Jocko Underground: Calandra''s Barometer. Good Questions VS Bad Ones | Allow For Creativity

Calandra''s Barometer. Good Questions VS Bad Ones. Allow For Creativity. Raising a bi-racial family in America. Would we benefit from mandatory military service. Dealing with big injuries. Meditation. Recommended non-military reading list. 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 Underground Podcast, number 78, sitting here with Echo Charles, EC. Yes, sir. And me, Jocko Link. Calandra's Barometer. We're going to talk about this. So this is an urban legend. It's something that was written about by a guy named Alexander Calandra, Calandra, something like that. He was a, he was a test designer, someone that makes tests. And he made tests for a living, and so he wrote this thing about how to ask good questions versus bad ones. And he published this story in 1959, 1959, the story was originally done.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  And it was published, it got published many times throughout the years after that. But the story goes something like this. There's a professor that asked a question on a test, and the question on the test is something like, "How would one find the height of a building using only a barometer?" And the correct answer being, or one correct answer being, the anticipated answer is that you, well, you would take a reading at the bottom of the building of the barometer, and then take a reading at the top, and then find the difference, and then calculate the height

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  based on the change in the barometer. That's the, the right answer. But there was a bunch of other answers that came in. You know, one person said, "Tie a rope to the barometer, lower it off the building, then measure the rope." Someone else said, "Measure the shadow of the building and measure the shadow of the barometer, and you know the height of the barometer, and then you can calculate the height of the building." Another one said, "Mark the height of the barometer on the wall as you go up the stairs, like each barometer, and you know that the barometer's whatever, 12 inches tall, and then you multiply at time the number of barometers it took to get to the top of the building. Now you know how big the building is."

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  Someone else said, drop the barometer off the roof, calculate the time, what's the, how long did it take to hit the bottom? What's the terminal velocity of the barometer?

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  Someone else said, trade the barometer with the building superintendent who has the information? And it goes on and on, right? So, there's a lot of different answers to this question.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  And what can we learn from this is that, number one, formulate, of course, formulate better questions when you ask them, but from a leadership perspective,

• 2:48Jocko Willink?

  there's more than one ways to skin a cat and the

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  the, the less,

• 2:56Jocko Willink?

  the less structure you can give someone when you ask them a question, or you ask for information, or you ask for an idea, or ask for a plan, the broader, you're going to, the broader variety of answers you're going to get.

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if you give your opinion first,

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna encumber other people's ideas with your own ideas.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  There was something, what was it? General Mead in Gettysburg? I think I might even said on this on the last underground podcast, General Mead of Gettysburg, he would allow the junior people to give their ideas first. This is the same type of thing.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  But

• 3:40Jocko Willink?

  I think even more important than that is the fact that for anything that there is, for any problem that you're trying to solve, there's going to be more than one solution. There's gonna be more than one solution. And from a leadership perspective, it is definitely better to allow the team to use one of their ideas instead of trying to impose your idea on them. And we've, I've talked a million different times about the reasons for that. But this works not just in business, that works at home. Works with your kids, works with your spouse.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  We always think our idea is the best, right? Who, what's the best idea? Mine?

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Right? But allowing others to execute, to come up with and execute their own plan is almost always the best course of action. They get ownership, they push through obstacles, and they win. Which means you win.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. That's my short message of the day of the underground is there's more, there's more than one way to skin a cat. You know, that, that really freed my mind in the SEAL teams. It really freed my mind because in the SEAL teams, everyone's a tactical genius, right? Everyone's like, no, you should, you should hit the target from here. No, you should go in a room like this, or no, you should go in a room like that. And it really freed my mind when I was like, well, you know, you could go in the room that way, or you could go in the room that way. And they're both, they're both, they're both gonna have advantages and disadvantages. Now, look, you could have somebody that's like, who's going like this, and it'd be a dumb idea, because not tactically sound.

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  But there could be three or four tactically sound solutions to a problem. And when I figured that out, and I figured that out pretty early, then I was like, oh yeah, it doesn't really matter. Like, you go this way, or you go that way. You could hit the target from here, you could hit the target from there. And by the way, then you throw in the entire idea that the enemy gets a vote, and like, well, we're gonna hit it from this direction. Okay, why? Well, because intel says the enemy's gonna be over here. Okay, but intel can be wrong. And then what are we gonna do? There's a, when you, when you assault a target, you set up a base element and you set a maneuver element. So the base element, let's say, is gonna sit on a ridge line, and they're gonna engage the target. With machine guns.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  And then the the the maneuver element maneuvers to the target. And then maneuvers through the target as the base element shifts fire off the target. Can you picture that? Yeah. It's a little hard to picture. But basically you have like an L setup. And one part of the L is the base element. They got machine guns. And they're gonna light up the target. And while the enemy is distracted by that and keeping their heads down and getting shot at. That allows the maneuver element to maneuver up into position and and and push through the target. And as you push through the target, the base element shifts fire. So they're not shooting you. And then you get through the target, the target's secure.

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  And I remember really long time ago. We had a, I was in a platoon and we had like a base element and a maneuver element for this target that we were doing a target assault out in the desert. And uh. The platoon commander was like, hey, we're gonna take all of our machine guns. And put all of the machine guns in the base element.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  That seems to make sense because the base element, like you want massive firepower from the base element. And the guys that are on the maneuver element, they're maneuvering. So you want guys with smaller guns, you know, not carrying a big belt fed machine gun. They're just walking through the target with their little M 16 and just hitting point targets.

• 7:32Jocko Willink?

  So it's like, cool. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Well, the master chief was like, hey.

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  What happens? If the maneuver element? Gets compromised as they approach the target. Meaning before the base element has started shooting. The the maneuver element. The enemy sees them. And they start to shoot at the maneuver element.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's a decent chance that what you need to do is then lay down fire. And let the base element start the maneuver. Which means. We actually want machine guns. In both of the two elements. But but. I just remember thinking to myself, oh yeah, so this, we have a plan. But that plan is not guaranteed to happen at all. And this was coming from like a Vietnam SEAL that was like, hey, you need to have machine guns. That was when I realized you need to have machine guns with you. Like, like period. Like base maneuver, recon, you have some machine guns. Machine guns are like what you need in a gunfight. But I realized like, oh, so these things aren't going to go as we expect them to go.

• 8:41Jocko Willink?

  And then I started realizing like, and again, that was one of those situations where it's like, well, you could see where it makes some sense to put people in the bay, put all the machine guns in the base element. But at the same time, you're like, as soon as he brought that up, it's like, no, that actually doesn't make sense. It actually doesn't make sense to do that. Now, you could have extra machine guns in the base element. That's cool. But the, but the maneuver element still has to at least be able to act as a base. If it does get into a situation where it's needed. So those kinds of situations, I eventually learned that most of the time, it was like, oh yeah, we could do it that way. Or we could do it that way. Or we could do it this way.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't get, I was never a person that got super hung up on this way or that way. I was never someone that got super hung up on six or half dozen. There's people that get caught up on six or half dozen. They're like, no, it should be six. And they're like, no, it should be half dozen. No, it should be six. No, it should be half dozen. I don't agree with you at all. I hope you burn in hell. They fight over it. They've seen people fight over six or a half dozen. So I learned not to do that. I learned that there was just, there's a reason there's an expression, there's many ways to skin a cat. Hey, look, I'm not saying that you can't come up with something that's not tactically sound.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Believe me, there's times that guys come up with ideas and it's like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Here's why. What happens if the enemy does this? Ooh, yeah, we better not do that. Okay. You only have to tell somebody once. And then they, then they put that in their calculus from there on out. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. So.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  Keep an open mind. Don't get addicted to your own plan. And of course, have machine guns with your maneuver element.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the lesson right there.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Check. All right, let's get some questions. What do we got?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Uh, first question. Dear Jocko Echo, my wife is from China and I'm a Caucasian American. She immigrated here about 14 years ago and worked her own way to get her citizenship. She's an American in spirit and values, living in American dream, living the American dream. We have two amazing young children who are just entering elementary school. We've been teaching them as much as we can about American values, especially the value of freedom, the amazing opportunity immigration immigration provides and why so many people want to move here. My question is, what advice would you have for raising happiness?

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections,

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.