525: Why Action Beats Analyzing. The Soldier and The Statesman.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Breakdown of Soldiers and Soldiering by Field Marshal Archibald Wavell. They discuss the tension between soldiers and politicians, the importance of initiative and decentralized command, and what truly defines good leadership in war and life. The conversation covers discipline, toughness, morale, training, communication, and why action beats hesitation. Throughout, they connect historical lessons—from Lincoln, Grant, Rommel, and others—to modern leadership, combat, business, and personal responsibility. 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 525 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So we are picking up from the last episode, episode 524. We are continuing on with the book Soldiers and Soldiering by Ultra Bar Ultra Bard Archibald Wavel or Wavel. If you haven't listened to 524 yet, then go start there. Go back, listen to it. It'll give you a little more background. Field Marshal Wavel was combat experienced, leader in multiple wars on multiple fronts. He was also a military historian. He's a writer and you can get the rest of his bio in that last episode. But some of what he wrote was captured in this book, Soldiers and Soldiering.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  So we are picking up where we left off on the last podcast. So let's get back to the book. Here we go. As you are aware, the relations between soldiers and statesmen, and by the way, this section is called the soldier and the statesman. And really what it could be called when you read it, it could be called the soldier and the politician, which obviously has its own little drama wrapped around it. As you are aware, the relations between soldiers and statesmen were not too happy in the late war. Broadly speaking, the politician charged the soldier with narrowness of outlook and professional pedantry, while the soldier was inclined to ascribe many of his difficulties

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  to political interference. And pedantry is like the rigid following of rules. So, you know, the politician's like, you have to do this thing right here. And, and then the soldier's going, yeah, well, how are we supposed to get our job done when we're being so tightly controlled by the politicians? But it goes on to say here, political generals.

• 1:55Jocko Willink?

  Are anathema to the British military tradition, which means detested by the British military tradition, like the political, you hear about, oh, that guy's a politician. It was a negative thing, which is a weird thing, by the way, because let's face it, if you're a general or an admiral, you better be able to politically maneuver to get things done. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to get anything done. Cause it's all done through political maneuvering. But of course, it's a derogatory term, say, oh, that guy's just a politician. Right? Uh, yet, and it goes on to say here, yet most of the best British commanders had political experience. Cromwell was for many years a member of parliament before he took to soldiering.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  Marlborough, of whom we have just spoken, had far more experience of political intrigue than of military service when he began his career, his career as a general. Wellington had been a member of both Irish and British parliaments. So you're talking about these leaders, they're a bunch of politicians.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  The relations, fast forward a little bit, the relations of that great and wise man Lincoln, he's talking about President Lincoln, with his generals are well worth study. Having after many trials, found a man whom he trusted in Grant. So Lincoln fired a bunch of generals before he landed on Grant, who got the job done. He left him to fight his campaigns without interference. I'm going to read to you an extract from a letter written by Lincoln to one of his generals, I think will show you his quality. And so this is a, a, a letter from Abraham Lincoln to Joseph Hooker, fighting Joe Hooker,

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  who was, uh, who lost the battle at Chancellorsville. He was replaced by Meade, who won the Battle of Gettysburg. Uh, Hooker was like a brash kinda boozer type guy. And there's a story that hookers, like prostitutes, are called hookers because of this guy, because he had like a band of hookers, of prostitutes that, that went with him when he rolled. So again, and as I researched that, our boy, our boy JD has, you know, he's told me that story a bunch of times like hookers, you know what I mean? So, but as I researched it more deeply,

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  it may or may not be true. Okay. There, there, there, there is usage of the word hookers to describe prostitutes prior to this, but he definitely popularized it. Or I should say, it looks like he definitely prop, uh, popularized it. So this is Abraham Lincoln.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna give command of the army of the Potomac to Hooker. And here's what he said.

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  "I have placed you at the head of the army of the Potomac. Of course, I have done this upon what appears to me sufficient reason, and yet I think it is best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you." That's pretty, this is like, uh, just in the clear. Yeah. This is, you're the president of the United States and you, you've got a guy, you're trying to get somebody to win this war for you and it's not been happening. And so now you've got to roll the dice on this guy. So you're like, hey, this is what I like. And this is what I don't like. "I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not indispensable quality."

• 5:22Jocko Willink?

  So he's coming out of the gate, three positives. "You are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds does good rather than harm." Another positive. Now it's about to shift a little bit. "I think that during General Burnside's command of the army, you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer." So when, um, when Burnside was leading the army, our boy Hooker like did interviews and disparaged him and said, yeah, Burnside doesn't know what he's doing, that type of thing. We say that in American politics all the time.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  Going on from Lincoln. "I have heard in such a way as to believe it of you, you're recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator." Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you command. So you didn't agree with him. And I'm giving you this job, even though I don't, it's despite the fact that you said that. Only those generals who gain success can set up as dictators. What I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship. So he's like, hey, if you win, you could become a dictator and I'm willing to take that risk because we need to win. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than is done.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  And will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have decided to infuse into the army of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him will now turn upon you. Dude, Lincoln just straight to the point. Yeah, you talked a bunch of shit about Burnside and now you gotta be ready because people are gonna talk shit about you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. So even though you did that, I'm gonna try and help you out and I'm not gonna put up with any of this disparaging of you. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  So you talked so much shit about Burnside that it wouldn't matter if it was Napoleon, he couldn't have been successful. And now beware of rashness, beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance. Vigilance, go forward and give us victories. Pretty good letter, man. We probably need to dive into some more of our boy Abraham Lincoln. Uh, fast forward a little bit, um. He says, doesn't that strike you as the letter that only a great man and wise man could have written? Lincoln did not find in fighting Joe Hooker, the general he wanted because he eventually got fired. It was Ulysses, it was Ulysses S. Grant, whom he eventually selected as commander in chief.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  And then he trusted him through thick and thin, though he, Grant, suffered many reverses and had often very heavy casualties. To a critic, to a critic who alleged that Grant drank. Lincoln replied by asking him to ascertain the brand of whiskey. So he could send a case to some of the other generals.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  Your boy Grant's a drunk. Well, what's he drinking? Let's send it to some of the other generals. This recalls the reply of George the second to one of his ministers who described Wolf, who took Quebec as mad.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "I wish to heavens he would bite some of my other generals."

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, those are good. Fast forward a little bit. That brings me back to the point I tried to make in my first lecture, and this was what we covered on the first podcast, that it is knowledge of the mechanics of war, not the principles of strategy, that distinguishes a good leader from a bad. And when he talks about the mechanics of war, he's talking about logistics. Basically, he's talking about logistics. Interchangeability between the statesman and the soldier passed forever, I fear, in the last century. The Germans professionalized the trade of war and modern inventions by increasing its technicalities have specialized it. It is much the same with politics, professionalized by democracy. So it used to be you could get, you could kind of be both.

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  Because war was like, hey, we got swords, we got bow and arrows, I can understand that. We got politics, which is politics. You gotta go interact with other people. But then all of a sudden, we got all these aircraft, we got ships, we got tanks, we got different weapons, we got artillery. You gotta learn that becomes a trade. And then you got politics, which becomes all this, uh, you know, who you know and networking and all stuff. And they both became too big, and so they became specialized.

• 10:15Jocko Willink?

  No longer can one man hope to exercise both callings, though both are branches of the same craft. The governance of men and the ordering of human affairs. So it doesn't matter if you're a politician, and it doesn't matter if you're a general, it doesn't matter if you're the commanding officer, or the CEO of a company, or you're in charge of your family. What are you doing? You got the governance of man and the ordering of hu- of human affairs. That's what we're doing. That's leadership, by the way. In acquiring proficiency in his branch, the politician has many advantages over the soldier. He is always in the field, while the soldier's opportunities of practicing his trade in peace are few and artificial. So politician, every time they roll out, they're, they're doing politics.

• 11:00Jocko Willink?

  They're doing a press conference, they're meeting with so and so, they're going to the thing. But you know, as a soldier, you only get to practice war in war. Otherwise, just practice and this practice is few and it's artificial. It's fake. You're not really killing anybody.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  The politician who has to persuade and confute must keep an open and flexible mind accustomed to criticism and argument. The mind of a soldier who commands and obeys without question is apt to be fixed, drilled and attached to definite rules. I will not take the comparison further that each should understand the other better is essential for the conduct of modern war. So we get the politicians, it's, it's actually saying this in a positive way. The politicians have an open mind. They, they can take criticism. They can adjust what their beliefs are. Whereas the soldier, they're like fixed and not changing their mind and they're attached to the rules. And each one of them could learn a little bit from the other.

• 12:00Jocko Willink?

  Right? We want to be, we want to be able to be both those things. We might have an open mind, but we got also know how to execute the thing.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  But how is this knowledge to be acquired? The only keys are a thoughtful study of the past. That's why we're doing this podcast right now. That's why we're reviewing this book. A receptive mind in the present and when the occasion comes, a patient understanding of each other's difficulties. So understanding what makes it challenging. The soldier is apt to disregard or underrate the statesman, the statesman's difficulties. So you know, the, the soldier is like, what is wrong? Why don't they just give us the money? Why don't we just give us the thing? Why don't they give us the go ahead? Why don't they give us the execute order? Why can't they change the rules for us?

• 12:49Jocko Willink?

  Don't understand how complicated it can be. I remember one of our present politicians giving an apt illustration of this tendency. He instanced a soldier's impatience at the slowness of a statesman to implement some political measure which was agreed to be essential, say compulsory service. If you agree it has to be done, why not do it at once, says the soldier. The politician might retort thus. When you come to a river, when you come to a river line defended by the enemy, which you must cross to reach the objective, do you assault it forthwith? Of course not, the soldier will reply. It is essential to reconnoiter, to group the artillery, to construct bridges, to draw

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  the enemy's attention away from the point of crossing, and so on. Just so, says the politician, so must I prepare the public opinion, anticipate objections, draw up a measure for which will be fair to all classes, arrange for the medical examination of men liable, decide on exemptions and so forth. So each one of these, the politician goes, why don't you just go assault the targets? It's like, bro, we got things we gotta figure out. It's a process. It's a process. And we don't understand each other. This is a, I was on Sean Ryan's podcast and I went through this, kind of the historical learning of languages for me, learning the enlisted frogman language, learning the officer

• 14:16Jocko Willink?

  language, learning the general and flag officer language, and being able to communicate and translate these things up and down across the chain of command. And then the next one up is like the political. What are they actually saying? Oh, the politicians want this to happen. They can't say that. Here's what they're inferring. You gotta figure that out. That's the next level. And that's what he's talking about here. War, fast forward, war is not a matter of diagrams, principles, or rules. The higher commander who goes to field service regulations for tactical guidance inspires about as much confidence as the doctor who turns into a medical dictionary for his diagnosis.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  And no method of education, no system of promotion, no amount of common sense ability is of value unless the leader has in him the root of the matter, the fighting spirit.

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  The will to win. So there is no textbook solution. This is something we learned from Hackworth, right? There's no textbook solution. You can, you can look at the textbook. You can get some ideas from the textbook, but you gotta figure out the solution. You can't go to the field service regulations for tactical guidance. Maybe you can go there for guidance, but you can't get the answer.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  As, as one of them said, he's just talking about some various generals of the past, as one of them said, "No battle was ever lost until the leader thought it so."

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that a good one? "No battle was ever lost until the leader thought it so." When are you defeated? When you think you are.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  And this is the first and true definition of the leader, never to think the battle or the cause lost.

• 16:06Jocko Willink?

  True. Now, would I put the word never on that? No, I wouldn't. Because, you know, you need to do an assessment sometimes. Hey, we're, we're, we're losing right now. We are not winning. You know, that's one of the things that I didn't, I've talked about in the Iraq war. No one was saying, "We're losing." In like 2005, no one was like, "Oh, wait a second. Enemy attacks are up 300%. They're controlling certain territories of the country, and this is the United States of America. This is called losing." No one was saying that. No one was saying that. Everyone's like, "Oh, you know, we've, we've, uh, there's a little uptick in some enemy attacks in that area, but we think it's just an anomaly."

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  They had all kinds of statistics that they would shape to, to make this story sound good. And same thing we saw in Afghanistan. I wasn't in Afghanistan, but you know, the, the reports were that the Afghan troops are ready to control the country. And everyone on the ground's like, "No, bullshit. Ain't happening. We're not, they're not ready. They can't do it." And guess what? They couldn't.

• 17:12Jocko Willink?

  So there are times when we need to make sure that we are allowed to say, hey, we're not winning and we need to adjust our strategy, do something different, retreat, get away.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  So it's like, is they're essentially saying, and just for clarification for my own sake. So essentially, when the, if the leader accepts the loss, that's when it's like kind of concrete in stone. Okay, he lost. But as long as he believes there's a fighting chance, they're going to keep fighting until, until not check. So yeah. So you get a like, kind of like, what, like a weak, meddled leader, you know, someone's, ah, you know, gets flustered or, you know, kind of easy. Then it's like, okay, then the team kind of be is that same way.

• 18:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And we can go, yes. But we could pull historical examples where like people just, they give up too early.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  And we also have historical examples where people give up too late, right? And now we've wiped out whatever resources we could have saved for no reason. So we have to pay attention to these things.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Understand.

• 18:22Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. One more, one word more. The pious Greek, when he had set up altars to the great gods by name, added one more altar. It was to the unknown god. So whenever we speak and think of the great captains and set up our military altars to Hannibal and Napoleon and Marlboro and such like, let us add one more altar to the unknown leader. That is to the good company platoon or section leader who carries forward his men or holds his post and often falls unknown.

• 19:04Jocko Willink?

  It is these who in the end do most to win wars. The British have been a free people and are still comparatively a free people. And though we are not, thank heaven, a military nation, this tradition of freedom gives to our junior leaders in war, a priceless gift of initiative. This is decentralized command. So long as this initiative is not cramped by too many regulations, too much formalism, we shall, I trust, continue to win our battles, sometimes in spite of our highest commanders. So this is very true, very true. The decentralized command, when you have

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  good sections leaders, squad leaders, good platoon leaders, good company commanders, like despite being told to do dumb things, they can still bring success. And they do. And they always have. But that is decentralized command. And the minute you take away that initiative, and it's the same thing that can happen in a business. Like if you let someone, some branch manager out there, running a store, running a project, and you let them just make things happen, if they're, they'll figure stuff out. But the minute you start to constrain them, you start to dictate to them. And put restrictions on them. That's when problems happen. So you gotta give people the room to maneuver. That is decentralized command.

• 20:35Jocko Willink?

  Section here on military genius. It is only a short time ago that I happened to see Captain Liddell Hart's article in Strand Magazine of last December. Liddell Hart, who we've covered on this podcast a bunch. Writing. Liddell Hart's writing is always a stimulant, often an irritant to military thought. I have only a small fraction of his great knowledge of military history, and I am writing with no time to refresh my rusty memory at military library. But the article has set me reflecting on the art of generalship and on its most noted exponents, a subject on which I have already presumed to publish some views and has prompted

• 21:17Jocko Willink?

  the following footnotes to the subject. So he's talking about Liddell Hart, you know, wrote about what military genius is, and he's kind of riffing on that. Genius is a tiresome and misleading word to apply to the military art if it suggests as many as it does to many, one so gifted by nature as to obtain his success by inspiration rather through study. So it's not that you were just born a genius, it's that you studied and you learned. Good generals, unlike poets, are made rather than born. Now, do I agree with that 100%? Nope.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  I agree with it 50%. I agree that a good general is, has to be born with some of the qualities of a good general, and then he has to be raised and nurtured with the qualities of a good general, and then he has to study. But he says, made rather than born, and will never reach the first rank without much study of their profession, but they must have certain natural gifts. Okay, so he's agreeing with me. They must have certain natural gifts, the power of quick decision, judgment, boldness, and I am afraid, a considerable degree of toughness, almost callousness, which is harder to find as civilization progresses. So even though he says generals are born not made,

• 22:40Jocko Willink?

  or sorry, made not born, in his opening of this section, he then goes on to say, but they gotta have certain natural gifts. So I don't know why he even said that first part. And what do you have to have? You have to have the power of quick decision, you have to have judgment, which by the way, like, quick decision is not easy. Having good judgment is very, very difficult, and I actually think you get good judgment more from your education and your study than you do. You're not just born with good judgment, you learn it. So that's kind of a weird thing to call a natural gift. Boldness, that's a little bit of natural, and then a considerable degree of toughness. And again, you know, questionable whether you're born with that, or whether it's something that you at least are able to grow.

• 23:26Jocko Willink?

  The considerations which in my view to be taken into account in assessing the value of a general are these: his worth as a strategist, his skills as a tactician, his power to deal tactfully with his government and with allies, his ability to train troops or to direct their training, and his energy and driving power in planning and in battle. So those are the key components for him. He says here, Liddell Hart, in his article, touches very lightly on the difference between strategy and tactics, and seems to imply that with the increase in the size of armies and the battlefield, strategy has gained in importance at the

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  expense of tactics. I cannot agree. I hold that tactics, the art of handling troops on the battlefield, is and always will be a more difficult and more important part of the general's task than strategy, the art of bringing forces to the battlefield in a favorable position.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  Interesting concept. Not sure I agree. If you are, if you are set up for success strategically, you can still win with, with bad tactics. If you're set up for a loss strategically, your tactics may not matter. So it's a little bit of an interesting, you know, idea.

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  But I don't think I agree with. But I will say that if you do not have good tacticians on the ground, you can still fail strategically. Maybe that's his point.

• 25:11Jocko Willink?

  In the end, it is the result of the manner in which the cards are played, or the battle is fought that is put down on the score sheets or in the pages of history. Therefore, I rate the skillful tactician above the skillful strategist, especially him who plays the bad cards well. Again, you can have cards that doesn't matter how well you play them, you still lose.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels like, and I don't know, maybe this is just a semantics difference.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  But it's almost like the way it's reading to me, I don't know, is that you can have the best strategy in the world, but your guys on the ground aren't, if they're not getting it done, then it don't matter because we ain't gonna get there, kind of a thing.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if you have the best strategy in the world and your guys on the ground aren't getting it done, was it really the best strategy in the world?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. If like you don't, you didn't realize that they couldn't get it done. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've always thought like when you guys introduced this idea of strategic,

• 26:11Speaker 01

  it was more this all encompassing, long-term, big picture thing.

• 26:17Jocko Willink?

  That's what it is.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and then, but before that, I thought it was just, oh, this is just the method in where this philosophy, this approach, we're gonna take to achieve victory. I thought that's essentially what it is, you know, like, I don't know, jujitsu, my strategy is, you know, to tire him out a little bit and then get on top and then grind him out for some points, you know, that's a strategy, right? A plan, a long-term, but it's the, it's the approach I take, you know, kind of a thing. Now tactically, if you can't tire him out, or if you can't affect, you know, kind of a thing. But yeah, then ultimately that would be a mismanaged strategy or a mis-calculated strategy, I guess, in a way.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  But you, as far as you're concerned, that's all part of the strategy because it's just a long-term kind of thing. See what I'm saying? Big picture kind of thing. So maybe there's like a small difference there, meaning like, hey, the strategy seems good on paper. Like this is a sound strategy right here. Hey, you guys think you can do, oh yeah, I can do that. I can jump that wall. I can, you know, communicate with my guys. I think we can do it. Meanwhile, they're, maybe they're sloppy or so. I don't know, something like this, you know? But yeah, maybe, like I said, maybe semantics, but it felt like that's what he's meaning there, which I think is kind of true in a way.

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  It is kind of true, but I can put you, you know, I could, let's put it this way, football. You could have really skilled players in football, better skills than the other team, but I could run a strategy, a game plan, even plays. Like you could be the have the best arm, but I just keep playing running game, right? Bad strategy. Or I'm like, hey, our strategy is to throw the ball, but our quarterback sucks. But I'm like, so our tactician can't execute and we lose.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:59Jocko Willink?

  Because why? It's not, it's not because the tactician's bad. It's because I'm bad. Because if we had a freaking badass runner and we played a running game, we could win. But instead I'm too stupid. And so I pick a bad strategy. So if I have an awesome quarterback and a couple awesome receivers, strategically, we're going to play a passing game, right? And we can win.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  But if I have, if I say, we're going to play a passing game and I've got a crappy quarterback and no good receivers, are we going to win? No.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  And strategically, if I have a great quarterback with a great arm and two great receivers, but I decide we're going to run against a badass defensive team, that's a dumb strategy. So the strategy matters more than the tactics. Now, what he's saying too is like, I could say, hey, guys, we're running, but the quarterback calling the plays on the field. And he like, hey, boys, you go long, right? I'm going to, I got a good arm. We're going to take advantage. So that the, sometimes the tacticians can win despite the strategy that's imposed upon them.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  But more often than not, you know, the quarterback's getting told to run it. He believes that the coach sees something that he doesn't. So he's trying to support the coach's calls. So he's like, okay, well, we'll run it again. Tackled, we'll run it again. Sacked, we'll run it again. Tackled.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  So tactics are essentially, I guess you could call it procedurally part of the strategy.

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  So like if the tactics don't fall in line with the strategy, that's the bad strategy. It's not.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  It's not that it's bad tactics, good strategy. It's the other way around. Like you, you like the quarterback to me was a great analogy, by the way. Where it's kind of like, yeah, like it seems like that's a good idea. They got weak, weak DBs. So let's, let's pass. But meanwhile, I don't realize that my quarterback's arm is kind of off. Or he's new or something like this. Our receivers aren't that fast. So you think, given their, their defense, that's a good strategy, but you're unaware of your own capabilities as an offense. So it's a bad strategy. Even though on paper you think like, oh no, it's the tacticians down there. They messed up the strategy. No, no, no. They are part of the strategy.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you're right. So I, my strategy has to utilize the tactics available with my team.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  And if I don't do that, that's a bad strategy. It's a bad strategy.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  So, and I guess at the end of the day, that's kind of my question where it's like, maybe they don't mean that. Maybe they, he's looking at it as two separate things.

• 30:37Jocko Willink?

  Maybe he is. And if he's doing that, that's wrong as well. No offense to this guy. He's not here to defend himself.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I would not agree. I rate the skillful strategist above the tactician, but the tactician, the tactics should drive the strategy to some extent. To some extent, like you just said, if we don't have a quarterback with an arm, why are we trying to throw the ball? That doesn't make sense. Our tactics have to drive our strategies.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  Pushing forward here, it seems also that he who devises or develops a new system of tactics deserves special advancement on the military role of fame. All tactics since the earliest days have been based on evaluating an equation in which X mobility, X equals mobility, Y equals armor, and Z equals hitting power. Once a satisfactory solution has been found and a formula evolved, it tends to remain static until some thinking soldier or possibly civilian recognizes that the values of Y, X, Y, and Z have been changed by the progress of inventions since the last formula was accepted and that a new formula and a new system of tactics are required.

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  It may seem irrelevant to judge a general on his relations with the government, or his power to deal with his allies, yet these are almost always important factors. And a general who cannot obtain the confidence of his government and persuade them of the soundness of his plans, or dissuade them from unsound strategy, or who quarrels with allies, may forfeit both fame and victory. So if you can't get along with the leadership, it's gonna be a loss. And if you can't get around with your allies, it's gonna be a loss. It's just like you got a great branch inside your company, but you don't get along with the CEO? It doesn't matter. You're not gonna get what you need. Or you don't get along with the other branches? You're not gonna be a hero here.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  Military history frequently points out how the training and experience of veteran troops has led to some surprising victories over numbers or circumstances. We're talking about the importance of training. And a commander who has succeeded in training his troops to a high pitch deserves credit for it, as well as the victories brings him.

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  So, yes, if you train your troops well, and you're victorious, you deserve credit for the training, as well as the victory. Lastly, the energy, the driving power and will force of a commander is perhaps the greatest factor in all of military success. And he who has it in the highest degree establishes a claim to be enrolled among the great ones. So this energy to make shit happen

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  is, as he says, perhaps the greatest factor. Now, here's, I totally agree with that. And I've known people, leaders throughout my time, who they haven't have used this term before, you've heard me use this term before, force of will. Like, there is a force of will. We are going to make this happen. That's what we're gonna do.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  Here's the only caveat to that. Boy, does it suck when someone's got a strong force of will and they're a shitty strategist or a shitty tactician because that happens. There are people that that can, they're so convincing and so convicted about their beliefs and about making something happen that they can drive bad ideas. This is a horror. This is almost, this is almost a worst case scenario. I've known people that were so articulate and powerful when, um, when explaining or tasking people or arguing with people, they were so formidable that they would win

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  arguments even when they were completely wrong, like factually wrong. Like imagine if, if, if someone came into this room right now and presented an argument to, to us that the sky was green and, and we lost the argument. You know what I'm saying? Like I've known people like that, that are so freaking good, so powerful, so persuasive, so, so energetic, so passionate that they're winning arguments about shit that they're totally wrong about.

• 35:10Jocko Willink?

  And so it's, that's, that's like a worst case scenario in my mind because they're unstoppable. Like they're unstoppable and they're just driving, they're driving shit into the ground. So we have to be very cautious. Being persuasive and, and having energy is, does not translate to being a hundred percent correct. So we have to be very cautious of that. And unfortunately, generally speaking, people that have that skill, part of it is because of their confidence and that's why it leaks over into overconfidence. It leaks into arrogance. Now they're not listening to anyone. Can't even articulate it, you know? It's a very interesting situation. It's, it's, it does, generally speaking, doesn't end up well.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. There, you know what? You ever heard of Dunning Kruger?

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  It kind of like smells like that a little bit.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Like the person who knows really like on a granular level about something, you know, they know so much about it that there's sometimes to the point where it's like, hey, it's not as simple as true or false. It's like they know the nuance and all this stuff. So they can jump on there and just start saying, hell, yeah. And go, you know, in this unilateral direction. And then, you know, everyone's all like convinced and stuff like that. They don't really do that because there's more to it than that. And they know that. But someone who's like, they just see it in this low resolution way. Hell, no, we're gonna win under all circumstances. Meanwhile, the guys who do know they're like, wait, there's circumstances where we don't win this. No, no, no, hell, yeah, we win. That's what we do. That's it. That's my whole thing. And it was like, yeah, hell, yeah, you know. So it's kind of like one of those deals almost.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  I seen a guy going against like a like a interviewer or someone was thought he could spar with Sugar Sean O'Malley. And he's like, well, you know, how long would it take you to take me out? And and Sugar Sean's like, well, how long you been having you trained? And he's like, no, he's like, well, 30 seconds. And the guy was like, totally in disbelief. Like, what are you kidding me? And Sugar Sean, it was like 14 seconds, you know, just like snapping down front headlock, guillotine, done. 14 seconds. But this guy, you could see it was like shocking to him. Yeah. So yeah, people that have that weird confidence. And yet he would probably been pretty persuasive

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  about it. But it doesn't matter, bro. It ain't right. Yeah. Be careful of that one. For sure. Got to be careful of that one. Um, there's a he points out a bunch of different generals that he thought either met or came close to the level of genius. One of them is Rommel, the the German, the desert fox. He says, as the war went on, he realized Hitler's megalomania and dishonesty. Long before the end, his distrust and contempt of of his Fuhrer were complete. For Rommel was a simple, straightforward honorable man. The following incidents recorded in Desmond Young's

• 38:09Jocko Willink?

  book should be noted to his credit. When in 1935, Rommel was attached to the Hitler Youth to improve their discipline, he soon fell out with Balder von Sheerach, saying that he objected strongly to small boys of 13 being trained as little Napoleons, and telling von Sheerach that if he was determined to train them as soldiers. He'd better first go and learn to be a soldier himself. Rommel coming off the top ropes. Von Sheerock naturally had him had Rommel return to the army. A remark of Rommel Rommel's about the Italians is, as the author says, surprising in a German general. And this is from Rommel, certainly they are no good at war.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  But one must not judge everyone in the world only by his qualities as a soldier. Otherwise, we should have no civilization. So he's like, the Italians weren't good at war, but what they're good at some bunch of other stuff.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  When Hitler's order to execute all commando troops reached Rommel in the desert. He promptly burned it. Though the order was signed Adolf Hitler. And though it threatened penalties under military law to anyone failing to carry it out. Or to communicate it to the troops. War under Rommel in the desert was waged hard and fiercely, but fairly. So, yeah, there's a

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  an order that came out from Hitler, if you find commandos, execute them like no prisoners of war. Execute them and Rommel said, no, we're not doing that. That's not the way this works. Uh, continuing on, he may not have been a highly educated soldier, but he seems to have had an instinct for strategy as well as for tactics. And we can probably judge for ourselves. Judge ourselves fortunate that Hitler and not Rommel directed the Axis strategy. And that Rommel's advice on the campaign in Africa was not taken.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  In his own notes on desert warfare, which form an appendix, he wrote. An adequate supply system and stocks of weapons, petrol and ammunition are essential conditions for any army to be able to stand successfully. The strain of battle before the fighting proper, the battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters. So he knew that logistics were going to win the war or not win the war.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Wait, what's a quartermaster?

• 40:28Jocko Willink?

  It's like the people that do supply, like they're the logisticians of the army.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah.

• 40:35Jocko Willink?

  A dictum of Rommel's on which it is worthwhile to ponder in these days when the lines of communication are loaded with cinema, concert parties, canteens and so forth is, "The best form of welfare for the troops is a superlative state of training for this saves unnecessary casualties." So Rommel, it wasn't about having freaking concerts and cinemas. And canteens for the troops. What you needed was good training. Rommel lived hard and frugally himself and expected others to do the same. Perhaps he was too hard on himself for he was a sick man by the time he'd reached Alamein and had soon to be sent to the hospital in Germany.

• 41:17Jocko Willink?

  The story of how on October 24th, while still in the hospital, he received a message from Hitler asking him to return and left at 7:00 AM the next morning to take over an already lost battle shows the courage and loyalty of the man.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  Space only, space allows only the barest mention here of other matters related in his enthralling book, Rommel's opinion of the British soldier. Quote, "An extraordinary bravery and toughness combined with the rigid inability to move quickly." So this is, you know, the, the Germans had actually, and this is all a little bit of, a little bit of conjecture, but B. H. Liddell Hart, he had written the books about maneuver warfare. And the Germans had read them. And he got those, and, and he had got those ideas from the Germans in the first place, but then they took his ideas behind the indirect approach and turned those into blitzkrieg,

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  which is what the Nazis used.

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  And he's saying, you know, Rommel's saying like, hey, they were brave and they were tough, but they, they couldn't move quick enough, which is what Liddell Hart was saying, like, you need to move. That's what warfare is going to be. If I may be pardoned a personal note, it is interesting me to find in this book that my calculation in the early part of 1941, when the British expedition went to Greece, that I should not be counterattacked before the beginning of May was justified against any ordinary commander. So here we go. The Brits went into Greece in March of, March 2nd of 1941.

• 42:53Jocko Willink?

  They got counterattacked by the Germans on March 31st and they had to withdraw withdraw on April 24th through the 29th, it took them five days to withdraw and they took 15,000 casualties. So this was a defeat for the British and you know who was in charge of that, that operation? The guy that's writing this book and you know who counterattacked? Rommel. So he says here, what he's saying is like, I didn't think I could be counterattacked before May. Again, winning in March, he's like, okay, well, it's March, we won't be counterattacked until May. He goes on to say, Rommel was ordered by higher command to submit a plan by April 20th for a cautious advance.

• 43:37Jocko Willink?

  So they, they see the, the Brits land on Greece, the Germans see it happening, they go, hey, listen, by April 20th, we want some kind of a plan for a cautious advance against the Brits in, in Greece. What did Rommel do? Did he wait until to submit a plan on April 20th? No. 20 days prior to that, he actually attacked on March 31st without ever submitting a plan and caught me, this guy, unprepared. And he said, I had not reckoned on a Rommel. So there you go. That's, that's a pretty badass moment in this book where this guy says, hey, man, I got my ass kicked by Rommel. I thought it was going to take him a couple of months

• 44:19Jocko Willink?

  to counterattack and even the Germans thought it would take at least 20 days to start a, uh, what they call it, a cautious advance. Rommel said, oh, we're getting attacked, counterattack.

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  Giving props to the guy that beat you.

• 44:36Jocko Willink?

  Rommel was a military phenomenon that can occur only at rare intervals. Men of such bravery and daring can survive only with exceptional fortune. So there you go. In most cases, guys that are as brave as Rommel, who was in World War I as well, they don't survive. They don't live. So when they live and they get more leadership opportunity, that's why you end up with a Rommel. You know, I got asked about, um, how do you teach people that kind of initiative, that kind of bold, that kind of being default aggressive? And the way I would do it at Trade Ed is I would put people in situations repeatedly where inaction and hesitation would get them wiped out. And it'd be like, uh, oh, they like, they take a building. And hey, man, you gotta get out of this building.

• 45:21Jocko Willink?

  And they would hesitate and wait and try and figure out a perfect plan and trying to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then in would come the trade at cadre op for and just slay.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this about that. That would make someone more assertive action, become an action taker.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Shame them. Like, and I don't mean shame them like necessarily for as an individual thing, but just create a culture of shame. So like, if you don't, I'm not saying to do this, I'm saying, what's your take on this? Even in principle. So you know how like, uh, uh, you know, you can tell, okay, so I was, I forget who it was. We're in Las Vegas where it was a big group of us where it was like me, I think Andy Stumpf was there. And there was like some other people there and you could tell no one wanted to pretend they didn't know where, where they were going. We're walking through like the casino, we're trying to find this restaurant. None of us knew where we were going, but no one wanted to act like, oh, like, what do you think? What do you think? Everyone was like, you could tell there was this vibe that like, no one wanted to act like they were lost or didn't know what they were doing, even though we were, we all were.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  So except the girls, the girls were just kind of following us, right? So, and I remember thinking like, we're all kind of embarrassed to be like, I don't know where we're going. We're all kind of ashamed of it, essentially. So I'm thinking, man, that's, and we eventually found it, kind of just clunking our way around, but we did, we found it. And no one had to admit we were lost or whatever, but I'm thinking.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  Maybe only you were lost.

• 46:50Jocko Willink?

  Maybe Andy knew where he was going straight up.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Trust me, we were lost. We've, we made a few wrong turns. Anyway.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  So I'm thinking, but that's kind of good in principle where guys are taking action. Then they're not sitting around asking, what do you think? And what do you think? What do you think? They just avoided that like the plague, like they were kind of embarrassed about it. That's what it felt like. Again, I don't know. I can't read nobody's mind. I could have been wrong, but I'm just saying that idea was in my head. I was like, what kind of cult, you could kind of actively and deliberately create a culture of that, of like. Being an action taker is the thing to do. And if you're not an action taker, it's kind of embarrassing. You're kind of sub substandard kind of a thing.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  That's why it's default aggressive. Yeah, that's that's what you're talking about is literally why we teach at Echelon Front. The the mindset of being default aggressive because it has to be stronger than just like, hey, hey, take action. It needs to be strong in that because when you're in that group and everyone's just kind of walking in, someone needs to be like, hold on a second. We we don't know where we're going. Stop. I need to take action. Default aggressive. That's what I need to do. That's why it exists. And yes, we want to train people to be like that. Look, and we're not training to be uh running to the sound, running to your death. We're not training that. But we're training to take action as your default mode. Can you override the default mode? Yes, you can be like, hey, I see a problem over there, but I'm not sure what it is. We're going to take a moment and assess it.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  That's fine, of course. Seven out of 10 times, action beats in action. That's my statistical facts. Seven out of 10 times, action be three times. It it pays to hold on a second. Seven out of 10 times, action beats beats in action. And by the way, when you use the iterative decision making process, your action that you take is very small and you're going to get feedback on it quickly. And it ups your ability to take action with very with minimal risk, which makes taking action as opposed to inaction even better odds than seven out of 10. It probably brings them to nine out of 10.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So how do you, I mean, I'm sure there's many ways to do it. So my question to you, just almost on a personal level, really. Like, do you think there's value in, let's say, a culture, right? You want to create a culture?

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  Yes, of course.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  You think there's value in kind of creating this culture of shame if you don't take action?

• 49:06Jocko Willink?

  If you want to do it with shame, that's fine. I I don't, you know, to me, I'm I'm not a person that's like utilizing shame on a normal basis to try and get people to do things. I would rather be like, hey, Echo, let's break down why you just got overrun. And you'd be like, well, what, why do you think, Echo? Well, we were sitting, once you told us that we had enemy forces approaching, we didn't take any action until it was too late. Oh, so what do you think you should do next time? We should move more quickly. Okay. You need to be aggressive. You need to be default aggressive. When you hear that there's enemy approaching, you need to almost immediately, okay, where are they coming from? The north? Okay. Hey, get the machine gunners up facing the north.

• 49:51Jocko Willink?

  Give me two people on the rooftop on the next building over and start laying down suppressive fire, but you can do that right now. What is the risk of doing that? The risk of doing that is almost nothing.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  And that so I'm actually thinking through this as you're explaining it. You know what? I I think anyway, this is my little theory. I think the culture and the environment in and of itself just naturally creates an element of shame if you're not aggressive because that starts to become the standard.

• 50:18Jocko Willink?

  Bro, if you don't, okay, the first time you learned your lesson, I'm like, hey, Echo, why didn't you leave that building quick? You're like, well, you know, I was trying to come up with a perfect plan. Obviously, that wasn't a good thing. Cool. Hey, next time you gotta take action. Got it. The next time you do it, I mean, now it's gonna, if if this, I guess this would be shaming you. I'm gonna be like, Echo, what the fuck were you doing sitting around when you knew the enemy was moving in your direction?

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:39Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna say that in front of your platoon.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:41Jocko Willink?

  Is that shame? Cool.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:43Jocko Willink?

  Cause I just gonna lay it on you. So I take it back. If I said I didn't shame people, I am definitely gonna let you know that you screwed up by not taking action when you need to. You need to take some iterative steps to improve the situation you're in. And nine times out of 10, iterative steps, iterative action is gonna be better than inaction. Now, if you take big steps, it's gonna be like seven out of 10. Cause now you're taking a little bit more risk.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 51:08Jocko Willink?

  So you just gotta use caution, but yes, default aggressive is the mindset that we have to have because action it beats inaction.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you're not really necessarily implementing actively and implementing shame, but you're allowing the shame to kind of play its role.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I guess if I call you out in front of your platoon and you feel shame. And again, I'm not calling you out in front of your platoon to be a jerk, but everyone's gotta learn the lessons, man.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 51:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm not purposely making you feel like an idiot in front of your platoon. And in fact, you wouldn't feel like an idiot. Everyone's looking at you like, hey dude, this is Echo's first time doing that job too. We get it. And you know what we're gonna do now? We're gonna help Echo because we know that Echo needs to be aggressive. So when we get told, hey, the enemy is moving towards your position right now, you need to maneuver. And as a machine gunner, I'm gonna go, hey Echo, where are they coming from? Oh, they're coming from the north? Machine gunner with me. I'm gonna set up. You see what I'm saying? People start taking action. So everyone is taking action. And in unified thought to move in the right direction.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you don't, or if you fail to, even after correction, whatever, everyone's gonna be looking at you. Just as an environment, they're gonna be looking at me like, what's up with this dude, you know, kind of a thing. So I learned that. And no one really said it until like later on, I realized, oh, wait, I do this in jujitsu back when I first started. So when I was a white belt.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying to think when I really learned it like, oh, I shouldn't be doing this stuff. Um, it is tapping to fatigue, you know, when you have a flurry and then the guy gets side mount on you and then you just tap whatever.

• 52:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you used to do that.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, big time. So I didn't know it was a thing. I thought that's how like, bro, I can't fight right now. So whatever. So, um,

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you should use to tap from claustrophobia.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  But that's different.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  As if that was a move.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  That's different. That's different.

• 52:46Jocko Willink?

  And I used to use it like a move.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro, you can claustrophobia tap somebody on purpose. You totally engineer that. Especially if you know that's their weakness.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I know.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Just like if they have a weak neck, you do it guilty and it's gonna work better. I'm just saying, these are legitimate moves. But as a, as a practitioner, like if you're gas, like you can get in a safe position or, you know, you can do things, you should try to avoid tapping because of condition. You should try to avoid. And if you don't, even you see how you were laughing at me right now, that's like implementing shame a little bit. Cause as a teammate, as a, as a friend, as a guy, you know, who you're training with, you don't want them to do that.

• 53:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  If you're gas, hey, you're gas. That's what we all get gas sometimes. Yeah, suck it up. Exactly. Right. See what I'm saying? So it's like, Brad, that's real.

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  Check. A little shame goes a long way.

• 53:37Jocko Willink?

  Ah, next section here, unorthodox soldiers. I've always had a liking for unorthodox soldiers and a leaning towards the unorthodox in war. My father did some of his soldiering in command of irregulars in expeditions against the natives in South Africa nearly 70 years ago. He then went off to staff college, considered an almost more unorthodox proceeding in those days. Lack of enterprise has prevented my straying aside from the regular path of soldiering. Though some of my superiors have, I believe occasionally criticized my methods as a little unconventional. Thus, I have always had a keen admiration for the irregular soldier, professional or amateur. Just again, just the idea of not just always following what

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  you're being told to do and trying to think of new ways to do that. And he's got a, that's, that's what he's saying in that section there. This next, this next section is called the good soldier. In over forty-two years active soldiering, I must have formed some opinion on the qualities which make the good soldier. When writing of generals, I put robustness as the first quality. Similarly, for the private soldier, I rate toughness, endurance as the prime requirement.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  Valor and sufferance, said a fine commander monk when he was asked to define the first essentials of a soldier. So valor and sufferance, that sufferance is the ability to endure pain.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  That's it, man. Here's the number one. Here's the top two things I need from a soldier. Valor and sufferance. The ability, the capacity to endure pain. Soldiering in the ranks on active service always has been, is now, in spite of mobile canteens, rations comprising some hundreds of items, wireless sets, cinema vans, NSA entertainments, pinup girls, and other comforts. Despite all that, a hard testing business required for success, a hard, tough man. The difference between the old type of soldier as I first knew him and the modern type

• 55:51Jocko Willink?

  is that the old soldier was tough. The modern type usually has to be toughened. The less civilized man has a natural advantage in war. His wants are simple. He's accustomed to hardship and frugality, often to his life is so laborious that he rates it comparatively lightly. Bro, I grew up on a damn dairy farm. Not me, but I had a guy that grew up on a dairy farm. Bro, he was as hardworking as they come. He's like, hey, you gotta get up at four o'clock in the morning and, you know, fill sandbags. He's like, cool. I used to get up at two o'clock in the morning and throw hay bales.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  Bro, this is a joke. When the Spartans were at the height of their military fame and glory, they, they sent a deputation to the oracle at Delphi and command and demanded arrogantly, can anything harm Sparta?

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  The answer came, yes, luxury. It is interesting to note how standards change and how the toughness of the ancients seems always greater than that of the present generations. I should say that this quality of toughness is partly inherited, partly produced by training, and that inheritance is the more important. Not all the modern, easy ways of life have been able to eradicate the hardcore of native toughness in the British race, though we did a little, though we did little enough to train it or keep it alive in the years between the wars. So he's saying like, hey, the Brits are just tough.

• 57:34Jocko Willink?

  And we didn't do much to, to, to, to keep it tough in between the wars. He says, "The Germans, with a tough but less tough inherited corps, did everything possible during the same period to develop hardness and endurance by training, not only in the army, but in the nation as a whole." So that's when you had the Hitler Youth out there just getting after it, right? But they were trying to make up, according to Wavell, they're trying to make up for the fastest, they're a little bit softer. So they had to be hardcore as a country.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  He says, "Might one define the German corps as pig iron, our own as steel."

• 58:19Jocko Willink?

  He's obviously got a bias here. "The Japanese are tough and have set up toughness as a fetish, just as did the Spartans, their forerunners in the worship of militarism."

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  Moose, again, this guy's got some biases, clearly. Mussolini did his best to display the Italians as tough, but the test was soon proved how soft their inner core was.

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  The modern British soldier, once trained, is capable of feats of endurance as great as any of the past, as the long-range patrols of the western desert, Wingate's Raiders in Burma, the men of Arnim, and many others have shown. And I'll call this part out. "The American soldier of this war, obviously, is obviously a great, great fighting man. Tough, daring, and resourceful. His reputation will stand second to none when it's all over."

• 59:21Jocko Willink?

  Can I get a hell yeah? I'll read it again. "The American soldier of this war is obviously a great fighting man, tough, daring, and resourceful. His reputation will stand second to none when it's all over." Now, my bias is coming out.

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  And second to none when it's all over. I mean, these are the, bro, these Americans, these Americans, these are the guys that went onto the beach in Normandy, these guys that went to Peleliu, right? These guys that went to Tarawa. These are American soldiers and Marines.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  They go hard.

• 1:00:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, you've got the Samurai spirit, the Bushido culture. Cool, we're coming.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  You said something interesting. I forget which, they say they fetishize toughness.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Those are the Japanese.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting, right? How they put that, where it's like, it's to be, it's almost like, I don't know, I'm totally loosely interpreting that. It's like, it's to be revered for sure, but it's not just a standard necessarily. That's what it feels like when they say they fetishize toughness.

• 1:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's an interesting take. And when you look at, you know, the Bushido culture, right? That was the Imperial Japanese Army. Like, that's what they were. But it's very, it's very interesting that, like, you're on a, you're in a defended island, and you set up defenses for months, if not years, and here come these Americans. You know what I'm saying? These Americans, country boys, city boys, you got all of them there, right? You got them all there, and they're coming in, they're not gonna stop.

• 1:01:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what's happening.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Jocko Willink?

  America.

• 1:01:16Jocko Willink?

  So that's endurance. Skill at arms is the next essential after endurance. A soldier must know how to use his weapon or weapons effectively. A comparatively simple matter in the old days, a very complicated one now, when nearly every man must be a specialist. The modern soldier is certainly more capable of adapting himself to new weapons and new conditions than the old type would have been. I kind of disagree with that because I can teach you how to shoot a rifle with pistol and you can be deadly pretty quickly. But if I'm like trying to teach you how to do like a bow and arrow, like I do archery, archery is a lot harder than shooting a pistol or rifle. And if we take that back another step to like a spear or a sword, now you gotta learn swordsmanship. That's like a martial art.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, snowboarding recently. So, snowboarding, surfing is the same thing. Where you have this kind of preliminary period that you gotta get good at just to be able to function, right? Where, where guns, let's say, that period is very short. You say, here's the trigger, know the rules and, you know, and then from there you can start getting good at it. But yeah, like bow and arrow or things or surfing or see, bro, you gotta learn how to stand up on a surfboard before you can tread any wave. I don't care how big or small, like you gotta learn to stand up first and it's really not that easy. It doesn't come that intuitively.

• 1:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it's not that hard to pull the trigger.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Yeah. So it's a, yeah, it's kind of one of those scenarios, you know?

• 1:02:45Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on the good soldier. To say that a good soldier must have discipline is no more than to say he must have learned his trade well. That's how core discipline is. It's just like, that's your, your freaking trade in life is discipline.

• 1:02:59Jocko Willink?

  I do not propose here to discuss in any detail the controversial matter of military discipline. Discipline is teaching which makes a man do something which he would not unless he had learnt that it was right, the proper and the expedient thing to do. So that's discipline. You wouldn't do it unless you knew it was the right thing to do.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  At its best, it is instilled and maintained by pride in oneself, in one's unit, in one's profession. Only at its worst by fear of punishment. So discipline should come from within.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  The military manifestations of discipline are many and various. At the end of the scale, may be placed the outward display such as saluting and smartness of drill, the meaning and value of which are often misunderstood and misused both inside the army and out. Saluting should be in spirit the recognition of a comrade in arms, the respect of a junior for a senior, a gesture of brotherhood on both sides.

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  Good drill should either be a ceremony for the uplifting of the spirit or a time saver for some necessary purpose, never mere formalism or pedantry.

• 1:04:15Jocko Willink?

  No one who has participated in it or seen it well done should doubt the inspiration of ceremonial drill. You ever seen the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team?

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Inspirational.

• 1:04:26Jocko Willink?

  No one has understood the effect of mass display better than our arch enemy Hitler. Yeah, when you'd see like those full freaking parades. I mean, come on.

• 1:04:39Jocko Willink?

  But pomp and ceremony should be for special occasions, not for every day. Drill learnt for a purpose on the battlefield has lost much of its former necessity, but by no means all. In the old days, it was not merely the foundation, but the almost the whole edifice of regular warfare. This is like close order drill. In the old days, it was the, it was what you had to do to make your unit work. You had to do close order drill. It was close order drill that made formidable the Greek phalanx, the Roman legion, the Spanish array of pikemen, the famous oblique order of Frederick the Great depended on it. It enabled the British line to defeat the French infantry column and the British square to hold off the French cavalry in the Napoleonic Wars. Today, it is still essential for many purposes.

• 1:05:25Jocko Willink?

  An effective artillery barrage could not be laid down if the movements of the gunners in loading and firing had not been practiced by constant and exact drill. A bridge could not be built rapidly under fire unless all stages had been worked out and rehearsed to a high degree of certainty. Unless airmen conformed to a regular drill and starting and landing their airplanes, there would be many casualties. So you have to drill things.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  You have to drill things. We used to drill things like crazy. I told a story the other day like, uh, rigging a Humvee for tow. We're like a freaking pit crew, right? Changing tires. Watch this. Oh yeah. That's, that's drill. That's close order drill when you're in a Humvee.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  These are examples of the outward, the mechanical side of discipline, learning by practice to do something so automatically that it becomes natural, even in moments of stress. Oh, that's a good thing. It is essential both to warfare and to orderly, efficient civil life. If anyone doubts this, let them consider the discipline he employs daily in his rising up and his lying down. The time, for instance, that it would take him to not his tie if he came to it unpracticed. So there you go. Like everything you do, you rehearse it. You know how to do it. If you don't, you got problems. That's why we drill. That's why we rehearse.

• 1:06:46Jocko Willink?

  One great difficulty of training, the individual soldier in peace is to instill discipline and yet preserve the initiative and independence needed in war. So just because we're disciplined, it doesn't mean we're too rigid. So the dichotomy of leadership, we gotta be disciplined, but we gotta have initiative and we gotta have independence. The best soldier in peace, officer or man, is not necessarily the best soldier in war. Though he is so more often than not, and it is always, and is not always easy in peace conditions to recognize the man who will make good in war. Yep, we know this. The soldier who is a thorough nuisance in the barracks is occasionally a treasure in the field. Though not as, or not nearly as often as Hollywood and sentimental novelists would have us to believe, but I'll tell you what,

• 1:07:32Jocko Willink?

  it ain't that rare. BTF Tony, right? Well, BTF Tony right there in the mix, bro. In combat, you know what I'm saying? Hey, and you know what? When there's peace time, you gotta just keep, you gotta, gotta, gotta watch out for him, you know? Gotta take care of him. Keep him out of trouble as best you can. It's gonna be hard. Oh, there's all kinds of guys like that in the military. And those are the, those are the dudes that win the freaking battle.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  I remember one of the draft with which I first joined a short, stocky tough from some Glasgow scum. I got to know him well as the roughest and sturdiest of the regimental hockey team. A wing half who never gave the forwards opposed to him a yard of rope and reveled in a hard, rough game. I knew him also too well in the orderly room. He was continually in trouble for foul tongue and propensity for drinking and fighting. He was at least once nearly put up for a discharge by an exasperated company commander. Yet I should always have been glad in war to see that hardly irrepressible figure at my side where I had so often found it in the hockey field.

• 1:08:47Jocko Willink?

  That's a BTF Tony all day. The best soldier has in him, I think, a seasoning of devilry. Some years ago, a friend of mine in a discussion on training defined the ideal infantryman as athlete, marksman, stalker. I retorted that a better ideal would be cat burglar, gunman, poacher.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  My point was that the athlete, marksman, stalker, whatever his skill, risks nothing. The cat burglar gunman and poacher risk life, liberty and limb as the soldier has to do in war. Dr. Johnson, who saw shrewdly into most things, once wrote some thoughts on the British soldier. He began, he began thus. The qualities which commonly make an army formidable are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline and great confidence in the commander. He went on to show that regularity was no part of the English soldier's character, that their discipline was often indifferent and that they had no particular reason to be confident in their commanders. So he's like, this is what makes a good soldier and we don't have it.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Yet they were without a doubt the bravest soldiers in Europe. He ascribed it to the independence of character of the Englishman. And this is like, you know, this is the American too. This is when you're a 19-year-old Marine getting ready to go into Tarawa. And you're like, I'm gonna kick ass and take names. Like, that's a real thing. We joke about it. I'm here to kick ass and take names, right? That's like a joke. No, no, no, no, no. Tell that to a night. He's not joking. 19-year-old Marines is not joking.

• 1:10:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the character of a good Englishman who called no man his master.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  He ended his essay thus. "They who complain in peace of the insolence of the populace must remember their insolence in peace is bravery in war."

• 1:10:51Jocko Willink?

  Gotta have that little bit of rebel, little bit of devilry in ya.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  "A good soldier will soon learn the tricks of the trade, some useful such as the proper care of his feet on the march, of his weapons and equipment in all times, the secret of making the best of uncomfortable conditions, some bad, some scroungings or looting." "To sum up, it seems to me that the essential qualities of the goods, good, the individual good soldier are endurance, skill at arms, and the valor of discipline with some pungency of independence." So true. And by the way, just so everyone knows, you want this with your kids too. You do not want just obedient kids. You want kids that are gonna push back. You want kids that are a little rebellious because at some point,

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  they're gonna be pushing back against peer pressure. At some point, they're gonna be pushing back against some tyrannical, uh, coach or teacher, someone that's like not a good person. So you gotta, you gotta raise your kids with some level of rebelliousness. You have to. Otherwise, they're just, you know, gonna conform. And sometimes they're gonna conform to things that are bad.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  There was a quote here. "Nothing has ever been made until the soldier has made it safe the field where the building shall be built. And the soldier is the scaffolding until it has been built and the soldier gets no reward but honor." And that's from Eric Linklater, Crisis in Heaven. "However good and well-trained a man may be as an individual, he is not a good soldier till he has become absorbed into the corporate life of his unit and has been entirely imbued with its traditions." So you gotta be a part of this thing, man. You gotta be a part of this thing. "Much is said nowadays of the necessity that the soldier should be convinced of the justice of his cause and he is certainly not,

• 1:12:50Jocko Willink?

  cannot escape propaganda. Yet many battles and campaigns have been won by men who had little idea of why they were fighting and perhaps cared less." Right? So it's like, oh, you gotta know the why. I say that all the time. Kind of like, but you got a soldier? This dude's gonna freaking risk his life. He doesn't even know what the politicians are talking about.

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  And that's because he's imbued with the spirit of his unit. It's because his bros.

• 1:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Whatever may inspire morale, it is an essential element of any military force. It is the inward spiritual side of discipline, morale. The inward spiritual side of discipline. It can be seen in such incidences as the sinking of the Birkenhead when the soldiers on board stood in order on the deck while the women and children were put in a few boats available and the ship sank under them. And this is a, this happened in 1852. And it was a troop ship. So they were, they were transporting some troops down to South Africa and the ship went down.

• 1:13:59Jocko Willink?

  And some of the soldiers and officers had taken their families. And so there's women and kids on the ship. And 640 people were on board. 450 of them died. All the women and children lived. And that's because they weren't, it was like, the culture. I am not getting into a lifeboat before the women and children are safe. This has been regarded as a perfect manifestation of discipline since the king of Prussia ordered an account of it to be read at the head of every unit in his army. The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies must be inspired by an inward discipline as the troops on the beach

• 1:14:44Jocko Willink?

  at Dunkirk and on many other stricken field where men have held on against hopeless odds, not because of individual bravery, but by the strength of their collective discipline and morale. Good teamwork and morale is now more than ever required when units fight over wide open spaces and not in close order when one individual can control them.

• 1:15:14Jocko Willink?

  And it goes on to talk about the good soldier, the British soldier has to the quality of tolerance, which extends even to the mistakes of his superiors. He will not easily withdraw confidence from his leaders, even if they fail to win success. A blessing on the British fighting man on his endurance, courage and good humor. And we talked about in the last one, like humor is a thing. Humor is a very positive thing. Very large proportion of those citizens who have served in this war have reached a standard of physical fitness that they have not known before and could not easily have acquired in civilian life. But it is the inward qualities that count.

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  It seems to me that the best qualities of a good soldier spring from the sense of true comradeship, which is the supreme gift of the military life as a whole and of a good unit in a special. Self sacrifice, loyalty to cause and friends, staunchness and endurance in hardship and danger. These are fostered by military training and comradeship. They will be required in the hard testing days of peace as well as war. I trust that after the war, the good soldier and the good citizen will be one. Hmm, maybe not the best thing to trust.

• 1:16:33Jocko Willink?

  And you know, when you hear this right here, this section, when we talk about what the the trouble that guys have transitioning to the civilian sector. It's because of these inward qualities that we talk about are part of being a unit. It's the comradeship, it's that's the, the, it says, the supreme gift of military life

• 1:16:57Jocko Willink?

  is the comradeship that you have, the self sacrifice, loyalty to cause and friends.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Fostered by military training and comradeship. That's why it's hard when that disappears. That's why we gotta get into a jujitsu gym, start training with people, get some hardship. You have some hardship today, Echo Charles.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Some shared hardship.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  That's what's happening, right? You feel better when we're done.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  I do feel better.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  More unity with the troops.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  More unity.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Want to go back on the, back on the mats?

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  I will conclude this very inadequate essay on the great subject with a story I have always appreciated. The old Duke of York, Commander in Chief, 1798 to 1809. The soldier's friend once found his footman, footman turning a poor woman from the door. Only an old soldier's wife was the explanation. And pray said the Duke, what else is her royal highness, the Duchess of York? So there you go. What is the, what is the Duchess of York? She's an old soldier's wife as well. I hope that story will be remembered in days to come, whenever old soldiers and soldiers' wives require help.

• 1:18:10Jocko Willink?

  Little section here on command, and I thought these were very poignant. A commander should never attempt to control an operation or a battle by remaining at his HQ. Or be content with, or be content to keep in touch with a subordinate by cable, wire transmission, or other means of communication. He must as far as possible see the ground for himself or to confirm or correct his impressions of the map.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  His subordinate commanders to discuss their plans and ideas with them, and the troops to judge their needs and their morals. You gotta get out with the troops. That's what he's saying. Isn't it weird sometimes you look at a map and what it looks like in real life compared to what it looks like on the map?

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:18:51Jocko Willink?

  Like, hmm, I didn't really, didn't really sense that.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:18:55Jocko Willink?

  And I used to go to great lengths, like especially my first deployment to Iraq, when we would be going to a place we'd never been before. Some area of Baghdad or some outline. And I would try and look at, because you look at a building from one angle. Especially like it's a pure overhead angle, bro, you're gonna be all, you're not gonna recognize it's very diff- I shouldn't say you're not, but it's gonna be, but you get three or four different 3D angles like, okay, and even then you're still gonna be caught off guard a little bit, still not gonna be what you quite expect. So you gotta get out there and same thing with your people. I talked to Echo on the radio, he sounded good to go. Get out there, he's a freaking disaster. Or he sounds like a disaster, I get out there, he's good to go. Like you gotta get out there and, and make sure that things make sense.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro, that's, that's true. And I go actually a couple of things where it, it hits me real quick. So that I was, uh, I was driving in Big Bear the other day, yesterday, actually. And we stayed up on a hill. And on the hill, the, there's this, it's called Moon Ridge, right? Where you go, but it's this maze of roads. So when you look at it on the map or the GPS, you're kind of like, oh yeah, follow this thing, whatever. You don't realize you're going up and then around this thing and then back down and all this stuff. And you're like, yeah, this map doesn't look like this actual terrain in real life at all. So that's a, so I agree with you there. But now when you see, when you're talking about people, that's so true. So you know how certain people, they're like more quiet, right? Just in general. And then some people who they're just normal, but when they get mad, they get quiet. And then some people, when they get mad, they get

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  a little bit more loud, more aggressive. See what I'm saying? But if you're just used to people getting loud and aggressive, and then you're like, oh yeah, you go around your other friend that gets quiet, you don't realize he gets quiet because you never really see him mad. Now they're quiet. You're like, oh yeah, no, nothing's wrong. Just mellow today. Meanwhile, he's pissed at you or whatever.

• 1:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Gotta get out there.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta know, yeah.

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Um, and it says, get out there as often as possible. The same course applies to periods of preparation and periods between operations. In fact, generally, the less time a commander spends in his office and the more times with his troop, the better.

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  So remember that, team leaders, CEOs, commanding officers, troop commanders. Here's some good rules.

• 1:21:05Jocko Willink?

  It's worthwhile to bear in mind the following when it comes to reports. Two thirds of the reports which are received in war are inaccurate. Never accept a single report of success or disaster as necessarily true without confirmation. Hey, apply that to your freaking social media stream. Please. Two thirds of them are junk. Right? And don't accept one report from anybody.

• 1:21:30Jocko Willink?

  Always try to devise a means to deceive and outwit the enemy and throw him off his balance. Check. That's a good call, right?

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  And finally, attack is not only the most effective, but the easiest form of warfare. And the moral difference between advance and retreat is incalculable.

• 1:21:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna say that again. The, the moral difference between advance and retreat is incalculable. That's what happens when you're running away, it's crushing. When you're attacking, it's, it's motivating.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Even when inferior in numbers, it pays to be aggressive. It pays to be as aggressive as possible. That's what we're doing, man. You ever seen a MMA fight where you see someone step up their game? Like, hey, I'm losing in right now and I need to step up my game and go on the attack. And that'll make the difference in a fight all day.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's. So I go through that every once in a while when I'm doing it like a conditioning bout. And if I really don't want to be here, or if I'm doing poorly.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  It's night and day how tired I feel. Same thing in jujitsu. So if, if you let's say, okay, I mean, you're rolling and you're like, if you just begin to kind of put it on me.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  I can kind of have the same output physically, but since I'm getting defeated, I seem way more tired.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Cause I don't want to be there.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  But when it's reversed, let's say I, you know, if I step it up and I'm kind of putting on you and your sense of urgency, now you're defending the whole time. I'm like, oh, this guy is freaking squirming a little bit. I can still do a lot of output. I won't be as tired because I want to be there. You see what I'm saying? So it's like way different. Like you can literally have the same physical output, but that mental game will make you feel more tired.

• 1:23:21Jocko Willink?

  That's the truth.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  That's real.

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Being on the attack, man.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's kind of like, you ever see like in, in, you see, you see this all the time in UFC, right? You know how two guys are just battling it out? You could tell they're both like, kind of in the orange zone as far as gassing, but they're just putting it on the line, right? And then one guy lands a shot and knocks the guy out. Bro, all of a sudden this guy's running around the ring. He's jumping on top of the rails. I brought us a lot of energy to do that and stuff. Where was that? You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So, bro, that's real, you know? Just that, I guess it's kind of like a level of morale in a way.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  It's a hundred percent morale. That's what it is, dude. Being on the attack is good morale.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Being on the defense is bad morale.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Be first. You ever heard of a corner man in MMA, be first, be first? Or in wrestling, be first, be first. Like they're saying that. They're trying to help you be first because that puts the other person on the defensive, which is what you want. Break their morale.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. For a soldier, certainly for the frontline soldier, physical and moral, moral toughness are always more important than book learning. There is a saying that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but you can make a very serviceable leather one. And in military service, leather purses are more practically useful than silk ones. The average fighting soldier has a natural suspicion of cleverness. And by cleverness, it means like, you know, like craftiness, being like smart, big words, either of the tongue or of the pen,

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  and is inclined to condemn it. A British general who rose to high command and played a considerable part in the conquest of our Indian empire is said to have, is said to have known only two lines of verse composed by himself, which he never tired of repeating. Damn your writing, mind your fighting.

• 1:25:18Jocko Willink?

  So that amongst soldiers, also, there is a prejudice against book learning.

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Yet, education for the soldier had to come, and it has to continue. Other things being equal, there can be no doubt that the better educated man will make a better commander and soldier. Tough character and practical experience will always be the first requirements. What are the subjects that should be studied by an officer desirous of perfecting himself in the military profession? History, especially military history, is an obvious subject with geography another. Both Napoleon and Wellington carried with them a considerable library on these subjects. Napoleon's precept, "Read and reread the campaigns of the great commanders," is well-known.

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  Thus, the officer, the leader, has a wide range of knowledge in which he can improve himself, and he should never cease learning.

• 1:26:16Jocko Willink?

  That's why we have these old books. That's why we review them.

• 1:26:21Jocko Willink?

  "There is one quality above all which seems to me essential for a good commander, the ability to express himself clearly, confidently, and concisely in speech and on paper."

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go ahead and say that again. Pay attention. There is one quality above all, which seems to me essential for a good commander. That is, the ability to express himself clearly, confidently, and concisely in speech and on paper. Didn't talk about tactics, didn't talk about toughness, he didn't talk about ability on the battlefield. He talked about clear, simple, clear, concise communication, spoken and written.

• 1:27:09Jocko Willink?

  "To have the power to translate his intentions into orders and instructions, which are not merely intelligible but unmistakable, and yet brief enough to waste no time." My experience of getting on for 50 years' service has shown me that it is a rare quality amongst army officers to which not nearly enough attention is paid in their education. Go be an English major.

• 1:27:37Jocko Willink?

  It is one which can be acquired, but seldom is because it is seldom taught. So communication, communication, communication. That's what we have to do as leaders. We have to write, we have to read, we have to speak. Simple, clear, concise language.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  Intelligible and unmistakable in what you're saying. This is what leadership is.

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  And we'll close out this book with this little bit of Plato, the Greek Plato, whose theories on education, though written some 22 and a half centuries ago, are still modern, insisted insisted on a proper balance between mental and physical development.

• 1:28:22Jocko Willink?

  While for the scholar, the tendency is to neglect physical development. For the soldier, the balance naturally inclines to the other side. So of course, the scholar, you know, they don't care about physical and the soldier doesn't really care enough about the mental side.

• 1:28:38Jocko Willink?

  The scholar may be a physical weed. And the term weed is a British is a British guy who's using a British term and the is an informal expression, which means a contemptible, a contemptibly feeble person.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  So the scholar may be a physically contemptible, feeble person. And yet a great scholar. However, a weakling, physical and moral can never be a good soldier.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  And with that, that's what we have once again. Many lessons from Field Marshal Wayvell. And that's what we're doing here, right? We are trying to capture, we're trying to improve our own understanding of military knowledge, of military history, of knowledge of leadership, of communications. That's what we're trying to do. And you can capture from that closing statement that we need physical strength, of course. We need mental strength, of course, and we need moral strength.

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  That's why we're here. That's what we're doing, getting stronger.

• 1:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Mentally, physically. And morally, because the moral part. If you're not physically and mentally strong, you're not going to stand up to the moral part, you'll get crushed. So. Part of this, part of, isn't it interesting you just brought it up, like the, when you're hurting? You, you didn't say, you didn't need to say, you, you said when you're hurting during a hard workout, you're not talking about like your muscle, your lactate acid, you're talking about mentally hurting. But we train, we train physically to become mentally tougher and we become mentally tougher and physically tougher, we become morally tougher. This is all connected.

• 1:30:40Jocko Willink?

  But it's interesting that you used to submit from fatigue. And then you got over that, then you submitted due to claustrophobia. And you've, you've morphed, you've grown beyond those things. You had to suffer through them. You had to recognize and feel shame. For your lack.

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  Of tenacity and guts. Right?

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Backbone.

• 1:31:15Jocko Willink?

  But that's what we had to do, right? And that's what we're all doing. But the reason I say that is because we do these physically hard things. And it makes us physically stronger, but let's not forget that it makes us mentally stronger. And then, let's not forget that when we become stronger physically and stronger mentally, now we can hold the line morally. So that's what we're doing.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  I have a question.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Go.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Kind of rewinding a little bit back to the knowledge, like the learning, book learning part, was a second ago. Oh, remember, you guys have a class called land navigation, right? Land nav. Do you remember that class pretty thoroughly or no?

• 1:31:51Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's not, it's not really like. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's not like a course that you go to, it's a class that you get taught.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:59Jocko Willink?

  It's not like some huge like.

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Is it in a classroom?

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  It's not like free fall school, you know, where you're going to a school or sniper school. It's like land nav. Well, you get like probably three, four hours in the classroom when you're a new guy. Or going through SEAL qualification training.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you go out and then you go out on the field, right? So what's the first thing in the classroom? Do you, if you even remember, but what do you learn? What's the first thing you learn?

• 1:32:22Jocko Willink?

  Um, you know, you're probably like learning how to, what all the things on a map mean. So when you look at a map like, hey, these are grid lines. This is the datum. This is what the, this is what a blue line means. This is what, you know, just learning what a map, what all the symbols of them, the symbology of a map, I guess.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  And or a chart, but a chart you're going to learn, that's not land nav. That's, that's maritime navigation. You use a chart. So for land navigation, you use a map and you gotta learn what all those little symbols are. That's probably the first thing that you learn.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause you know how like when you learn something in the classroom with zero experience, it's like, it's almost like shots in the dark. Like, okay, I'll just trust that this is true. Yeah, no context. But when you do it the other way around, where you just, oh, I was just thrown in the field, like, you know, construction or something like this. And I was just thrown in the field. They were telling me what to do and on the fly, what not to. Meanwhile, I was just winging it and I was kind of trial and erroring the whole thing. But I've been doing it for like three years. I got a pretty like good experience, right? And then you go in the classroom or learn some technical thing. You're like, bro, this explains a whole lot, you know, and you're just picking and you're just eating it up because it's so contextual, you know? So it's almost like, like, do you think there would be some bit, I guess it just depends on what it is, but some benefit in kind of throwing,

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  like reversing the education system, not, not the full education, but in certain things.

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes. And it's not, but you don't have to take it to the extreme. You just, you do little bits, right?

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Well, back and forth.

• 1:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You go back and forth, back and forth. You, the, uh, the idea of learning things is to have a very broad mind and utilize as much as you possibly can to get people to understand, right? So we'd have guys, and I talked about this, I think in the dichotomy of leadership of like, some instructors teaching close quarters combat would be like, they would want to explain everything and they explain it for two hours. Meanwhile, the other instructor is like, hey, let me give you a five minute brief, then you'll start doing it. The people that do it.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  Do better. Now, if you, if you had another person that was like, hey, I'm not going to tell you anything. And you're just going to enter the room and figure it out for yourself. That's a loser too.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  So we have to have a hybrid system where you get shown techniques and then you do the techniques and then you do the techniques live. You know, it was really helpful. Once we started using simunition where you could fight against other people that were maneuvering. Been through that before. So yes, if you were to sit some, if I took you, Echo Charles, and brought you in a classroom and I tried to teach you land nav. Now I could do it like if we had VR and I could use a bunch of imagery to show you what it looked like. But that's going to be really difficult. But to teach you in a classroom with a book, let's, let's limit to me to having like a book and a map. You could go on the field and be completely lost.

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  If I just brought you in the field and you didn't have, I didn't explain what things were, it would take you longer to learn how to do it. But if I did what you said, or what we just kind of agreed upon where I was like, okay. I have a map, I have a book, I'm going to give you a 20 minute brief. We're going to go out there, we're going to look at what this terrain feature looks like in real life.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Jocko Willink?

  And you go, oh, man. Okay. I see that now. Oh yeah. That's what it looks like on the map. Cool. And when you see that one, you go, oh, so that means that, uh, if that's what a ravine looks like, so that means, uh, a finger is going to look like this. And you start, oh yeah, yeah. And then you see it. Yep. Here's a finger. There's, oh, you go. So yes, doing a hybrid methodology is the best way.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:45Jocko Willink?

  In everything.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's funny because you see, you know, you, we think of this classic, like let's say a plumber, for example. Get this classic old school plumber. He's seen it all, you know, very little, you know, mayor may not have high school education, but this, this guy can solve some problems. Okay. And if you need the wizard to come and solve your problem that no one else could call, you call this guy, right? But meanwhile, he only has like a high school, barely high school education or whatever. And then you see the flip side where this guy's got all the degrees, you know? And all the accolades and graduate, top of his class, you know, all this stuff. But then he gets out in the field and, you know, he didn't know what to do because he has no, he can't connect the dots to like what happens day to day versus what happened in the classroom kind of a thing. So yeah, that hybrid makes sense. That's why jujitsu, I think is.

• 1:36:28Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu has got to be the hybrid too. Like you want, you, I could take you into a classroom or I could even, even though like a.

• 1:36:36Jocko Willink?

  High-tech, 3D, like simulator where you're watching moves happen. I could show them to you, but when you get on the mat, you would suck.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Right, and but that's why Jiu-Jitsu is so good is because that's how Jiu-Jitsu is kind of learned. It's like sparring is such a big part of it.

• 1:36:54Jocko Willink?

  It is.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Spar.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  But I, to remove the instructional part, it also doesn't make sense because I can show you in 30 seconds, how to do an arm lock and it's gonna, it's gonna propel you. If I just trying to let you figure it out.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  It ain't happening. So we want to find that balanced hybrid ground, where we're teaching moves and then applying the moves. It's just like playing an instrument. Like you have to learn the notes. And then, once you learn the notes, now you can make, now you can make songs. You can, you can bend the notes. There's all kinds of stuff you can do. But like on a guitar, you have to learn the chords. Now, you could, you could explain to me the theory of chords and let me try and figure it out. It would take me years. Or you could show me the chords and show me the theory. And now I'm in a totally different spot, better spot. So. And that's what we're doing.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and speaking of getting stronger mentally, physically, spiritually, morally, we're going to be lifting, we're going to be sprinting. We're going to be doing workouts. We need fuel. We recommend Jocka Fuel. Go to jockafuel.com. We make the cleanest. We make the best tasting. We make the highest quality. We make creatine, which I'm on a lot of right now.

• 1:38:14Jocko Willink?

  We make protein. We have the new fruity cereal protein, ready to drink. And it seems to be, uh, an obsession for many people, myself included. Absolutely delicious. We're, we're, we got a powder form of that coming. So everyone will be able to get the fruity cereal. But check out the, the, the protein shakes, the ready to drink protein shakes. Check out the, the powder that we make. It's going to give you the fuel that you need. A lot of protein, man. We all need a lot of protein, more than you think you need. Check those macros, right? Check out, do a little audit. Do a little first in nutrition, first in nutrition.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 1:38:50Jocko Willink?

  You know Jonathan and Nan, well they're like part of their protocol. When you start their program, you gotta do an audit to see what you're actually intaking into your body.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:00Jocko Willink?

  And one of the shortfalls that often comes up is not enough protein.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:06Jocko Willink?

  So people think they're good to go on protein, but they're not.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:09Jocko Willink?

  They think they're getting whatever, 200 grams of protein or 180 grams of protein a day. And they're not. What are they getting 100 grams of? Junk. So you need protein and our protein can definitely help you get there.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Do you know off the top of your head, and I say this because my daughter started implementing this recipe. So you know the video you and Hannah did, Rana, you and Rana did, and Rana said, I'm recalling it.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Everyone says it tastes like cheesecake.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  And it does.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you try it?

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  My daughter makes that every single day from watching that video. And she was like, oh my gosh. But do you know, do you remember off the top of your head, what is in that? I know there's milk powder, vanilla.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. Uh, it's Greek yogurt. I know cause, cause, cause Coach Rana has been just, and my wife too, they're just like getting into that Greek yogurt. There's like a bunch of protein in Greek yogurt. And when you put, and it doesn't taste good by itself.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  But when you put milk in there, milk powder. Good to go.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  It's actual. So she puts the Greek yogurt, blueberries or strawberries or both. Um, and milk.

• 1:40:14Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  And I think that's it. I don't think she puts anything else in there.

• 1:40:17Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, that's it.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  That's it. Cause the milk sweetens it. Yeah, yeah. But oh, she's pounding a bunch of that. But surprisingly, it's really good macros.

• 1:40:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, great macros.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So a little dessert.

• 1:40:28Jocko Willink?

  A good way to get your protein. Get the, get yourself some protein powder, mix it with Greek yogurt, mix it with milk, mix it with water. It just depends on what you, what you like and also what you're going for. We got energy drinks, we got hydration. We got everything that you need. Joint warfare, you're gonna need that. You're gonna need some super krill. Take some time more. That's what we're doing. Check out Jocko Fuel.com or check out your local store. We got in all kinds of stores. If you don't have, if, if, check it out, your gym. Like, of course, it's in my gym. It's in Victory MMA. But if you got a jiu-jitsu gym, or you got a, a weightlifting gym, or a yoga studio, or whatever you got,

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  email J F Sales at Jocko Fuel.com and we can get you the highest quality goods to give your clients. So check it out, Jocko Fuel.com, get some. Also, Origin USA, we're training jiu-jitsu. We need rash guards.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  We need rash guards. We need gis. We need training gear. We need jeans. We need hoodies. We need all kinds of stuff and we, we want it to be made by freedom, built by freedom. We don't want it made by communists. We don't want it made by slaves. We don't support slave labor. Do you support slave labor? Oh, what are you wearing on your, on your pants? What kind of pants are you wearing that were literally made by slave labor? We don't support that. We support freedom. And that's where you go, American made, Origin USA. Go to OriginUSA.com and support freedom.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  That's true. Also, on Jocko's store, there is a new shirt out, by the way. Get after it.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. A new one?

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, brand new. Brand's making new, actually, as of right now, okay, right now, I'm not, you figure it's Sunday night right now.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  It's, it's live. I put it live last night. I'm gonna make the announcement Monday. This comes out Tuesday. So.

• 1:42:20Jocko Willink?

  They might not be left.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Might have missed. Hopefully, about enough for everybody. You see what I'm saying? But here, I'll give you the, the, the, the style or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. It's the only time I'm gonna say it, by the way. Maybe. So you know how back in the day, so it's get after it, right? We love get after it. It's the only way to handle a bunch of stuff is to get after it. You see what I'm saying? But you know, back in the day when JP, you said something to JP, like, hey, put your name on the back of your helmet? So in that cannon JP, how he put his name in the back of the helmet, it wasn't with like a Sharpie pen. It was with tape. It's like this black tactical looking tape.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  I like that. So one of the videos I made and it had JP's title on it. I was like, oh, let me make JP's name like that. So it looks like the tactical tape on it. And I was like, bro, that's freaking looks good. So years later, that's what they get after it is like it's made out of tape. That's what that's the history behind it. Anyway, it's out. It's three colors on there. Not to mention all the other stuff, the new good, the new discipline equals freedom. There's still way we're up and running. So you know, we're, we're stocked up. So yeah, man, you want to represent on the path, Jocko store.com. If you want the shirt locker, that's a subscription. That's a new design, a little bit outside the box. You already knew that, but boom, we're up and running with that one have been for years. So go on there, click on shirt locker, see what it's all about. If you're down for that,

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  get a new design every month. It's a good one.

• 1:43:47Jocko Willink?

  Check. And speaking of check, check out the book, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Check out Need to Lead by Dave Burke. Check out all the books I've written about leadership. Check out the kids books I've written. You can check all that stuff out. Um, wherever you buy books, really. And then we have echelonfront.com, a leadership consultancy. We talk about all these principles of leadership and how they apply to everything in your business, in your life. If you need help inside your business, check out echelonfront.com. We also have an, an online training academy, because these are skills. These are skills, just like Field Marshal Wavell said, these are skills that you can hone, get better at. But you can't just do it on your own. You have to put effort into it. So check out extremeownership.com

• 1:44:29Jocko Willink?

  if you want to learn these skills. And then of course, on top of all that, if you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help out their families, want to help out Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. You can also check out heroesandhorses.org and find the Jimmy Mays organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org. For us, if you want to connect with us, you can check out Jaco.com. And then on social media, the big algorithm.

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful, man. That algorithm, it'll grab you and not let go. Thanks once again to our military personnel, standing watch on the front lines of freedom around the world and protecting our way of life here at home. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, board, patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders who stand the watch on the home front, protecting us. We are grateful to you as well. And everyone else out there, let's just remember this line from the Field Marshal, quote, "Discipline is teaching which makes a man do something which he would not unless he had learned that it was

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  the right, the proper, and the expedient thing to do," end quote. And that's the discipline. You're not going to want to do it, but the discipline requires that you do it anyways. That's the discipline is the right and proper thing to do, which is why we do it every single day. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.