Standard Directive 007: Check Early Problems

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  When I was running the advanced training in the SEAL teams, I watched and I saw all too often platoons falling apart during training missions. Just falling apart, total disaster. And here's the thing,

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  it wouldn't happen all at once. It wouldn't happen from one big catastrophic event. It was a little mistake here, followed by a little mistake there, which leads to another mistake. They would, uh, they'd take too long to come up with their plan. Take them an extra 45 minutes to come up with a plan. And now they don't really have time to rehearse. And they don't have time to give fire team leaders the time that they need to brief their teams and do some walkthroughs.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  And since they didn't have time for that, they don't have time for walking through or even talking through some contingencies. And this is before they even get in the field.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  And then they get in the field. And so no one has a real clear idea of what's going on. And one team makes a small adjustment to the plan.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  And they don't really tell anybody else. And then another team reacts a little bit differently to the same problem. And they make a small adjustment, but it's in the other direction. And now these little problems start to compound and things start to unravel.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  And then the platoon commander starts to feel like he's losing control. So he overcompensates. He starts yelling at people and the squad leader doesn't like that. So he gets defiant and he doesn't listen. And the downward spiral accelerates.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  And soon, it's a lost cause. It's just chaos, mayhem. It's just disaster. And all that started because they took a little extra time to plan. Planning is important, but when you take a little too much time and then you let that bite into your rehearsal time and the briefing time and you can't do walkthroughs and not everyone gets the word, it's that one problem leads to the next problem, which leads to the next problem, and the problems get worse and worse. And then you have an unmitigated disaster. And this is

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  the thing. If you're not careful, this is how life works too. We make one little mistake. Just one little mistake, and then we let it go. We don't correct it. We don't redouble our efforts to get things back on track. And that one little mistake, that one little problem, that one little issue, causes another little mistake, causes another little problem. And all of a sudden, you've got two problems, then four problems, then eight problems, then 16 problems, and this

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  can lead to a downward spiral. So you need to pay attention to that. You can't let that happen. When there's a problem, you have to address the problem. You have to address the problem. You have to fix it. Or you at least have to make adjustments. Or you have to recalibrate based on the lessons that you learned. But don't think you can just get away with letting things slide. Things add up. And if you let them add up in the wrong direction, things will eventually

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  fall apart. So don't let that happen. When you have problems, address those problems and get them sorted out.