The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #22: "Unjustly" Getting Criticized By The Boss, Publicly.

Getting called out or criticized by your boss "unjustly" in public. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Debrief Podcast, episode 22 with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. Dave, what's happening? We have a leadership consultant company and what we do is we work with a bunch of different companies and Dave and I and the rest of the team at Echelon Front, sometimes we discuss the leadership challenges that we see, we debrief them. And at one point, Dave and I said, hey, wouldn't it be good if we shared these debrief with other people so they could learn what we're learning? And so that's what this podcast is. So Dave, let's debrief. What do you got?

• 0:34Dave Berke?

  When your boss calls you out in public, the biggest issue is actually not the boss, it's your ego and how you react to that. So here's the situation. Working with a company, I'm talking to a sales manager and he's frustrated about this company's work from home policy that they're about to enact as a response to COVID. So as you might guess, and as you all know, a lot of companies are dealing with this is COVID kicks off, a lot of people working remotely, working from home has become a thing, and now we're finding the right way to bring people back to work. So how do we get people back to the office? Do it smart, do it safe, do it the right way. This sales manager had built and briefed a plan

• 1:16Dave Berke?

  to his boss, the CFO who he's working for, on how they're going to execute this return to work plan and what's going to be the new work from home policy. And he thought he was all good to go. So he briefed the CFO about three or four days later, he brings his entire team in on a Zoom call, CFO's there, he starts briefing as part of this meeting, the new work from home policy, and the CFO says, hey, this plan isn't going to work. So the feedback from him is it goes, hey, he did this in front of my whole team after he helped me build and sign off on the plan. Totally caught this guy off guard. And up until now, the CFO's seen fine with the plan, and now he's against it to the last minute. And he did it in front of his whole team. So as you might guess, this manager

• 1:59Dave Berke?

  I'm working with directly is, he's pretty fired up. He's frustrated, he's mad at the CFO. And, you know, I understand where he's coming from. And his question is, how do I fix this? Or how do I solve this? And it's mostly like frustration with the CFO for having done that. He made me look bad. And he kind of backstabbed me because he said he was good with the plan. So that's the situation this guy's in. And we're talking about ways to solve this problem.

• 2:27Dave Berke?

  Probably wasn't the most satisfying answer that he got from me, which is, hey, this isn't about the CFO. This is about you. And so how do you solve this? Well, the first thing you gotta do is figure out how to take ownership of this. And you also have to protect your team. I want to talk about that for just a minute. I think the first question to ask is, hey, if the CFO doesn't like your plan, this plan that you briefed, if he's got a problem with it, how do you recognize that this is actually your fault? And if your ego's getting out of control and you're frustrated and you're pissed off and you're blaming the CFO, it's going to be almost impossible to do that. So, so we talked a little bit about the CFO. Hey, what does a CFO want for the company? What are his goals? What are his objectives? What, what does he really want? And CFO wants us

• 3:11Dave Berke?

  to make money. He wants us to do well. He wants the team to be successful. He wants sales to go up. He wants revenue increase. The CFO actually wants us to win. He does. And who does the CFO answer to? He works directly for the CEO. He works directly for the person in this case that is in charge. Any idea what the CEO wants? He wants all those same things. He wants us to be successful. So inside of that, that recognition is frustrated as you are. So how do we win here? How, how, how can he protect his team, take care of his team and be successful? So I'll make it kind of binary. There's a lot of nuance inside there, but the bottom line is the sale team, the sales team likes to work from home. They had to do it out of, out of necessity last year, but it's actually

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  Now we like wearing pajama bottoms until noon.

• 3:56Dave Berke?

  Now we're digging it. Yeah. And, and listen, they actually have learned how to do what they thought couldn't be done remotely, forced into learning how to do it. They're actually, they're pretty good at it. So it's not, um, it's not beyond understanding that they like this and they're working, working in a way that's actually still working out.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  I was going to say, the performance metrics can be either the same or they can go up.

• 4:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  Because now all of a sudden I can do a call at six o'clock in the morning because I can just jump on there and I don't have to drive a new commute and all this stuff and boom. Also, I can talk to more clients every day because I'm not spending an hour and a half sitting in my car. And I'm more flexible and I could do a night call with this other person because I'm My office because my office is my house. So there's some legitimate reasons.

• 4:39Dave Berke?

  Absolutely.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  We kind of keep this stuff going a little bit.

• 4:40Dave Berke?

  Totally. And like I said, I'm going to be binary that the sales team likes work from home. And the CEO CFO, they want people back in the office. And and inside of that is all those things you said, there's legitimacy to both of those sides and all the things that sit inside the middle there.

• 4:58Dave Berke?

  And that's really, that's really sort of the crux of this is is to figure out how do we do this the right way? So it don't just sit all the way over here, everybody's back tomorrow, or all the way over here is, hey, we're never coming back to work. There's an answer inside there. And the answer is actually what's best for the team and what's best for the client, what's best for the company. And so how do we get to that? How do we get to what's best? And the path he was heading down was he's mad at the CFO. So his reaction is he's gonna push back. You made me look bad. And he's gonna kind of go on the attack to the CFO for what he did.

• 5:34Dave Berke?

  And what's gonna happen if I go on the attack, if you're my boss and you say, hey, I don't like your plan anymore. And then I push back against you, what's probably gonna end up happening is you and I are gonna go to war. You and I are gonna fight. And the outcome of that, however long it takes, is very likely that you are going to win. Because I'm I'm one of six sales managers and you're the CFO. So I can go to war all day long. And give you all the reasons why I was right and you were wrong and remind you that you backstab me. Or I can take a step back and go, right, hang on.

• 6:02Dave Berke?

  The three or four days from the time that I briefed you to the time that we did this thing, what what happened? You went and talked to the boss. Did I come back and follow up with you? Did I prep the meeting? Did I ask if there's any changes? Did I ask if you have any additional inputs? Did I do a whole bunch of things I could have done to make sure that we were still aligned?

• 6:16Dave Berke?

  And did I really understand the strategic picture? Because what really needs to happen, there's actually a balance inside there. We can't all come back tomorrow. And we can't all sit around in our pajamas for the rest of our lives, working from home. We have to do what actually is best. And so if you take the approach of hang on a second. CFO has got some valid reasons. There must be something going on that I missed. Some real reason that the CFO is driving this. And if I can say, take a step back and get to understand the bigger picture, what I'm gonna get is rather than a war with you. What I'm gonna get, assuming I actually have a good relationship, which he does. I'm gonna get a compromise. I'm gonna get a, a solution, an incremental solution that I can start from and start to move, which is. I can understand the reasons why the boss wants us to come back.

• 7:00Dave Berke?

  I can, instead of saying, everybody comes back right away, go, hey. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we have all hands company meetings. We want to do that in person for these reasons. These are the things we're gonna get done. And maybe two days a week, I can start to bring my team back. Or five days a month, or whatever it might be. And I can also tell my boss, exactly what you said is, hey, boss. Some of the benefits from working from home and, and extending some of those things is. We've got clients international. We've got clients on East Coast time. We've got some ways to do this from home. Everybody's effective. And what I'll get is. I'll understand the CEO's intent. I'll understand the CFO's intent, and I'll get them to understand my intent. And I'll find something that works for everybody. And then we can start to get to a solution that over time. Done incrementally, we actually get to where we need to be. And this was less about exactly what the right solution was. Hey, it has to be this, at this interval, at this time.

• 7:46Dave Berke?

  The answer was. How do I get to a place where I can take care of my team and take care of the company? And I don't do that by being mad at you for cutting me off and changing the plan at the last minute. I get that by saying, alright, I missed something. I didn't understand the strategic picture. Hey, boss, how can I better understand what you need? And how does this plan look for you? So I can start to move forward to get what you, to get what we want, so we can all be successful. So we can get to that compromise.

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  I just wrote down, my first note was, but Dave.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  Because. We get to hear that all the time. But Chaco, but Chaco, but Dave, but Dave, but Dave. You know, well, when you, as soon as you say, hey, listen, you need to take ownership of this. Your CFO. They did what they did, but you need to take ownership. And they're like, but Dave. The guy undermined me in front of everybody. I already gave him the brief. But Dave, I already, he already signed off on it. But Dave, he helped me put it together. But Dave, this was in front of all my people. There's just, but Dave, but Dave, but Dave, but Dave. That's what it is all day long.

• 8:47Dave Berke?

  It's like you were there.

• 8:50Jocko Willink?

  So, so this idea of, of, hey,

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  the resistance to taking ownership is to say, I get it, Dave. I'm supposed to take ownership, blah, blah, blah. But Dave, here's the real deal. So the buts don't work. They don't work. The only thing you can do is take ownership of what's happening and make adjustments. And that's when you do what you talked about. Here's a li- a little bit of tactical discussion here. What do you do? What do you do when Jocko, the sales leader, is talking to my team? And Dave, the CFO is on the call and I already went over the plan with Dave. And he approved the plan, helped me come up with a plan. And then I'm on the t- on the call, talking to my team.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  And Dave cuts me off and says, I actually, Jocko, this plan isn't going to work. What do I do? What do I say? What do I say? Do I get defensive? Do I say, but Dave, we already discussed this? Do I say, but Dave, I already showed you. Do you do that? And do you get defensive? Or do you open your mind up? And do you say, hey, Dave, I think there's probably some perspective that you've seen since we last talked. You know what? Why don't we just call this meeting for now? I'm going to come down. I'm going to get on a call with you and let me, let me, let me understand your perspective so we can, we can get unified on this. Because you know what? My team, we're flexible. We're here to win. So if you've got some insight, I'm ready to incorporate it into the plan.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Now, does the team think, oh, Jocko just folded like a little baby? No, they don't think that. And as a matter of fact, when my, when my, when Jocko says, you know what, Dave, you and I already discussed this. If I'm a team member, I'm like, Jocko, shut up. That's the boss. Man, don't form an antagonistic relationship with the boss. Freaking play the game and get us some wins over here before we're coming into work seven days a week. At six o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night. We don't want to do that. We want to work from home. Go build a relationship, Jocko. So when I say, hey, Dave, there's probably think some things have come up in the last few days. You know what? Um, we'll make no adjustments to the plan right now. Let, let's you and I get on a call. Let me learn what you learned. And, and let's come up with an alternative plan.

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  And you go, hey, sounds good, Jocko. And then we sit down and we come up with an alternative, alternative plan. Humility is a respected trait. It is a respected trait. It's not a disrespected trait. When you get defensive and you're scared and you, and you are protecting your ego, people can see that. And that's what it looks like and that's what it smells like. So don't let that happen.

• 11:32Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I think people get in this idea of like, protecting my team means drawing a line in the sand and not tolerating anybody in approaching over that line when the exact opposite is true when you described is, hey, if I push back hard enough, if I actually push back too hard, guess what's gonna happen to me? Dave's not gonna be the sales manager anymore. And then what happens to the team then? So I wrote down a couple of things that said, hey, taking ownership solves so many problems. And then the next thing I wrote down was checking the ego helps too.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, sometimes when I go down these types of discussions and I start saying, well, I'm gonna say like, hey, Dave, you see something that I don't see. Dave, you obviously you see something that I don't see. I'll come to your office and, and, and get on a knee and, and I'll, I'll receive your new ultimate plan. And people are thinking, oh, you're, oh, so what you're saying, Jocko, is go kiss ass?

• 12:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm not saying go kiss ass. First of all, I have a relationship with my boss. So they actually do listen to me. Why do they listen to me? Because I listen to them. So I'm not kissing ass. What I'm doing is I'm winning. Because the best thing that you can do to protect your team is have an awesome relationship with your boss. That's the best way you can quote, protect your team. That's the best way you can take care of your team, is you have an awesome relationship with your boss. So make that your priority. That actually trumps the little work from home plan. So there you go.

• 12:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  I like it.

• 12:55Dave Berke?

  And the outcome of that was, you know, it was a good outcome because those things you just described is actually what happened. The lesson here for him is how you described is that conversation of, hey, boss, I guess I think I missed something here. Let's sit down and talk through so that I better understand some of those gaps and some of the insights you have. The ideal situation is I don't have to come to go, hey, boss, I'm sorry I blew up you on that zoom meeting and got mad. The ideal way is for me to be able to detach right away, right when that ego starts to flare up and I can do it in real time and go, oh, hey, hey, let's, let's call this, complete this for now. Let me come down and figure that out. So I don't have to come back three days later and go, hey, sorry, I lost my temper. Sorry, I got mad at you. I'm sorry I said those things that I said, and I'm sorry I didn't answer emails for two days.

• 13:37Dave Berke?

  Hey, let's work this out. So the ability to do what you described in real time, that detachment that we talk about all the time, that's when that needs to happen. We're on the right track here. They do have a good relationship. And it turns out the CEO wasn't sitting on this all or nothing scenario. He just wanted to accelerate bringing people back for obvious reasons. And when we got to that place, this is not going to be an issue. But that ego man gets in the way. So we're on the right track with that one. That one's, I think it's going to be fine.

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  Check. What do we got next?

• 14:04Dave Berke?

  This is a tough one.

• 14:08Dave Berke?

  Good leadership outlasts the leader. And in this particular situation, and this is probably one time where I actually talked to the company about discussing this in sort of explicit detail. There's a company we'll work with where the CEO of this company passed away. And we know us and they know, we know them and they know us and we have a very, very good relationship. So this was a CEO, relatively young guy, the heart and soul of this company. And about three years ago, brought in echelon front, Red Extreme ownership had a huge impact in his personal and professional life. And instituted a massive organizational change by which being technically good at your job is important. But he realized in this technical firm, this engineering firm,

• 14:54Dave Berke?

  They needed to be good leaders as well and made a massive pivot and a massive investment in Extreme Ownership and the idea that he was going to build leaders. And as his company was making huge strides, massive growth, unbelievably successful, and the glide path was so good that out of nowhere, on a weekend, he died. Totally unexpected, just absolutely came out of left field and nobody saw it coming. It was a shock to them, it was a shock for us, a shock for me, I got to know him really well, we've been with him for a couple of years. And so that was the situation, was this totally unexpected situation and the worst possible case situation.

• 15:35Dave Berke?

  You know, he didn't have to retire early, he didn't move, he died. And the question that we were getting is sort of, the best way to describe it is what do we do now? And they reached out to us and they leaned on us for that and I thought about how best to talk about this because this hurt me too, I knew him well. And I thought about the things that we teach and I thought about how we teach them and what they mean and I thought about where they matter the most. And this is something that obviously you've got a lot of experience with in the military and our time with that and I want to talk about that too, but as I was talking to the other folks on the team, I said, this is what we, when what we teach matters the most. And I started thinking about the laws of combat, I thought about, I thought about cover and move.

• 16:20Dave Berke?

  The first thing we teach, cover and move. And what that's about, more than anything is about relationships, it's about trust and how now more than ever, the relationships they have with each other matter the most, how they're going to need to lean on each other and support each other and be supported by each other, how that will matter more now than it has ever mattered before. The strength of those relationships they've built and how important they're going to be. I thought about the second law of simple and how inside of that concept is communicating in a way that we make sure people understand. And how that was more important now than ever, is to make sure people understood what we needed to do during this totally awful situation. Talk about prioritize and execute and we use the word detachment all the time.

• 17:03Dave Berke?

  And we're typically talking about, we want to be detached from frustration or detached from emotion or detached from our egos. And never have they been in a situation where they're this emotional and how critical it is for us to be detached when people are gonna have the hardest time detaching because this is a situation they didn't anticipate and how this is more important now than ever. And then that culmination of all that of decentralized command, which is the way we talk about it is everybody is a leader and how we push decision-making down. But oftentimes, we talk about that in the context of, hey, Dave's the boss, he's going on vacation. Or, hey, I want to empower my people because they're in a better position to solve problems. So they're closer to it, so they should be able to lead. But now we're talking about Dave as the CEO. Dave's gone.

• 17:50Dave Berke?

  Dave's gone. And if I haven't created and cultivated this idea of decentralized command and my people are so reliant on me that in my absence, they cannot execute and they cannot perform, the team fails and the team loses. And so implementing decentralized command has so much more meaning now than it has ever meant before because this leader, this CEO, he's not coming back. And I thought about dichotomy and we talked about even what dichotomy meant. And we're always talking about balancing these opposing forces and now we're talking about how much do we grieve versus how much do we work? And if we spend all of our time grieving at this loss and we don't work anymore, what happens to us? What happens to our company? What happens to our team? What happens to our families? And then if all we do is just, hey, get back to work and we don't acknowledge that

• 18:35Dave Berke?

  and spend time and thinking about that and taking care of the family and grieving and doing those things, what is it gonna be like to replace the CEO while still living in the spirit of what this this former CEO wanted and letting this new person in charge be who they are and what the balance is like inside there? And so what was amazing about this is that inside of all the things we teach and so often it's taught in this practical sense about particular situations, they understood that they actually had all the tools, they had all the knowledge, all the understanding and all the ability to get through a situation that they didn't expect, they didn't foresee, and they didn't really plan for it. They weren't thinking in these terms. But now that it's happened, they actually know what to do. They know what to do. And

• 19:22Dave Berke?

  This is a hard thing because there's so much emotion involved. But this is a company that I think is in a position that had this happened two years ago. I think it would have been really, really difficult for them to be successful. And now they're actually in a place where they're going, they're absolutely going to be successful because of what this CEO did and because the path he set them down on. And because of what they were able to accomplish while he was still with us, that they're actually going to be successful now that he's gone. And I just thought this one was worth talking about. Not just in the practical sense, but because of the emotion that comes along with often people tie that to life in the military. They don't think about it at an engineering firm when the CEO passes away.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the interesting thing in the right answer, when you start talking about these hard situations is when you get in hard situations, the fundamentals of leadership, the, the fundamentals of leadership become even more important. The worse things get, the more important they are. What's, what's interesting about the principles that we teach is the principles function in all situations. And you don't get to this level of intensity or this level of chaos and say, oh, wait a second, pull out these other principles. You don't get to a situation where you've lost a leader and say, oh, okay.

• 20:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, now it's time to pull, break glass and pull out these other emergency principles. And we saw a lot of this when COVID kicked off in companies. And all of a sudden the market changed or people couldn't come to work or, you know, any number of things unfolded. We didn't say, oh, here's our, you know, pandemic combat leadership procedures. No, the procedures that we use, the procedures that we teach, we have to focus on them harder. We have to make sure that we're following these, these protocols, these, these laws of combat leadership. So. That's what we have to do. And, and you know, that, so that's, that's sort of the pragmatic side of,

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  of the answer to this is like, hey, guess what? Here's what we gotta do to get back to work. Here's what we need to do to move forward. So that, that is a very pragmatic answer. The other part of the answer, you know, you use the term grieve, like, okay, this is something we're not normally balancing. So we don't, this is not a normal thing to say, oh, okay, well, now we have to grieve. Okay, what's that look like? Well, a company like this may have never grieved in a unified way before. Because they might not have had anyone die inside the company before. That's not unheard of. So what is, what does that look like? What does this sort of collective grieving look like? And, and how do we function through that?

• 22:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's some of the things, you know, that, that we did talk about with them of, of like, okay, you know, one thing that I've, that I noticed in losing guys and losing friends, was that there's, we don't have a good protocol in America. We don't have, you know, in other countries, they have a protocol that they're gonna follow. Someone dies, here's the protocol. This is what you're going to do. You're gonna eat this food, you're gonna say these prayers, you're gonna go to this type of ceremony, you're gonna go to this other type of ceremony, and then you're gonna go to a final ceremony, you're gonna have a get together, and then that's it. The grieving is over. That's, we followed the protocol, and now we are going to essentially move on. And everyone accepts that that's the level of grieving that's gonna be done.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  And there's different variants about this throughout the world. In America, we, we have so many different, we have so many different types of people in Americans, and so many different protocols have been, you know, through this country that it's kind of watered down, and it's different for different communities and different people. So different cultures, yeah, that's really the word, is different cultures. So many different cultures are in America that the protocol of death, which doesn't happen very often in people's lives, we don't have a great protocol for it. So what happens to us in leadership positions is we need to sort of formulate a protocol, or pick a protocol. And hey, look, it's like disturbing to use the word protocol when you're talking about losing someone.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  But there's a reason that I'm using that word because if you don't have a protocol to follow, it's like when you're flying a jet, Dave, and there's, there's something that happens, there's some emergency signal comes on, there's a protocol that you follow, that you don't have to think about, that you're gonna execute, that's gonna get you out of that situation. You know, when we have a parachute malfunction, there's a protocol to follow. I'm not, I'm not creatively making up decisions of how I'm gonna handle when my parachute's not working. No, I'm gonna follow the protocol because I don't want to be thinking at this point. So that's why I think this idea around protocol is something to say, okay, here's what we're going to do. And I, I think that's the right move.

• 24:32Jocko Willink?

  Does this mean that at the end of, you go through these ceremonies, you go through these procedures, you go through this protocol, that everyone goes, oh, great, now it's over, now we can move on? No. But you also can make part of that protocol. Hey, listen, here's what we're gonna do to, in memory of, here's a, a thing that we're gonna set up, here's a scholarship that we're gonna set up, here's a, an annual run that we're gonna do, here's a, a, a party that we're gonna have on this date. You know, there's things that you can do that, that then extend the, the remembrance and you make sure that you, you remember, but you don't dwell. Remember what happens, you remember the people, but you don't dwell in those, in that,

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  because now we're living in the past. And no one wants you to be living in the past. So definitely a difficult situation and it was really neat to see that company close ranks, which is a term we use in the military, which means we're gonna, we're gonna stick together. And it was really neat to see that company close ranks and, and move through that and continue, when, continue to move forward and continue on that great trajectory that they have in what they're doing. Great business, great people, and amazing to see what they're doing.

• 25:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and you know, we all talk about the outcome, obviously this is an ongoing thing. It's, this is, just like you said, there's no ending to this of like, hey, on this particular day, this is all behind them. But my final thought on that is something you've talked about all the time too, which... What allowed them to close ranks, like you said, is when you make your people the mission, when you make your people the most important thing and you take care of them and you give them these tools and you invest in them as people, not as engineers, not as some particular skill or task, and that's important, but that's not what the priority is. The priority is, is giving them the things, and this is true for business, this is true for family, this is true anywhere, when you give them the things that they need so they can be successful without you.

• 26:30Dave Berke?

  When the time comes for them to be able to do things without you, whatever it is, they're able to do that. And that's what they need so they can be successful. And I'm not saying you run around reminding everybody every five seconds, this could all end today. We know that's true, but it doesn't even have to be those extreme situations. What you have to be able to give them is the tools for them to be successful without you for a whole host of reasons, and God forbid something like this happens, which it does. What you want more than anything is for them to be able to be okay and to be able to close ranks. And what's inside that is exactly what you said, is those fundamental things that we teach apply everywhere. And there is no hidden, oh, when you're ready for it, and we don't do this at Echelon Front, there is no, oh, you've now demonstrated you're a master of these basic skills, we're ready for the next set of things. It's, that's not how it is.

• 27:15Dave Berke?

  It's the same thing. How it applies, where it applies and how to do it, certainly that changes from, from situation to situation, but it's those fundamental principles that you can connect to every single situation in your life, from the best ones to the worst ones, is what allows them to close ranks and be successful despite how bad the things are.

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  This is my turn, and, well, I wanted to, I wanted to get a little bit pragmatic and a little less theoretical than I normally am on the debrief podcast. I wanted to cover, I wanted to cover some ideas around project management.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  And there's a reason for this. There's a reason why I'm going here and you'll see.

• 28:03Jocko Willink?

  Project management. So there's, I, I, you know, we see a lot of projects being undertaken. And that's great. We work with incredible project managers in a ton of different industries. And there's some great sort of protocols for doing projects and running projects. I have some, some golden rules here. I just went on the internet and, and checked out some golden rules and some rules of project management. The first one I got, this little list here from this thing called Hugger, which is an app, like a, it's like a, like a cooperative application that you can use. I've never used it, looked nice, whatever. But they had a seven golden rules.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  Have a detailed project scope approved by stakeholders. Have the right and right sized team. Set frequent milestones. Set clear roles and responsibilities. Don't micromanage. Reward the team when milestones are reached and build in extra time for changes.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  There's some good rules, good rules for project management. I found another set of rules for project management from a website called toughnickel.com.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  They recommend that you understand the scope, that you understand the goals of the stakeholders, that you plan, that you have contingency plans, that you communicate with the team, that you test early and you prototype, that you monitor, that you report to the client and manage expectations, that you deliver, and that you hold a wrap up slash lessons learned meeting.

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  So there's some other good rules for project managers. And this is all good stuff and I appreciate it. And there's a bunch of other great pieces of advice out there and rules and suggestions for good project management. But before you get into any of those rules, I want to, I want you to implement one rule to start this whole thing off. I want you to make this the top of the list of every project management list of rules that you look at in your life. And the rule, the number one rule, as far as I'm concerned, for project management is that not everything is a project. Not everything is a project.

• 30:28Jocko Willink?

  You don't need a big plan for everything. You don't need to discuss with the stakeholders. You don't need to set milestones. You don't need to test. You don't need to prototype. Sometimes, sometimes what you can do is you can just do. That's what you, sometimes you can just do.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  Or sometimes you can delegate someone on your team to just do. They can do the thing. Or sometimes you can even take a whole team and you can say, hey, team, you go do that thing.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  And you can also take a project, what looks like a project, and you can split it up into two or three execution steps and you're done.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  So, hey, you do this, you do that, you do the other thing. There's the three things we're gonna get them done. No project, like I said, no stakeholder discussion, no milestone set out. This is what you're gonna do. Go do it.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so you gotta think through it.

• 31:29Jocko Willink?

  You gotta run the numbers before you figure if something's a project or not. You gotta kind of do the calculus and the calculus isn't hard. Right? Here's one part of the calculus. What's gonna take longer to come up with a plan or to freaking execute?

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay? What's gonna take longer? Is it gonna take longer to come up with a plan? Or is it gonna take longer to execute? Could we beat the planning with just executing? And you put the calculus is like, oh, we're gonna make a couple of mistakes along the way because we didn't come up with the best plan, but we're still gonna beat the plan.

• 32:02Jocko Willink?

  So, so run that calculus. Run the calculus. How many moving parts are there?

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  How many moving parts? How many things have to line up to make this happen? Is it more than four? Or is it less than four? Is there more than four things that you have to line up to make this whatever thing happen? If it's more than four, you probably have a project. If it's less than four, you don't. You can make it happen.

• 32:31Jocko Willink?

  Like if I've got a, hey, get a document done, get it reviewed, and, and send it to our lawyer. Is that a project? Nope. That's three things. We can get them done.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  Also, how many different teams are involved? Not people, but how many different legitimate teams are involved? Is it more than four or is it less than four? Because if it's three teams, I can manage three teams, we can get it done. We don't need a project management on this scenario. If it's more than four teams, well, guess what? I, I need someone, we need to think through it. So ask yourself these questions. And then you gotta ask yourself this question, you gotta put a little check on yourself. And the check is, what do you tend to do? What, what is your tendency as a human?

• 33:30Jocko Willink?

  Are you a human that executes or are you a human that creates projects? Because if you have a tendency to just go and execute, then you need to check yourself because you might bite off more than you can chew. That happens. There are some people that just, their tendency is just to go. Guess where I lean? Yeah, you know where I lean. We're executing. This is a tendency I have to pay attention to. I know that I can make things easier in my head than they are in real life. I know that I do that. I do that with, uh, one of the first people I remember doing that with is Jade Charles, Echo's brother. Uh, there's some, you know, he's a computer guy.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  And I was sort of like, bro, we'll just make, you know, hey, just make that. And it was a lot bigger of a project than I could have understood. So where are you? If you're a person that tends to execute, recognize that. And you also might be a person that tends to create projects. And, and you tend not to get things executed. And that's what you have to pay attention to. And then you have to weigh your decision properly. You have to put the weight in the right spot. And by the way, you can make iterative decision making. If you're going to execute a project or not. I could say, hey, Dave, this is what we're looking at doing.

• 34:57Jocko Willink?

  Why don't you do an assessment, see what it'll take? That's the first little step. I didn't organize a project, I just told Dave to go check something out.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  So that's my number one rule of project management. Not everything is a project. Check yourself. Little pragmatic information.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  You got anything on that, Dave?

• 35:19Dave Berke?

  I just love the idea of your, what your natural tendencies are. And I'm glad you caveated it with if your tendency is to just go, then you probably need to just keep yourself in check a little bit. But the alternative is when you see people realize, oh, are you saying this isn't that hard and we can just go do it? How liberating is go, hey, just go do it. We had this thing in the military called a POAM, Plan of Action and Milestones, which is like some giant binder that covers every single thing had to get done. When we stood up a brand new fighter squadron, we used a POAM. It was 20 different agencies and 40 different this, and it was a massive thing. There aren't too many other things that you really needed a POAM for.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  How many aircraft at your squadron?

• 36:03Dave Berke?

  Six, 14.

• 36:04Jocko Willink?

  14, how many, how much are those worth?

• 36:06Dave Berke?

  133 million each.

• 36:08Jocko Willink?

  How many personnel were at the command?

• 36:10Dave Berke?

  Hundreds from three different private companies and two different military services and.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  And how many, how much real estate did you need?

• 36:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, how much gear and equipment did you have, right? Oh, and you had to have operational readiness? So yeah, you can see that, that sounds like it might be a project.

• 36:26Dave Berke?

  Yeah, need a POAM there. No, absolutely. But don't get shackled by the POAM and like you start getting lower and lower and they're like, hey, just go execute. So if anything, just, yes, keep yourself in check, but just move that needle. People love when you just like, you can just go do this. It's like, oh, is this, is this handcuff off? Yes, handcuffs off, go execute, just go make it happen. Do whatever you want.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and for me, I look at things like, kind of like a fire team, right? I can handle four people all day long. Just like I can handle moving parts, like there's three moving parts, four moving parts, we're probably good.

• 37:02Dave Berke?

  Such a good number.

• 37:02Jocko Willink?

  There's three, four teams I gotta kind of work together with, cool. We get bigger than that, I'm gonna, I know I'm gonna lose it. And by the way, if you have three or four moving parts times three or four moving teams, well, now you got some calculus to do. This might be a project.

• 37:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  Know what you tend to do.

• 37:18Dave Berke?

  Check.

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  Probably a good place to stop. Hey, if you want any more of this information, you can check out extremeownership.com. That's our online training academy. You had a question about what we're talking about? You want to know if something's a project or not?

• 37:32Jocko Willink?

  You want to ask us about what to do in tough situations, get on there, extremeownership.com. We're on there live. We're on there doing Zoom calls. Do we have pajama bottoms on? Sometimes. Do you have pajamas? Do you even have pajamas?

• 37:46Dave Berke?

  I don't own pajamas. I got workout shorts on, probably more than I want to admit.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  So you can check that out. We have our consulting company where some of these stories, well, where these stories come from, echelonfront.com, bunch of books about leadership, bunch of podcasts, and Jocko's store, jacofuel.com, originusa.com. Check that stuff out if you want to support. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening to us debrief. Now go out there, check yourself and lead. This is Dave and Jocko, out.