Marines recognize this defense as a vital and enduring national interest. Our professionalism is grounded in our nation's values, which sets us apart from competitors. Achieving that standard, being prepared to defend the nation, has been and will continue to be a competitive act. So us just being ready is how we are helping America compete with everybody else in the world, because they gotta keep up. You see what the Marine Corps is doing? You know you better be training hard. We accept that the existence of the Marine Corps helps deter potential foes.

• 36:54Jocko Willink?

  Our goal is for that deterrence to take place below the violence threshold. So what we're doing right there, we're kind of making sure that even the doves in the government are looking at the Marine Corps thinking, you know, the Marine Corps doesn't want war either. The Marine Corps wants peace, they want these things to happen below that, we better give them more money. Well-funded Marine Corps. Professionals understand this goal and thus direct their energies, self-study and unit development in particular, toward achieving it. So all Marines are trying to become professionals. Professionals.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  True experts in the conduct of war. As professionals, we recognize that development of coercive tools must be balanced with the need to attract in competition as well. For example, one component of an attraction strategy could lead to greater deterrence through building increased interoperability with an ally. It could also lead to advances through the informal element of national power as we perform disaster relief mission. Marines must remain alert for the opportunities to use and integrate both coercion and attraction into the larger competition. So the Marine Corps is not, they're saying here, we're not just here to fight wars. We're here to build relationships. Now at Echelon Front, we talk about building relationships all the time. That's how you lead.

• 38:24Jocko Willink?

  You lead by building relationships. That's how you get things done, by building relationships.

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  And what we're talking about here is we are competing. And in order to compete, guess what we do? We build relationships. We build relationships. And just to give people example. And I'm sure you have some more, Dave, but. Especially before the war started for me in the 90s. This is what the SEAL teams did. Go to a country, train their special operations unit, do a big exercise. Train them in the use of our weapons. We train in the use of their weapons. We send some people to learn how to speak their language. We bring some people to learn. That they can learn how to speak English. We form these relationships. We work together.

• 39:11Jocko Willink?

  So that way, we're strengthening our allies. We have somebody we can rely upon. We get to know them. But that's just relationships. That's what it is. Did you guys do that in the? In the pilot world?

• 39:22Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about carrier deployments. And I think right now there's a connotation that the aircraft carrier, and it's probably already always existed, but certainly now since, you know, post 9 11. The carrier is this power projection tool, this, you know, the. You know, 90,000 tons of diplomacy, you know, sovereign US soil, all of them. They have these great taglines, the Navy. Leverages which which are true in a lot of ways, but pre 9 11, if you ever did a cruise pre 9 11, like I did back in the day. The joke that we called them pleasure cruises. It was like 13, 14 port calls. And the two months, you know, that you you sailed from San Diego to to the Persian Gulf was a bunch of port calls.

• 40:04Dave Berke?

  You're you're doing joint operations with different countries. You're you're. Pulling up here side and contributing to their economy. You're building all those relationships and most of it is allies or people we want to build relationships with. Then you go to the Gulf for a couple of months, do that thing. And in that, you're doing three or four port calls to Bahrain, to the UAE, all these places that were trying to strengthen relationships and that. That the carrier wasn't an instrument of power projection. It was an instrument of diplomacy, which was building those relationships. Obviously, post 9 11. You know, my experience, my second cruise was like, go to the North Arabian Gulf, stay there for seven months, come home. But. You know, before that, the investment the Navy was making was mostly strengthening the relationships. And there are stories out there even somewhat recently that carriers would deploy

• 40:45Dave Berke?

  for disaster relief with no aircraft on them, just to send a carrier to help, you know, floods and crazy things that happen in different places, strictly for strengthening ties and relationships that are projecting literal no combat power by design because the Navy see, well, I'm sure it's larger than just the Navy, but that's my connection. And, you know, I deployed off carriers for the most part.

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's attraction, right? That's, that's, that's attraction as opposed to deterrence, right? We're just trying to show people that, hey, we're, you want to be friends with us. You want to be, we're attractive. We can help you if you get in a time of need.

• 41:16Dave Berke?

  We're a good ally.

• 41:17Jocko Willink?

  At a tactical level, when I would deploy in the 90s, we would go out and do exercises where I would be in the jungle with some special operations unit from some other country. What do you do when you are a fighter pilot?

• 41:38Dave Berke?

  Same thing.

• 41:39Jocko Willink?

  Are you giving them a tour? Are you taking them in the backseat? At a tactical level, just out of my own curiosity, what would you do?

• 41:47Dave Berke?

  You're, you're flying with them. You're spending time with them. And, and there's a little bit-

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  Wait, are they flying their aircraft? And so you're their wingman and you work some stuff?

• 41:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you're integrating with them. Sometimes you fight against them. Sometimes you fight with them. Really what it's supposed to be is-

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever put your ego in check and let one of these, let one of these foreigners beat, beat you in a dogfight?

• 42:05Dave Berke?

  No, dude, come on, man.

• 42:07Jocko Willink?

  Zero percent chance.

• 42:09Dave Berke?

  Zero. Now, certain countries, they would have, we would fly with different countries that they would have different ROE, different rules, training rules and things like that. And you could see some of them were geared very specifically to make sure that certain people had advantages. And we would play by those rules and, and sometimes get in trouble for not following those rules. You know, one of the things that's really cool about the American military and certainly in aviation, and there's a saying we have, there's like, hey, there's no rank in the cockpit. So I could be the junior dude in the squadron. I'm not saying this happened very often, but you could be a mid-level guy. You're going to go out and fly with your boss. And once you start fighting him, like, you can pummel him to just pummel him into the ground. And it's, it's, there is no like deference, like, I don't want to make the old man look bad. You, you go out there and do your thing.

• 42:56Dave Berke?

  That's not always like that, but the, the interaction in some sense was this idea that this American military with this big might, this big power, our aviation world is, is something they can learn from, but we always learned stuff from them too. We would share briefing techniques and how they ran their briefs, how they trained their guys, how they did certain things. And a lot of it, at least on paper, was for us to bring to them, things that can help them get better. But it was always reciprocal. We always learned from operating with other countries. And I flew with pilots and airplanes from all sorts of different countries. Even sometimes the same exact airplane, but they fly it differently. They do things differently. So there's a whole bunch of things that you can do to interact with them that is beneficial for both. It was probably lopsided. What we knew and how we did it was usually more, more beneficial to them, but it wasn't completely

• 43:39Dave Berke?

  one-sided either. Flying dissimilar with different countries is a blast because you learn stuff to go, oh, man, we don't do that in our airplanes. That's really good for me to see. It makes me more prepared for if something actually really happens.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  Would you guys go toe-to-toe Top Gun dogfight style, one-on-one?

• 43:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you'd have, you'd have different things. I've never been in a situation where if the brief was you and me are going to fight, I don't care what country or what plane, once fight's on, it is game on. There is no like, hey, go easy on this guy or let this guy. I've never been in a dogfight once in my life, other than, hey, I'm there to show you certain things. But if it's like a real dogfight, like just a real fight, you're just, you fly your best airplane. There are times that you would dial back your best jet because it'd be really, it would undermine the effectiveness of the training.

• 44:30Jocko Willink?

  Of the relationship building as well.

• 44:32Dave Berke?

  But it never to like, oh, you did, we're even.

• 44:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, good job. You really caught me off guard there.

• 44:37Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:37Jocko Willink?

  You got me.

• 44:38Dave Berke?

  That would be, that would be, you know, in, in the heyday of, when you're a Top Gun IP and you're fighting against, you know, somebody else and you're going to come back, no joke, you come back with 25, 30 valid shots. That can be really disheartening for somebody to look on paper and go, hey, let me see your shot card. And they've got zero shots. And you're like, oh, hang on, I need to get my second sheet of paper. And if there's a Top Gun IP or a Web School IP listening to this, they're laughing right now because you can come back within four or five sets, five, six shots per, and you have 30 valid shots and the other guys got zero. If you do that set after set after set after set after a while, it'd be like you and me rolling on the mats and you doing nothing but trying to beat me. You're not teaching me, you're not training me, you're just going to beat me like.

• 45:20Dave Berke?

  Bro, what, I don't want to do this anymore. So you would dial that back, but you'd never be like, oh, Dave, that was amazing how you did that. I, I didn't think you could, you would never get to that level of, of that in a, in an actual fight. When we're training and doing other things, yeah, you, you, you're there to learn and they, they learn from you, learn from them, but I've never been in a one, one, one V one, where I'm dialing it back because somebody needs, you know, somebody's saying, hey, don't, don't fight your best jet. I'm only doing that, you know, in a tactical sense of helping him see sight pictures and maneuvering in a way that's benefiting him. Uh, but not like, cause I feel bad or, or something like that.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  Are the personalities of the foreign countries fighter pilots similar to Americans?

• 46:05Dave Berke?

  Yeah. One other thing too, and I, I'd be interested in what you saw with special forces around the world. What I came to find is despite what appears to be a whole bunch of differences between different countries, when it came down to it, the personalities of fighter pilots are really similar. There are differences. There are some cultural things. There are some organizational things. But at the end of the day, fighter pilots that fly fighters in any country and every type, any type of fighter, they're much more similar than they are different.

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Same thing with special operations. They'd have, there's definitely some, some differences in culture and whatnot, but it's, it's a pretty thin, pretty thin layer that you have to pull back and all of a sudden, oh, these guys are kind of just like us.

• 46:44Dave Berke?

  The mentality, yeah, totally. Yeah.

• 46:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, from a maintenance perspective,

• 46:50Jocko Willink?

  it seems like just the American sort of from manufacturing to like maintenance, the maintenance programs in the Navy, you know, even in the SEAL teams, we would, especially before the, once the war started, we kind of, we, we saw less of the Navy kind of administrative stuff on our, in, inside the but when the nineties, it was like, hey, you gotta do these protocols that the big Navy follows. And, and so you'd see, oh, well, you know, these guys are squared away. The Navy is squared away. There's a reason that when you, when you pull a piece of firefighting gear off of a wall on a ship that's been there for three years.

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  It works. It works because it's gone through this maintenance check. It's gone through every 30 days and every 90 days it's gotten this and it's got this and the other thing. Is, are there, are, do foreign countries have that same level of uh being squared away from a maintenance perspective?

• 47:47Dave Berke?

  You know, I don't know. I, I, I don't know if I ever got to that level, that layer of fidelity.

• 47:54Dave Berke?

  I will say that the American military, certainly the Navy and the Marine Corps is where I get most of my experience with. That is something we take really, really seriously. And what you just described is the equipment that we have, the things we have as old as they are, whatever, the things that we have work. And that when I manned up an aircraft, I never once got on an airplane and felt like kinda sketchy about it. Never once did I get in an airplane and not feel like I'm getting into a plane. And I'm not sure, I'm not sure if that's true for, for other countries or other, other services, well, outside of America. But I always, and I've flown with the Navy a lot. I've flown with the Marine Corps a lot. I've flown with the Air Force a lot, and that is universal.

• 48:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so I have a different feeling and I have gotten into aircraft and been completely sketched out with both my fingers crossed, hoping that this thing is gonna make it. And in all those cases, it was in a, it was in an aircraft that was not an American military aircraft and you're going, well, I guess this is, could go down like that. This could be it. I never had the best feeling. And what's weird is, you know, the, the other thing about the American military aircraft is they're working, man. Like the Navy helicopters, they're, they're just, they're, it's, you know what they are? They're daily drivers.

• 49:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  They're a daily driver. A, a CH46, a Navy CH46, that thing is a daily driver. That thing is a Ford F-150 that's just ready. It's, that thing is gonna do its job.

• 49:23Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  So I always felt, even though there'd be hydraulic fluid all over the deck and it would, it would be a little bit, it would look sketchy. But you're, you know that that thing's been flying, well, first of all, how old is the CH46 platform? 19, early 1960s? And some of those birds are from the 1960s, still flying. Well, at least they were still flying when, when I was in.

• 49:47Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Jocko Willink?

  All right, little tangent right there.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting is everything we just talked about.

• 49:58Jocko Willink?

  All plays, that's what this whole book is about. It's about competition, but it's all those things. That's the reason I was kind of diving into it. It's all these things are how we are competing. With our allies and with our rivals and we're letting everybody know that this is what we've got. And these are capabilities and this is what we can do. Like that's all part of the game.

• 50:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And I was thinking that that tangent was also like, that's what makes us professionals. That's the profession of what we're doing. It's not a, it's not a, it's not a hobby. As fun as it is, it's, it's flying airplanes, all those are professional things. And that's when we were working with other countries. The one thing I will say this is that I know when, when you were going to fight someone outside of your squadron. So another squadron and then outside of the service, like we're going to go with the air force. You, you had the sense of like, hey, you gotta, you gotta be on your A game. When we were fighting with other countries, it was like you, you were going to show them your absolute best game. In everything we do from brief to shut down and everything in between. So there was a sense of looking the part and that every step away from your squadron, from your bros.

• 51:01Dave Berke?

  That went up higher. Like, don't you go fight with the air force and embarrass us. And when you're fighting, you know, working with foreign countries, the need to look professional was absolutely understood.

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  Verbalized at all or no?

• 51:12Dave Berke?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 51:16Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Who would you train with? Like for example, like what, what other country?

• 51:20Dave Berke?

  Let me, I mean, okay. So I have trained personally with Canadians, Australians, Brits, Saudis. Uh, Emiratis, Kuwaitis, Singapore.

• 51:35Dave Berke?

  Malaysia, I'm, I'm running out. There's more. These are all just air forces or services. Your countries that fly different airplanes or interacted in some way. Um, Japan, a whole bunch of countries.

• 51:47Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever fly airplanes?

• 51:49Dave Berke?

  So every, you said something, I'm kinda laughing at it and I didn't know we're gonna circle back to it. Every single time you go do this, kinda the last day or two, you have some graduation thing and they're always offering, "Hey, you jump in our..." And remember, I flew a single seat airplane, so it wasn't always that we could do that, but if there's a two-seat jet or something, we always offering, and they're always offering us, "Hey, jump in the backseat." I never once, never once. I don't wanna be in the backseat, first of all, of anything, certainly not of a, you know, a former Soviet Union MiG-29 that's, you know, wow, I never got in the backseat of somebody else's airplane.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  You were busy.

• 52:24Dave Berke?

  Couldn't do it that day, not available. And that, I think, is what you were saying, like, "I don't know anything about any of these, I don't know about this airplane, and first of all, I don't wanna be in the backseat. I don't know if the cool..." And guys would, guys would kill for that stuff, and I never wanted to do it. But being in the back of a flanker or a MiG or something, go for it, dude, that's all you.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Sometimes you'd have the same planes though, right, or no?

• 52:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah, Canadians, Australians, we flew the exact same airplanes.

• 52:50Jocko Willink?

  It's the, like, in the SEAL teams, if you're gonna do something, you're in some foreign aircraft, the only way to get out of it would be to, basically, quit. You know, you can't say, like, "Well, hey, guys, I'm not really comfortable with this aircraft." And so, you're sitting there in a squad, and every single one of those, probably like,

• 53:11Jocko Willink?

  there's, every single one of those guys is thinking, "We should not be doing this." And every single one of those guys doesn't say a word about it, gets on that bird, and goes and does what you gotta do. Not me.

• 53:23Dave Berke?

  Uh, back to the book, "Warfighting also instructs that the, quote, 'Military profession is a thinking profession,' end quote. This means that Marines must practice mental, the mental discipline necessary to challenge our assumptions. As professionals, we need to dispassionately assess the environment and make certain we are setting the pace for our competitors." I was on with a client the other day, and, well, you know, the lead in to the question that I got asked was, "Well, you know, in the military, of course, it's a, it's a very hierarchy, uh, structured thing, and what you want is people that all think the same way." You know, that was the lead in to the question. So, then he asked the question, then I had to start with, "Well, let me just tell you that the last thing I

• 54:06Dave Berke?

  want on my team is a bunch of people that think the same way I do. Actually, I want a bunch of people that push back and think different thoughts and see different perspectives than me."

• 54:14Jocko Willink?

  And so here's the Marine Corps quoting from their, their, their manual number one, which is called warfighting. Military profession is a thinking profession. And it takes discipline to challenge our own assumptions. Again, it's totally, it's the complete opposite of what everyone thinks the Marine Corps is. Everybody thinks everyone, oh, we want every Marine to think the same. No, you don't. We want them to actually, it's actually we're being instructed to challenge our own assumptions.

• 54:44Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I like that connection too. You were talking earlier about wanting to see this thing connect back to humility, which was that sentence kind of started this and that there is, there is an undeniable connection there. The mental discipline necessary to challenge our own assumptions, the humility that it takes to go and look at your own guess, your own assumption to go, I might be wrong. The humility inside of that, and they're calling it mental discipline, but those two are completely linked. And even if you just think about the things you say, the self-discipline it takes for you to do the things that you do as disciplined as you are, the reason you do it is that you don't want to get complacent. You don't want to get comfortable. You don't want to get weak. So you have the mental discipline to do that. And that is,

• 55:26Dave Berke?

  that is humility. Because if you don't have your, like, I can skip a day. I can skip a couple of days, whatever.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  Either, either a lack of mental discipline or a lack of humility will lead you to not challenge your assumptions and just think that everything's going fine and we'll just go through with it.

• 55:40Dave Berke?

  My plan's good to go.

• 55:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Jocko Willink?

  Next section is education. Before, before we go into this next section, let me ask you this. Do you remember when I was talking about diving and not wanting to be the buddy?

• 55:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, totally. So that was, I think, when we were talking about, and I was, you know, the single seat mindset of, of my experience, you know?

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  Is it a similar thing where if you're in the backseat, you're just kind of not in control and you're not much to do and you're sort of?

• 56:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, that was for me. And there were guys just like me that had no problem sitting in the backseat. If, if, if you lined up like 10 fighter pilots today, like, hey, do you want to go fly in the backseat of an authentic P-51 from World War II? Nine of them would be in there like this and I would say, no, thanks.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  So it could even be 100 or 99 of them would say, I'll be in there.

• 56:35Dave Berke?

  Just about everybody.

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  I want to get in there. I'm not, I'm not even a freaking pilot.

• 56:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And, and I understand the historical significance of it.

• 56:43Dave Berke?

  And I'm not even sure it's rational to even think that, but I never, ever, ever, even wanting to fly a two-seat airplane, I didn't want to do that. Because I didn't, I didn't want people looking at me like, hey, what do you like? I got this, you know, and that's all young, I mean, I think I've grown that in some ways, but there is an absolute uniqueness of being alone in an airplane. There's something about that. There's something unique about that.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, I got a big smile on my face right now. So, there's a, I'm not even 100% sure about this, but I'm 99. This is why, this is why, every time you say, "single-seat", every time you're like, "well, it's a single-seat", there's a Ferrari sports car, which is one of the most expensive Ferraris that you can get. It's nuts, you know, it's got 10 million horsepower and it can do the whatever. And it's a single-seat car. And I, we're gonna, I'm gonna have to fact-check this.

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  The name of the car is Ego-East.

• 58:06Jocko Willink?

  That's the name, it's like something ego. That's the name of the car.

• 58:10Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm in this thing by myself. There's not even anyone else to come in here, it's not possible. This is all about me.

• 58:18Dave Berke?

  Well, think of the ego, I mean, if you want to think about even just me, think of the ego of flying for the military, not good enough. Flying helicopters, not good enough. Flying Cobras, not good enough. Flying jets, not good enough. Flying F-18s, not good enough. Flying single-seat F-18s, okay, that'll do. Like, the criteria of what I had created in my mind of what success was, like, what success was, was just that. And I don't, I don't mean to presume that I know...

• 58:54Dave Berke?

  What you, you know, what you were thinking, but hey, do you want to just be in the Navy? That's not enough for me. Uh, you could be a, a diver or like, and you could go through the criteria of like, and even, and, and I'm, I'm implying like, it's kind of crazy, like Green Berke.

• 59:09Dave Berke?

  That's not what I want to do. Like, Jago, you know how many people would kill to say they're Green Berets? Like, yeah, I know, I understand that, but that's not what I want. And I had created a scenario in my mind, like if it's not a single seat, high lot, F-18 in the Marine Corps, I'm not going to be happy, which is kind of, it's insane. It's crazy, but that is, that is what, that's what I wanted to do.

• 59:35Dave Berke?

  And I don't, maybe if I ended up in a two seat squadron, would I have somehow go, hey, you know what? I was an idiot. This was, this is totally awesome. This is great. Maybe.

• 59:44Dave Berke?

  But you, you know, the ego, the power of the ego going, and that's, I think, not to defend myself too much, but I think that's a little bit different than arrogance. The ego and the arrogance, you know, the flaunting of I'm better than you arrogance and more like, no, that to me is the hardest, that's the highest peak you can get to. That's where I, I want to be. And I had created it that that's what I wanted. And other guys like, they didn't, I don't care. I'll fly whatever. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, cool. Whatever. I'll fly that. Cool. Go, go fly that.

• 1:00:21Jocko Willink?

  If you don't have that, how far do you make it?

• 1:00:27Dave Berke?

  Not where I wanted to go.

• 1:00:29Jocko Willink?

  I, I mean, okay. So there might be some small, tiny, miniscule part of the population that is just so talented that they can kind of just cruise by and they're going to get it.

• 1:00:38Dave Berke?

  Right. Yeah, there are.

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  And there's some people that are like, guess what I'm doing this weekend? I'm sharpening my knife. I'm polishing my boots. That was me in SEAL training. You know, me in SEAL training was, oh, guys are going to go to whatever, you know, go to the mall, go try and meet girls or whatever. I'm going to sharpen my knife the whole weekend and get ready for inspection. Because I want to make sure I get through this thing. So I'm not sure. I see pitfalls all over the place and I don't need any more pitfalls than are already in existence.

• 1:01:05Dave Berke?

  And you're not going to feel like you're missing out either. You're not like, man, I wish I was out at the bar, out at the club. Like you're not thinking that at all. You're like, this is what I should be doing. This is what I should be doing. I don't care about anything else. So you don't even feel like you're doing it even though you don't want to. You wouldn't want to do anything else. As a matter of fact, if you did the other thing, you're like, you know what I should be doing right now? I should be back home prepping. That's what I should be doing.

• 1:01:26Jocko Willink?

  So the, the, I think that's the difference. Well, maybe not the difference, but when you talk about, when you talk about ego

• 1:01:37Jocko Willink?

  and you cross section some humility in there, guess what that equals? That equals someone that's working as hard as they possibly can and holding themselves to the highest possible standard so that they can achieve what they want to achieve. When someone's just arrogant, guess what? They don't do that extra studying. They don't stay and sharpen their knives. They don't. And, and look, there's a tiny, miniscule percentage chance that they have the natural talent and it's probably, well, it's, I'll tell you, it's a lot easier

• 1:02:05Jocko Willink?

  in the sea to get through basic SEAL training, just based on the fact that you're a really good athlete and you're decently tough. And if you have that, you can be pretty arrogant and still make it through because you don't really need to do anything extra because you can do a rope climb. And you can carry a log around and it's like, okay, you know, you played whatever you, you, you did track and field and you played football and you, you know, you show up and you're 21 years old and you're in really good shape. You can be pretty arrogant and not really have to do anything extra and make it through the program. I bet it's a little bit more challenging. There's probably less people that would fall into that category in pilot school because you get hit with the academics, you get hit with the, the, the fine motor skills, you get hit with the, the,

• 1:02:49Jocko Willink?

  the natural ability to, like I remember when I took the test for officer candidate school and they're showing you pictures and what, is this? Is this plane, they show like, I wasn't even going into aviation or anything. They're showing you a plane. Is this thing coming or going? Is this that? And so you're getting hit with those kinds of tests as well. So there's gotta be, there's, there's, there's different types of screening that's taking place. That are more, there's, there's a broader modality of screening as opposed to SEAL training. It's like, be cold, do pull ups. That's, that's not a huge.

• 1:03:25Dave Berke?

  How much autonomy do you have over your schedule and stuff in, in SEAL training as well? I'm sure at some points you have zero, but do you have a bunch of free time? Do you?

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Surprisingly, what's surprising to a lot of people is you do have a lot.

• 1:03:37Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  You do have a decent amount of free time and that is part of the test. Because part of the test is, oh, you want to go get drunk and get in a fight? Cool. You're not here anymore. Right. Cause you just got in trouble. We don't need you in the SEAL teams. Oh, you did, you just went and didn't prepare this weekend and now you're failing your third inspection? Cool. We don't need you in the SEAL teams. Like, so there is a, they have to give you some opportunity. They have to give you enough rope that you can hang yourself and you certainly can. And there's plenty of, plenty of guys that did.

• 1:04:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  Plenty of guys that got in trouble in town, didn't come back from Mexico in time for muster. And you know, you hit a couple of those things and you're, you're gone. So they give you enough rope. If you're a knucklehead, you'll hang yourself with it. But other than that, if you can do pull ups and you can suffer, or you can do some rope climbs, like you can kind of just grit through it. And that's why I think you, that's why I think I would venture to say that we have a higher percentage of arrogance in the SEAL teams because you don't, because you're not going to get humbled quite as much as, as you are in such a selective

• 1:04:43Jocko Willink?

  scenario as going to flight school, well, going to OCS, going to the basic school, you know, getting down selected, down selected to get in, down selected at OCS, down selected at the basic school, down selected at flight school. And then down selected to go to Top Gun. Like that's, that's a bunch of very narrow, very narrow funnels that you gotta get through. If you're going to make it all the way to Top Gun instructor, we don't, that's, that's a bunch of very narrow things to pass.

• 1:05:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah, even with that, it's not a flawless system. I mean, even with that, there are guys that are that are there that maybe shouldn't be there.

• 1:05:30Dave Berke?

  I I equate, and I'm probably wrong about this, just my perception, I equate the SEALs, being a Navy SEAL is as even inside the community of these highly, highly capable special operations organizations throughout the different services, that the SEALs, I elevate them in my own mind, that there's just something unique about that. And if I take a step back and I think like, okay, flying F-16s with the Air Force or flying F-18s for the Navy and Marine Corps, look, man, it's the same. And there's probably people say, Green Berke Navy SEAL, like, you could account a couple of that are

• 1:06:05Dave Berke?

  that's not what I had in my mind, that there was a piece that would just set up a tiny bit compared to everything else. That's what I think when I think from the outside of SEALs, or at least can understand someone in your shoes going, that one.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  And I would say when I was 18 and I was raising my right hand to enlist in the Navy, that's what I was thinking. Once I was in and I work with the, I work with the Marine Corps, I work with the Army Special Force, I work with the soldiers from the 101st Airborne, I realized there's guys here that are 10 times better than me. And they're in a, they're in a ground pounder in an infantry unit.

• 1:06:40Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Good, I am a humble person. I was gonna ask you, so what, keep, once you make it through Wicket after Wicket after, after narrow Wicket, after narrow Wicket, after narrow Wicket, and now you're at a point where you're a Top Gun Senior Instructor, and there's no person that can beat you in a dogfight? How are you finding your humility at that point?

• 1:07:03Dave Berke?

  For me, it was that there actually still were people that could beat me.

• 1:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:07:07Dave Berke?

  And I think it was almost luck that I was able to keep being reminded of that. And what I mean by that is

• 1:07:20Dave Berke?

  No one, I will never, even if you could track it, I will never be considered the best. Even the guys at my top gun in my generation, I'm in a conversation of, of a couple of guys, but nobody's gonna go, "Oh, Dave Brooke was the best guy." Nobody's gonna say that. I, I simply was not. Now, I was good enough to be in a strata of a couple of people that we had a, a small pool of, of, of instructors that sort of fit in that little category, and I was in there. But no question that I was not at the top.

• 1:07:47Jocko Willink?

  Is there a singular person that was? Or is it two?

• 1:07:50Dave Berke?

  No, it's, it's usually not. I, it's, in my experience, it was like, there's a little group. But inside that, every now and then, those guys get to fight each other. And what almost always happened is it's, at the end, it's neutral. You come back and it was awesome, but nobody got really the upper hand. Every now and then you go, "Oh dude, he was pushing me around a little bit, so he..." But it's never like he shot me, or he was in pushing, bullying me. It was like, "Ah, you had like 10 degrees on me there at the end of that 20 minute fight." So it was really super... I went out towards the later half of my career. I was the, I was the senior instructor at Top Gun. I was the training officer as a Marine. So you're talking wicked after wicked after wicked. I went out and flew with a guy named Trim Downing, legendary Navy pilot, CEO of Top Gun, my boss at the time. And he went out and we did four fights.

• 1:08:36Dave Berke?

  First three were just how you play out, neutral, neutral, neutral. I was paying really close attention. I got to the last fight and I, I did the first turn and go, "I'm gonna get him. I got him. I figured him out." And it was gonna be a really satisfying moment for me. And he ended up doing something I didn't think could even be done. And then he, he completely pummeled me. And to the point that I'm looking over my shoulder, almost like a brand new guy going, "What, what is happening? How did this happen to me?" And, you know, he's laughing at me on the radio. And not only when I forget it, those are the things that, at just the right intervals in my career, right when I was about to go over the edge of, "I'm unbeatable. I'm better than everybody." I never got to that point, cause something would always happen and go, and I would go,

• 1:09:21Dave Berke?

  "Oh, damn, that guy is better than me." Trim did that to me at a time where had, had that not happened, I just didn't fight against him. There was some risk that I could have just left there and gone off the deep end and looked back and go, "I was the best pilot in the world." Which is a ridiculous thought. I was lucky that at every interval where I got right to the edge, something would happen to me and go, "Dude..." That guy is better than you. And it happened just enough. Now, that doesn't happen to a lot of people. And

• 1:09:52Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean that doesn't? What doesn't?

• 1:09:54Dave Berke?

  The reminder, there are people that managed to get through and not have that experience happen. And, and the irony is that there's, there's more humility at Top Gun than you would think because it keeps happening. When you get stratified in an organization like Top Gun, that is humbling because everybody gets there for the same reason. You get there because you are the best. And then you get there and then you kind of start stratifying inside that. And that little tier that I was talking about, that little line and then the three or four, everybody knows who those guys are. Everybody, especially if you're not one of them. And that, that is,

• 1:10:38Dave Berke?

  that is a humbling thing in and of itself. And if you make it up there, the only risk is if you kind of believe it like, oh, I'm here because I'm better than everyone. If you don't get beat at some interval, that's where you can kind of go, hey, I have done something that nobody else can, I've made it to a place that nobody else can make. That fight against Trim, you could call him right now and he would, he would know exactly what I'm talking about. Because he also knew it from the, he had been, this was his third time on the staff as an instructor. He'd been there three times. He had seen it all. And the crazy part about that was

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  Were the first three fights a setup?

• 1:11:15Dave Berke?

  I don't think so. I really don't. I think the setup for him was the third, the second merge of the fourth fight. Where I looked over and I'm like, ah, he's slow, he can't make this turn. He can't do this maneuver. I'm gonna, I can draw it out. I unload. And I said, he doesn't have the airspeed to fly over the top. He can't do a loop in this case. The difference was, is my threshold for loop airspeed, which was really low. His was lower than mine. And that's something-

• 1:11:44Jocko Willink?

  Why? Because of his aircraft?

• 1:11:45Dave Berke?

  Because of his-

• 1:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Because of his skill?

• 1:11:47Dave Berke?

  Skill. His ability to fly. So, I'd have a, we'd have a thing called-

• 1:11:51Jocko Willink?

  So you could do, like, for instance, you could do a loop in a half a mile and he could do one in-

• 1:11:56Dave Berke?

  It's more of, it's more of speed, but yeah. So we had a, a thing called min vertical airspeed. We would teach guys, below 150 knots, you cannot go over the top. You can't loop your jet. We did that to keep people from, you know, spinning airplanes out of control. My min vertical airspeed was way lower than that.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Like what? Are you not allowed to talk about it?

• 1:12:13Dave Berke?

  No, no, I mean, at this point, I'm, I'm good. Probably, I don't know, 115, you can milk it up 120. And, and his, because he was a better pilot than me. He was able to fly his airplane closer to the edge of being out of control than I was. And I did my math of, nobody can do that. I can't do that. So, and I got right to my, my min, min vertical airspeed. He was slower than me, which meant I actually had an advantage over him. I had more speed than him, probably 10 knots over him. So these are really fine margins. But, that 10 knot differential didn't affect him as much as it affected me. So when I went up and I, I literally looked this way, thinking he'd be falling off.

• 1:12:55Jocko Willink?

  You looked to the left.

• 1:12:56Dave Berke?

  And, and he wasn't there and I'm like, well, where else could he be? And he was actually inside my turn above me and I'm, and I'm, part of me is thinking like, you physically can't do that. Like, physics won't allow that. The only thing that allowed it was, and, and you remember, Dan Pedersen talking about flying the airplane beyond the capability?

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was thinking.

• 1:13:16Dave Berke?

  And, and the end of it, the simplest way to describe it, that guy was a better pilot than I was. He could do something in his machine that I couldn't do, the exact same machine. And the, and the outcome was, he wins. Not like a little advantage. It was a lopsided, one-sided at the end was, he's directly behind me laughing at me. If you can't get some humility from that and go, oh, I, okay. I've made it all the way up here and there's still someone better than me. And thank God those things happen to me, Jocko. Like, thank God that happened to me. Cause I can keep, I take that with me. And, and I keep that. And that was a really good lesson for me. Had that been reversed? Who knows, man?

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, General Boyd, when Dan Pedersen was talking about the fact that he went to the conference and General Boyd was talking, who is the, you know, and he's saying, look, this is what the aircraft doing, we can do it, we can calculate more. And all the Top Gun guys are going, we can do things that are beyond that. That's right. And what that reminds me of is that you'll be doing jujitsu with someone and they'll have some capability that's not normal. The two capabilities that might not be normal. One is flexibility, someone, someone that's massively flexible and you, you get past their guard and you think you're past their guard and there's no human that's gonna be able to take their leg and put it back in front of you. And yet they do it. Or someone that's just psycho strong and you get across side on them and they kind of bridge and, and get

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  a position with their hands and you go, what are you gonna do? Push me? Oh, they push you off of them. And that's pretty freaking crazy, but it's a similar thing that there's no possible way you think, there's no human that's gonna put their leg in front of me right now. Jeff Glover, Jeff Glover, like you're past his guard and all of a sudden there's a leg coming, you know, over your side and you're thinking, who, is there someone else on the mat with us right now? Cause a, a human can't do this. Well, he's doing it right now and he's got your back. Yeah. And the other thing I was, I was thinking about was I was on my first deployment to Iraq and we were doing a bunch of ops. And then, look, at this point, I was very lucky because there wasn't a lot of people that we were the only platoon in Iraq at this time. For, for a short period of time, I had the only platoon in Iraq and we were

• 1:15:24Jocko Willink?

  pussed up with some people, but I had the only, imagine that. Imagine that. All the SEALs, I have the only platoon in Iraq. So it's freaking awesome. And I remember, and then eventually, you know, now the other platoon started coming in, when my other platoon started coming in, my commanding officer came in and, you know, we had a really good relationship. I'd worked for him before. And we had done, we had done a series of operations, rapid operations, really tight turn times and got a, you know, got the targets we were going after. And I remember my commanding officer, he gave me some like incredibly strong compliment. You know, like, I mean,

• 1:16:06Jocko Willink?

  Now it sounds completely ridiculous. At the time, it was this, you know, really strong compliment about what incredible, you know, groundbreaking and all this stuff. And I looked at him, I remember I looked at him, I said, "Hey, sir, give me 24 hours and I'll screw it up." Because, and the reason I said that is because on all these operations, you're like, "Man, so many things can go wrong. Bad things can happen." And, and I don't even, you know, and we had already had some bad things happen. You know, we'd already had some mistakes. We already had some things that should have gone different. And maybe they didn't quite leak out to, you know, maybe we kept them inside the platoon, like, "Hey dude, what were you doing? Why were you over there? If we would have, you know, if we didn't de-conflict at that moment, you could have got

• 1:16:48Jocko Willink?

  shot." Like, like some things where we, we, we got away with it, right? We got away with some mistakes. And so, he's telling me, "What a great job." And I just looked at him, "Hey, sir, give us 24 hours and I'll screw it up." And, and that to me is something I always tell myself, you know, that we always have that, always have that, uh, that, that person whispering in your ear, telling you that all glory is fleeting, because it is.

• 1:17:13Dave Berke?

  I think that lesson is, it's impossible to say how important that is. And, and you probably know this, but every single day at, at work, at Echelon Front, no matter what good work we've done, no matter what impact we made, no matter what the client tells me how great Echelon Front is, every single new phone call, every single, every time I do the same thing I've done 100 times, I think about that. I, and that, that event I was talking about in the airplane, that's why I think like that. And I, I, I think like that every single time, every single day. I'm about to start off a keynote that I've

• 1:17:52Dave Berke?

  done 100 times or 400 times. And I think, "Ooh, well, you, you don't want to screw this up. You gotta get this right. You, you, you can undo all the work that you've done by not having this be as good as every other one that you do." So, there is so much value in that, that recognition. And for me, being reminded that at my best, there's still somebody better.

• 1:18:17Dave Berke?

  That I keep with me every single day, every day in everything that I do. So, losing is sometimes a good thing.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  We were about to jump into the next section before I went down that tangent. Education, and by the way, we're on page six now, out of this chapter. We're moving right along. Professional military education for Marines intends to develop creative thinking leaders in a continuous progressive process of development. Those are some words that people do not think of when they think of the United States Marine Corps or the military at large. Creative thinking leaders in a continuous progressive process of development. This philosophy aligns well with the kind of education Marines need to succeed in competition as well as in war.

• 1:19:06Jocko Willink?

  While the nature of competition endures over extended periods like war, its character constantly evolves. Rivals continually strive to improve their competitive advantages, strive to gain the initiative, and strive to keep their competitors off balance.

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  If you wake up in the morning and you just read that line to yourself, that your rivals are continually striving to improve their competitive advantages, they're striving to gain the initiative, and they're striving to keep you off of balance, that's a good thing to wake up to in the morning. Because it's real easy to forget that.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Education is a primary method for Marines to sustain competitive advantage over time. I'm going to say that again. What's the primary method? Is it marksmanship? Is it battle exercises? No, they're saying education. Now, it's a primary, but a lot of people don't think that that even falls in the top 10 for the Marine Corps. Education. As Marine leaders progress through their careers, they need to develop mastery of the concepts that provide an ability to lead organizations like the Marine Corps through cycles of innovation, cycles of innovation that are essential to staying at the forefront of competition.

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  These concepts go beyond just adaptation.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  They go beyond to say, "Look, if you're just adapting to what's happening, you're wrong." If I'm just adapting to what you're doing, Dave, I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I need to be making you adapt to what I'm doing. Right. I'm gonna be on offense. They include topics like organizational learning, the ability for an organization to sense changes in its environment. Sense, not react to changes in its environment, but sense those changes. You know, lately I've been talking a lot about

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  just being more aware

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  of what's happening. When people ask me, "Well, the home life balance." You know, "How am I supposed to..." Hey, the answer is you need to balance them. How can I help you? I can help you by making sure that you're more aware and you're more attuned to when things get off balance. You need to sense those things more.

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  And you need to sense changes in the environment and improve its effectiveness and efficiency in response to those changes. Change management, when leaders are able to implement needed change in an organization while keeping its people engaged. And the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation, which is essentially a difference between incremental improvements of what already exists versus new and better approaches that displace the old methods over time. That's what we're trying to do. It is not enough for Marines to educate themselves on war and warfighting alone. Such a narrow focus limits the benefit they can give to the nation. Most of a Marine's career will be spent training in the Fleet Marine Force or serving in a support establishment,

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  understanding competition and how the Marine Corps contributes to it is an essential skill, especially for career Marines who will have the greatest impact on the Marine Corps' competitive attributes over time. Self-education in social, economic, technological, and other matters beyond military history and leadership are essential if Marines are to excel in competition. Now, what's really cool about working at Echelon Front and working with all these different companies is we get to work in economic environments, we get to work in technological environments, we get to work in construction and manufacturing, we get to work in all these different environments. And what's awesome is when we can take...

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  What we know and we can overlay it into those things and get to see and get to learn how our principles impact even in these this wide array of different environments. And that actually makes us smarter because when I see when I see how a principal, when I see how cover and move applies in a manufacturing plant and I see how it how it works in a financial company and I see how it works in a sales organization, when I see all those things, guess what I know better. I know cover and move better. I understand it better.

• 1:23:26Jocko Willink?

  And that's what they're talking about here. The better you understand all these different aspects of what's going on in the competition between America and other nation states, the better you can see how your how your organization contributes to that competition and how you can better contribute to that competition. The goal for education then is to foster awareness with the campaigning mindset of how all capabilities available to Marines can fit into and support a larger competition strategy. It should improve knowledge of openness to the interests of potential and existing allies and partners. The outcome we seek from education is to increase the

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  ability of Marines to envision greater possibilities in competition. Next section, talent management. Our doctrine of maneuver warfare places a premium on individual judgment and action. Wait a second, are we talking about the Marine Corps? Is everyone just following orders? No. We place a premium on individual judgment and action, which also means we recognize all Marines of a given grade and occupational specialty are not interchangeable. They should be assigned to billets based on specific ability and temperament. This expression of talent management found in warfighting applies equally as well to competing. People have different strengths and weaknesses. The organizations that compete

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  most effectively place their people in position to use their strengths.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Now, this is something we get asked quite a bit. And you know, I wrote about leadership strategy and tactics. Hey, if I've got, if Dave's really good at, at, at, at sales, and he's not that great at administrative duties, what should I do with him? Well, I'll tell you what you should do, put him in sales. That's what he's good at. Let him go do it. Now, does that mean you let him just ignore the administrative part? And he never has to touch paperwork and we hire someone? No, no, no. We want to strengthen his weaknesses, but we want to utilize and capitalize on his strengths. They also coach their people on the development of their strengths and link their use to the organization's goals. Some people excel at planning and creating new designs for operations and organizations.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Others excel at taking a blueprint and then optimizing it so it works as well as possible. Few have the ability to do all these things with equal skill. To compete at peak effectiveness, marine leaders need to measure the talents of the people they lead and then match these skills to the duties they perform. Organizations that do this well and for a sustained period also have a sustained competitive advantage. They maximize the performance of their people over time.

• 1:26:11Jocko Willink?

  That answers a lot of questions if you're in a leadership position. You find someone that's good at something, let them do it.

• 1:26:21Jocko Willink?

  Force planning.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  Force planning, which includes the functions of design, development, and management of the force for the Marine Corps, must balance utility at many points on the competition continuum with building a force that is a functional tool for the joint force to use in winning battles. The output of this complex undertaking must serve the needs of competing generally and of warfighting in particular. Realizing that they both exist on the same continuum and that they are in related shapes, shapes our overall approach to this planning. So, we could take the Marine Corps, and if we only wanted them to be good at warfighting.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  We would do things differently. We would, we would, we would change entire, entire portions of the way we raise Marines. We would get rid of certain parts of it. Hey, what are you talking about? We, we need to know marksmanship, we need to know cover move, we need, that's what we need to do. We need to be awesome at our tactics. We need to know how to win. We know how to interact with each other. Catch people in the combined arms level, but that's what we're going to focus on. There's a whole nother bunch of stuff that we focus on, that, well, that the Marine Corps focuses on. And what they're saying here is you have to find that balance. You gotta be able to compete, which means we gotta be able to go out and shake hands and make friends and build relationships. And we gotta be able to fight.

• 1:27:52Jocko Willink?

  We've gotta find out, we've got it, we've gotta balance those two. And we gotta realize that they're both interrelated. So this happens with companies where companies, hey, we've gotta make money. We've gotta make money. That's great. Guess what else we have to do? We have to maintain our reputation. Cause we can make a ton of money and blow our reputation out the door. Or we can have a great reputation and now we're going bankrupt. So what do we need to do? We need to find balance on these two things. To do this successfully, the output of our force planning should present a dilemma to our potential competitors and defeat their plans against us.

• 1:28:34Jocko Willink?

  The way we combined our organization, the way we combined our organization doctrine, training and equipment should produce a competitive advantage or multiple advantages. The options we choose within each of these elements affects our competitiveness over time. For example, if we enhance the training for equipment mechanics so that they can operate for extended periods without external support, then we also enhance our ability to operate in austere environments for a long period of time. The output of force planning is the sum of choices made inside each of these elements. These choices must be guided by the goal of establishing competitive advantages, which are useful for combat and also useful for competition.

• 1:29:23Jocko Willink?

  Having that goal, when you make sure that you're sticking with your goal, you have to be guided. Your choices are guided by the goal of establishing these competitive advantages. That's what we're making our choices based on. Is this going to give us a competitive advantage or not? That's a very good way of simplifying your decision-making process. How is this going to give us a competitive advantage? If it's not, why are we doing it?

• 1:29:49Dave Berke?

  I mean, that competitive advantage is something you have to have to be successful. And when you're making the connection to business, especially when you're sort of just looking at the most basic level of what consumers want, they've got a bunch of options. They can get the product or the thing you make usually from a whole bunch of different companies. And the competitive advantage is how you can deliver that to what they want better than everybody else. And if what you're doing isn't contributing to that, that, I think, over time, we've talked about complacency, the other things, the inability to recognize that you have to continue to contribute to that competitive advantage, that doesn't stay. If you have that competitive advantage now, your competitors are trying to erode that and take that away from you. And so even the idea that everything you're doing

• 1:30:34Dave Berke?

  has to be designed to contribute to either building or sustaining that advantage, or you're gonna go away. You will be outmaneuvered by your competition. And I love that even in the Marine Corps, they're saying it's useful for combat and competition. Those are two different things. And we're telling the Marine Corps, the Marines are telling Marines, those are two different things.

• 1:30:56Jocko Willink?

  Which is interesting, because they're also saying throughout this entire book, that those are on the same continuum.

• 1:31:02Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:31:03Jocko Willink?

  So, I'm going to do something that's going to be useful at multiple locations on that continuum.

• 1:31:12Dave Berke?

  Right. Because if all we cared about is you being good at combat, we would raise Marines, just like you said, in a totally different way. And we would forgive a whole bunch of things that happen, like, that's okay, he can do all those crazy things, because when we go to war, we're gonna unleash that guy. And we know that's not enough. You can't do that for a whole bunch of different reasons. And the recognition that, hey, combat is, combat's gonna happen. I mean, certainly in this day and age, you're gonna see some combat. But that might be fleeting, you might get one opportunity, one good deployment. But the competition piece, and they've said it over and over, that is happening all the time, in a whole bunch of different ways.

• 1:31:51Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, if we are to fully prepare, then Marines need to also consider the merits and challenges of asymmetry in competition. Truly asymmetric asymmetric competition actions or competitive actions can impose costs on the rival. For example, the original assault breaker concept developed in this 1970s and 1980s was an asymmetric response to the Soviet advantage in armor and number. So in Europe in the 70s and 80s, they had this massive, the Soviet block had more armor than we did. And if they attacked, it was their armor versus NATO armor. They had the numbers. So they came up with this, this plan, which was, hey, as soon as something breaks out,

• 1:32:35Jocko Willink?

  we're going to attack deep behind enemy lines with long range weapons, missiles to, to, to take out all those extra tanks that they have. So that was, that was something that we, that we came up with to, to negate their competitive advantage. Yeah, that we'll hear it says improved sensors with precision munitions to negate the Soviet's advantages. So I guess I could have just read it. The execution of forced planning starts a cycle that begins putting forth a theory about how we can contribute to the nation's strategic competitions throughout the continuum, building capabilities to bring theory to reality and then testing the capabilities

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  through exercises and operations. So again, now they've gone from guessing, well, I'm going from guessing to hypothesis. Now it's putting forth a theory, right? My theory is, because that's another word for guess. It's another nice word for, I'm going to take a guess. My theory is, and then you take those and you take those theories and you put them to the test, just like a hypothesis in exercises and operations. Let's see how they work. Other political actors observe this theory unfold and adapt themselves so they can compete more effectively against it. That's what's going to happen. Our observations of these adaptations starts the cycle once again. Force planning then is a continual effort to stay ahead of potential adversaries.

• 1:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Thus, we see that force planning itself is a competitive act and the Marine Corps must retain the ability to reconfigure the force when necessary to sustain its competitive advantage or develop new ones. This ability starts with the mental flexibility that comes from humility and the disciplined practice of questioning assumptions.

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  Tattoo that on your forehead.

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, maybe on your forearm so you can see it. We don't want to have to look in the mirror. This ability, we should be constantly checking and seeing where we're at and seeing what adaptations the enemy is making, the competitors are making. And if we don't have mental flexibility, we're wrong. And if we don't have humility, we're wrong. And if we don't have discipline, we're wrong. I think these people listen to the podcast. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that the authors listen to the podcast. Let us know.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Our awareness of the competition continuum and its existence, both above and below the threshold of violence, broadens our view on force planning. So the better you understand that, the better you understand that the game is much bigger than, hey, we're going to fight you with violence. The game is much bigger than that. Our philosophy is that we can, as we have done in the past, prepare Marines to succeed in competition without sacrificing the Marine Corps' ability to prevail in battle.

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Our understanding of ourselves must include how the Marine Corps fits into the complex adaptive system that is the naval service and the joint force. We know that the Marine Corps is operating on both sides of the violence threshold and expect this to continue into the future. However, our campaigning mindset should lead us to explore thoroughly how the Marine Corps can contribute to preventing war. Again, a little psyops. How the Marine Corps can contribute to preventing war by regularly operating below the violence threshold, even as Marines are ready to operate above it when required.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  I had a note here and I don't even know what it meant. When I talked about preparing the Marines to succeed in competition without sacrificing the Marine Corps' ability to prevail in battle.

• 1:36:23Jocko Willink?

  I have in parentheses harder than you think. Oh, and then I have, as an example, I have college sports teams. Okay, so now it now it makes sense. The example I thought of is if you've got a college sports team.

• 1:36:39Jocko Willink?

  If if a simple example would be, hey, if the only thing we want this these athletes to do is play football. Everything's else else is off the table. Well, it gives you a lot of capability on the football field. But let's face it, no one has anything other than football when they're done. So you have to balance it. It's an example of, you know, if Echo Charles, hey, he's not doing well in geometry class. He's got a D. We need to bench him. Well, what if he's our best player? We don't want to bench him, but we have to balance it.

• 1:37:16Jocko Willink?

  Now on to the conclusion.

• 1:37:20Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps is one of the nation's tools for the strategic competition that is the normal state of event of events in international relations. And by the way, man.

• 1:37:33Jocko Willink?

  As you watch the news. As you read the news, which I recommend.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  If you think about the international news and you pay attention to the competitions that are going on. It all this makes a lot more sense. When you see what China's doing, when you see what Iran's doing. When you see what's going on in Syria, which when you see what's going on in the Middle East, when you see what's going on, we see what's going on in Europe, when you see when you start to think about all those things from a more holistic viewpoint and you overlay the fact that it's one day competition, which look. We that's the way it is. Look at what Russia does.

• 1:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Look at what Russia does. See, they are competing.

• 1:38:22Jocko Willink?

  They are competing and not only that. Uh, uh, sometimes Echo Charles.

• 1:38:29Jocko Willink?

  People around Russia, like people other than Russia, they're out playing flag football.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  And Russia's playing tackle. You know what I'm saying? They're, you know, someone else is playing, um, you know, uh, tai chi. And they're playing combat sambo. And the tai chi people are thinking like, oh, you know, and all of a sudden they get punched in the face. Or they're in a bad position, more or worse, they're in a bad position, they don't even know it. They don't know the capability that that sambo practitioner has.

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  So you've got to pay attention to that. You've got to start seeing that these little maneuvers, these little maneuvers that these other nation states make, they're not. I can't even believe I'm having to say this right now, but you can watch things happen and the way people respond to it. It's almost as if. It's just by chance that this other nation state is making this maneuver. And, and throughout this book, and I wish I would have, should have been doing this all along, you can, you can, you can find examples of where this is happening. Oh, there's a boundary getting stretched. Oh, there's a salami slice. Like all these things are going on. Oh, there's a, there's a below the violence threshold maneuver. And they're going to back off right before there's a response coming. This is what's happening all the time.

• 1:39:53Dave Berke?

  There's a competition piece inside that too, that I think about is, we were talking earlier about hierarchy.

• 1:40:01Dave Berke?

  Everybody kind of knows the hierarchy too. Everybody kind of knows where we are in the hierarchy. And what, what that should tell us is that they know. Which is even more reason for them to, to be competing all the time. Because they know where they sit and they don't like being there. They don't like being there. And that is true for nation states. And that shop that you're running on that street corner. If the hierarchy is known, which it almost always is. The other people in the hierarchy that are underneath you don't like that. They also know that they can't go toe to toe with you. They can't do the brute force method and just run you out. So they gotta out maneuver you and out compete you with little tiny moves here and there.

• 1:40:46Dave Berke?

  And when you were talking about the idea of, of, I can't believe I have to say this, is the complacency that comes from being at the top of your food chain, whatever it is.

• 1:40:57Dave Berke?

  Everybody else knows what's going on and they're all trying to outmaneuver you. So you shouldn't be surprised by any of it. That's what they're doing. You were saying earlier that you're out on the weekends going to the club. They're home sharpening their knives and that's what they're supposed to be doing.

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  And, and actually sometimes they're not even sharpening their knives. What they're doing is they've got a bar out in town that they're working with. That's giving free drinks for you.

• 1:41:27Dave Berke?

  To you.

• 1:41:28Jocko Willink?

  And so even though they, they, they can only sharpen their knife so much. So what are they gonna do? They're gonna weaken you.

• 1:41:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:35Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be on the watch for that.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  You ever seen the movie Training Day?

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  Excellent film, by the way. That's what that whole movie was about essentially. So he was trying to, you know, he was, he basically had this new recruit who'd do anything he wanted to make the team or whatever, right? So he sets him up to have to do everything yet like he asked him to do. It started with making him smoke that weed or whatever. If you watch the movie, you'll understand. And he even says in the, in one of the, one of the pivotal parts, when he's manipulating him, he says, hey, it's chess. It's not checkers. So like, yeah, you, if you don't know you're in a competition or whatever, essentially this is the explanation. Where you're just like, oh yeah, today we're just sort of cruising where, and actually you're, you're example of like, okay.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  If you know where you are in the hierarchy, our hierarchy and you're, let's say you're high and you have all these challenger people or entities, right? You're kind of cruising and they know they can't go toe to toe with you with how you, how you put it. But their move can be like 10 years down the road and they're plotting for that, you know, that, that 10 years they're plotting for that move or that series of moves, you know?

• 1:42:46Jocko Willink?

  So we got Denzel plays the bad cop essentially.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, Alonso.

• 1:42:50Jocko Willink?

  Who plays the other one?

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  Jake is played by Ethan Hawke.

• 1:42:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, and that's the first escalation is smoking pot.

• 1:43:02Speaker 02

  Uh, the first escalate, it starts in the beginning. So like right when the way he talks to him in the beginning, where you could tell this guy Jake is like, he just wants to make the team. He wants to do everything. So it starts with that.

• 1:43:13Jocko Willink?

  By the way, does that whole movie take place in one day? Or is that just the name of the movie? Oh, that's all in one day?

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:18Jocko Willink?

  Cause I was gonna say what's, what's interesting about that is if Ethan Hawke, Jake Hoyt, Jake Hoyt, AKA, if he would have gotten a brief prior to that day starting, that there was a competition happening and there was maneuvers that were about to be made.

• 1:43:37Jocko Willink?

  He wouldn't have, he, you know, if he knows that this guy is maneuvering, it's like, hey, you need to smoke this weed. No, no.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  That's not happening. Cause to me, once he got him to do that, and I don't know, I don't remember the movie. That's, that's almost checkmate, right? That's almost checkmate. Like, hey dude, well, I'll get you, you, you need to get piss tested. And now you're out of the force and now you're in trouble. Now you got a bad, uh, reputa- or not even a bad reputation. You got a, what's it was an RE4 code in the military where you're not allowed to get a federal job anymore, but you got a bad thing happening. You got a dishonorable discharge. That's a checkmate move. Almost out of the gate.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  That's literally how it played out. Cause that was like one of the first major moves. And it didn't come into play till later when he was like, hey, kill that guy.

• 1:44:19Jocko Willink?

  But if he, if he would have been aware of the competition that was happening, he would have known. Hey man, this is not a good move. Hey, I'm not doing that. And that's, that totally actually would have flipped, almost flipped the checkmate.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  The whole deal.

• 1:44:35Jocko Willink?

  The whole deal is flipped, but you're not aware of it. You get lowered in.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  Well, maybe, I mean, obviously it was a movie. So there was, he always had it.

• 1:44:46Jocko Willink?

  You've never put out that qualifier before. Normally you just treat movies like they're reality.

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  He he did in there. I mean, you're right, obviously, but um in the in that particular movie, he had him by the he had him by the balls the whole time. Cause Jake Coit went into the thing. He wants to make the team.

• 1:45:03Jocko Willink?

  He's even he's even he's even beyond not knowing that he's competing. He's in like the he's in the beyond opposite direction where he's thinking that he wants to like prove and be be a part of the team.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:45:19Jocko Willink?

  Opposite of competing.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  Exact opposite. And it's funny you say that too, where it's like, oh, that was checkmate. Where he was like, when that came up, when he's like, hey, kill the guy. He's like, no, I'm not gonna do it. He's like, in fact, you know what? I'm tired of this whole thing. I'm turning you guys in. He's like, yeah, go ahead. But what what's gonna happen when they pull your blood? You've been smoking weed and meth all day, or not meth, he was like PCP or whatever. All day having you and he's like, looking at him, you can see the wheels.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  Wait, he made him smoke PCP or was it like intertwined in the pot?

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly right. So it was weed. So he made him smoke the weed. And then after he smoked it, he was like, dang, I didn't know you smoked BCP. He's like, you did. I haven't, but you have now, you know, like that kind like.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  Wait, did Denzel's character smoke weed as well?

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  No, he made him. He put a gun to his head. Yeah, he was like, hey, and the way he rash, have you seen Chinese? The way ration or rationalized it was like, hey, if you refuse weed in an undercover situation, they're just gonna kill you. So you gotta be ready to do this kind of stuff. And he's like, oh, no, he's like, he's like, I don't want you on my team. Gun to his head, I don't want you on my team, you know.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  He puts a gun to his head?

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, just as a like a like a demonstration.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like what if it was like this?

• 1:46:28Speaker 02

  Exactly right. If we were on the street, you'd be dead right now, like like that kind of stuff, you know? So it's kind of like he learned, it's almost like he Jake felt like he was learning this big, huge impactful lesson at that time. You know, where he's like, yeah, you gotta kind of gotta push it far sometimes, you know, to.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  He broed him out.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  Or did he browbeat him?

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  He browbeat him, kind of both. He, actually, the whole movie is him doing one or the other. It's weird, it's a weird manipulation thing. Yeah, and finally, when he was tired of it, he was like, I'm not doing this. He was like, oh, yeah, but you've been smoking PCP all day. So you kind of gotta. And all my guys who are in on it, they're all gonna say the same thing. And he's like, and he kind of has to do it. Then soon, like, right after, he's like, hey, I know it's, it's crazy, I know, but this is how it is, you know? We gotta be wolves.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  Wait, does he kill him? Spoiler alert, does he kill him?

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:47:19Jocko Willink?

  Uh, since we're talking about Training Day, I have a small request. You may or may not comply. But let's face it, when you give me the, okay, it sounds a lot like Denzel Washington, let's hear it.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  That's, I'm not gonna do it, but that's exactly where I got it from.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  No, I know that, because even though I don't know that movie very well.

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a part.

• 1:47:40Jocko Willink?

  If I get a little overly hostile with you, kind of one of your defensive mechanisms is to throw that, okay, ah, back at me.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  They, there was a time, there was a time in Training Day, in the, in the beginning, he meets him at the diner, right? And he's like, oh, the guy, Jake, he's trying to make small talk, you know, it's all awkward. And Alonso, he's reading the newspaper, and he's like, not talking to him, it's real awkward. So Jake keeps trying to make small talk. He's like, hey, shut up, let me read my paper. Jake's like, oh, awkward. So he can't help himself. He has to say something again, just to fight the awkwardness. And then he's like, puts down the paper. He's like, hey, tell me a story. And he's like, what are you talking about? He's like, but you want, I read the newspaper for the stories, or blah, blah, blah, he says this thing. It's like, so you gotta tell me a story. So he starts telling him a story, and then

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  in the part when he's like, oh, yeah, I'm with this, my training officer, she was a girl or whatever. He's like, oh, it's a girl training officer? Oh, man, that's, and he's like, yeah. He's like, alright, alright, alright.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  So that's where it came from. I'd use it in a different context, but yes, that's where I got it from. Thank you, Chaco, for that.

• 1:48:50Jocko Willink?

  It always, uh, it always makes me smile. If I can push you to the point where you throw that at me, I know I did my job for the day.

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:48:59Jocko Willink?

  The.

• 1:49:02Jocko Willink?

  Manipulation, you gotta be on the lookout for it. You gotta be on the lookout because if you're not competing all the time, if you don't recognize that you're competing, that's when you're gonna get caught. And you should never, never, ever give that kind of leverage to another human being over you.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Not to go back to Training Day too much, but the smoking, the smoking weed part, when he realized it, when he was like, hey, you've been smoking PCP all day, haven't you? And he's like, he looked at him, he's like, you've been planning this all day? And he goes, I've been planning it all week. See what I'm saying though? That's the demonstration. Hey, you're always competing. Last week, we didn't even meet each other. I was already, I was still competing. You weren't, and look at you now. See what I'm saying? These lessons are everywhere.

• 1:49:49Jocko Willink?

  I kinda forgot that.

• 1:49:50Dave Berke?

  I'm just retracing my steps for the last four years and trying to make sure I know what's actually going on here.

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book for the conclusion. As professionals Marines acknowledge this condition and prepare themselves and the Marine Corps to succeed in this struggle, adopting a campaigning mindset helps us do this effectively as it aids us in visualizing the long timelines that often span years and decades.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  This influences the type of education they seek. I mean, it's so crazy to not think about years and decades.

• 1:50:28Jocko Willink?

  That's, if you're not thinking in years and decades, you're gonna have some issues.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, none of us think in years and decades, I mean, whatever. Typically, we don't think in years and decades. Typically, I mean, for a handful of things, but that's it.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  And those handful of things is what I'm talking about.

• 1:50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:49Jocko Willink?

  This influences the type of education they seek to prepare them for the continual innovation that will be required to sustain competitive advantage and create new ones over the course of long-term campaign. It also influences their decision, their thinking on talent management because the most competitive organizations are the ones that get the most from their people by placing them in positions to use their strengths on a regular basis. All of this preparation leads to the type of agile force planning needed in long-term competition, resulting in a succession, a succession of force planning that outcomes.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  Planning outcomes that achieve and then sustain competitive advantages in the military element of national power. That's the, that's the conclusion there of chapter three. Almost two hours deep. So, uh, good place to stop for now because I don't even want to crack open chapter four yet. Too much for one night. So we're always in competition. We should be in strategic competition and all of this chapter three, we are preparing for competition. Echo Charles, here comes the tee up. Here comes the softball coming your way. Let's see if you can knock it out of the park. Speaking of preparing for competitions,

• 1:52:05Jocko Willink?

  do you have any suggestions that will help us stay prepared?

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, take supplements and here's why.

• 1:52:12Jocko Willink?

  Straight to it.

• 1:52:12Speaker 02

  Yep. And here's why. So, you know, okay. So we'll start with the joint stuff as we always do. This is why. So a lot of times I'm one of these people, bro, we don't have joint problems, right? Until you do. See what I'm saying? So that time, if we're not thinking that, that if we're not considering the fact that we might have these issues with joints, we're lifting weights, we're doing the jujitsu and we're not anticipating the potential for joint problems, we're not going to be competing in that way or aware of that competition.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay. We also need to be strategic in the way that we're thinking because we are putting a wear and tear. It might not hurt you right now, but guess what you're doing in two years, three years, five years. You want to keep those things maintained in the Navy, in the Marine Corps that we know about. I'm sure it's this way in the Army and the Air Force as well. You're going to follow these maintenance protocols and they're going to help when you need that element, when you need that piece of equipment, when you need that shoulder, that elbow, that knee. And look, your knee, let's face it, it could already come with a kind of genetic disadvantage. You might have knees that are skinny.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  They need all the help they can get.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:53:25Jocko Willink?

  And if that's the case.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  Hey, you can get these supplements. Listen, we are doing something at Jaco Fuel to try and help out. So what we're doing is if you, we know that shipping is expensive.

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  We know that people are already paying for the product and now all of a sudden they gotta pay for shipping too. And what we want to do is we want to give you a way to get that shipping cost down. Well, we got a way to get it down. We got a way to get it down a lot. We got a way to make it free. If you subscribe to any of these items. If you subscribe to any of these items, shipping is free. It was in January, but now it's free, period.

• 1:54:13Speaker 02

  Straight up.

• 1:54:13Jocko Willink?

  It's free, period. And if you subscribe, you save money too. You save like cost, the cost goes down by 10%. So if you want to be prepared, if you want to be competitive, and you want to help out your bank account, hey, go subscribe and the shipping is free. And you get 10% off, which is pretty cool. So we're trying to make this stuff more available, easier to everybody. So that's what we're doing. Joint Warfare, Super Krill, Discipline, Discipline Glow, even the drinks.

• 1:54:53Jocko Willink?

  Shipping for free, milk shipping for free, strawberry, chocolate, Warrior Kissup, everything shipping for free, if you want to get it.

• 1:54:59Speaker 02

  Interesting. Yeah, that's good. That's gonna help you later.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna help you. All these things are gonna help you later.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  Yep, in the campaign. True story. Also, other things are gonna help you later.

• 1:55:11Jocko Willink?

  You can also get this stuff at Wawa. Where you can, you can get the, the ready to drink. What do you drink? What'd you have tonight, Dave? You went too deep and so did I. We started recording late. We both kind of like.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  It was an early morning. I know that.

• 1:55:23Jocko Willink?

  What flavors did we go?

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  I went afterburn orange with the Dax Savage follow-up.

• 1:55:28Jocko Willink?

  I went.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  Chaser, Dax Savage Chaser.

• 1:55:31Jocko Willink?

  I went, I went. I went Jaco Palmer and then I went sour apple sniper JP. Appreciate it. That's what I went. So I went, we both went back to back.

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Back to back.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  Back to back. I don't do that very often.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  I was thinking too, like, I don't usually start hitting this, this late at night, but.

• 1:55:50Jocko Willink?

  I have work to do when I get home too. So that's a positive thing. You can get it. You can also get the stuff at the vitamin shop. So hit those up or get the free shipping.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:56:03Speaker 02

  It's true. Also at origin main.com. This way you can get stuff as well.

• 1:56:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:07Speaker 02

  There's a lot of other cool stuff at origin. Origin bank.com. All American made stuff, by the way. The boots, jeans, jujitsu stuff.

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever watch Pete? Do you ever watch Pete's? Do you ever watch the origin USA Instagram, uh, story?

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:56:25Jocko Willink?

  So the other day, Pete Roberts.

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  He made a story about how he was all fired up because he bought. We bought. We bought originusa.com.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  Okay, the, the domain name.

• 1:56:40Jocko Willink?

  The domain, domain name. And he was all fired up and he was, he was, he spent, we spent 50 grand on that. And he's all fired up. It, I don't know. Do you, do you know anything about buying? What's called a URL? Do you know anything about that?

• 1:56:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So if it's a kind of a, kind of a. A good word.

• 1:56:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  They can be very, very expensive, i.e. for origin USA. 50 grand, $50,000. And he's on there and he's like, you know, a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have even. Dreamt of spending 50 grand for this, but this is where we're going. We need, we need this new URL. So we're, we're doing it. We're executing. And I, I didn't, I didn't, didn't have time because I saw the story. We.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Me also bought another domain name, which will be up soon.

• 1:57:34Jocko Willink?

  And people, you could argue, would say this is even more a valuable name, URL. I bought Jaco.com.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  Jaco.com, and I almost posted this because what I was gonna say, and this is the true story. I bought Jaco.com. How much you think I paid for it? Origin USA cost 50 grand. Dave, what do you think? How much you think I paid for it?

• 1:57:58Dave Berke?

  I think it's unfair for me to answer this question.

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you already know the answer?

• 1:58:02Dave Berke?

  Me too.

• 1:58:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're good. So if you're wondering, so I got Jaco.com for $1. No, awesome guy owned it, and he's a trooper, he's in the game, and he just reached out to Jamie and said, "Hey, I own Jaco." And we get all kinds of things, like, we get all kinds. Jamie forced me, he's like, "Hey, what do you want to do? Hey, what do you want to do?" And I see one title to an email, says Jaco.com, and I open it up, and Jamie's like, "Hey, do you want me to do anything with this?" I'm like, "He wants to sell me Jaco.com for a dollar." And he also came out here with his wife, we had a cool time, we hung out. But yeah, so I was gonna post that Pete, the businessman, Pete the negotiator, I was gonna say, "Hey, my business partner Pete, great job negotiating the price to $50,000.

• 1:58:45Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, I got Jaco.com for a dollar." You know what that is right there? Come- competition. I beat you, Pete.

• 1:58:54Dave Berke?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  That's a below-market price, by the way.

• 1:58:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. No, it's super cool. So that should be up soon, Jaco.com. And yes, I won that competition, Pete.

• 1:59:04Speaker 02

  Cool. So Origin went from Maine to straight up USA, expanding.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  It's not there yet.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:10Jocko Willink?

  Right now, go to Jaco. But Jaco Fuel. Oh, I also bought Jaco Fuel.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  I think I bought that one.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Did you buy that? What'd you pay for it? $9.

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  $11.90.

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  You gotta love it!

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  You know, market price.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  Market price.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  Actually, I don't know. I think you did buy that. Either way, yes, it's true.

• 1:59:24Jocko Willink?

  I bought that a long time ago.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Check.

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  But yes, so yeah, Origin Maine, soon to be OriginUSA.com. This is cool. This is where you can get American-made stuff. Also, we have a store, Jacostore.com. I bought that one, by the way. Back in the day. This is where you can get this one equal equals freedom.

• 1:59:45Jocko Willink?

  Did you think of that name yourself?

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:59:47Jocko Willink?

  That's a good original.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  No, I think you thought of that one.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  No, actually, I know I didn't. I remember being like, oh, what is it? You like Jaco Store? And I was like, oh, cool. I guess we're going with the theme.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:54Jocko Willink?

  This is not a hard one to figure out.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  I remember too. Yeah, you were like, yeah, Jocko Podcast, cause it's simple or whatever. I was like, oh, yeah, it's an online store. There you go. Jaco Store all day. And, you know, it's yours. So boom. Anyway, this is where you can get this one equals freedom shirts and hoodies and hats and a lot of cool stuff there. There's a t-shirt club called the Sh Hurt Locker. See what I, how I said it.

• 2:00:18Jocko Willink?

  I did. See now, just so you know, you no longer have to say t-shirt club, which sounds super wacky. You can just say, we also have the shirt locker. Where you get a shirt every month. You can say it in a much cooler way.

• 2:00:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  You can just exclude the lame things that sometimes get said.

• 2:00:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Like t-shirt.

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  All right. Well, thank you for coaching me up there. Uh, Jaco, there's the shirt locker where you can get a new cool t-shirt every month. High quality, high speed, low drag, as Jaco always says. Either way.

• 2:00:53Jocko Willink?

  You've never actually even heard me say.

• 2:00:55Speaker 02

  It's a good thing to check out. It's a good thing to check out. So, hey, man, if you think that's cool, go ahead and do that. It's at JacoStore.com, like I said.

• 2:01:03Jocko Willink?

  You didn't mention the fact that at OriginMaine.com, you can also get jeans. You can get boots.

• 2:01:07Speaker 02

  I did.

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Did you?

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Dave, did he say that?

• 2:01:10Dave Berke?

  Dude, this, we could be going two for two here. I have no recollection of you saying that.

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, there's jeans and boots and guess what? They're American made. I said that. It's true.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  You definitely didn't say that.

• 2:01:20Speaker 02

  Hey, Ken, so.

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Review the tapes. No editing.

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  This is gonna sound like a dumb question.

• 2:01:26Jocko Willink?

  From you?

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:01:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:01:27Speaker 02

  Okay, bear with me. So the Origin Boots, are those good for snow?

• 2:01:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  Not like snow trekking, but like, hey, I'm out of in snow.

• 2:01:38Jocko Willink?

  Yes, if you're out and you're in snow, they're good. If you're gonna gonna go on a winter hike in the woods.

• 2:01:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:01:43Jocko Willink?

  They're not gonna be optimal because they don't have any insulation. Now, if you put on a pair of wool socks and maybe a little polypropylene socks underneath them, you might be pretty good to go. Plus, if you added a little, you know, waterproofing to it. You know, we got some oils you can put in there, you'd be good to go.

• 2:01:58Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  But you we if you're going on a trip to the mountains where you're gonna be. It's gonna be cold, but you're walking around, you'll be good to go.

• 2:02:05Speaker 02

  Normal stuff.

• 2:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Normal stuff.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I figured that would, I guess, not a dumb question, right? I thought it was kind of dumb because, well, they're in Maine.

• 2:02:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, norm on it would be a dumb question if you were from Maine, being that you're from Hawaii. It's actually a totally legit question. Your environment has not taught you lessons that a New Englander would learn, or someone from Michigan or or Montana would learn.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Wyoming people wouldn't be asking me that question.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  No, so it's not common knowledge for people like us from the Ina. All right, cool. Boom, there it is. Also, uh, subscribe to this podcast if you want and leave a review on your podcast player of choice.

• 2:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and we also have, you can join the the Jaco Underground, Jaco Underground dot com. There's some people are asking questions. Wait a second. What's happening?

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  And I'm like, wait, I explained it.

• 2:03:00Jocko Willink?

  This podcast, Jocko Podcast, the goal is to never change this. The goal is to never put this podcast behind a paywall.

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:03:09Jocko Willink?

  That's the goal. We want this to be free. And as long as that is humanly possible, it will be. And the only thing you will have to suffer through is this section that we're listening to right now. If you can bear with that, which you didn't even have to. In fact, I know that there's only four of you listening right now. If you can bear that, you can listen to this for free. And you can also just press stop. You didn't have to hear any of this crap.

• 2:03:36Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:03:36Jocko Willink?

  But but but look, we we also, so we had set this up as a contingency. So we have an alternative platform that we built. We don't want to have other sponsors. We don't have somebody cutting in when we're talking about the battle of the bulge to tell you about what kind of underwear you should use. We don't want that to happen. So if you want to help us out with that, you can go and you subscribe to the Underground. And in order to give you some benefit, a tangible benefit, we're kind of, we're recording another podcast called the Jaco Underground Podcast. And we just kind of give some other information. They're a little bit shorter.

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  They're just, they're just some behind the scenes, some, some amplifying information about what we talk about, some of where this podcast came from, how I thought of doing this, why we're doing this. So if you want, you can do, you can go to JacoUnderground.com. It's $8.18 a month, which is a important number. And look, we're not trying to prevent people from being able to get this information. If you can't afford that and you still want to listen to the Jaco Underground Podcast, it's cool. Send an email to [email protected] and we will hook you up and you will be able to listen to the Jaco Underground Podcast.

• 2:04:57Jocko Willink?

  So we have that going on and, and well, we also have, what else do we have? We've got the Unraveling, which actually Daryl and I are in, we are in, we're in deep, got a bunch of stuff that we will have coming your way for, coming your way for the Unraveling Podcast. We have the Grounded Podcast, which hmm, we need to, we need to do that. And the Warrior Kid Podcast. Again, I said this the other day, I owe a book on January 31st. And when that's done, my plan is to knock out some Warrior Kid Podcasts. We got a YouTube channel where Echo puts up all the videos of this podcast and other

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  videos where he makes a bunch of stuff blow up using CGI because he thinks it's cool. It is cool. It's 100% cool. Jaco, thank you. Well, that's just your opinion. Uh, we have an album called Psychological Warfare, where I talk about overcoming moments of weakness. Flipside Canvas, Dakota Myers Company, a bunch of cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual.

• 2:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Which I pull out to read quotes from all the time when I'm talking to clients. Oh yeah, they ask a question. Oh yeah, I read about this here. Dave?

• 2:06:17Dave Berke?

  All the time.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  All the time. So if you've got questions about what to actually do as a leader, get Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We also have the code, the evaluations, the protocols. We have Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. There's a new version out. We have Way of the Warrior Kid 4 Field Manual. We also have Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. We have About Face by David Hackworth that I wrote the foreword for the new one. Mikey and the Dragons, which a lot of people say is the best picture book ever. A lot of people saying that. Most people are saying that. We have a, and then of course Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. We have Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. Go to echelonfront.com if you want help in your

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  organization. We solve problems through Leadership EF Online, which is online courses about leadership that you can bring your whole company through. They can do them at their own pace. You can do it as a group. There's all kinds of ways to go through that program that will get your whole company, your whole team aligned and thinking the same way about leadership. We have, we have a live event that we do a few times a year. 2020, we didn't do any because there was a virus out there. 2021, we're reorganizing our dates. We're planning to do it. Go to extremeownership.com if you want to come to that. EF Overwatch, we have leaders to place inside your company that have a military background, that understand these

• 2:07:48Jocko Willink?

  principles that we talk about. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, then check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 2:08:06Jocko Willink?

  And if the last two hours, you didn't get enough of my dictatorial diatribes,

• 2:08:15Jocko Willink?

  or you need more of Echo's bewildered bemoaning, or Dave's fanatical phrasing, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which for those of you that only understand what Echo says, he refers to that as the Gram.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  And Facebook, Dave is at David R Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all the people in uniform worldwide, doing what you have to do so we can do what we want to do. And the same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. We thank you as well for what you do every day. And to everyone else out there, competition is an enduring condition.

• 2:09:11Jocko Willink?

  It's always happening. It's always happening.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  And you need to be prepared, and you need to make sure you are competing for the strategic win, for the long-term win. So pay attention to what you are paying attention to.

• 2:09:33Jocko Willink?

  And then

• 2:09:35Jocko Willink?

  keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.