The Debrief w/ Jocko And Dave Berke #23: Critical Advice for Getting Promoted Above Your Peers

One day you're a team member, and the next day you are the supervisor. How do you handle that position? 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, sitting here with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. Dave, let's do a little debrief. We work with companies through our company, Echelon Front, and we work with a lot of, a wide variety of companies. We help them with their leadership. Leadership is the solution to all problems and we help them solve their problems through leadership. We do, just FYI, change the characters and the backgrounds and the industry so we're not burning or putting on display the problems of companies that we work with. It's all classified

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  as far as we're concerned. So, we do talk through what we see so that we can help everybody learn. So what do we got, Dave?

• 0:52Dave Berke?

  When you get promoted above your peers, the best thing you can do is lead them.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, that's an interesting thing to start off with. Let's make sure that when we say that, we also put the caveat on there that this doesn't mean you go turn into office Rambo and now, oh, you've been promoted, now I'm in charge, I'm going to run everything. That's not what we're talking about.

• 1:16Dave Berke?

  That's cool because now I can cross out one of the verbatim lines that what's something you don't want to do when you're in charge. So the situation for this, and look, you're obviously right, there, there's a lot to think about and the situation that we're talking about right now is a client who was an individual contributor, he's part of a five-person team, and his boss got promoted up, which left a gap in who was going to lead this team and he got selected to be the supervisor of this group. So he went from being one of five peers to now being the supervisor of four subordinates that he's been working with for a while.

• 1:50Dave Berke?

  This company is a cool company, they do like data collection for healthcare and so there's a lot of time working as a team, pulling through data, a lot of time behind a computer, and he had been working well with these four guys, wanted to get promoted, but once he got promoted, his boss, who's now a manager, had been noticing he was shying away from some of the responsibility of that supervisory role. And he had talked to him and kind of what came out was this person was struggling with... Wanting to promote, wanted to be in a leadership role, but I think you use the phrase, he wants to be one of the guys, wants to be part of the team still. And when he was getting tasks that kind of required him to function in that leadership role, he was shying away from some of those tasks. So that's kind of the situation we're talking about.

• 2:35Dave Berke?

  How do you get someone who is a former peer now leading the teams? What does he need to do to be successful in that role?

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, right out of the gate on this, there's an interesting way to look at leadership. And one interesting way to look at leadership, if you have this mindset, let's say you're trapped in this mindset of like, hey, I was one of the guys and now all of a sudden I got promoted. I, you know, I still want to be one of the guys. I don't want to feel like I'm, I'm, you know, talking down to them. Like you can have that, you can get caught in that mindset. And, and one way to kind of help you get through that mindset is by looking at leadership as a job. Meaning, hey, you know, the five of us working together, okay, Dave, we're all doing computer, what'd you say, data collection, data entry, data analytics, cool, we're all doing that.

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  And then one day I get promoted and now I go, oh, wait, now I'm supposed to be telling Dave what to do. Instead of me thinking I'm telling Dave what to do, I think, oh, my new job is to make sure that the tasks get assigned out correctly. My new job is to make sure that I get the information that we need from the boss to make sure that gets passed down to the team. Oh, my job is to make sure that everyone gets the equal amount of work so no one gets over tasked. That's my job. So, you know, we, we say all the time, leadership is a skill. Well, on top of that, leadership is a job and there's tasks that when you're in a leadership position that you actually have to do. If you're in a SEAL platoon, right? You might think, hey, oh, the guys are out building a pallet to, you know, get the pallet prepared to load on an aircraft. I should go out there and help them.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm, I'm the platoon commander. Well, actually, there's something else that you should be doing. You should be setting up to make sure that the aircraft is on time. You should be making sure that the guys are getting their, uh, their, their per diem for the trip. Whatever it is you're gonna be, you have a job that you need to do. Now, does this mean you can never go out and get in, you know, get your hands dirty? No, obviously it doesn't mean that, but you do have a job. When you're in a leadership position, everyone has roles and responsibilities. So your roles and responsibilities have changed. Doesn't mean you're barking orders at people. It means you have a job and you need to get it done.

• 4:41Dave Berke?

  Yeah, dude, that's awesome. And, and I think that really gets to the core of, of what he's struggling with in this particular case too, is that leadership, that role that you just talked about. It's much more about the actions you have to take and the things you have to do than the title that you have. And inside there too, I think something you said that's important is if you, if Dave gets promoted and my first thought is, I don't have to do that anymore. Now I'm way on the other side of that spectrum of, that's not what it means either. It doesn't mean I thank God I don't have to ever build a pallet again. That's for those losers over there. Now, that's not what he's struggling with, but it really gets to the larger point that you're getting at is there's, there's a balance that you have to strike in there, which is if you say, hey, I know I'm in charge, but I'm gonna keep doing the exact same things. I'm gonna go build that pallet.

• 5:27Dave Berke?

  I'm gonna keep behaving the same way and not actually fulfill those responsibilities in that role. You're actually gonna hurt the team because you're gonna miss some of those key explanations from key leadership. You're gonna miss some of those deadlines. You're gonna miss those things you just described because you're gonna spend so much time being one of the guys that you don't actually do the job that you need to do. And what's gonna happen is the team is gonna suffer. One of the things we talked about is, one of the things that he was worried about was being resented. And I think you've talked about this too, is this idea of-

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  I've definitely talked about-

• 6:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  Because resentment is brutal. It drives all kinds of horrific behaviors from people. And the, one of the biggest problems with resentment is that it, it doesn't matter where it comes from. Like this, this force of resentment-

• 6:19Jocko Willink?

  Is almost like a spontaneous combustion, right? It just appears, right? Oh, Dave got credit and I didn't. You can feel the spontaneous combustion of this fire. And then I need somewhere to direct this heat, direct this, this, this negative energy. And of course, I'm going to direct it at you in this case, you know, because you're the guy that got credit when I was the one that did most of the work and I resent it. And instead of me just saying something like, hey, Dave, man, it's kind of jacked up. You got all the credit for this. And you could say like, well, you know, uh, do you want to talk to the boss? Do you want to figure out how we can give you more credit? And maybe you're a jerk and maybe we shouldn't get along. And maybe like, oh, what do you mean? I did all the work. I don't know, but the worst thing I can do, and that's what, that's where, that's where I think negative feelings turn into actual resentment is when I keep them inside and I don't let them out and I don't.

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  Look, this doesn't mean I go direct, you know, VFR direct on Dave like, hey, you got credit and I deserved it. No, but hey, Dave, you know, I noticed that you got the full commission on that and, and I did a bunch of the work. Do you, do you think that, does that make sense to you? And then we can have a discussion about it and maybe we have to elevate it up the chain of command or whatever. But when I just shit on it and it just starts to burn, that's when the resentment comes out and resentment is a really destructive and horrible force. And like I said, a lot of times Dave didn't have anything to do with it. It just so happens that, you know, this Corgor, my, my client didn't need to extend their contract and your client did.

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  And this happens to be when the quarterly, uh, or when the annual news pay newsletter comes out about our company and you've got this multimillion dollar contract and I don't have one and now you're getting all this, it has nothing to do with you.

• 8:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  But man, I'm burning up because I didn't get the credit that I deserved. That turns into resentment and people do, I mean, it's Cain and Abel, right? It's Cain and Abel. Cain is, they Cain and Abel both offer sacrifices to God.

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  For whatever reason, God prefers Abel's sacrifice. And that makes Cain so mad that he kills his brother. He kills his brother. That's through pure resentment. So you gotta, you gotta not let this happen. I think it's actually, it's interesting that God doesn't explain why. He didn't say, you know what? Abel's gift was a little bit better. He put a little bit more time and effort into it. It was more valuable. He didn't say anything like that. He just liked this one better. And that may, that, that's it. No reason. And that's an important part of that story is, hey, things are gonna happen that are bad luck for you. And if you let that eat you up, you might end up killing your brother.

• 8:57Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Which is crazy. That's the, the summary on that whole thought is, it's a crazy thing, what it will drive some people to do. And it's, it's an interesting part of the, the discussion too, is one of the things I was talking to him about in this leadership role is, on one hand, and, and there's a balance, but on one hand, you don't want to be too consumed with the idea that all my team now is gonna hate me. Cause it's actually probably not gonna happen. First of all, he had a good relationship with most of these guys. He was, he was one of the guys. He was well respected. He did a good job. He earned that position. And so part of it was, listen, don't think that just because now you've been elevated, all of a sudden, all that work you've done, all those relationships you've built, that they're all of a sudden gonna turn on you.

• 9:38Dave Berke?

  But the other side of it is, I kinda shared a story with him was, what you just described is also a thing that you gotta be aware of. And it reminded me, when I was in my first fleet squadron, I was about two years into my four-year time in my fleet squadron, about the time where the commanding officer was gonna pick who was gonna go to Top Gun. And there's eight guys that were peers, were all equals. And two of us got picked. It was one other guy and me. And I was kind of stoked. I was thinking, these are all my bros. They're gonna be stoked too. And most of them were, but not everybody was. And one guy actually pulled me aside and said, "You should not have been selected." Now, it was a little bit less about me.

• 10:23Dave Berke?

  He, he wasn't quite saying, "I didn't deserve it." What he was saying was, "You shouldn't have been selected. It makes, other people are being overlooked and that's not fair to them." Like, okay. And it was kind of one of those things that didn't really matter. The CEO had made his choice. I was gonna go. But it revealed to me like, you can't pretend like this is also isn't a thing. So if you're gonna be in a leadership role, and you're gonna elevate above your peers, don't ignore that exact story that you had.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Dave Berke?

  Which is that resentment that could especially have gone unaddressed and ignored, can lead to bad things.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was talking about this yesterday on the podcast. Look, we, we, you gotta detach from your emotions. Great. Yes, please do that. This doesn't mean don't have emotions. And more important, you need to put the emotions of yourself and whoever you're working with into the calculus to get the answer.

• 11:11Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 11:12Jocko Willink?

  So when you interact with the people that you just got promoted above, you need to put that into the calculus that, yeah, some people are gonna be stoked for, for me. Yeah, cool. Some people are gonna be stoked you're going to Top Gun. And there's gonna be some people that are not stoked. And you have to think about that when you interact with people. You gotta put it in the calculus if you're gonna get the right answer. Emotions are part of the calculus.

• 11:35Dave Berke?

  Hundred percent. And leadership strategy and tactics has kind of, you talk about in the book, but we've talked about it just in general, a couple of different examples that you gave from some earlier platoons about guys on your team that got promoted and how they went about responding to that promotion. And you kind of had two contrasting examples. And of course, there's a whole myriad of examples, but the contrast you gave was the one guy who was like, well, you know, I guess I'm in charge and whatever. And really kind of, he's, he sort of downplays it and diminishes it with, I think, the intent of, hey, I'm still one of the guys, I'm still part of the team. And the other guy who was like, hey, listen, fellas, you probably got the word, you know, came down, I'm promoting up to this, this new position. Here's a couple of things that the boss needs to get done. You know, A, B, and C, let's go make these things

• 12:20Dave Berke?

  happen. And for the most part, for the most part, guys like, cool, no factor. And that's really what the point was, is, hey, if you're in a leadership role, you need to lead. Now, leadership doesn't mean, hey, guess what? I'm in charge. I'm sure you saw the announcement. Well, things are gonna change. And all of a sudden, you take that and you have to be kind of large and in charge and be the one in charge. But I thought you described it really well, which is, the best thing you can do is just do that job, fill that role, and be in the position where

• 12:53Dave Berke?

  You might have a couple of people that resent you, maybe a couple of people kind of feel like maybe they got overlooked and maybe they should have been the ones to do it. And they're going to have some extra scrutiny. And if you do that job really well and support them and give them what they need and continue the good relationship. You have a much better chance of actually helping that person be successful than if you're like, well, I don't want Jocko to be mad at me because I got promoted. So I'm going to not do that thing and we're going to still be still be bros or still be buddies.

• 13:21Dave Berke?

  Once you're in that position, you are in that position, the best thing you can do is follow through on that position.

• 13:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And isn't it interesting that let's say I get promoted above you, Dave. And I say, I open up leadership strategy and tactics and it says, you know, hey, be humble, listen to people. And I go, hey, Dave, you know, we got this project coming up. I've never led a project like that before. How do you think we should do it? Now, depending on Dave, Dave might be like, wow, Jocko was humble. He's ready to listen. Uh, I'm looking forward to this. I'm glad he got this promotion after all. Or Dave could be like, you see Jocko, do you know how to do this? Uh, this should have been me. So you have to put that in the calculus as well. This is what we have to watch out for. Human beings are all crazy, including you. So we have to watch out for that.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and that's why when you approach these things, you've got to really do your best to, to understand what Dave's perspective is. What's the best way to understand Dave's perspective? Ask Dave earnest questions. And that's, that's what you got to work with. And sometimes you might have to make some micro adjustments. You know, you might have to say, ooh, I can see Dave doesn't think I know what I'm doing. And I've, I've given him a little bit too much. And maybe I gotta pull some of that back. Or maybe Dave's like excited about it. Oh, cool. Great. He's not resentful and I can move forward with it.

• 14:45Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And that kind of leads towards the, the, you know, I talk and I often talk about, hey, what's, what's the prognosis? What's the outcome going to be? And I would put this one in the squarely, we'll see category. Because what you're describing,

• 14:58Dave Berke?

  That can be hard when you are the one dealing with that other crazy person. You talk about, hey, we're all, we're all different and we're all crazy and there's no question that's the case. And in that, that leadership role, it's one thing to kind of talk about how you want to handle it. It's another thing to have the other person staring you in the face or saying the things that they're saying or interacting with you as a real person. And we will see how this goes, but elevating above your peers and in that leadership role, that can be a challenge, especially if you don't accept the responsibility like you just described is, you actually have, you have to do this as a job, these actions you have to take. And your responses of that for your team are not going to be universal. You're not going to get the same response from all your people.

• 15:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What can scare people is even the terminology that you just used, elevating above, right? That's a, if I'm already feeling a little bit uncomfortable and that's why I like the idea of, hey, listen, here's your new roles and responsibilities. You're in charge of making sure everyone's gets the right assignments. You're in charge of making sure the boss gets in for it. Do the job and then you can work from there, but it's a great baseline to start. What are my roles and responsibilities and I'm going to tackle those roles and responsibilities. Good way to move forward.

• 16:07Dave Berke?

  Check.

• 16:09Jocko Willink?

  All right. What do we, is that, is that the end of that one?

• 16:10Dave Berke?

  That's how I got.

• 16:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 16:12Dave Berke?

  We got another one though.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  Let's see, let's hear it.

• 16:15Dave Berke?

  Talking about relationships and relationships can be a lot stronger. If you actually know how to build a relationship.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 16:24Dave Berke?

  So just kind of generically, the situation is,

• 16:29Dave Berke?

  we've got two team leaders, they work together. They both have different tasks at this company. One kind of builds it, this, this basic product they build is kind of a software project actually. And this other team customizes that product to the individual clients. So everything's about 80% the same, but they customize certain details for each client that comes in. And these two teams have to work together to make sure this customized product gets to the client the way that they want. Teams work together pretty well. The company is doing very well. The question that came up or the situation that came up was, one of the team leads, the customized team lead had noticed lately that the other team and him weren't getting along, or I shouldn't say that, they weren't coordinating as well.

• 17:12Dave Berke?

  And so they were getting a little behind on some deliveries. They had some customer complaints. And

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  And they're both doing the same job or are they in support of each other?

• 17:20Dave Berke?

  They are in support of each other. Their jobs are similar, not the same. They have to work together to get the final end state of this product to the customer.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 17:28Dave Berke?

  On time. And the simplest way to put it is, performance has been going down. And the first question I asked is, it's, it's almost always the first question I ask, no matter what the scenario is, no matter what the situation is, or even where in the organization you are. And the question is, hey, how good is the relationship between you and your counterpart, or your two teams, or these two entities working together? And what was interesting is the answer he gave was, the relationship is awesome.

• 17:57Dave Berke?

  So that's kind of where we started was, things aren't going well, we're not delivering, customers aren't happy, we're not meeting our product expectations, relationship is awesome.

• 18:06Dave Berke?

  Well,

• 18:08Dave Berke?

  if it's so awesome, what's the problem? Because actually, if Jocko and I are working together and our relationship is awesome, we're not going to be late, we're not going to under deliver, we're not going to have these challenges. So there's really, inside that, there actually is a problem with the relationship.

• 18:24Dave Berke?

  Where I, where we dug into and where I kind of highlighted this idea of relationships can be much stronger if you know how to build them. One of the things I've discovered, certainly more recently, as we've been talking about it more, is when you talk about relationships and I ask, hey, Jocko, what is a relationship? In your mind, you have a pretty good sense of what that is. You can kind of visualize what a relationship is, but it's sort of hard to explain. And when we talked about, hey, what's a relationship, a lot of times, and with this person too, it was hard to say what it was. Like, well, it's not this that we get along, or we like each other. It's a lot more, more detailed than that. So it led me to have this conversation about, hey, let's talk about what a relationship is. And as simple as it might be in your head, it's a little more complex than what we, what we think.

• 19:10Dave Berke?

  And we actually go down the path and, and it really, it's either this podcast, a debrief podcast, or some other podcast you and I did, where you started talking about, initially it was three components, but we talked about the four elements of a relationship, trust, respect, listening, and influence. These are the actual things that make up what a relationship is. But it actually doesn't stop there either. And we talked a little bit about that is,

• 19:35Dave Berke?

  You have to know how to build trust, how to create respect. And going into the depths of not just what a relationship is, but how do you build those pieces of a relationship? That's the thing that I've seen is a challenge for people to know what to do. And it was a challenge here because there was a problem with the relationship. And the real question was figure out where the gap is and what do you do to fix that? To build that back up, the part of that relationship, that's, that's a problem.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, a lot of times when you try and pin somebody down, like, what is a relationship? And then how do you build it? You know, the relationship, like you said, it's hard, kind of hard to quantify, but the, okay, well, how are you going to build that? Well, you know, we'll go out for dinner. I'm gonna take them out for lunch, get them a cup of coffee. That's kind of what people go to and look, I'm, I'm all for it, man. Go out to dinner, hang out with people, get them a cup of coffee, whatever you're gonna do. But the, the trust, respect, listen and influence, that idea, when you identify those core elements, then you can actually figure out, okay, well, those are the things I need to build. And then it becomes really, well, it's not so obvious. How do you build trust? You gotta give it. How do you build respect? Or how do you get someone to respect you? You gotta give them respect. How do you get someone to listen to you? You have to listen to them. Those, these are also counterintuitive.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  It's really counterintuitive when someone says to me, how, how do I get this guy to listen to me? And I go, oh, listen to them. They, we, uh, no, I want him to listen to me. I know, cool. You want him to listen to you, then you need to listen to him. You know, uh, my, but this guy's not treating me with respect. Well, how do I get respect from him? Oh, oh, treat him with respect. No, no, I want him to respect me. Yeah, I'm telling you, treat him with respect and then they will start to treat you with respect. And same thing with influence. So those are the things we have to do to build a relationship. Now, one of the ways that I always try and portray the fact that trust, respect, listening and influence is a relationship is because when I say to you, okay, if Dave doesn't trust me, do we have a relationship? No.

• 21:31Jocko Willink?

  If Dave doesn't treat me with respect and I don't treat David with respect, we have a relationship? No. If Dave doesn't influence me at all and I don't influence him at all, does, do we have a relationship? No. And if Dave doesn't listen, it's so, so there you go. If those things don't exist, we don't have a relationship. So those are the components that make up a relationship. And in order to get them, you have to give them.

• 21:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And I think that's the key. I wrote down what you said is, and you sort of said it, just kind of part of the larger thing is these are the things we have to do. That is a literal thing. So when I talk about trust, when we talk about trust, respect, listening, influence, those are actions, those are verbs, those are the things you actually have to do. And so you can even get to a point where you understand a relationship and I can look and go, hey, there's a trust gap. Okay. Jocko doesn't trust me. Maybe I, I don't know, maybe I under delivered on something or said something and I didn't follow through. Or if we can even diagnose, oh, I understand what the problem is here. That actually doesn't get to the resolution because I have to do something to build that relationship. And to your point is, if I need you to trust me more, what I have to

• 22:34Dave Berke?

  do is show you more trust. If I want you to listen to me more, I have to talk less and listen more. And the fact that relationships require work and actions and things that we do, that can be overlooked sometimes. For exactly how you described is when we think about a relationship like, oh, we, we get along, we like the same team, or, or, you know, we have the same interests, or, or we like to do these things together. Again, I don't have a problem with that, but those by themselves don't build the relationship. And if you want to solve a relationship problem, and listen, if your teams are not working well together, there is a component of the relationship that is failing. There's something that needs to get better. I think the trap that this person had fallen into

• 23:14Dave Berke?

  was they'd had been working well for a long time. And the actions that you take to build the relationship, he had stopped doing those things and taken for granted, hey, me and Jocko, we get along great. Everything's good. And then some of the small things, which was giving you updates, following through, making your, making sure your team got credit, little changes that are coming down the pipe that you should know about, I'm not telling you those things. And so the things we have to do, he wasn't doing. And as simple as that sounds, if you get complacent inside a relationship and stop doing the actions to build a relationship, that relationship's going to suffer, which is exactly what happened.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  What was your line of questioning when this guy's like, oh, I have an awesome relationship. It's good to go.

• 23:51Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Um, the first question I asked him is, hey, so what do you think the problem is? Why do you think, and what this, what spurred it is that they had a big client with a deliverable that was late. And I think he said, like, this is the first time we've been late in, he said something like, years. I'm like, hey, so what do you think the problem was? And he kind of paused on why they were late. And he said something in effect of they didn't have the the framework that this client wanted. Something I'm sort of generalizing. I said, hey, what does he get that from? He's like, well, he gets that from us. Cause he's this is the this is the team lead of the customization piece. And they're the team lead of the like framework piece, the baseline piece.

• 24:31Dave Berke?

  And he discovered he's like, oh, it was that recognition of I didn't give him a piece that he needed to have for him to deliver what we needed for the customer. And I put in the outcome, I said, humbling encounter. And it was kind of one of those conversations where you have a conversation with someone and they figure out the answer in the middle of the conversation. You see that look on their face of. And it's the look of, oh, this is my fault. I'm doing this. And these are people that believe in ownership. These are not people trying to shy away from that. This is an actual problem where you look at something and can't diagnose what it is until you look at a couple of things you're not looking at and go, oh, I'm I'm causing I'm causing this problem.

• 25:12Dave Berke?

  And what he's causing this problem is for something that he wasn't doing, not something he was doing, something he wasn't doing.

• 25:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the line of questioning is always interesting as you as you start to dive into what's going on in someone's world. And you you you ask the earnest questions, you know, earnest questions. And you very quickly oftentimes get to that point where people have the self discovery that, oh, this is a problem that I have created.

• 25:42Dave Berke?

  And the self discovery is the best way. It's so much better than telling somebody something and then instead of them throwing up themselves.

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent true. All right, what is it, my turn now?

• 25:50Dave Berke?

  It's your turn.

• 25:51Jocko Willink?

  All right. So from my turn today, I wanted to talk about the MVP. The MVP, the minimally viable plan. And the minimally viable plan is an amazing tool for you to have as a leader. Cause for me, it's what I'm looking for. And there's going to be some perfectionists out there, some people are going to get a little bit crazy when I say that, right? The minimally viable plan is what I'm looking for. So let's start with my subordinates. My subordinate presents me with a plan.

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  Guess what I'm looking for in that plan? Minimally viable. Is it gonna get the job done? Is your plan good enough to get the job done? Okay, it is, cool. Is it the most efficient way? Don't care. Does it, is it the fastest way? Don't care. Is it the cheapest way? Don't care. Now, look, is it overboard expensive? Is it overboard inefficient? Then, then we can, then it's not really a viable plan, right? Is there some crazy risk involved that's unacceptable? Okay, then that's not a viable plan. So if it's way too much, if it's way too inefficient, if it's way too risky, then those aren't viable plans, actually.

• 27:09Jocko Willink?

  But if it'll get the job done and there's not some crazy risk and it's not some crazy cost, then that's what I'm looking for. A minimally viable plan. And you know, even if there's a little tactical, a little tactical risk, like we might, oh, might take a little digger over here, might not work out perfectly, I'm fine with that. Look, if it's a strategic risk, cool. That's not a viable plan.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  But as long as somebody brings me a minimally viable plan, I'm not gonna argue with my subordinate about their plan. It's gonna work. Now, might I ask some earnest questions? Sure. But am I gonna dig in? And battle against their plan? No. Not at all. Now, like I said, if it's unacceptable risk, if it's unacceptable cost, if it's unacceptable inefficiency, cool. That's not a minimally viable plan, it's not a viable plan. And what I'm going to do is I'm gonna ask them some questions about those problem areas and they see it and they go, ooh, that is a huge risk. We don't wanna do that. Let me go back to you. Let me go back to the drawing board. Which is fine.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  They go back and rework the plan and they come up with a better plan and, oh, now they bring me another plan and now it's, they've, they've eliminated that risk. They've cut that cost out. We've got a viable plan, cool. I'm happy. I'm going with it. And if I get in the habit of doing that, We are going to save so much, we're going to save time arguing, right? It allows me to be more detached. It gives them ownership. All these things come into play and they're all very important parts of a team and leaders leading a team. Like you and I debating for, for an hour and a half about plan A or plan B is totally worthless. Me trying to dig in and, and, and come up with a plan myself, that's worthless.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  Now I'm not detached. Now I can't see what problems are on the plan. Me dictating a plan to you, we know that's bad because now you don't have ownership of the plan. So the best way to do is let you come up with a minimally viable plan and present it to me. And if it's a minimally viable plan, good, we're going with it. So from a leadership perspective, a minimally viable plan is a very powerful tool. Now, from a operational perspective, from a, from a decision-making process, it's also a very viable plan. It's also very viable way to do business. It's a very viable way to operate is to look for minimally viable plan.

• 29:42Jocko Willink?

  Because in most cases, and you can, you can, I'm going to say seven out of 10. 70% of the time it's better to take action than to not take action. Okay? Now, look, two out of 10 is almost too much, right? Because there's some times where you, a tactical pause is the right thing to do. You know, give it a minute to develop. Those things happen. And you need to, you need to check yourself on that. You need to make sure that you're not just, hey, well, I'm default aggressive, but I'm just going. No, default aggressive is only default. The default can be over, overridden. Do you have to do that in an aircraft?

• 30:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah, sometimes.

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  What do you have to override?

• 30:19Dave Berke?

  There are times that, uh, the way the system, uh, is designed will limit how, how fast you could do something or how hard you can pull or how many you can do at a certain time. And there are literal overrides built in, which is the engineer saying, there are times you're not going to want to do the default. Now you have to take specific steps to do that. The override just doesn't happen on its own, but it is built into the machine that allows you to override it when you think is required.

• 30:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And so it's the same thing with being Default aggressive. Most of the time you're gonna do, oh, the plane's telling me to do this. Cool. Yep. I'm hitting that limit. Should stick with it. Yep. Sometimes gotta do the override. Yeah. So that's why it's called a default aggressive mindset. So most of the time, doing something is better than not doing something. Taking action is better than not taking action. Cause listen, at a minimum, you get to see a new angle. You get to see a new perspective. You're gonna get some feedback on what your action was. So most of the time, taking action is better.

• 31:12Jocko Willink?

  But a lot of time, people don't take action. And one of the things that prevents them from taking action is trying to find a perfect plan. Trying to analyze all the data points that are coming in. I sent you a text. We haven't even talked about this yet. I sent you a text the other day. Uh, man, I'm gonna have to research it. I sent you a text. You said, what are you talking about? It was like data. Correlate the data. Correlate the data, right? Correlate the data. Well, this is what I'm talking about. When you're in a leadership position, you're getting all this data that's coming into you. It could be, you know, you're getting input from this person over here that's telling you one thing. You're getting input, input from some other person that's telling you. You're getting actual data that's coming in, you know, results from the, the numbers of whatever it is that you're doing.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  All this data is coming in. You as a leader, gotta correlate that data and figure out what we're gonna do next. That's, that's actually what your job is, is to take a bunch of data points from a bunch of different people and a different bunch of different sources. And correlate that data into a picture that you can go, okay, now I can see what we're supposed to do. Now, if you're too close to the data, it's like those old paintings where you walk up close to the painting and it just looks like a bunch of dots. You can't see anything. You can't figure out what the pictures. You gotta take a step back from the painting. You look at the data and you go, oh, now I start to see a picture. Now I can figure out what to do. So that's what we have to do as leaders. You're constantly trying to pull yourself back away from that image. Not from the image, you're, you're pulling yourself far enough back from that data that it actually makes sense when you see it together.

• 32:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause if Dave's telling me one thing, JP's telling me something else, Leif's giving me some other piece of data, Steve's telling, like I got all these people telling me things. If I'm too close to them, I can't even put them together. I've gotta step back so I can have a better picture of, of what I'm looking at. So this is a problem. That data coming in is something that I can get so wrapped around that now I'm not moving forward. I'm, I'm spending all my time and they have a name for it. They get for free. You know, when something gets a name, you know, it's a problem, right? Analysis paralysis. And sure, it's cute because it rhymes or whatever. But it's not just something that is just used because it rhymes. It really happens. We see it in business. We saw it on the battlefield.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  People are sitting there not wanting to make a decision, not wanting to do anything. And part of what they're trying to do is they're trying to take the data that they do have, and they're trying to correlate it together. And then they're trying to predict what's going to happen in the future. Which by the way, is impossible to do with 100% accuracy. Now, look, if there's some decision that you have such incredibly solid data, and the decisions and the variables have been eliminated where it's a actual, you know, 99% possibility, well, guess what? We're not even talking about that decision. Who cares? We're doing what obviously the, the data leads us to. So it's easy to make a decision when we've got 99% of the data

• 34:08Jocko Willink?

  and it's all aimed in the same direction and all correlates with each other and all corroborates with each other. Like this is, this is easy. This isn't leadership. This is just following the obvious trail.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  We don't normally have that luxury or we often don't have the luxury of having perfect data, complete data, all that. And it's all, all the data happens to be pointing in the same direction. That doesn't happen very often. So what we end up with is people that get caught up trying to figure out what their perfect plan is going to be, or arguing, or debating, or analyzing. And so this is another time where you as a leader can, can, can vote for the MVP, the minimally viable plan. And, and it will help your decision-making process because it's like a little threshold. It's a little threshold that, that you can have as a leader of.

• 35:05Jocko Willink?

  Of, okay, you know what, this, I don't know if this is gonna work, I don't know if this is gonna work. Oh, you know what, that's gonna work, we can execute it. It's, that's a nice little threshold. To think to yourself, alright, is this gonna work, yes or no? Right, is this gonna work, yes or no? It will this, I know it's not gonna be perfect, I know there's gonna be flaws in it, but will it work? And part of, when I say this, the word work,

• 35:30Jocko Willink?

  and this is important, will it improve our position in some way?

• 35:37Jocko Willink?

  Is it going to just improve our position? If it's going to at least improve where we're at, and you know what? Maybe all it does is give us information, a little bit more information. Maybe if we go, hey, should we go left or right? Well, I'm not really sure. Left seems like a good call. At least when we go left, we know, oh, maybe it was the wrong way. Okay, at least we know that now. So we learned something, and you can see where this is very clearly connected to iterative decision making. Iterative decision making, if you think of iterative decision making, and you've heard me say a thousand times, that I cheat when it comes to making decisions, because I'm just gonna make really just small decisions very quickly.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, one thing that allows me to do that is I'm not looking for a perfect plan to move a short decision. I'm looking for a minimally viable plan. And that's what I'm gonna do. So I have this very low threshold for taking action. And there's some level of risk, but guess what? Since it's a small action, I'm able to do it, and I'm able to do it quickly. And then, of course, we gotta run the loops. The loops being the OODA loop, right? Observe, orient, decide, and act. Well, you decided to make this minimally viable plan. You decide to do that, cool. Then you act, you execute the plan, and then you gotta run the feedback loop. Okay, what is it telling us? Same thing with the EO leadership loop, which we covered on here. You gotta get the feedback.

• 37:02Jocko Willink?

  Once you make a decision, then you gotta get the feedback, make adjustments, and that will get you where you need to be.

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  With a minimally viable plan. What do you think?

• 37:16Dave Berke?

  It's awesome, man. Listening to it is crazy how, how, how quickly you tied it back even to the previous scenario we just discussed and you use that word self-discovery. And I wrote down in the different examples of what you do with this minimum viable plan, minimally viable plan, both versions of what you do get to the same place. One is, I'm like, okay, cool, let's do it. And so your plan, we get to go do it. So what you want, you've, you've figured that on your own. I didn't impose it on you. I didn't make you do it. I didn't tell you to do it. It's yours. You discover it. We go execute it. Or I go, hmm, okay, I gotta ask a couple of questions. And then I ask those questions and you discover for yourself and you can either go, oh, good

• 37:59Dave Berke?

  question, Dave, let me make a couple of changes. Or, oh, I'm glad you asked that. Here's the answer to that. Either way, it gets to the same thing and how that is so much more powerful than me telling you or imposing or even, even teaching you, which I'm not saying that's a bad thing. And yes, we want to do that. But how do I really want you to learn? And if you can discover it for yourself, that is a lesson and the method to get that lesson. And I just wrote down the other thing is when I think about the MVP, when I think about the idea of getting to that minimum viable plan and you discovering for yourself, the biggest barrier that I see is my ego that tells me my plan is better than yours. So you know what I'm gonna do? We're gonna fight and maybe it's a subtle

• 38:43Dave Berke?

  fight, maybe it's a big fight, but either way, we are gonna, we are gonna wrestle over whose plan. Instead of the threshold, and I wrote that down, the threshold of me going, can I just look at that and go, I wouldn't have done it like that. It's not what I would do. But you know what? It improves our position. It's viable. And if that's the case, the answer is just go do it. But my ego tells me, no.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know what? You said, you mentioned about, I always, maybe you didn't use the exact words that I use, but I want, I don't want to tell you the truth. I want you to, the truth to be revealed to you by you. Not only is it more acceptable to your ego, in fact, it's, it's ego champion, right? You get to say, you know, Jocko, I've thought through this. And actually, we want to, we want to attack this target from the West because there's some, there's some defenses over there on the East. So I've changed my plan. I go, oh, thank you. And you're, you're actually, you're up ego from that. It's a positive thing. But then you use the word "teach", and I thought about that. And I don't know if you've been through,

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  you must have been through this stage with your kids. When it comes to teaching them the times tables, which as we know, way the Warrior Kid, I like the times tables, I like the flashcards. One of the things, if you want to teach someone, is you have to let them figure it out. That's why even in Warrior Kid, Mark has to make the flashcards. He has to figure it out. The first time you figure out that 4 times 4 equals 16, when you figure it out, if I just tell you, "Okay, Dave, write down 4 times 4 equals 16", and you go, "Cool", and you write it down, and then I go, "Okay, 4 times 5 equals 20", write it down. If I'm doing that, I'm removing the most powerful step

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  of learning, which is you figuring it out, you wiring your brain, and I'm sure there's some neurological process that's taking place. But when you go, "Wait a second, 4 times 4, okay, I know 4 plus 4 is 8, I know 4 plus 4 is 8, and 8 plus 8 is 16, so 4 fours, 4 fours is 16", okay, go. And next time I ask you this, you know it, you know it. So not only is it more comforting to your ego when you are able to discover the truth, it's a more powerful teaching mechanism. And this is like, I'm sure you could say this about Top Gun, this is definitely true in training young SEALs. Just telling them, "Hey, you want to hit the target from over here",

• 41:15Jocko Willink?

  it doesn't, it doesn't leave a mark. If you say, "Hey, why are you going to hit the target from over there", and they start to look at the terrain, they say, "Well, you know, because the terrain is, oh, actually, oh, you know what? I didn't do a good terrain study. You know what, I'm actually going to adjust my plan." That leaves a mark. They say, "From now on, I better do a better terrain study." That's what we want to do, and that's going to be much more helpful in educating your team leaders on how to actually lead. Anything else, man? No. Right on. All right. Good place to stop. If you wanna, if you wanna dig deeper to any aspect of leadership, we're talking about these subjects all the time, actually live.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  We have pre-recorded training. Is that even the right word, pre-recorded? I guess it is pre-recorded, but we have, we have courses that you can go through, extremeownership.com. It's an online academy, talking about how to live better. How to live better. If you're out there interacting with another human being, you're in a leadership position. If you're interacting with your spouse, if you're interacting with your kids, if you're interacting with your peers, if you're a brand new guy at your company and you're not in charge of anybody, you're still in a leadership position because you have to lead your peers and you have to lead your, lead your boss in the right direction. How much of your time, how much of your career, Dave Berke, did you spend leading your superiors? A good amount. Yeah. A good amount.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  I mean, the chances that my boss had the perfect plan were next to none. I, we're gonna, you're, you're gonna have to lead your bosses. So no matter what you're doing, you're in a leadership position, come and check it out, extremeownership.com. Check out the academy. If you want our help inside your organization, we have a whole leadership consultancy. Go to echelonfront.com. You can pick up any of the books that I've written about leadership. You can listen to my other podcasts, it's called Jocko Podcast. We have the unraveling, Jocko unraveling podcast. And also for the kids out there, the warrior kids, get that warrior kid podcast together. And if you want to support any of these podcasts,

• 43:18Jocko Willink?

  go to jacostore.com, go to originusa.com, or go to jacofuel.com and get yourself some gear. That's all we got for today. Thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko. Out.