The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #6: Iterative Decision Making. Making Small Moves, Rather Than Big Moves

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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?

  This is the Jocko Debrief Podcast, Episode 6 with Dave Berke and me, Jocko Willink. So Dave, we've got some more debriefing to do. We didn't get through my Gettysburg debriefs that I had for you. So if you haven't listened to those yet, go back to Episode 5. But moving into some of the other things that I had on my list that I texted to you and said, "I've got some debrief points for you." So the next one that I wanted to cover is, again, this is something that's in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and I believe it's fairly well-spelled out. And I've been briefing

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  this a lot lately. In the current environment that we're in, it's 2020 right now. There's a virus that currently seems like a world impacting virus. And so we've all been dealing with it and have been helping people make decisions and maneuver their companies. And one of the things that I've been talking a lot about is iterative decision-making, which is a good way to lead in unknown circumstances. And what you do is you basically make a small decision, and then you take a small step in that direction. And what I realized during this Gettysburg battlefield walk that we did discussing the

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  various leadership decisions that were made, was there was certain situations where leaders on the battlefield could have made small moves instead of big ones. And in no case did they do that. I mean, I'm sure I'll find some eventually. But in the major movements that were made, especially the major mistakes that were made, there was no time where someone made a small decision and made a small step in that direction. So what I was saying, and again, I'm there with almost the entire, well, with a bunch of people from Ashland Front. It's me, it's Leif, it's Mike Sorelli, it's, who else is there? Oh, Steve Ward, Jason Gardner, and Jamie. So like, we've got this big crew there.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  And I started talking through one of the things that...

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  could have solved one of these major problems and that is when, when, when General Longstreet didn't like a plan that General Lee had come up with and he dragged his feet for an extended period of time and it ended up being a total disaster. And I said, hey, you know, everyone's kind of going on, what would you have done? What would you have done? What would you have done? Right? Either, if you're either person, what would you have done? And he notes, hey, I'll draw a line in the sand. I would never do this. I don't agree with it. I would have ordered him to do it. I would have fired him. It's like we went through all those things. And I said, well, hey, here's what I would have done. If I was either person, if I was General Lee or General Longstreet, I would have done iterative decision making and therefore iterative execution. And I, I think that there's just a gap and I, I want to explain that gap.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Iterative decision making is not just making decision. It's the execution of that small decision. So Dave, if I tell you, hey, I want you to assault that hill. And you say, I don't think that's a good idea. And I say, well, we need to get it done. And you say, well, I don't think it's gonna be worth the effort and the casualties that we could take. Okay. So there's where we're at. There's our line in the sand. Either one of us at this point, I can say, well, I'll tell you what, why don't you move another hundred yards forward and push, push a couple of point men up and see what they can see and see if they start taking fire. See if there's any cover you could get on the way there.

• 3:47Jocko Willink?

  How does that sound? And you go, that actually makes sense. Or you could also say that to me, you know what, Jocko, I don't know about assaulting that hill. Here's, why don't we start with this? I'll move a hundred meters closer. I'll send a couple scouts up. We'll see if there's any cover that we could get. If it looks like we are taking fire, I can pull them back. If we're not taking fire and we find good cover, I'll proceed a little further. That's it. That's iterative decision making and it includes iterative execution. And what you find is that when you make a small decision and then you take a small step, when you make that small step, you learn more. When you learn more, you can make a decision on which direction to go now.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  So that's fairly straightforward. The next note that I had is that iterative decisions are actually aggressive.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  You can make aggressive, much more aggressive moves when they are small. So I've been telling a lot of clients that I had a reputation in the SEAL teams of being very, very decisive. But I was cheating. I was cheating because I wouldn't make decisive, massive moves. I would make many small moves very rapidly. So if we started taking fire, I didn't say, "Oh, everyone assault now." Because I don't even know where we're taking fire from, or how many people there are, or what the situation is. So I'm not going to say, "Everyone assault now."

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not going to say, "Everyone run away, we're taking fire." No, that's a big decision. I'm not taking, I don't take that bullback. What I say is, "Hey, two people go up to the roof." "Dave, Dave, Dave and Mike, go to the roof, tell me what you see." Everyone thinks I just made a power decision. There's absolutely no risk. We're in a building that we already own. You have cover up on the roof? Cool. That is being aggressive. So iterative decisions where some people, where some people might think, "Well, that's kind of weak." Right? "What are you doing? That's weak. You're just gonna, you're, you know, you're just taking small steps." I'm taking small steps rapidly, and that is the best way to be aggressive. Look, caveat, sometimes you have to make a bold decision that's big. Yes, you do. Absolutely. Should happen very seldomly. It should happen very seldomly. And hopefully it doesn't happen at all.

• 6:05Dave Berke?

  Yeah. One of the reasons why you and the team, we've been talking about iterative decision-making so much more recently is because of what you just described. I wrote down at the very beginning, I wrote down the word unknown. Of course, you're talking about, and it's, it's, we all understand that this is kind of a period of unknown. Nobody was, nobody had a playbook for COVID. Nobody saw this thing coming. So part of the reason why we have been talking about iterative decision-making and several fast, short movements is how you maneuver in this unknown environment. And it makes sense, and it's what we should be talking about. The other side of that, though, when you talk about iterative decision-making is, if you kind of take this whole situation up,

• 6:48Dave Berke?

  let's go back a year where things were just kind of jamming, everything was, was going really well. It was actually, there's actually a lot of unknown there too. And, and the, the thing that complacency creeps in when, when you think you've got the whole situation, you've got the whole way of the land, you think you know what's going on and you start to make these bigger, longer, less iterative decisions. If you're not complacent, even if you think you know everything, you've got all this information, you still, you know what, there's things out there we don't know. I've got all the intel, I've seen this 50 times, I've done it throughout my entire career, everything is the ways. If you keep that mindset of, you know what, there is something out there, maybe we don't know. You're actually going to end up doing the exact same decision-making process now that you would

• 7:34Dave Berke?

  a year ago or a year from now. And this idea of iterative decisions isn't just because we know there's unknowns, it's because there's always unknowns. It may be really obvious now, and it is, it's glaringly obvious that we don't know what's going on sometimes. But the truth of the matter is, is that if you're in a leadership role, it's always like that. And if you think you've got this whole thing figured out, we can go, hey, Jocko, just take your team, go 10 miles down the road and plant the flag on that hill. If you think you know between here and there, you're going to set yourself up. You need to make those same decision-making approach, that same iterative decision-making, no matter what the situation is. And if it turns out you get there, hey, no factor, cool, keep moving, you can do it quickly. But you don't not do that just because you think you've got the situation understood.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, as we've been, as I've been explaining this to clients, I've been doing a little setup with them. I'll say, um, I'll say, what you want to do as a leader in this position is you want to take a guess on what to do next. And then I say, I say, nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that the leader is taking a guess as to what to do next. But guess what? In any situation, if you're in a leadership position, the number of times that you're going to have 100% accurate information spoon-fed to you and you're going to be able to line up that and come up with a perfect decision is never. So if you're in a leadership position, guess what? You are making guesses. That's what you're doing. That's what leaders do. How do we mitigate the risk of the guess? We take a little tiny step.

• 9:01Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  So you have to guess. So don't commit all your forces or all your resources or all your assets to a guess. Commit just a little tiny bit of them and then do an assessment to see if it was the right move or not.

• 9:14Dave Berke?

  And it costs you so little. And even that guess, there's nothing wrong with me admitting as a leader, hey, you know what? I don't have all the answers here. As a matter of fact, when you give me those orders, go take that hill. And I'm thinking, this is a terrible idea. I'm not doing that. Why would I come back and go, hey, that's a terrible idea. We're not going to do that. How about I go, hey, boss, I thank you for what you're saying. Look, I don't have a good recon between here and there. Let me take my team. I'm going to push them out. Give me about an hour. I'll radio you back what you see. We're going to take this first move and set out some scouts. I don't need to dig into my position. I need to go, okay, cool. I can make that happen. And I apply the same thing. But if I come in and go, this is a terrible idea. We shouldn't do this. And it turns out I go out there and like, wow, this is actually really easy. Now I had a call back like, hey, you were right. And I gotta, there is no reason not to just say, I actually don't know.

• 9:58Dave Berke?

  And the best way for us to know is we're going to go out and start to move in this direction.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the other thing I've been telling all my clients is after you make that guess, and it turns out your guess is wrong, what do you do then? You tell everyone, hey, I guessed a little bit wrong. I assessed this wrong. Here's some things that changed. Here's a different view. Now that we, now that we see this part of the market or this part of the battlefield, here's the adjustments we're going to make. You have to be humble enough to make adjustments.

• 10:21Dave Berke?

  But doesn't it make you look really dumb and weak when you get something wrong?

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  And it goes, that goes back to, you know, your perspective, your ego, being able to detach, because everybody knows that if I stand up and say, listen, I know we're meeting more resistance than we thought, but we're going for it anyways. Everyone looks at me and goes, you're a freaking idiot.

• 10:38Dave Berke?

  Crazy. Yeah.

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  All right, next. The last one of these debrief podcasts that we did, we were talking a lot about intent and implied intent, meaning just through my attitude, you know what I want. Then there's actual verbal or written commander's intent. Here's what I want you to do. Here's my overall intent. And then there's culture and there's values and you stack all these things together. And we have, we should have a situation that if you take my, my verbal commander's intent or my written commander's intent, like, hey, this is what I want you to do. The implied intent, the values, the culture, you should be able to make 99.9% of decisions without having to talk to me at all, if you're working for me.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it should be.

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  How do I know that? Well, here's a, here's a little drill that I can run through with you to see if you understand these various forms of my intent. And that is discussing contingencies. Because if I say, hey, Dave,

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  what will you do if you get into an enemy contact before you get to the target?

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  And you say, if we take enemy contact, we're going full auto and we're going to assault from wherever we are. And what I actually wanted you to do was not reveal your position. Well, guess what? I've obviously not explained any level of these intents to you. So if you're in a leadership position and you want to understand if people, look, and if I say, hey, Dave, the commander's intent for tonight is you get in and out without being compromised. And you say, got it, boss. And I go, okay, read back to me what the intent is. And you say, it's to get in and out without being compromised. Okay, cool, got it.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  This only means that you could repeat the words that I said. So then I say, okay, let me run through some scenarios with you. Here's a contingency. You roll up, you get out of your vehicles and all of a sudden there's dogs barking and lights start coming on inside the village. What are you gonna do? And you're like, shoot the dogs.

• 12:52Dave Berke?

  Right, assault the building, yeah.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  Right, so that's what I'm saying. It's really simple. It's a really simple thing. But if you talk through contingencies with people, you find out what they're thinking and it reveals whether they understand your intent or not.

• 13:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah. As, so, we didn't, we didn't rehearse any of this. You sent me this text last week and I'm like, cool. I wonder what this is. And we're talking about it now and, and as I, as I read this bullet, you know, the contingencies reveal understanding of your intent. It took me a minute to kind of understand the context and as you're describing it. And then, same thing I always do is I put myself in a position of being a subordinate. And, and everybody should understand, and this is true for you. You and I, despite the fact that we've commanded teams and we've always also been subordinates. I've been a subordinate my entire career. I was never not without a boss in the military. So, the role of being a subordinate is something I'm very familiar with.

• 13:51Dave Berke?

  Even when I was a commander, I was a subordinate to some other senior commander. The question of just, hey, what would you do here? Sometimes when, like, my boss would ask me that, I would feel like, is he questioning what, is he questioning me? But really, what a good boss is doing there is actually evaluating how good of a job he has done to prepare me to handle which he absolutely knows are gonna happen, which is a contingency. Contingencies always happen. Nothing ever happens the way you plan. And as a leader, when you're saying, hey, okay, Jocko, walk me through this scenario. You got my intent, but this happens, what are you gonna do? That's not me testing you. That's me testing me. Have I explained myself well?

• 14:35Dave Berke?

  And so when I, as you're explaining, I'm picturing again, you know what? How many times did I hear my boss run me through a contingency scenario? I'm thinking, what the hell's wrong with this guy? Why is he asking me all these questions? Questioning whether I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. It's like, no, he's actually measuring himself. Did he explain it well enough to set me up to be successful? When he knows full well, there are gonna be problems as I go execute, cause he knows what's out there waiting for me. The understanding the intent, I mean, how critical is that that I know your intent as a leader? So I can do something in real time and get it right?

• 15:11Jocko Willink?

  You know what else is interesting? I had this conversation with Jamie the other day. And you know, Jamie has been participating more and more and answering questions and stuff. And she goes, you know, she's like, I'm starting to feel like

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  I am doing a better job answering questions. I'm like, you knock it out of the park. And she says, yeah, you know, I'm just trying to, I'm just kind of answering the way I would answer a client when they asked me a question. And, and, and of course I know I make everyone nervous. You're like, everyone wants to say the right thing. And she kind of alluded to that. She's like, you know, sometimes when I know you're on the EF online and I know that if I say something, I want to get it right. And it makes me trip up. And I don't want to do that anymore. And I go, Jamie, trust me, you nail these questions. And, and then I told her, look, this used to happen when I was running training for the SEALs. You'd get these young SEAL leaders and I'd put them in some pressure situation.

• 16:07Jocko Willink?

  And I would be looking at them and they would do something really stupid. And I go, I go, why did you do that? And they were like, I, I thought you'd want me to be aggressive or I thought you'd want me to whatever. I thought you want me to take the high ground or I thought, and I go, bro, don't do what you think I want you to do. Don't try and interpret what you think I might want you to do. What you think you should do right then? That's what you need to do. So that's another thing that walking through contingencies reveals. Look, I don't want someone in the field that is going to make a decision based on what they think I might want them to do if I was there. I want them to actually do what makes sense in that situation. So let's go through some contingencies so we can remove that.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  And then we truly understand if they know what the intent is. And again, now we've got multiple levels of intent to try and comprehend. And they should, obviously they're all aligned, but they all hit a different specter or spectrum. And they're all important. And by the way, do you have your pen ready?

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  By the way, there's a hierarchy of these intents.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  So if I've told you, you know, that, hey, you're going, you know, we, I want you to avoid, you know, getting in enemy contact tonight.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  But something happens where your troops are in danger.

• 17:36Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Right? There's a hierarchy of intents, which we actually

• 17:42Jocko Willink?

  need to have understanding of. Now, look, most of the time they're aligned. I mean, I want you to complete the mission. I want you, most of the time they're aligned, but there can be nuanced scenarios where a leader is going to have to say, look, I know the intent that Jocko told me was to, was to make sure we make money on this deal.

• 18:06Jocko Willink?

  But right now, the only way we make money on this deal is by me screwing over this client.

• 18:13Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  I know there's a hierarchy of intents here, and I know that I'm not supposed to do that. So not only do we have multiple intents, they should be aligned, but there is a hierarchy.

• 18:27Dave Berke?

  That makes, that makes sense. And it's, it's, if you understand the strategy, if you understand what you really want us to do in the long run, it makes it easier to do that. You've used example like this before too, which was, you could say, hey, Dave, my intent is actually, don't give away your position. Keep very low profile, and if there's any risk of that, I want you to withdraw and back up. That's what I want you to do. But there are times that that might actually put me at more risk. And the, you don't want me to come back and go, hey, we lost two guys, but I followed what I thought you wanted me to do, which was back up. And that's the thing you're talking about is, don't do what you think I want you to do. When we all first joined Echelon Front and you started talking and training us about how to do Q and A, and hey, how do

• 19:11Dave Berke?

  we answer clients' questions? The goal that you said was, I want you to answer the question in the way that you would actually solve that problem. So if you have a question, you think about what you would do. And if you have the humility to say, this is what I do, and it turns out that's wrong. Now we can actually have a debrief. You can go, hey Dave, let me talk to you why maybe this wouldn't work. And I can learn from that and get better at that. But I've been spending all my time thinking about what you would say. And I know what Jamie's talking about. We all know what it's like to have Jocko on a gig with us. Like, oh God, he's watching me answer. If I can have the humility to just do what I think I should do, I'll actually learn more and get better at it than trying to calculate. What would Jocko say and how would Jocko? And that's just doing nothing but causing problems for me. And you actually don't want me doing that anyway.

• 19:56Dave Berke?

  You want me to do what I think I should do. And if it's right, great. And if it's wrong, then we can debrief it and learn from it and get better.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep. There's a, there's a, a level of detachment and reflection that goes on there too, because saying, here's a classic example I've seen guys get caught in. And it's a straight up, well, what would Jocko do? Right? What would Jocko do? Well, they have, this is why this is so scary. They have their implied intent that they've received. Is it possible that the implied intent that someone has received from me is not accurate? Yes, it's absolutely possible because Jocko's aggressive and he makes things happen. And so what do I think when I get asked a question? You know, what should I do? And my subordinate just says, hey, this sounds like a horrible plan and we're not doing it.

• 20:47Jocko Willink?

  And the thought is, well, Jocko's default aggressive. You know what? You shut up and do what I told you to do. And so here's what I tell people. Actually ask yourself if you could picture me doing that. Actually say, wait, wait a second. If I was to put Jocko in this situation and I was saying, hey, I don't want to do your plan. Would Jocko say, shut up and do what I told you to do? No, actually he wouldn't do that. What would he do? He would say, why do you, what is it that you don't like about the plan? And do you have a different idea? So there's a whole, there's a whole level. And what this comes down to is these really good conversations that you can have based on contingency, contingencies and how people are going to act in certain situations.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  And then you take this hierarchy of intent that we're, we're now exposing to the world because it exists. Yeah. And by the way, if my implied intent is received in an inaccurate way, that's a horrible thing. And that's why we need to pay attention to it. And there's plenty of leaders that don't pay attention to it. They don't understand it. They don't know that it exists. They've got this implied intent that is, don't ask me any questions.

• 21:53Jocko Willink?

  Don't ask me any questions. Do what I tell you to do. That's, that's an implied intent and they actually, some people kinda like that implied intent. You shut up and don't ask me any questions. Do what I told you to do.

• 22:03Jocko Willink?

  Ah, alright. The next thing.

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  This one should be relatively simple. What winning looks like to you versus what winning looks like to the troops?

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  So, this is, again, this is aligned with intent, but you have to make sure that what winning looks like to me is what winning looks like to, if you're working for me. Not, not, actually, you're not working for me, but if you're on the front lines and I'm the boss, I have to make sure that winning looks the same to both of us. Because if winning to you looks like closing a deal and it doesn't matter if we ever do anything with this, you know, if you're a car salesman and you're, you're, you wanna close that deal and make as much money as you possibly can and get that person out the door and you don't care that it's a lemon and it's, they're gonna complain about it on Yelp? That's a win for you. It's a loss for me.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  So what do I need to do? I need to make sure that winning for you looks the same as winning for me. And if I do a good job of setting up my compensations and the missions and the way we're doing things, I can make sure that those are aligned, but oftentimes you see situations where, hey, the, what the frontline troop thinks is winning is not aligned with what the senior leadership thinks winning is. So we have to be careful of that.

• 23:33Dave Berke?

  As I'm thinking about what you're just saying and then think about things that you've said before and kinda piecing together a lot of conversations we have. One of the easiest ways to make sure that what winning looks like for me, so I'm now the big boss, whatever, I'm in charge of those things. You're four levels down, you're a frontline guy selling cars or whatever that scenario was. One of the best ways for me as a leader to make sure winning to me and winning to you look the same

• 24:01Dave Berke?

  is I actually have to care about you more than me. I have to really believe that you being successful is what this is all about, that this team that I'm in charge of or responsible for or tasked to lead, whatever that is. And you have said that so many times and...

• 24:18Dave Berke?

  You really have to think about what that means that you're when you as a task unit commander made decisions and you talk about the challenge of like understanding that you're putting your men at risk and knowing what you what what really was out potentially out there for them. That you cared about them more than yourself. How much easier it is to align them winning with you winning than if you actually are in it for you. And what kind of what what dis- what how destructive that is in the long run for an organization. When you as a leader see your own success as the as as kind of like the secret that goal that you really want at the expense of your team.

• 25:02Dave Berke?

  And how simple it sounds to say put your people before you and and and all the military sources of of taking care of your people. If you don't actually believe that it's going to be really hard for winning to be the same for you and for them.

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, we did that podcast not too long ago and the I forget the quote, I wish I could remember it off the top of my head, but it was something like if you if if you provide evidence of you caring about your troops, you don't even have to worry about morale.

• 25:37Dave Berke?

  They will fight. They will fight. I think it was I think it was the Jocko podcast 245.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Dave Berke?

  And it was. Yeah. Provide evidence. Let your people believe that you could show them that you actually believe about that more and all the other problems take care of themselves because they'll go fight.

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Um, next thing. There's some really dumb things that happened in the Battle of Gettysburg. Some people did some really, really dumb things. And there's a bunch of reasons why. There's a a bunch of. Things that could have helped that mostly being relationships if if I have a relationship with you, Dave. Look, if I have a relationship with you, I at least have a dumb detector. And I can say, you know what? Dave is gonna, he's, he has propensity to do some dumb stuff. I'm gonna keep him in my back pocket. I'm gonna keep an eye on him. I'm not gonna give him the, the, the, the, the mission that's gonna take a lot of decision making.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  But if I don't have a relationship with you, then I don't know how dumb you could be. And there's a chance

• 26:50Jocko Willink?

  that you could do things that are so dumb that

• 26:56Jocko Willink?

  I really didn't even conceive of a contingency where you could be this stupid.

• 27:04Jocko Willink?

  So what you have to do is you have to think about the parameters wrapping some wide parameters around stupidity in situations where you don't know somebody well enough. And I'll tell you, even when you do know people well, the first time you put them into combat, or first time they put, get put under stress, or the first time that they're in an unknown, there's, there's situations where even someone you know and trust, you might need to throw some parameters around the most outlandish things that people could do. So what that is, this is, this is extreme ownership, right? Listen,

• 27:48Jocko Willink?

  if Dave does something, if I'm in charge and Dave does something that is so stupid,

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  that is my fault because I didn't put the parameters in place. I didn't know him well enough. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't anticipate this level of stupidity. And you know what that makes me? Stupid.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  So this, I, I, you know, you start to hear people saying, you know, well, that person did that, that was just absolutely ridiculous. How could, you know, that's just so dumb. It's like, yep. You gotta remember, people are gonna do dumb things. Put some parameters in place to prevent really dumb things from happening. And by the way, when they do happen, okay, you let it happen. Go, go clean it up.

• 28:36Jocko Willink?

  I hate when people do really dumb things. And the reason I hate it is because I know that I screwed up. Yeah. I know that I screwed up.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  Um, here's a question, was it a good move or not?

• 28:51Jocko Willink?

  Was that call a good move or a bad call? And where this comes into play in the battle of Gettysburg and elsewhere, but where it really comes into play is we want our people to be default aggressive. We want our subordinate leaders to have a bias for action. We want them to step up and make things happen. We want to have decentralized command. All those things are good. Well, guess what? Dave, if you're in the field and I'm in charge, you could show initiative. You could, you could maneuver your troops to beyond the limit of advance because you saw an opportunity or you saw a situation that needed to be dealt with immediately.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  And that could cost us the battle. It, it might've been the wrong move and it cost us the battle. It might've been the right move and it won us the battle. There's situations that happen at Gettysburg and there's situations that have happened throughout battles throughout history. And there's situations that happen in business where somebody makes a move, somebody does something. It destroys the whole business. Somebody makes a gamble, somebody throws out a product that they should have. There's just all these things that happen. Was it a good move or not? So you can, so you can sit back from a hindsight is 2020 perspective and say, well, how do we know if something was a good move or not? Right? How do we know if something was a good move or not?

• 30:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, what we have to do is we have to look at the fundamental principles that we are operating within.

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  And what that, so a cover move is a good example. Cover and move, you could take that as implied intent from me. If you worked for me and you weren't covering and moving, look, I said it to you, but you better freaking just know it as well. Cover moves the way it is. There's a principle that doesn't change. So if, if you came back to me, if, if you came back to me, you said, hey, Jocko, here's what I did. This element was moving. I, I moved to a position where I could better cover for them. They were able to move, but then I got flanked and I had to retreat and then they retreated. And that's why we had to fail the mission.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  Was it a good move or not? Did you violate cover and move? Nope, you didn't. So I can look at that and say, you know what? You didn't get the result you wanted. You failed the mission, but at least you didn't violate the principles. If you came back and said, hey, you know what, Jocko? I saw an opportunity. I started flanking. I lost contact with the element that was supporting us. I got, let's, I'm trying to drive this in a good way. What really happened, you got target fixated. You moved too far and now all of a sudden you're out of supporting distance and they can't help you anymore. Now you can't cover and move for each other. And that's when they got ambushed. And there was no support for them. And that's why we took casualties. But I was just being aggressive.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  Actually, bro, you violated a principle. You violated cover and move. So now, if we want to stack things up, we get these, we go back to this idea of implied intent, commander's intent, values, culture. We stack all those things up. And if we start violating these things, now we can look back and we can objectively say, this was a bad move. It didn't support the intent. It didn't support the implied intent. It didn't support the commander's intent. All those things are bad. Now where I have a problem is,

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  I can't count on you. I can't hold you accountable for understanding my implied intent if I never talk about it with you, right? I can, it can be a reason, but unless I turn that implied intent into a value, a culture, and a commander's intent, then it doesn't help me. So those are some ways, if you think about situations and you want to debrief your people properly.

• 32:56Jocko Willink?

  And you say, well, you know, Dave, we've talked about cover and move since day one. I've seen you rehearse it and practice it. And you got out there and you're wondering why I'm thinking that you made a bad move? It's because you violated the only principle that I told you never to violate. Cause, cause that's where we're at as a leader. We've got, we've got people that are going to do things that we have to be able to explain to them why it was right or why it was wrong. Because we want initiative and all this comes back to decentralized command because we want people to have initiative. But so, so where this is all going is

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  the parameters that we allow people to operate within. Right? The parameters that we allow people to operate within. We have to make sure that they understand them. Goes back to revealing intent through contingencies. All these things stack up. And if we want to be able to debrief someone properly and say, hey, here's why this was a bad move. And here's why you can't do it again. Because it violated this, it violated this. And by the way, it revealed to me that I've given you an implied intent that you didn't understand.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  You know, you thought I always thought go. And I don't think that, and I gave you that impression and that's my fault. So, uh, look, and when you make a bad move, it's absolutely, I'm not saying it's your fault, but I've got to be able to explain to you why it was a bad move. Yeah. So good things to think about.

• 34:38Jocko Willink?

  When somebody makes a move. When they do something and, and you want to explain to them why it was wrong. You have to have, you have to be able to display to them what they violated. So that you can explain to them in a more clear manner, what the violation was and why it can't happen again.

• 35:05Jocko Willink?

  And this one's pretty simple and straightforward. There's heroic activities.

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  At the Battle of Gettysburg and, and I just got to thinking.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  What is the, how is it that we as human beings can look at someone and say that was heroic? What, why is that? Why is this heroic? Why is this, why is what this person did heroic?

• 35:31Jocko Willink?

  And why what somebody else did not heroic? What is the, and it took me 20 seconds of thinking about it. What makes something a heroic act? And it's so blatantly obvious.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  When somebody does something heroic, they do it not for themselves, but for others. And I'm, like I said, I'm going to cover the Battle of Gettysburg and probably multiple podcasts, but you know, this guy Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who was in charge of the 20th Maine and, and he just made a heroic effort of leadership and, and personal fortitude at the moment of truth. And it's awesome. But as I looked at all these different things as they unfolded and you also see other things that happened in the Battle of Gettysburg. We think, well, that was a, that was a move, but we're not looking at it as heroic. Why? Well, it's because it wasn't done.

• 36:32Jocko Willink?

  It was done really for personal glory. Or at least there was elements of personal glory in there. And as a matter of fact, what's interesting is when you start looking at the personalities, you start getting these caricatures of personalities at the Battle of Gettysburg and, and just one, you know, you'll hear the word like, oh, this guy was flamboyant. And it's really hard to then take that person who's flamboyant and start, start applying the heroic to them because you feel, well, they're flamboyant and they made sacrifices, but you get that. And look, look, I'm not being critical. I'm just saying that you get this, you get this tinge of, oh, this person was flamboyant. And all of a sudden you think, well.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, but you see someone that's not flamboyant, someone that was a former freaking school teacher like, like, like Colonel Chamberlain. And you think, yep, he's doing this not for himself, not for any level of glory whatsoever. He's doing this to help, to sacrifice and to help others. That's what he's doing. And then you take all that.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  And this, this whole experience at, at Gettysburg, you know, you're basically hearing this incredible story and, and since you're on the hollowed ground itself, and it's something that I've, I said on this podcast since day one, I, you know, I would, I used to do it more often, but I would say, hey, as I'm reading this,

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  I want you to remember that this isn't a character in a story. This isn't a person, this isn't an actor playing a role in a movie. This is a person. They did this.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  And as I was at Gettysburg and you feel very, you can feel the gravity and the weight of, of the battlefield, you can feel it. And, and I know some of it is because, you know, we have been to war and so we all kind of have some,

• 38:34Jocko Willink?

  some taste in our mouth, some memory of, of loss and of fire and of blood and of fear. And so we know it and you're there and you hear these stories.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  And it was very,

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  it was very heavy for me because you start recognizing these stories and I did a podcast about this with, with Daryl, with Daryl Cooper on unraveling and we, it's, it's about the fact that way, the way human beings observe sto- observe, absorb stories. And how we actually create stories in order to better understand the world around us. Like it's a, it's not, this isn't, this isn't, hey theoretically, this is what we do. This is what we do. Our brain is programmed to do this. Our brain is programmed to look at a set of circumstances and build a story around it so that we can survive better in the world. That's what we actually do.

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  And you hear these stories of the way things unfolded at Gettysburg.

• 39:44Jocko Willink?

  And you realize that our current situation, it's, it's America, it's 2020.

• 39:55Jocko Willink?

  We don't often tell the right stories, or we have a battle of stories. And people have opposing stories of the way things are, the way things were, what happened and how things unfolded. And what that all tells me.

• 40:13Jocko Willink?

  It reinforced the fact that stories that truly matter.

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  And so if you're on a team, if your organization, if you're running a business. The story that you elevate.

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  Has a massive impact on the mindset and the culture of the people that you are leading. So, think about that and know that and understand that. I mean, Dave, in the Marine Corps. Think about the story of the Marine Corps and then think about the little stories that make up the Marine Corps. It's, it's, it's a religious lore. It's a, it's a biblical level story. And it provides the Marine Corps.

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  Tying back, it provides the Marine Corps with an implied intent with a, with a culture. And with values that aren't rooted in words. They are absolutely rooted in stories and I've covered a bunch of Marine Corps doctrine. They root their values, they root their, their statements in stories. So that they have meaning. And if you're running an organization, think about that because stories absolutely matter.

• 41:46Dave Berke?

  To have an organization that you can take, you can take someone like me and have those stories be so powerful that somehow I, I, Dave Berke, feel connected to Smedley Butler, or Chesty Puller, or people I have never known and will never meet, but feel obligated to perform in some way that makes them proud of me being part of that organization, that when you talk about culture like that, I, I haven't thought about the stories in the way that you describe them, what they mean, but as you're saying it, that's why I became

• 42:28Dave Berke?

  a Marine, was the stories, I didn't know these people, and it wasn't even that I read about these people, like, in a chronological sense, it was that the stories of what these people were, and feeling the sense of wanting to be a part of that, and feeling obligated to meet some standard that almost seemed impossible, the tying in of, as you're going from what makes someone heroic to the meaning of stories, I mean, think about what you're, what an organization can do if you can make that connection for your people, I mean, that's, and that's why I became a Marine, that's why I became a Marine.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  That's why millions of people have become Marines.

• 43:09Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 43:10Jocko Willink?

  And with that, I think it's a good place to stop for tonight. If you want to dig deeper into these and all other aspects of leadership in any arena, you can join Dave and me and the rest of the Echelon Front team live, we are actually there. You want to talk to us? People like, oh, I, I, people on social media say, I'd love to meet you someday. Come on to efonline.com and come and meet me, meet Dave, meet the rest of the team, we're there. We will answer your questions, we will help you solve your problems through leadership. And if you want leadership guidance inside your organization, inside your company, come and check out our leadership consultancy at echelonfront.com, it's what we do. I've also written a bunch of books about leadership, Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  of Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. I've got some other podcasts. Jocko Podcast is my main podcast, I guess that's the root of everything. Jocko Unraveling with my friend Daryl Cooper, we talk about very in-depth subjects.

• 44:14Jocko Willink?

  We also have Grounded, which is pretty much about Jiu-Jitsu. And the Warrior Kid Podcast for all the Warrior Kids out there. And if you want to support any of these podcasts,

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  including this one, you can get some gear from JacoStore.com or OriginMaine.com. That's all we've got for tonight. Thank you for listening to the debrief. Now go lead.

• 44:38Jocko Willink?

  This is Dave and Jocko. Out.