This is JoCo podcast number two fifty four with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. And joining us again is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening.

Last few podcasts. Two fifty one with wife Bhavan to fifty two to fifty three, also with Dave Burke.

We've been making our way through the book guidelines for the leader and commander, which I brought my actual sacred real copy, not just the photocopy so Dave could lay eyes on it.

And we're approaching the halfway point. We should get to the halfway point today. No promises because there's this book is dense. There's all kinds of stuff to unpack.

This is the route of the book that taught me the most about leadership, about face by Colonel David Hackworth.

Hackworth references this book multiple times in About Face. So the book is Guidelines for the Leader and Commander by General Bruce Carr, Bruce Clark, World War One, World War Two, Korea Distinguished Service Cross, three Silver Stars of forty five years of service as a leader and a trainer in the Army. Plenty of lessons to learn and we're learning them. We are learning them. So let's get into it. Chapter eight Philosophies and principles of training in overseas areas.

This is a whole section on how do you train when you're deployed.

Section one, the training task, the missions, the primary mission of all US military forces is to deter communist aggression.

And if deterrence fails to defeat aggression when and where it occurs.

So sometimes I work with companies and they want to have a mission statement. There's a good example of a mission statement. That's what you're trying to do. This is what you can make. So many decisions based on that kind of mission statement, what your job is, why do we exist? You ever thought about that one? Why do I exist? What am I here for? You ever think about that, Charles? Yes. You think to yourself, I'm here, too.

I haven't come up with an answer yet.

We're working it. Make some video press record, apparently.

Check the mission of the United States Army and oversee in oversee areas. STEM logically from this broad U.S. forces mission. Our first mission is to ensure the readiness of US Army forces to defeat communist aggression in overseas theaters. In doing so, we contribute most effectively to the accomplishment of our deterrence mission. Additionally, we have the mission to support US contingency operations in peripheral areas. The Lebanon and Congo operations are examples in of such contingencies.

These missions require that all U.S. Army personnel and units instantly be ready to undertake combat operations. This requirement provides the basis for all overseas training objectives, which are presented and discussed in the following paragraph. So here's what I think you find in organizations that really nice kind of clean thing gets put out to the troops and then the troops start to do their job and they start to live their lives and they lose track of this. It can happen to an organization.

It can happen to you as a human being. You kind of forget where you're going. You forget what you're trying to do. You forget what the team is here for. You forget what the mission is.

Can't let that happen. I got to think about that stuff.

So easy to veer off course, so easy just to just to get off course a little bit.

Have you ever seen you must have seen this Gulf War one. Gulf War one? I'm almost positive. Helicopters are holding station there. They're holding station and there's a blue on blue and they end up shooting a and APC. I don't see it. Was it was it a Bradley.

I know. I know what you're talking about. It's a friendly position. I thought it might even have been Marine LAVs. Maybe I'm right about it, but it's. Yeah, it's a lightly armored American vehicle. Yeah. And you can hear it. It's one of the most horrific things to listen to. But what happens is these helicopters are in position and there's just a little bit of a cross breeze, just a little bit of a cross breeze.

And so they don't really recognize it because they're just slowly getting blown off of their where they're supposed to be. And guess what? There's multiple helicopters. They're all getting blown off.

So relative to the other helicopters, they're in position.

And it's the open desert and it's hard to tell where you are in the open desert. There's no real oftentimes there's no real clean reference point. Oh, there's the. A mountain with the little peak next to it, or there's the river there, whatever, that those things don't exist, just big flat open.

So these guys drift and the next thing you know, they're calling in, hey, we see an armored vehicle. Well, there should be no armored vehicles in your area. Well, are you sure? Yeah, we're sure you should engage that.

And not only do they engage the vehicle, some of the guys get out of the vehicle and they engage the guys to get out. It's it's absolutely it's a it's a it's a complete nightmare. And here's the really crazy thing. When once that call goes down and the pilot realizes what he did. And he says something like you can hear in his voice, he's going to throw up, he's just absolutely sick to his stomach and he says, can we return to base?

We just we just we just engaged, ah, friendly troops.

And whoever is the air mission commander, is that the right term, I guess, is the air mission commander says, you know, negative, go back to station and hold for, you know, enemy enemy vehicles. That's where, you know, you still have your job. But what an example of a little slow drift off course with catastrophic results. That can happen when we lose sight of what our mission is. Back to the book, Objectives of Training in order to ensure effective accomplishment of assigned combat, operational contingency and peacetime operations missions, the training goal of U.S. forces overseas is to maintain all units and headquarters of the high command in a state of combat readiness.

This goal is equally applicable to combat combat support, technical administrative type units, and it is attained through careful attention to the following seven specific training objectives. So, you know, you're in an organization and we always think of whatever that whatever the critical mode, the critical piece of that organization is, whether it's the front line salesperson, whether it's the front line infantrymen.

Whoever's making the actual, you know, hand-to-hand combat, who's doing the work, we always focus on them and he's laying out everybody else, combat support, technical administrative type units, everyone's important and they all have to be trained with this mission in mind. So here's the objectives, one, maintain the proficiency of the individual soldier.

That's number one, proficiency of the individual soldiers, number one number to develop a high degree of responsibility and resourcefulness in the commanders and key personnel, both officers and non-commissioned officers of all units.

And one thing you know, as I continue to read through this book, you can you can sense there is there are threads, there is there is remaining DNA of World War One of centralized command of like obedience.

And you can feel you can feel some of that in there. And you can also feel the rejection of that.

And so that's why when he says things like, hey, it's responsibility and resourcefulness. Right. You this is to you know, we need our subordinate units to take ownership. We need our supported officers to take ownership and figure out how to do things. That's what that's the number two look, we want our soldiers to be proficient, number two, we want our leaders to be resourceful and to take ownership. Number three, achieve on a continuing and progressive basis the effective integration of new weapons and equipment, new organization and new techniques at all levels of command.

Learning is what the Marine Corps came out with that manual, how how logit was that?

I mean, he's basically saying you need to figure that you need a bit of it, adapt. You need to figure this out. You need to figure this out.

And by the way, continuing progressive basis, when does that end? Oh, that's right. It doesn't it continuing progressive basis doesn't end. Next, maintain an effective fighting team of the combined arms and supporting units. Maintain an effective, integrated team of the branches and services we need to work together.

And so, so combined arms. What is combined arms? Combined arms is the use of multiple different weapons platforms, all in conjunction to support each other. It's the sort of the highest form of cover move, right? Because we got aircraft in the sky that are covering the tanks as they move in. The tanks are covering for infantry. The infantry are also covering the tanks, actually, artillery covering all people. So this is combined arms. It's all these elements covering and moving for each other.

What I miss on that, the piece of that, too, you got it right, is, is the intent there? Sooner or later, the enemy is going to have to respond to something.

And when they respond to the tanks, that frees up the infantry. They respond to the aircraft, that frees up the tanks or whatever it is. And the beauty of that is that all these different things are bringing to bear. I don't care which one is the one that ends up closing the deal. I don't care if it's the tanks that take the final shot of the aircraft. We don't care. We're going to work together. We're going to create a problem for the enemy that they cannot handle.

They got to take one and they're going to lose to the other.

And I don't care which one of this and this bring forth brings forth one of my favorite doctrinal terms of all time, which is it's the equivalent of checkmate, which is we are going to capture the enemy in the combined arms dilemma, meaning there is no escape.

You're either going to get killed by the infantry, by the air, by the artillery, by armor. We have you you're in checkmate. That is the combined arms dilemma where we have you one of my favorite doctrinal terms.

That put a smile on my face for the day also talks about I already said this one, but maintain an effective, integrated team of the branches and services of U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, all need to work together, develop a high degree of competence in combined in joint operations. Once again, it's interesting teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. All the last three of these are all about working together. And was the last one developed coordination techniques for the effective accomplishment of inter allied operations.

So it's teamwork. It's out of the seven, four of them are about teamwork.

We have to learn how to work together, understanding the cycles of training, combat readiness is the joint joining of well-trained men with properly maintained equipment in an organization or in an organized unit of high esprit. The first requirement is that the men of this unit be trained as individuals and as a team to carry out their combat jobs with thoroughness and speed. This task surpasses all others for the commander overseas. That type of clarity, once again, if you're a commander on the ground and you're looking at, hey, what's my priority?

There you go. This task surpasses all all others for commanders overseas is to make sure that guys are trained individuals to work as a team to carry out their jobs. That's the most important thing. Readiness training is therefore the first priority task of every such unit commander. Within the concept of readiness training, each commander will be required to plan cycles or phases of training to meet varying situations and requirements, the most conspicuous of which is an annual loss of approximately 50 percent of his personnel who will be replaced by soldiers of varying levels of training and service.

And look, the whole time I'm reading this book and you and I had a funny conversation when I started sending you pictures of texts of like little sections of the book, and you eventually sent me a text, just just cover the whole thing.

And I'm like, I will. But, you know, I there's parts of it where I go, you know what? That's not 100 percent applicable or I'm not really sure how that ties in. And sometimes there are some point points. We get to a level of detail. What I found so interesting, why he wanted to read this is there's not too many.

You know, when you hear when you talk to civilian companies, they're thinking, oh, well, you know, in the Army, you've got these guys and they're trained and they're selected. And, you know, everyone's got this this baseline of training. Well, guess what? You're also losing 50 percent of your people annually. They're just cycling out. They're either getting out. And this isn't even talk in wartime. This is just like life.

People move on.

So you're constantly in this struggle to train and maintain efficiency. And every time you train someone, every for every person you train, one of those one of those people that you train leaves one out of every two people. You train leaves. Which is which makes it a hard job. What do you got?

I'm already coming back to the very first thing you said, which is you said the word clarity, I think, a couple of times now. And just hearing that mission statement of what we do, the amount of clarity in his first comment, here's our mission. We are here to deter an enemy. If we don't, we're going to fight them and kill them. That's our mission. And the very next thing he says is everybody else's role is to train, to be prepared to do that.

That actually sounds really simple, but it's really hard to create a message that's that clear. So by which the infantrymen and the person who's running administration who seem like completely different, have a clarity in how what they do contributes to the overall mission. That is not easy to do. And this idea of communicating in a simple, clear and concise manner to talk all the time is really hard. But from the very beginning, he's like, hey, this is the mission.

Here are seven things that we're going to do to allow that to happen. Subordinate commanders, your job is to make it happen. So he's tying all these things together. And it sounds so simple when I'm hearing him say, but I'm realizing how hard that actually is in an organization to get everybody to understand what it is they do to contribute. If you can make your administrative folks feel like they are war fighters, you have a clear mission statement.

Yeah, imagine. I have no idea how many troops he's talking to. It's talking to overseas American troops, millions of. Yeah, maybe not millions, but this is hundreds and hundreds of thousands of troops.

This continual turnover of personnel precludes commanders from programming a single training cycle common to all men as employed in a basic training center. It requires the programming of a number of successive cycles, which may overlap to some degree and at times may operate concurrently during any 12 month period. The commander will need to place emphasis on the following cycles of training. So again, he's just emphasizing the fact you're going to lose people, you're going to lose them all the time, and that's going to make your job hard.

Here's the things that you need to focus on advanced individual training to improve the efficiency of minimum service soldiers or to provide refresher training for men of longer service. So you've got to just train individuals basic unit training to improve the efficiency of cruise teams and squads, advanced unit training to integrate teams, Cruz and squads into small units, combined arms training to integrate infantry, armor, artillery engineer and other supporting units in the company in battalion group exercises, and then combat mission training to include readiness tests, rehearsals of operational plans and joint combined training.

So that's what you're doing. He's saying that same thing over and over again. You've got to train the individual, then you've got to train that that next level team. Then you've got to integrate them with the other teams. Then you've got to get all those teams working together. Very good way to think about how you train in any organization you're in. Next, the need to maintain a high level combat readiness without peaks and valleys of proficiency prevents the commander from concentrating for long on any cycle before going into the next.

This is not to imply that a unit must perform all five cycles at one time. It does mean that the commander must elevate continually the level of proficiency of his men and unit in each of these five phases of training based on this evaluation. He plans his training program. Ideally, the commander assesses the proficiency of each soldier in all five cycles and organizes his training so that individuals and the unit as a whole progress systematically through all cycles. And he goes on to explain this.

And what I like about this is how often with whatever organization you're in or whatever organization you're leading, do you actually think in a holistic way comprehensively about the methodology that you're using to train your people? The answer is probably not great. So if we don't have even a goal of what good looks like, if we haven't written down what good looks like, how are we possibly going to get there?

Going ahead a little bit, base, balancing unit and activities, the training for combat readiness is not the only mission of the commander. He must also make adequate provisions for the supply and maintenance of the unit equipment administration and discipline, community relations program, troop morale and welfare programs. And the all these activities demand their share of resources, time and emphasis. So. So not only do you have to train people for combat, that's great. That's your number one priority.

You already said that you also got all these other things that you need to handle, which, by the way, is the same in any organization, in any organization that you're in. Guess what you've got? You've got to take care of the families. You've got to make sure that your guys are healthy. You've got to make sure that they've got something to distract their mind and keep them occupied.

Continuing on the immediate day to day pressures of these additional functions, resulting in a tendency to emphasize them at the expense of combat readiness needs. So all of a sudden he just went from like, look, you got to take care of those other things. You got to get it's like the it's like when it's like when someone goes, you know, I just read you I read I read at that Fitness magazine that, you know, rest is even more important than working out, you know what I'm saying?

And all of a sudden that becomes the thing. The prevailing mode is rest.

Yes. You know you know what I'm talking about. I do know it's kind of got a chuckle. Yeah. A year ago, you're looking at me like I said. Have you ever caught yourself in that combined arms dilemma? Know where you were kind of like, well, you know, rest is important.

Important? Yeah. Yes, I have, in a way.

But in this way, which might even kind of apply to this as far as the concept goes, because you use that as the example, if I'm working out or if I don't feel like working out and I'm like, well, I did work up pretty hard yesterday and rest is important rationalizing.

Maybe I should rest. It's not like this. Rest today will hurt me. If anything, it'll help me write a little bit complicated kind of question or statement.

I get it. But I'm just saying it's kind of the same thing where you have that starts to become the cause for that moment. It was the prevailing thing.

Got it.

So we have to make sure that we provide ample room for rest and recovery, but we can't let that become the prevailing mode of operating.

Yeah, which let's face it, what do people gravitate towards?

People like that gravitate towards that couch, the comfort, the fun.

The unit commander must recognize that even after the elimination of nice to have activities necessary functions remain which cannot be fully executed within the resources available to him. His only recourse is to do first things first. And I got a question like that today, talking to a client. Well, what do we do when we're resource constrained? What do we do when we don't have the manpower? It's like, oh, cool. Yeah, we already talked about Jimmy.

You talk about priorities actually earlier. Yeah, that's good. That's what we're talking about. That's what it is. Prioritize and execute. It's interesting, too, I used to use this quote, and when I was talking to clients, I'd say there's no organization in the world that has unlimited resources. We've worked with some companies now that come pretty damn close to unlimited, at least financial resources, they they have, for all practical purposes, unlimited resources.

The problem is the problem becomes human capital. Right. You can only get there's only so many people in existence that have a certain job skill, have a certain capability.

And so that becomes a limiting factor. So even with a company that has more money than they can spend, they could throw all kinds of money at whatever problem they have.

But they're limited by their limited by human resources. And you could even when you say, look, we can pay, we can pay, you know, however many people, a million dollars a year, those people just do not exist. And so so there is I've had to modify that a little bit. But the statement remains true.

There's no there's no organization in the world that has unlimited resources. Everyone has limited resources. Everyone every company, the biggest companies in the world have limited resources. That's all there is to it. And so what do you always have to do, you always have to prioritize and execute, you always have to prioritize and execute.

He must go. What was what he's there's a part that I think he's also getting at, too, is if you understand what that what that number one priority is, those other things he talked about and he kind of did kind of the classic dichotomy here.

This is important. But, yeah, he also understands that all those things, those morale, welfare, recreation type things, what they're actually designed to do is when we need to come back to that priority, when we need to surge for that most important thing. Investing of that is actually the best way to have your guys have the energy to to exert themselves even more kind of thinking about like surge operations are thinking about when I'm on a deployment, we're supposed to go for six months and we get that.

We get the notification four and a half months into it. You're getting extended for six weeks and this six month deployment is not going to be closer to eight months. If you made that investment in your family and they are are all in because you've demonstrated that you care about them, you can do those extra six weeks. It's no factor. But when you you forsake all these other things and don't recognize that those things are important, it's really hard to get anything extra out of your guys.

And this is a guy who's obviously has experience with we're going to have to exert our selves at some point. And when that time comes, hey, weekends at home with the family, those things aren't going to happen. And the way for that to happen is to invest in that when you can when you have the time and resources to do it, knowing that you can actually come back to the thing that matters the most, which is you going to do your job.

Yeah, it's it's a great correlation to the rest and recovery that we're on for physical working out. If you got time, you need to rest because there's going to be a time where there's not going to rest and you're going to get you're going to catch a beat down.

So that's the way it's going to happen.

Continue on. He must analyze his mission and determine the relative priority and degree of interdependence of the functions essential to the mission accomplishment. Based on these considerations, he must develop a program of unit activities which provides a balanced distribution of resources amongst these functions. So, yes, you've got to take care of your people to plan such a balanced program. A commander must first survey his many tasks in toto. Toto, do you think I look that word up?

Yeah, I think I sure did. Yeah, and it's a word Toto means everything means just what it sounds like. It means everything completely.

So you got to look at everything and then you can do a little prioritize and execute. And then having made a complete list listing of appropriate to his command, the commander should analyze the proportion of hours and manpower being given to each activity. One method is to calculate the man hours devoted to each activity as a percentage of total man hours available to the units. A continuous realistic appraisal of the units man hours is an essential part of command. When the commander feels that an imbalance exists and that the accomplishment of his mission is thereby threatened, he must take positive, aggressive action to rectify the situation.

When he has exhausted all means at his disposal without correcting the imbalance, then he should seek assistance from his higher commander.

That little trick I called a trick of man hours. That little trick of when people say we can't get this done and you go, oh, how many man hours will it take to get this done? You ask that question because a lot of times they they've just looked at the task and may have made a gut decision, but the problem with that gut decision is they could be right. But it doesn't help you because you have no you have nowhere to go.

Because if Echo if I say hey, echo, how long it's going to take you to pour to build this block wall. And you say, I don't know, I can't get it done. I don't have it's going to take way too long. OK, well how long is it going to take? How long would it take one man to do it. But just you buy yourself a week. OK, so that's 40 hours. What if I give you three more people?

You don't say so, digging in a little bit and figuring out how long it takes to do something.

That's the data. That's the data that you need.

He's also telling you to go back to your boss complaint if you're under resourced. Show them the information. Hey, boss. Hey, listen, you need to get this done. It takes X amount of time, X amount of people. I'm on our staff. I can't get this done on time. That's a totally different thing than JoCo do. I can't do this, man. It's too hard. It's too much work. Don't go to your boss and complain.

If you don't have it, you need no factor.

We can address that, but we can only address that if you actually come back to me with something that's solvable other than this is too big of a problem for me.

Yeah, yeah. That that is really what it is.

It's like it's, it's too big of a problem then I'm in the mood for. It's like that kind of situation because you do this all the time, even on a small level, you all start asking those questions like, well, well you know and then where, where, where, where, where, where are being real vague.

I know. But because I can't really think of anything that just gave me that feeling right. When you when you said, hey, how long is this concrete wall going to take? I was acting like I know that feeling well and I see what you're doing because you're like, hey, we like this is a problem that needs to be solved to me, you know, and you put some task on me that it's like that's just your idea.

Like, let's think so instead instead of like, OK, let's think through the whole thing, really understand what it takes to do it. You know that that process exists no matter how big and how small. Me, I just see how big it is or estimate how big it is. And I'm like, I'm really not in the mood for this right now, you know, and then you just get to the bottom of it. So it's kind of like undeniably doable, you know?

And I'm like, I got to do this to you. And I don't really.

Yeah, there's a there's a surface level way of looking at things and just seeing, like, what's on the surface and going, hey, you know, you see the tip of an iceberg and you go look at icebergs. Huge. I can't I can't handle that whole iceberg. It's too it's too big. Well, let's get a snorkel and mask and look underwater and see how much ice is down there that we got to chip away. Yeah, that can be done.

Yeah. And I kind of boxed you into something. Oh yeah.

Big time even that analogy. Right. That iceberg. Like I see it, you're like, OK, that's the tip of the iceberg. We know that iceberg is big to me. I'm like, yeah, I don't deal with big iceberg necks like this one. And you're like, OK, it's big but you know, there's more to it than that. I'm like, man, I don't know. I'm not in the mood for all that part.

You know, it's like that is the difference, you know. But at the end of the day, it's kind of like that's how we all are naturally.

Right, where if you see a big task or let's say you see like a goal. Right. Or something like this and you're like, yeah, man, I want that goal. I want that element of success or whatever.

And then you start like going for it.

In the moment, you realize that, man, this is going to take a lot more than I'm in the mood for, whether it be things get boring or you realize it's more work or you realize shit, I got to learn this new skill to even get to step to. And I didn't really account for that when I wanted that thing to begin with. You start to be like, well, it's too it's too much, you know. So yes.

Or even if it gets boring or something like that rather than analyzing it. OK, well, what would it take to do that? Oh, no, I could have learned this. OK, let's learn that and then let's read about, you know, step by step by step. And most of the time in the beginning, you just not in the mood for all those steps, man.

You know, you just revealed a pattern of thought that I have that I realized that I do all the time.

And I think it's actually very important that I've never really talked about it before.

But I think what it boils down to, I look at things and I see them or I I will look at them until I understand that they are finite, that they're the things are finite.

There is whatever that thing is, I will I can get to the end of it. Yeah, I can get to the end of it. I can pull that string and I will get to the end.

That that thing is finite.

There is nothing there's nothing that I'm going to find on Earth to to attack. That's infinite, right?

There's no infinite thing that I can think of with that. I would look at with a view of like, OK, here's something I want to do. Oh, it's an infinite task. No, doesn't exist. There's nothing that I can do. That's an infinite task. Yeah. Look, if we could we say it's it's infinite that we want to continue to learn. Yes. That's a. Infinite thing, is it infinite that we want to try and improve ourselves and get better?

Yeah, that's an infinite thing.

Is there any particular task that we can come across where it's infinite?

No. You get a scuba mask, you get in the water, you dive and you will find the bottom of that iceberg. And maybe you have to come back up and get scuba tanks and you have to go down there. Maybe you've got to get a mini sub, but you can find the bottom of that thing. And then guess what? You can get it back up. You can grab a little little pickaxe and you can start chipping away at that thing.

Yeah, yeah. And then and at that point, really, at the end of day, like, if you be honest with yourself, you can come to a point and determine whether or not it's worth it. Like if you go down and you're like, hey, we're trying to move this iceberg because we want to do this and do that and whatever. Right. And then you go there and you're like, dang, this is this iceberg is way bigger than we thought and it's kind of not worth it.

Our end goal isn't worth all that what we're going to expend.

You know, think about your difference in mentality, though, when you see that something is finite. Yeah. That totally changes your attitude from thinking this thing could go on forever because now your your your efforts are futile, literally futile.

Yeah. But once you know that this thing is finite, this job has an end. Guess what? I'm going to start chipping and I can I can be persistent and I'm going to make progress.

You know what? I don't know if this is like two of the same thing, but you have this thing where, you know, the whole idea of, like, doing something even though you don't feel like doing it. Yes. Like, you don't really have that. Like you don't have the you don't have the opposite. You like you don't have that thing that tells you, hey, like don't do it. Like if you don't feel like doing it, don't do it if you think it needs to be done.

So having that quality helps that kind of situation. So like, OK, I'll apply it to like working out right where with.

So what's the thing that I don't I don't have like your behavior changing because you don't feel like doing something. Got it. So you'll be like oh I don't feel like it, but that has nothing to do with what I'm doing, you know. So like if you're about to work out and you're like, man, I got this hard workout I got, I got twenty five sets till failure today. That's my workout with all these exercises and all this stuff.

If I don't, if I only got one hour sleep like that's just not doable for me. You know, the fact, the fact is it is doable, it's going to suck. But if that's not a factor in your thinking then you're just going to do it. You're just going to the sucking part is just going to be part of the workout kind of thing and it's going to sort of get done. So if you start thinking like that in the beginning, like start asking yourself, well, we know that it can be done.

What will it take to get it done?

The workout and then you, like, kind of the same stuff it always like. That's the truth. The same stuff it took last time.

You know, it'll just suck less and then boom, then you have that finite thing like, oh, I see exactly what's making me not want to do it. And then it's sort of that I admit that to yourself.

Yeah. You ever have like a horrible workout and then you think to yourself, well, OK, sometimes I'll be staring at whatever workout and I know it's going to suck. And you know what? You know what I just realized? I do. I go, well, I'll start now. It will be over in one hour and 20 minutes. If I start right now, it's going to be over. And when I know what I have to do, I'll just turn off my brain.

But it becomes a finite thing. Yeah, I make it. I use time to put up to put a end on it. In my mind I won't say, oh this workouts go, I'll go, oh this workout is going to suck. It's going to be over an hour and 20 minutes.

I've done so interesting. Yeah I do the I mean essentially it's another version of that we're OK. When I first sort of started out a time my rest and I still do, but I can time it in my head.

No way better because I'm so used to, to whatever. But if I'm like really not feeling like working out, I'll set the timer right there.

So it's like the workouts going to be done regardless.

Regardless if I don't set the timer, I'll take a little ten, twenty second more rest and then it extends it out more and becomes sort of the stick. But if the timer is rolling right there, you're going to do it whether you feel like because that's part of the workout, you know, and then you're done and you're just done. It's it actually goes quicker than the one of the hardest moves to make.

One of the hardest movements to make in the gym is press and start on the skybox, you know, and I do that.

So and I'll I'll write it like in I'll write it on social media. I'll be like him.

Hemmed and hawed, hesitated, waited, stretch some more get a little more warmed.

I just had it's usually let's face it, it's usually squats where you're like, OK, well you know, maybe I should just do a little bit more stretching, maybe I should do a little bit more overhead squat form with the PVC just to make sure I'm good. And you do all these things and all you're doing is just putting it off.

And then finally I go, OK, you know what? Shut up. And when I go, this thing only ends when I start.

It can only end if I start. This thing can only end if I start it.

That's a good thing to say. I never tried though. And if it starts.

Yes, I'll do. Of all, I organize a little thing like, oh, man, that's kind of necessary to organize the good stuff, you're clean from that. Well, that's good. I have never gone that. I might do an extra couple of sets, a warmup, but I'm not starting a vacuum sketch.

Had a bad check.

All right. Getting back to the book, everything that I have said about the balancing of unit activities is doubly valid for the training program itself. The most valuable resource available to the commander is his men's. Time and time, once lost, can never be regained.

That's fitting.

Time, once lost, can never be regained poorly, poorly prepared, unimaginative or unnecessary instructions and waste soldiers timed worse. It is boring and soon results in ineffective, poorly trained individuals with no initiative or esprit. The skillful commander is the one who adopts the philosophy of gainful employment for each man and one who takes maximum advantage of every training hour to ensure value received man member.

All that dumb training you did in the military. I do like when they started there, you would just do some training, you'd go, man, this is just horrible, horrible.

What are we doing to waste?

In this respect, prior preparation and effective supervision are essential, prior preparation must not be limited to determining merely what is material is to be merely what material is to be presented in gathering appropriate training. AIDS meetings and rehearsals should be held for appropriate officers and non-commissioned officers sufficiently in advance to ensure that the training preparation meets the desired standards. Hey, prep for your training. If you're an instructor, you owe it to the students. Nevertheless, a commander must realize that the instructor is his most important training tool and that any time required, including duty hours to prepare that tool for its job is time well spent.

The hours given to preparation and rehearsal of instruction will be repaid many fold in the hundreds of man hours that are saved by not wasting soldiers time with poorly presented training.

Oh, totally legit. Don't waste your people's time. And if you actually want to apply decentralized command, the best thing you can do with your time is train your people. It's the best thing you can do. I think we talked about in the last podcast about how much you learn when you teach, we're talking about that, I think on the very last time, just how when you become an instructor, that's when you learn the most man when you have guys on your team that can train.

You want to talk about liberating yourself to do other things and people talk about how hard it is to train your instructor, how hard it is to get your people where they need to be, that is time well spent is training your trainers. And again, everything I know, he's where he pulls all the stuff from the experience this guy had in anybody. And you asked me and I just sat there and just kind of got depressed hearing with anybody that's ever had their time wasted by a bad instructor.

I don't care if it's in school or anywhere else. We all know that feeling of this is a waste of my time. It's like the most corrosive thing you can do to somebody else is waste their time. Your instructors and look instructors is the minimum synonym mentors, teachers, leaders, whatever. That's what an instructor is. Those are the people that matter the most in your organization because they're the ones actually responsible for other people's time.

I, I took Overtreat at and I had a meeting and I rolled into the meeting and I had like oh we'll book or whatever, a little notebook. And I had like four bullet points of things I needed to tell the guys. And I walked in there and I told the guys what I need to tell them. And then I walked out and like one of my brose was like, dude, you can prepare to this stuff, right? And I was like, you can prepare to the stuff.

And I was thinking to myself. Well, yeah, I mean, what what's the alternative, what's the alternative to walk in there and really not know what the hell you're going to say? That's crazy. That's crazy. That's what that is. That's disrespectful. Which I have a problem with, there's a chunk here about safety, obviously always important, and we work with a lot of industries that safety is is absolutely paramount where lives are at risk.

So there's a section there about safety. The success of any safety program is dependent on the quality of support and leadership rendered by all unit commanders. You know, it's like, oh, we have a safety officer. Great. That's great that you have a safety officer. And guess who else is responsible for safety? Everyone.

Training under tactical conditions, to me, it is basic that all field training should be conducted under tactical conditions, setting up an administrative bivouac is the easy way out, but it is bad practice and has no place in the field training of today's soldier.

Each soldier participating in tactical training will learn to think and act in a manner fitting for combat. He'll make mistakes at first, but it will be easier for him to overcome them in a tactical environment. Then it'll be easier for easier for him to overcome them in a tactical environment than an administrative one. Realistic combat habits developed in training will be second nature to soldiers in combat, poorly trained soldier, the poorly trained soldier taken by surprise without a weapon in his rare in his hand rarely gets a second chance to amend his habits.

So look, obviously, is the connection to the military here is obvious. When you're going to go to the range or you got range time, don't bring out, you know, an RV to sit around and play video games while you're not shooting, go and set up tactical sites and spend time in the field and make the most of that the same thing in the business world.

Right. If we're going to train people for a certain scenario to do it in the most realistic way that you maximize the training. After entering, combat, commanders will find it's too late to teach dispersion, first aid, marksmanship, camouflage care and maintenance of equipment and the thousand and one other things that go to make up the well trained soldier and unit. It is also a little late to furnish him an adequate training background of information.

So if you wait. It's going to be a problem.

It's the similar thing of people that think, well, you know, if I get into a fight or we'll fight, brolgas, go full rage, you know, I'll go full rage.

And they think that that's going to make up for 18 years of jujitsu, wrestling. Moiseyev And boxing is not happening. You will lose. There's no there's it's too late. You have to train.

You have to prepare before it actually happens. From a leadership perspective, isn't it crazy? Isn't it crazy to think that. Hey. I can just roll into a leadership situation without any training, without role playing, without thinking through some contingencies in my mind, and things are just going to go, I'll just know what to do.

Why would you think that? Why would you think that?

Why would you get that idea in your head? Why would you get the idea in your head that if you've got to go talk to one of your subordinates that had an outburst and and is upset about something, why would you think that just rolling in there, you'll just know what to do? Why would you not think through that? Why would you not train? Why would you not prepare if you have subordinate leaders?

That are working for you, why would you assume that if there's a contingency that unfolds, that they're just going to figure it out? Why would you assume that they're going to know how to handle when somebody flies off the off the handle?

Why would you assume that they're going to know how to handle when a client comes in and is having a having an outburst? Why would you assume that they're going to know what to do? And if they know what to do, why would you assume that they're actually to be able to do it?

Because that's the next level, right, is you can do the moves all day of moiety and wrestling. But until you're going against someone, until you spar with someone, until you roleplay with someone, you're not actually able to do it. Why would you assume that?

The answer is you assume that if you were dumb, don't assume that train train for those leadership situations, train for those hand-to-hand combat situations.

Next section. Training for good habits. And discipline in battle, the habits and discipline that have been instilled in training are of supreme importance. First, because men in combat will do instinctively what they have been in the habit of doing in training. And second, because only the extra drive of discipline will enable the soldier to overcome the fear that all men experience in battle.

There you go. Supreme importance, by the way, this guy is not he's not throwing words around just because they sound good or just trying to emphasize something a little bit. He's using this word and might be the only time he uses that. Habits and discipline are of supreme importance. Men will do in combat what they have been in the habit of doing and training, every experienced commander knows this, but too often he fails to appreciate the absolute necessity of practicing only correct procedures.

It is essential that good habits be so deeply ingrained in each individual soldier through correct teaching and intensive practice that even under the stress of battle, he will do the right thing both immediately and instinctively. Conversely, because practice makes perfect, a commander must never under any circumstances permit training errors to be repeated.

There you go to the question of discipline.

I would ask you to consider this more in the light of self-discipline, because all too often the word discipline takes on the connotation of restriction, overbearing authority and blind obedience.

We do not want an automaton. We want an effective combat ready soldier who has a keen sense of duty and who feels an obligation to his commander, to the men around him and to his unit.

So anybody that's questioning, you know, even me when I'm saying, hey, look, you get some DNA coming from World War One, you get some of that, you get some of that feeling that he's sort of, hey, listen, you know, the rank structure is important. You better do it yourself. There it is.

Blind obedience. No, not what we want. Overbearing authority, not what we want. Restriction on what you're able to do, not what we want. What we want is self-discipline.

I'm I'm partially just enjoying picturing you reading that and the reaction you had as you reading that in General Clarke's book for the first time, the only thing I wrote down, I wrote it down before he said this is the good news in all this when he's talking about the challenge of making real difficult and realistic training.

People like hard training, they like hard training. They respond to hard training and for whatever pushes you away from not wanting to make things difficult. That's actually what your people want. When I look back and all the things that I did, the hardest things I did were the things I enjoyed the most.

So whatever you're feeling like, the harder it is, the better it is, because he talked about the incident. This is what's going to keep your people alive in war for sure. But hard training is actually what your people want.

Funny you should say that. Let me read the next paragraph.

Instilling discipline in troops is actually not as difficult as it may appear.

As a matter of fact, the answer to instilling discipline can be given in one word training.

Good training overcomes resistance to obedience and resentment of authority. So I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics. You want to build morale in a team, you've got to do hard things or things go through suffering together that will bring you that will bring your unit together, that will increase your rear morale.

It will also increase your discipline that covers the tangible things. It makes them better at the skill, whatever skill you're training for. But the intangible things like morale, the discipline you just talked about, the esprit de corps, the willingness to take and make sacrifices, that's the intangible qualities that also come from that as well, which is every bit as important as being really good at your job. I like this guy. One of the keys to successful training is developing our men into the proper attitude toward training.

Generally, our men want to do what we want them to do. And when they don't, it's usually because we have failed to instruct them properly.

That's our fault. A guiding principle that applies to all units and organizations is that a man must understand clearly what is expected of him. Merely telling him is not enough. He must be instructed. Proper training will also foster pride and confidence in the individual, a pride and confidence that will be extended to his leaders and units as well. When that pride and confidence have been nurtured to a point that obedience becomes a habit and response becomes natural and willing. You've gone a long way towards your goal of combat readiness.

As you can see, habit and discipline go hand in hand. A poorly disciplined unit is evidence that its commander has failed to instill proper habits through his training program and right from the very start.

Now, again, now you feel a little bit of lean back, right? A little bit of lean back to obedience.

Becoming a habit and response becomes natural. So you get a little bit of a lean back towards. All right. So now we're getting somebody that's going to be like obedience is sort of part of that discipline.

Even though he said earlier, look, we don't want automatons, we do not want automatons. That's not what we're looking for. It's not what we're trying to. That's what we're trying to train. That's the last thing that I want. Decentralization of responsibility. Once he has set his goals and started his training program in motion, a commander must rely upon the initiative of his subordinates, G.

By properly delegating responsibility and the related authority, a commander will foster this initiative and will enhance the development of all subordinate's officers and non-commissioned officers alike. I must emphasize here that this principle cannot be restricted merely to the training program, but should extend to all unit activities. This is it. This is a decentralized command. This is the fourth wall of combat, decentralized command that doesn't only apply to training, it doesn't only apply to planning.

It doesn't only apply to operations, it applies to everything. Decentralized command is how you need to operate. How many officers are doing the jobs of their noncommissioned officers, we speak of enhancing the prestige of our noncommissioned officers, but the best possible way of doing this is by giving them responsibility to do the jobs themselves, while also insisting, insisting that they accomplish them properly. What's giving people ownership? Let them do it. Try that with your kids, make dinner, make tie your own shoes, clean your own room, do your own laundry, make them responsible.

Decentralized that command and guess what, you can do that, then you can focus on getting them better training. This is not to say that the commander should abdicate his own responsibility, but a one man shop of is a one man shop is evidence of poor leadership. There you go. So if you're running everything, bad leadership, a good commander will patiently and carefully instruct his subordinates to ensure they know what is expected. He may even have his subordinates return and present their plans for accomplishing the tasks, but he will then insist that they get the jobs done without detailed guidance.

So again, now we're back to like this leaning back towards, hey, I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do. Look, I want obedience, but you go figure out what you want to do. So he's balancing this dichotomy of leadership between, hey, you need to put some structure in place so people know what to do. But I don't want you to go and figure out how how are you going to get it done?

It's almost like you have to take the word obedience and and change what that natural reaction you have.

Because I hear the word obedience. I don't like that word. There's a I don't like that word.

And just like you describe, I actually don't I don't want my people to feel like they have to be obedient to me. And so it's almost as if the obedience isn't, I say to do something and you do it. It's the obedience is it's the natural. Almost unspoken reaction that what we need to get done is going to get done as opposed to you will do what I say because that if that's the obedience you're looking for, you actually you're just hurting yourself in so many different ways.

But there's there's language in here.

When I hear you say it might kind of get that little I don't I don't like that. But as he explains it and kind of peels that back, the obedience he's referring to isn't I demand you to be obedient to my orders. It's I want and when he talks about decentralization, I want the obedience to be we are going to solve this problem. We're going to get whatever needs to get done. I'm actually going to have you figured out half the time.

Yeah.

And I think to take what you just said and take it one step further, what obedience is and it's everything he is saying is is leading to towards the result of what obedience is. If you're obedient, you're driving towards accomplishing the mission. That's it. That's my obedience. We've got a mission and I'm going to accomplish it. That's what I'm going to do, because he's literally saying without detailed guidance, I'm not going to tell you how to do it.

Here's the mission. Go accomplish it. That's obedience. By giving them responsibility and authority and by underwriting their honest mistakes, he will encourage them to exercise initiative and accept responsibility.

He will help them to develop into more effective individuals and hence in the more effective soldiers and officers. This, in turn, will result in a better unit. That sentence right there, giving, giving responsibility and giving authority and underwriting their mistakes like, hey, made a mistake.

I got I got it. No problem. So from. You're encouraging them. That's how you create leaders that are going to take initiative, which is exactly what you want. If you're a good leader, a problem arises when individuals are given the authority to make decisions on various types of actions and then fail to use it. How much time is wasted by passing the buck to the next level, even though authority existed to make a decision on the spot?

Training, supervision, proper supervision of training still remains primarily the commander's responsibility, a good model to bear in mind as an organization does well, only things the boss checks he. He goes over that over and over again. He talks about inspections again here. We covered that on one of the earlier podcasts.

And one thing he does say, and I'll just reemphasize it a word of caution is in order inspections that are poorly scheduled or executed will harass the troops.

And if you're harassing the troops with your little freaking inspection, you're wrong. You're wrong. That's not what inspections are for. Training methods, proper methods of training will produce better soldiers in less time and hence speed the building of combat ready units. A discussion on training methods invariably includes the question of the committee system versus the unit method of training, which is better, probably a combination of the two methods at the lowest practicable level of command is the best answer.

Decentralized command. Small unit commanders should be responsible for the bulk of training. Although specialized subject or those involving a small segment of several units often lend themselves to centralized instruction by committees. So that's all good stuff if you've got some universal skill that everyone needs to learn. Hey, send people to a schoolhouse for that. We get that.

And he goes in through these things. Talks about some bad practices as well, bad practices such as having men wait in line to run a lane on the assault course or having men wait behind the ready line to fire on a range. You've got to eliminate those things, he says. And he says it cannot be emphasized too often that a man learns best by doing. In every appropriate subject or element of training, practical application must be stressed. Got to do sometimes I would get these instructors I remember especially going through close quarters, combat training, you know, so clearing rooms.

And in the beginning, when you're taking a task unit through the instruction of room clearances, you know, you start at a very fundamental basic level. And guys are doing one in two men room. That's the staff who are sorry, two men, rematches entries.

And so, like, I would get basically maybe take two platoons to do two different sections of the class. And one of the instructors would be a guy that would focus on really explaining things a lot, going into a lot of detail, maybe maybe like to hear himself talk a little bit.

The other person maybe is a guy that's like, hey, here's what you got to do. All right, let's start running. Let's start doing it.

And by the end of the day, I'd have to switch the platoons because the platoon that was doing would be way ahead of the platoon that was listening.

You have to freakin do stuff. Yeah. You have to freakin do stuff. Would you get down there? I mean, you got to remember to I'm sitting here listening as you're talking about it, I'm hearing it from you through him for the first time, connecting it to the things that I've experienced. And I'm hearing all these little there's all these common things he keeps coming back to, was talking about not wasting people's time. He's talking about pushing decision making down.

He's talking about giving your people authority and responsibility and then taking ownership of their honest mistakes. A great way to not waste your people's time is to not have them be reliant on you to make decisions for them, and as you push that decision making down, your subordinate leaders get closer and closer to the problem and their ability to solve the problems and do things that are constructive and useful for their people. Is them not being reliant on you and why I wrote it down?

He asked the question beginning. He said, how many officers are doing the jobs of their noncommissioned officers? How many leaders are making decisions and doing things on your team, in your organization right now that you really shouldn't be doing? And the answer is probably almost all of you.

And if you can just have a mental exercise. Let me just think for a minute of any task that I do that I really shouldn't be doing. If you're doing that, you are wasting your people's time. You're hindering their development, find a task that you shouldn't be doing and push it down to them. And then when they screw it up, take responsibility and ownership for it, train them better, resource them better.

But as you push those decision making, push that Decision-Making down, you waste less of their time. And just I'm just hearing him connecting all these things together and how crazy, how simple it sounds when he says it, but how often we don't do the very thing he's describing.

And isn't it strange that this is a guy that spent forty five years in the military and well, at forty five years in the military, whatever, 50 years ago, and actually a hundred years ago, because he was got in in nineteen seventeen, so one hundred and three years ago and he spent his whole life in the army, multiple wars. But what we're talking about, you and I, we definitely apply it to we reflect on our time in the military and do we reflect on businesses right now in every single industry that we work with all the time we talk to on a daily.

How many companies do you talk to a day? Three, four or five different companies a day every day? Me too. And personnel at different levels inside those companies.

And all these things apply. All these things apply.

Universal, there are universal truths to leadership that really are universal truth to leadership improvement through ideas, research and development.

The Army is constantly seeking ways and means to improve the training of the individual, as well as to develop and improve equipment and procedures. Research into new and more modern methods and ideas is a continuing process. Various organizations, both military and civilian, devote all their energies to two projects of a research nature, and he goes on talking about that, applying well established scientific principles to military problems. These groups observe the test individuals and units over a period of time to determine the best method of performing a specific operation or the advisability of adopting a specific item being studied.

So he's he looks at things not saying, hey, I got the answer. That's him saying, look, we got to you got to bring in experts that actually can study and see what the right answer is. Commanders should always encourage imagination and ingenuity, seeking better ways to solve their training, maintenance and management problems. Next section, Chapter nine, training the individual, adjusting the soldier to his new career, the individual begins his military career in an army training center or in a selected unit to the new soldier.

This is the front door to the army.

Here he gets his first taste of military life. This is where he is indoctrinated in the fundamentals of military service and where he forms the thoughts, ideas and habits that stay with him throughout his service and that go with him when his service is terminated. From this starting point in his career, the soldier will develop in proportion to the effort made to put him on the right track and to the application of sound training practices during this vital period of adjustment. This is something that I absolutely saw all the time.

And I don't know if you would. I don't know if this would apply to while flying jets.

But what you learn, what guys learn in their first platoon, they always are biased towards that as being the right thing. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, archaic or not new old. They what they learn in that first platoon, they always I know I always was and I had to fight against that unnatural bias or natural bias that I would have towards, hey, well, you know, this is what I learned. This is the way you do it.

I guess that first thing you learn leaves the deepest, the deepest scars.

The deepest trail, does that happen with flying jets totally, man, you show up in your first squadron and the things that that the more experienced guys are saying is gospel and it's probably not a lot different for you.

You know, most guys I did what I did. We spent our whole lives dreaming about doing it. And by the time you finally got your first squadron, which was the the top of the mountain, you've been climbing your whole life, everything there is. What is everything that said, there is gospel because you made it to where you wanted to be. And these guys that have been there are telling you that stuff is seared in your brain. And the truth is, is it's not all right.

A lot of it is is not right. And it's really hard to undo those bad habits. Same thing happened to me. I got there first, first. And people are talking that is burned into my brain. Is there anything that you learned in your first squadron that later you were like, wow, I learned that the wrong way?

Yeah, a lot. You in life do this a lot. When you when you tell stories about what was unique about TASC Unit Bruiser and the uniqueness of that was was a lot less about the tactics and the maneuvers that you executed and the weapons and things like that. It was so much more about the culture, the mindset and the and the the recognition of ownership and leadership being the thing that's going to make you unique.

What I learned or look back on in my image, the lessons of my first squadron certainly learned some things like, hey, that's not the best way to run the system or the best way to maneuver your aircraft. But what I learned the most in retrospect was the leadership that was either good or bad. And it's really hard to diagnose bad leadership when you're a really young guy, at least initially, you'll show up in kind of whatever's going on.

They're like, OK, this is how it is cool. And you kind of get on board. And it's actually connected to to a note that I wrote when you were talking about people walking in the front door, we may think we've got a lot of time with those new folks, but they start to form those opinions very quickly. You know, the first couple of days are just kind of clueless. They're just going to get on board. But very quickly, they're going to start to take note of what's going on around them and they're going to acclimate to whatever type of leadership you give them.

And if it's good leadership, they're going to they're going to align with that. And if it's not, they're going to live with that, too. And so the clock that you're running with these new folks, they start to move to whatever direction you push them very, very quickly. And my what I look back on is the lessons that I learned.

I look back like, man, I thought that squadron was really good and it really wasn't. We didn't do a lot of these things that we should have been doing. And it's mostly centered around the things you've always talked about, about, hey, you know what? When we take our squadron up to Fallon for four, three weeks for Big Fallon airwing that, you know, we're doing on Friday nights, everybody's going out to the bars on Friday nights.

And that's what we did. And when I was in squadrons units that they didn't do those things because they knew that they had limited window for training and they were going to stay and and and get better.

That's when the contrast became much more clear about the things that I'd grown up with that weren't nearly as good as I thought they were at the time.

And look, man, when you're on the other side and you tell these stories about trade, that when you've seen 10000 runs of the same clearance, literally just thousands upon thousands, it becomes very easy to see what good and bad looks like.

Yeah, the the pride, the positive identification of good and bad man. I don't know why I was paying attention to that stuff when I was a young frogman.

And it was you know, we showed up in the nineties, man.

We showed up in the 90s and the 90s. Was after the 80s, and I know that might sound funny, but it's important because the 80s there was basically no war.

I mean, most of the 70s, yeah, so think about that, you know, like the last SEAL platoon in the early 70s, one of the seventy two, seventy three, something like the last platoon, there was a couple more stragglers over there, but then you go 70, then you go all the way to 1980, then you go all the way from 80 to 90. And you had to look you had Grenada, a handful of guys, you had Panama, a handful of guys.

And by a handful, you know, 50 guys, whatever the number is.

But it's a very tiny percentage of the community. And then you roll into the 90s.

But I'm coming off the 80s.

So understanding what it meant to be combat ready. Was a faded picture. It was a faded picture and there were some guys that knew and the thank God, thank God some of those old Vietnam guys were there. Thank God some of the second some of the people that had learned firsthand from the Vietnam guys, they were there to to to hold that line.

But there was also guys that were, you know, reading on war, we ain't going to war you.

We're going drinking, you know, that's what. And even if we're not going drinking, you know what? We're not going we're not going to war. We're going to hang out with our family. We're going to go run some side business. We're going to go do other things besides just be a team guy.

And that's a weird place to come from. It's a weird place to roll into the teams when you have these expectations. Like I had the I had the dumbest expectations.

You know, I thought I was going to knowm thought I was going to know. In 1994, I was ready to deploy to Danang.

You still think I still kind of do think that man, whenever I talk to tell those guys I remember asking it like, was it hard to know? Maybe was it maybe was Dick Thompson? I was like, was it hard? Because he volunteered for this, volunteered for that? And I said, was it hard to volunteer? He's like, no. They were like, oh, you want to go to Special Forces School right over here? Oh, you want to go to SOGGE school right over here.

Oh, you want to be an obstacle right over here. You step, right? Oh yeah. We got openings man. We got openings. Why do we got openings. We got openings. We have more than one hundred percent casualty rating. Right. More than one hundred percent casualty rating. If you show up here, you will be wounded or killed. How's it going?

Yeah, there's the line and those little Frenchman dictum just rolling in. Just be good. Let's do it. What do you got? We can't tell you about it. Cool. I'll sign up when I put my name.

Don't do the titles for the SOGGE episodes of this podcast Dead Man Walking. Don't don't go to SOGGE.

That's what that was the word. That was the gouge. Did you use that term. The gouging. Totally.

That's the guy that was the gouge. Don't go to school, go to SOGGE and these guys are like, well why wouldn't we go to soccer?

Everyone gets wounded or killed. Oh, cool. Sign me up. Yeah. So I thought I was going to know, so when I get to the team and and you know what I had to do with Vietnam, I got Vietnam issue, Vietnam era gear that was left over from Nam.

I got that. You couldn't tell the difference when you saw me going through Scutti. My like, the gear that I used was Vietnam gear. Like, that's the same gear, the same canteen's the same mag pouches. Everything was the same. So I kind of was going to.

But that impression that you get in that first platoon, man, it leaves a mark. Yeah, it leaves a mark.

And so that's why if you're in a leadership position and you got people checking on board, you got to recognize that you're making a mark. Don't play around with that. Essential to the smooth and orderly transformation of the individual from a citizen to a soldier is the organization and caliber of the training establishment. The commander of this training activity must be given the tools to work with and enough priority to ensure assignment of the most competent officers and men. Personnel should be carefully selected, highly motivated and imbued with the standards prescribed for basic combat training.

A prerequisite for later command has its foundation in this criteria. Until an officer and non-commissioned officer has served in these capacities, he is handicapped in the art of training units. That's powerful. How often is it that we actually invest our best people into being instructors? Not often enough. Not often enough. You guys do it. The Top Gun does it.

Yeah, well, I was thinking you guys do it as well.

I mean, the parallels between what you did in training and this is the thing when I got into the teams, no one wanted to go to training. It was, hey, man, I want to go over there.

I want to go on deployment. Yeah, I want to go to Nam. I'll want to go on deployment. That's what everybody wants to do. Part of the reason was because one of the ways that you got cred street.

Yeah. Was by doing deployments. Right. Hey, I did three deployments. I did four deployments in five deployments. You were in the pecking order. There was a pecking order. So nobody wants to get out of that cycle. They just want to go on deployment, deployment, deployment. Because you want to you want to go up that hierarchy. You want to be five platoons. You want to be seven. Do you want to do as many platoons?

You can as fast as you can. It's kind of funny because when the you know, you be a new guy in your first platoon. But then I was talking to Naameh Guy, and he was like, you're a new guy until you go into combat. So all you motherfuckers are cherries, say, Roger that, his dude sitting there with six deployment's under their belt, but they never went to war, so he's just like, yeah, Cherrie's whatever.

Yeah. Cherry boys, whatever.

Keep keep it up, man. What a life trainer personnel will face many problems with their new soldiers, trainees come from every aspect of life. So this is what I think the reason I wanted to cover this part is because we work with companies all the time. They hire people all the time. What's your indoctrination program? How you welcome them aboard? What are you doing to train them out of the gate? Oh, you got to you're so critical to get them in the role that you can't spare four days to set aside and get them trained up and familiarize and meet them with the right people.

You can't do that. It's more important that you just get them totally blind rolling into their role. That doesn't make any sense, man.

Set aside some time. Trainees come from every walk of life, all kinds of schooling, other civilian experience, multitude of aptitudes, beliefs, skills from this complex mixture of raw material. The training unit commander has to turn out train soldiers who are ready to undergo further training and ultimately become combat ready fighters in the Army's combat ready units.

During this period of his training, this new soldier will have to learn how to live as a soldier with other soldiers. He will learn to accept discipline, to keep physically fit, to develop proper habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and sanitation, and to live harmoniously with his fellow soldiers.

These things will not come easily to all trainees. Many will need lots of help and lots of guidance to overcome their troubles, their commanders, the ones who can and should give this assistance. Not weird to think about, this is where you're going to develop these people that have just they're they're just random. I know I never I always joke about the fact that I, I never flossed my teeth until I joined the Navy and in boot camp the like, you need to floss your teeth every night.

And I was like, OK, whatever.

I've never I've lost my teeth every night since then. I was just a savage that didn't floss my teeth, but that's one of the many habits where they and this is what you do. This is what you're supposed to do. Call Roger that.

I'm that kid.

Of course I can for some of my teeth with like a piece of rope, although new soldiers are being trained as replacements for other units, all training commanders will do well to look at their trainees this way. These are my men. I will train them as if I'm going to fight alongside them and as if my life will someday be in their hands. That's that's that is one cool thing that you hear from guys that worked as Bud's instructors is the attitude of like, hey, this I do.

I want this guy in a platoon with me. Right. That's a great place to start. That criteria is is is so important. I mean. Yeah, Top Gun, we talked a little bit. Maybe a difference. There was there was a key emphasis put on training in my community. A Top Gun was obviously a place that resembled a reflected that that apex of that training facility, if you want to call it that. But really what it was there was a chance to pass on information to to teach guys.

And the criteria for finishing that program was if you as an instructor who was going to if I'm going to put that top gun patch on your shoulder, the criteria was what?

I go to war with you. That was the criteria. Is this guy someone that I would go to war with as his wingman? And again, you've talked about it. It may be a little bit more evident in the military example, because we're talking about literal war and we're talking about a guy who's written something based on his experiences in war. But the translation to anywhere in the private sector, even your own family, isn't that hard.

If you think about what is the criteria that really matters to you, what you'd be willing to do with or for this person, it doesn't have to be war as the outcome. And you're talking about the investment you're making in your people up front. You can you spare can you spare a week to put this person on the right path? So his his ability to be successful in the organization is 100 times greater than if you just shoved him out there because we're understaffed or we've got to get this job done.

Go get that person in the role. Yeah. Got to make the investment that you make up front will be tenfold then not making it.

Next section is entitled The Army is built on discipline when a man comes into the army, he usually leaves home for the first time. He leaves behind his parents, his friends, the inhibitions he has built up from being around those who have been close to him. Without these the restraining influence of these inhibitions and in the quick tempo of his new life as a trainee, he is likely to slip in morals, in neatness and in energy.

The one thing that will keep him on the right track.

His discipline, development of discipline is the best way to re institute the desirable inhibitions he may have lost. How can commanders instill discipline in their trainees? The answer can be given in one word training.

This is a rehash, right, good training overcomes resistance to obedience and resentment of authority. When obedience becomes habit and is natural and willing, training is paid off in terms of discipline. Soldiers development of discipline can be part of every period of training. During basic training, commanders have many opportunities to stress the importance of these things, which which make a disciplined soldier obedience, alertness, neatness of dress and physical fitness. The training will also develop a respect for commanders and a renewed devotion to his country in battle.

Discipline is of supreme importance. This is the only time you use the word supreme.

Most men are afraid in battle, but discipline produces the courage to overcome this fear. Discipline is in. A soldier implies a sense of duty and obligation to his unit. When the soldiers of a unit share that obligation, that unit has gone a long way toward the goal of combat effectiveness. Only one kind of discipline is acceptable. It is perfect discipline. When trainees show evidence of poor discipline, it is generally because their commanders have failed to insist on perfect discipline from the start.

And that's a pattern. That's a pattern, quote, only one kind of discipline. That's perfect discipline. He talks about getting to an overseas environment, the new arrivals should be indoctrinated in the customs of the new country in which he is stationed. He should be encouraged to meet his new neighbors, learning their ways, study their language, become familiar with their history. And then he talks to skip forward a little bit to. Well, I'm going to cover this one was one of the little section simultaneously with his with his new geographical environment must come adjustment to his new situational environment.

The transformation is one of attitude in which the new arrival must be made to realize he is no longer in a basic training or garrison situation. He must now apply the training principles and garrison experience he has gained. He must be made aware of the seriousness of the situation that he is in the front line of defense against aggression. While there are many educational and recreational diversions overseas, the commander must keep the new arrival constantly alert to the necessity of keeping himself combat ready, the astute commander must be not only a leader and trainer of men.

But a student of psychology and human nature as well, he must be able to instill in his men the feeling that they can enjoy their tours of duty overseas, benefit from the experience, and at the same time be prepared to assume more serious endeavors when called upon. So there you go, you got to understand human nature, you got to understand a little psychology. Motivation for performance, it has been said that man is the Army's most valuable asset, even the greatest asset, however, becomes a liability if improperly used.

The American soldier must be properly motivated before he will efficiently and willingly perform his assigned tasks from this motivation. Develop esprit, enthusiasm, morale, effort, competition and accomplishment. When I mean, motivation of the American soldier overseas is best accomplished, when he no one knows why he is there as the number one thing, the no way, number one way to make sure someone's motivated, make sure they know why they're doing what they're doing.

Same answer I give nine times a day is made to feel that he belongs is performing primarily a job for which he has been trained. He knows where his efforts fit into the big picture is recognized and rewarded for success, the one of those that I would say was a was a new thought in my mind was that is performing primarily in a job for which he's been trained.

And I was kind of like, that's a good point. That's a good point. Think about when you're when you're doing something like, oh, yeah, this is what happened when I learned, you know, in jujitsu. It's real clear, right? Oh, I learned this escape and you use it. That's just a total reward. Yeah.

How about when you learn some new technical skill on the filmmaking and then you get to apply it? Sometimes you've got to force it in there in many cases.

Yeah. It's like you'll do it. Yeah. Just because you're pursuing that very thing. Right. That you're talking about. Yeah. So when it comes naturally, when it naturally occurs, it's a super positive thing. Big time.

Dave, how long were you in the Marine Corps for before you dropped the bomb on target.

Eighty six years. Six years. Did that feel good? It did, yeah. Did that give you motivation? It's crazy how to do the math there. I was thinking, man, how long was it? It was six years.

What year did you get commissioned for? And then you drop bombs, bomb Cingular, you drop a bomb, bomb two thousand in two thousand.

Yeah, listen, like you said, man, remember, this is straight up.

You were straight up like Top Gun experiencing the mic, right? Like Maverick and Maverick have the close fly by with the mic.

I'm saying that because because in two thousand, how many people die was I look, I don't know if it's fact, but if it's not fact, it's really close. I was like the first guy in the world to drop a jadallah because I had my squadron on deployment was super squadron that I got this good deal. Dave Berg is coming in hot, but at the time had billions of dollars developing this weapons system. You're the guy that gets to drop it again.

OK, do you remember the date?

You know, the month it was April of twenty two thousand. OK, so April of two thousand. We're going out there just just canvassing the world. If there's anyone out there that knows anyone that dropped the JDAM before April of 2000, please let us know so I can put this guy over here a good deal.

Yes, I want him in check. It's like you said, though, man.

I mean, first of all, at the time, for me, that was it. Dude, we're done checking the block.

I can I can die a happy man. It's because of what you said. There wasn't anything going on. I mean, you look back now, you know, post 9/11, it's I mean, it is it's embarrassing. I don't even like we talk about this all the time. I don't even like bringing it up. But at the time that was it.

And and to get back to your your more serious point of dude was I stoked, I, I never felt more useful in what I was doing than that night. I can picture it hitting that switch in that bomb, coming off my jet, blowing up that, that a three launcher in Iraq. That was like the most important thing I've ever done in my life.

How many people did that after you dropped yours? Did things start to escalate?

Well, no, we were just getting one year deal, Dave. Man, it was kind of a cool thing at the time. It really was. And yeah, if if I'm if I'm if I'm out of turn, let me know. There's just not that many people out there that that that have the potential of doing it, given the systems that required when the bomb hit the fleet and everything.

It was a confluence of a lot of things that just went my way. So you're saying that in the whole fleet that dam had just kind of arrived?

First of all, the GM had just arrived and what was required is a GPS aircraft on my carrier.

There was one squadron that had GPS on board, which was glorious in your Air-Crane, the aircraft, the other aircraft, the other four squadrons couldn't even carry the weapon. And this was the first time. Yes, and Marine Corps got it before Navy. No, it's not that the Marine Corps got it. Just so happens that on my deployment, the three the Navy squadron of fighters, they didn't have aircraft, which is kind of crazy, but we did so again.

So you dropped the first ever JDAM. Like I said, if it wasn't the first, it was really close. It was definitely the first one.

What about what about what about Bosnia? What about Sarajevo?

That's I'm I'm almost positive that predates GPS guided weapons. That's all laser guided some other other guidance systems. That's not GPS guided weapons. You're going out on a limb. I am. And look, fix it if I'm wrong. Dial in, send a message.

I'll be happy to hit your brain when there's some guys that flew into Sarajevo dropping bombs. Yeah, well, I mean, look, I could definitely be wrong.

At the time, I wasn't like, do you know, I'm going to add this to, like, your bio when I talk about you? Because, you know, I got my little you know, he was this. He was that. And I want to say he also dropped the first ever Jay Dam, the first ever GPS guided munitions was dropped by Colonel Dave Berg, the two thousand pound dam. And the year two thousand was this brand new, incredible thing that we just got trained on, which was kind of what were the circumstances that got you cleared hot?

Yeah, the circumstances were during the day I was scheduled for a night mission, just a prescheduled mission that probably involved, you know, a handful of airplanes doing Operation Southern Watch, just kind of monitoring the airspace, which we did. Two thousand. I was on deployment right on. I was on deployment. Yeah, I was about to head home, what aircraft carrier were you coming off the Stennis was the JFK. Did you replace the replace the JAG?

I was on the JFK. So I guess I missed you. That's as we're talking.

That's the other carrier that would have had the potential. And I think there was only one squadron on that carrier. The other Marine Hornet squadron might have had the chance to. If it's going to happen, it's going to be off that carrier.

But between the JFK and us during that, you know, spring to summer of two thousand, which was just monitoring the no fly zone, what happened was in the middle of the day, on a day that I happened to be already hard scheduled, we got triggered what's called an arrow response option, which means Saddam did something that met some criteria that we had a preplanned response to.

And what he happened to do in this case was took the same launcher south of, you know, the parallel to the line that we were that we were responsible for. So Intel says, hey, they moved the same site down south of where they're not allowed to be here below this line. They can't be here. And the big debate was so we got this information, this intelligence, the debate was, hey, we're not going to let the brand new guy go on this mission.

This is a response option that mandates we're going to go blow this thing up. And my squadron commander was like negative. That's the schedule he's going flying. And if it wasn't way you were a new guy.

I was. It was this your first deployment? My first cruise. My first deployment.

And the only reason I was out there was just every fourth or fifth night. You just ended up on the schedule. I was, you know, dash whatever of this of this mission. It turns out that my flight lead, I'll tell you, I look, I'm I'm all about being fair and everything. If I was the squadron commander or the squadron XO or the ops officer or one of the other or anybody else in the squadron, like that new guy just broke his left heel.

You got he looked weird. I don't know how that happened, but I'm taking his place there.

It was one of those things that the air wing had scheduled responsibility to cover the no fly zone. I was on the schedule. It was going to be a totally boring night mission, which we'd done all the time, was just covering the no fly zone. Middle of the day this happened. We knew that that package that was going in was going to go from a a a monitoring mission to a targeting mission.

The the mission loadout required a GPS guided weapon that happened to be one aircraft in that formation from one squadron that had the GPS aircraft and GPS got a weapon. I was there. I was scheduled for that. There was a behind the scenes conversation. I was not part of over whether this new guy, Chip, was going to get to go because this is garbage, because he's brand new. The squadron commander was like, I'm not building a habit pattern by which because of the mission, I'm going to change the formation.

He's a young guy. He could go do it. I went did it. I launched I joined on the wing of of some other squadron aircraft. We flew north for two and a half hours. I blew this thing up and I came home. Were you nervous?

I was, yeah. But not like I was nervous, but not like. Were you super confident? I knew that I was I was nervous.

And the chips fall. I mean, is this a hard job? No, it is not a hard thing to do. As a matter of fact, the beauty of this mission, just to put things in context, is that before I even got into my airplane, I was handed the precise latitude and longitude which I preprogrammed into it a basically a disk that I downloaded to the airplane. So before I even took off from the carrier, I my aircraft and the bomb all knew exactly where to go.

It was literally I'm just carrying this thing on my wing.

My only job was to arm it up and and press the button.

Do you did you fly flat dumb and happy, like at a certain altitude or did you come on did you kind of like, hey, bro, I would love to tell you the coolest story in the world. It's not a cool story.

That's why I told you telling the story now is almost embarrassing because people listening now, when they think about what we have done since 2001, this story is the least exciting combat story you'll ever hear.

And combat should be in quotes in two thousand. It was the coolest thing I had ever done.

We did we did a bunch of shipboard things in the on that deployment. Yeah. So in the millennium deployment between two thousand ninety nine ninety thousand, we did like shipboard things overseas and one of the ship warnings that we happened to do was of big Russian oil tanker and it was on CNN and all this kind of stuff.

So it was kind of the big mesh, kind of the same thing. And just to put it in perspective, when we got back, so we were on the carrier and then there was another platoon from Team two that was on the ark.

And when we got back, we had to, like, brief the CEO and the Commodore about like what we did on deployment. And so we got to brief, you know, that we did this thing, which was kind of, you know, at the time was pretty cool. And just to put it in perspective, what the other platoon commander briefed was that they did and in extremis, propelled.

Clearance for the arge ship, like something got tangled in the propeller and they like anchored the ship and they drove down and cut the thing off and they kind of like helped.

That was what they briefed. That's what a SEAL platoon did in the year two thousand. And that was the highest level thing that they did with the most visibility that they could debrief. Was we did a maintenance dive on the ship we were on on board, so that just kind of tells you how what it was like at the time were different back then, man.

So, Ivan, I'm 100 percent I can totally imagine what you were feeling going into this and coming out of it.

Yeah, it was it was awesome at the time. And look, when I came back, I mean, the whole ship knew about it. There was a press release that I have a copy of somewhere that that the Iraqi media put out that, you know, I honestly think it was like straight up a baby milk factory had been attacked.

You know, the standard propaganda, you know, unarmed civilians were killed. The whole story I got the intel officer keynoted. Hey, check this out. This is the report from your attack. I got all the stuff somewhere that to your mom. Totally. Yes, absolutely. So it was it was an interesting time.

It was a time that I obviously none of us knew what was coming, you know, the following year, how much things would change. And I actually thought at that time that was probably the only chance I was ever really going to have to do something that contributed to the mission, which is exactly how I felt.

I felt like I finally did my job after a lifetime of dreaming about it and six years training for it.

Little did I know. That's awesome. Yeah, so if you're in if you're in CAG nine on the Stennis or if you're in CAG two on the JFK, which was two. Fifty one was the Marine Hornet squadron, let me know if I got my facts.

Not straight, but at that time there was just not a lot going on. JFK did some work. The ship you're on to, they dropped some bombs. They did, but maybe not GPS guided. I don't think so.

Like, it really matters, but call me out of those I did at the time, bro. I can tell you at the end of the time, check logit.

He goes through looking at these these these items to to motivate, keep someone motivated. First of all, a man does any task better when he thoroughly understands the reasons for performing that task.

Surely you have heard the question, what am I doing here? What have you, the commander done to answer this question? Have you made your troop information program merely a corner bulletin board in the dayroom? Have you explained to your men the role of allied forces in your overseas area as part of the United States Army and what it plays in that role? Have you discussed with them the threat of communism?

Have you shown them how an alert, well-trained, strong force in peacetime becomes a deterrence to aggression and armed conflict? So. That's the why, and that's the way that we talk about all the time. He go. Yeah.

Do they understand how what they're doing contributes to the mission?

It's as simple as that. Yeah.

And when you're working on the front lines of a factory, look, if you understand how that contributes to everything that's happening in and what we're trying to do, that that makes a difference.

The only way they're ever going to know that is if their leadership makes that a priority or else they're going to get stuck down there and their perspective, the world's going to get smaller and smaller. They're going to feel more and more disconnected, and they're not going to understand that. You have to make that happen.

That will not happen on its own. That's one thing that's cool up in origin.

You know that the troops that are on the front line, they see what's happening right down to the fact that they can see people competing in their ghys right. They can see people working in the genes that they made. They get thankyous.

They get, you know, pictures of the genes being worn in North Dakota, being worn in Texas, being, you know, being used.

And it's awesome. And they know that that they can feel what that means because it's bringing back the community.

And so everybody understands that why it's so important. He does a great job making that clear.

The second item I outlined as motivation for this is a sense of belonging. Very few drives of a man are stronger than his desire for identification with a group. When he knows what that he is wanted, he has a definite niche, a specific job, and that his efforts contribute to the achievement of common goal. Then he becomes proud of himself, his unit and his superiors.

Develop your men, develop in your men this feeling of identification and your task will be lighter. Then when the chips are down and they are called upon to do battle, they will perform as members of an integrated team, not as individuals. This brings us to the utilization demand. And this is what this is the desert, the story of Dave Burke.

Thousands of dollars were spent to train each man first as a basic soldier, that is a specific M.O.s is each man in the unit doing being used in the job for which he was trained? I realize only too well that commanders must occasionally put men off their jobs to meet temporary requirements, the men realize the necessity for this, too. Too often our commander forgets to put the man back on the job for which he's trained. The men do not understand this, and such action is often demoralizing and result in the loss of unit effectiveness.

When it becomes necessary to assign an individual to a position other than the one for which he has been trained. The commander will rise in stature if proper counseling is given. Explain why the temporary assignment has been made and let that man know as soon as possible. He will be reassigned to duties commensurate with his M.O.s. One thing should be kept in mind, however, no amount of motivation will make a man tackle his job he knows is too big for him.

That's the infinite thing. Where a man fits into the big picture, obviously important, and then goes into that a little bit and finally there's a great deal of vanity in each of us and few things are more motivating than recognition for a and reward for a job well done.

He. Then jumping forward a little bit, he's got a little sexual and physical fitness, which I always like to cover, the vision of a push button war suggests that the physical rigors of the battlefield belong to the past. Isn't that crazy? Nineteen sixty three.

He's thinking. Just think about it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Physical fitness in today's army is even more important than has been in the past. And this is especially true in overseas theaters where to meet any communist bloc aggression. The fighting men on the ground is the ultimate weapon. The fundamental factor of the decision. The soldier overseas must be combat ready, not only in terms of equipment, training and conviction, but also in terms of ability to withstand the rugged demands of physical combat.

The time to begin is the day a new physical, a new replacement arrives in your command. In many cases, he will be fresh from basic or advanced individual training, and it will merely be a matter of maintaining his high state of physical fitness that he brings with him. In other cases, you may well have to start from scratch and bring the man up to the desired standard. In both instances, your solution as a commander is a physical fitness program that will provide for progressive and continuous physical conditioning of your men.

It can and should be integrated into a phase of proactive phases of training in your program as an asset to your unit commander is the highly developed sports program, and he talks about how important that is, how important it is to to have these kind of programs where you're running.

He talks about care of equipment.

Got to take care of your gear. He uses this little quote in here. Remember the rhyme? Remember the rhyme about for want of a nail. And I had never heard of that point. So I had to look it up for want of a nail. The shoe was lost for one of the shoe. The horse was lost for one of the horse. The rider was lost for want of a ride. The battle is lost for one of the battle.

The kingdom was lost, all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Does that little thing. Just that little just that little thing. Talks about he goes into like this is where I started kind of breezing through some stuff because he's talking about he's getting in the weeds a little bit about how do you get people to take care of their vehicles. He goes through some execution charts, proficiency of weapons testing, the abilities of soldiers.

He runs into this a little bit, performance testing and talks about how you've got to continually test people so that you know that they can do their job schooling.

He talks about schooling of the individuals. And again, this is he starts getting into some of the weeds. And then he gets into professionalism and professionalism to me is, you know, a word. You know, talk about your first experience in the military and how that leaves a mark. Well, in 1991, when I checked into SEAL Team one, there was an underlying theme of professionalism.

It was, hey, professionalism SEAL Team one, that the nickname for SEAL Team one was Stollberg Team one, because, you know, we had haircut inspections every two weeks. Yeah. And then uniform inspections, I think the first Monday of every month.

SEAL Team five. They do we can we can confirm this with Jason Gardner, but I don't think they had uniform inspections in the decade. So everyone looked the team won the Stalag team one. And it was this, that the underlying tone was professionalism. Back to the book. In today's Army, we can afford to keep only the worthwhile individual in our ranks. Every effort must be made to strive for professionalism in all things.

Retention of the desirable and dedicated individual is the goal, constant supervision by officers and non-commissioned officers is necessary to raise standards of performance. A great deal can be accomplished by each individual by setting the example and being a professional himself more than any other thing demonstrated competence, ability and efficiency, i.e. professionalism will encourage new officers and enlisted men to make the army their profession.

What is real professionalism for the career army officer? Many do not understand what is meant by professionalism. I submit that professionalism to the young soldier, to the career non-commissioned officer, to the young reserve officer, unlimited of active duty and to the reserve officer on extended active duty is different from that applicable to the career regular army officer with 20 years of service. I will explain this as I see it. If you are innumerate, if you enumerate the various things that have to be done in order to produce a combat ready army to meet the demands of our country in case of emergency, I believe you will find that these necessary operations pretty well will cover the field in creating an army.

So here's the list of things that you have to do in order to create an army, raising an army, organizing the army, equipping the army, training the army, supplying the army, leading and commanding the army and ministering the army, moving the army, communicating within the army, employing the army. A career regular army officer who wants to prepare himself to be a professional. Should learn the general requirements, techniques and principles of each one of these necessary operations.

In addition, he should become a master of one.

And have at least one other as a strong minor. And I think that's probably a pretty good place to stop right now. We could go all day with this.

But what's interesting I find interesting about that is if you've got 10 broad operational fields in the army and you can only be a master in one of them because we just don't have the ability to be more than that. You could be a miner, another. Then how can you be a professional? Right, because I was kind of expect him to say, you need to learn all these things, he says you're going to become a master want and you can only become a minor.

And one more. So I'm thinking, how do you become a professional? And I think the answer is humility. To actually know that you're not a master of everything, to actually know that you have shortfalls and you have deficiencies, and then what you do is you surround yourself with people that are masters in those areas. You build that team. You build the team and that starts with humility, it starts with knowing your weaknesses so you can turn those weaknesses into strengths by bringing the right people into your organization.

There you go, Echo Charles. Yes, speaking of turning weaknesses into strengths, sure. Do you have anything that can kind of help us maybe turn weaknesses in the strengths? Technically, factually, actually, do you know you're known for saying the word factually? I do know, yeah. Some people will occasionally just throw out just a factually like comments. Yeah.

Apparently my daughter gives me shit about that as well, so I couldn't know what I'm saying anyway. So, yes, OK, we're on the path, right. Turning weaknesses into strengths. OK, so thing we don't want to worry about is our joint so chuckle.

Speaking of comments, maybe we should just ask the question. You were gone for two podcasts. Is this whole sort of support section? You know, it was like, I don't know, three minutes, seven minutes, something like that, you know, way too short. Maybe people could put in the comments. You know what? You know how they're feeling about that. Maybe they missed it.

Yes. Well, we'll just say technically, the support section factually is, well, you in the support section and all these fine products and services are infused into the section as a whole seems.

So the section isn't only about support, it's how to stay on the path straight up.

That's what the section section is. If you want to, you know, get all Namee naming things for sections go anyway.

Thing you don't want to worry about is your joints.

When you're on this path that we're all on, definitely don't want to be worried about your doing so serious. So talk about supplements overall. A bunch of supplements, all JOCO supplements called JOCO fuel. The joint supplements to keep your joints in the game. Don't have to worry about them, not to think about them. Don't have to consider them. When you're doing individual specific things.

I like red, you paint yourself into a corner and then you got to kind of work your way out of there verbally. Yeah, yeah. It's fun as individual specific things that you know. Yeah.

Nonetheless, joints, we're not worried about them or we're doing deep squats. We're not worried about joints. You know why?

Because we're on this joint warfare super krill oil. You go on that consistently, you don't worry about none of that stuff. You're worried about your gains. So speaking of gains, boom, Molk, I know I'm skipping around.

Don't worry about it. I got you good.

More protein in the form of dessert. That's what you take after you're working out. So, boom, break down. Build back up. Oh, good.

OK, so here's what we do want to talk about. Discipline and discipline. Go.

What can I add something on the mock scenario. Sure. Because there is something to talk about. It's a little something called smashing pumpkin. Oh yeah. It's a new flavor if you tried it.

No, it literally came in when I was leaving.

It is it is at the top of my list. Right. You got to eat it. It just is at the top of the list right now. It's just beat everything. Now part of that is because it's new and I'm sure there's some level of, hey, just like the variety and it tastes good to have something different. But I am I already you know, Brian. Well, you know, it's a seasonal thing. I was like, no, stop.

This is not a seasonal thing. There's no this is this is a new this is in the game. This is this is this is part of Jakov. You're Smashing Pumpkins. I don't even I don't even really understand what. Pumpkin, have you ever eaten pumpkin before. Like when you were a little kid carving pumpkins, you ate some because you were not the raw pumpkin. I didn't know. Right.

I was like, let's see what this tastes like. It doesn't taste like anything. Right. Basically, it's slimy. So I'm thinking, what is what is pumpkin flavored milk going to taste like slime? You know, I wasn't really sure because that's what pumpkin pumpkin has no taste. Kind of it's just sort of slimy. Yeah. So I wasn't a hundred percent sure, but, you know, these guys are all fired up and they send me the sample and I mix it.

I was like, good lord, I don't even.

So it's it's a pumpkin spice flavor case. There's a cinnamon situation.

But what I don't know. Look, does it taste like pumpkin spice? Maybe. I've never really eaten anything that tasted like pumpkin spice. Let me tell you this. It tastes freaking good. It tastes real good. It tastes shockingly good. Yeah, I understand. You know what's pumpkin spice is right? I don't know.

I'm kind of a bizarre thing. Yeah, it's a thing. It's a flavor. I guess my whyever get pumpkin spice drink right some later. OK, so I, you know so yeah. That's why it's funny when you're like I've never eaten anything with pumpkin. Yeah. Because that's not what pumpkin spice. Tennant's pumpkin spice tends to be like drinks and stuff. They're trendy drinks. That's what it gets like the end of the rap for.

Whatever, it's a fall thing, it's a seasonal thing, it's kind of softly, softly kind of thing. That's why Pete was all like seasonal. Oh yeah. Did you just say besides seasonal?

Softly, softly OK, if we fall, it's a fall thing because, you know, my it's towards, you know, like that. Oh yeah. I dig. I dig it. Let me get that balance. You got to balance for sure. Sometimes we wonder if Pete listens to these parts of the podcast that I can tell if he does or does not, because I'm always busting his chops here.

Whether he listens or not, he's kind of missing out and he can't defend himself. Yeah. So you either listen or you can't defend yourself. Your call, Pete. Yeah, but we know that you're leaning towards what you say. Comfy, comfy. Softly, softly, softly.

Because he hadn't even tried pumpkin spice yet. He even tried Smashing Pumpkins today. Oh, I told him and I said, bro, this stuff is so good. This stuff is so good. He goes, I haven't even tried it yet. I go, because he's got a sweet tooth. Yeah. Like that guy mainlines bockl what you like.

It's going out of style that people send that guy, you know, they send him like cookies and donuts and stuff just to just to torment him. So pumpkin spice anyways. Smashing pumpkin Molk wait.

But anyways, we're still getting to the bottom of pumpkin spice thing. I thought, OK. Oh, we're not getting too of a no, no, no, go ahead. No, no, no. We don't have to get to the bottom. I want to know. I thought it was a food staple. Exactly. That's kind of my point. Right. So you know how you were saying, OK, my wife, you know, my wife gets it.

It's a trendy thing, right?

So pizza and seasonal. But it is Halloween. That's a pumpkin thing, too. Yes. That that I do know. OK, pumpkin spice. Think about pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie before.

Yeah. And again to me. OK, yes I've had it.

OK, so like consider like this because I can get it. Get to it is like a cinnamon added to the pumpkin pie kind of flavor are you saying.

Yeah. And then pomoc all good but so seasonal.

Is it because of fall season or is it because the Halloween season, you know jack lanterns and whatnot.

Well pumpkins. Yeah, Halloween just you think not the fall look as pumpkin spice as fall, that's a fall thing, it seems, right.

But it's not seasonal.

I quit. I'm asking you about the smoke.

Is it seasonal now or is it not seasonal? Can't look in January or March or spring or whatever. Can't we all keep it in the.

We have to come to like this to freaking good. Yeah. Smashing Pumpkins. I believe it.

Actually when you mentioned it, I was like, dang, that's a whoever came up with that kind of idea for Mogk. Like, that's pretty. That's good. That's solid.

It's really good. I'm not sure they might have been my daughter who came up with the idea.

My daughter, I said because my daughter is into nutrition and stuff and she's in the Molk and she's into mixing up recipes.

Sir, you and I, one day I was texting with her and I said, hey, you know, what flavor do you want?

And one of the things that she said she wanted was pumpkin pumpkin spice, which I didn't even really know was a thing to think that big time.

And hey, man, you're down for it. Obviously, you like pumpkin spice, apparently. So, you know, you don't I don't like pumpkin spice. I like Smashing Pumpkins.

Well, there you go. You know, there you go.

Either way. Yes. OK, so plenty other flavors, too, by the way. So all good malt protein form of a dessert and in the form of some pumpkin spice boom. There you go monkies. Good. Also OK, I skipped around a little bit. We usually talk about the vitamin D.

That's important to know how the seasons change. You need to be outside that much.

Getting sun was in so boom, you want to be sure you got that and stuff.

Also, Cold War free immune system.

Vitamin D is good for your immune system too. But in combo same same deal, you don't got to worry about your sickness.

Let's face it, I think everyone should be upping their immune system at this point in the world.

I think in time, yes, that is money.

There's plenty of reasons. There's one big reason. Get that immune system kick in.

Yes, sir. It's true. Also chocolaty. Get that in bags and cans. What's up with the.

Well, what's going on right now is we may have initiated a little bit of a war in the drink world in the in the canned drink world, so there might be a delay in getting a white T back in the game.

We've been we've been drawn into there's been there's been a declaration of war against.

JoCo discipline, go kans.

Yes, yes, so it's on, I'm going gonna talk too much detail, but let me just say we are at war and and look, it's one thing when you're kind of down there and you're scrapping and you're, you know, but whatever, you just having a good time. But then all of a sudden you realize you you're at war. And so we had some events unfold that some some big actors have taken action to attempt to suppress our people.

Yeah. So we're going to have to fight. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Look forward to hearing more about that one plans or whatnot. Then unless you did mention discipline, go so discipline joco discipline and discipline. Good discipline is the powder discipline go is the cans and pills and capsules by the way.

But we're talking about the cans are ready to drink. Right. This was for this drink.

Deploy a health, a health, an actual healthy energy drink. Sexually healthy though not the kind like.

Oh no, no, no actually yeah.

Actually healthy. Good. No preservative, no nothing.

OK, available in Iowa, vitamin shop and online.

It's a speaking of war. So check this out. Part of this war is driving and crushing the enemy. So we're not in all wars yet. We want to.

And by the way, war was just the beginning, but we got to crush. So check this out. So right now, we're only in Florida, the Florida wars. We have like a battle map, especially now that we're at war. We have a battle map. If you're in it, check this out. If you want to support the cause, go to Walwa in Florida in just. Clean out, just get yourself some discipline, go get yourself some discipline, go and help us win the war.

Appreciate it. Also, vitamin JOP, you get it there if you don't have a wall near you. Also orange in Maine, dotcom.

Yeah, and let's face it, also Amazon. Yes. Yelp available Brime. You mentioned Orjan being dotcom. Other stuff on or jamaine dotcom jiujitsu stuff. Yes. We'll see everyday stuff to wear.

Jeans, specifically American denim. It's a big deal.

American denim also boots on there. Real good stuff. You are going to get something, man, if you want something American made stuff. It's not like that's not a big deal.

By the way, you may have been looking for Delta 68 jeans. They were unavailable for a while. They're back. We're we're catching up right now. And they're freaking awesome.

And I have a confession to make. You know how I'm always like, you know, I mean, I literally have written books about putting your people ahead of you and take care of people and all that, you know, the confession.

So we kind of reengineer the Delta genes a little bit. We reengineered the fabric a little bit. We reengineered the cut. And so Pete sent me like that.

We went back and forth like three iterations, finally sent the iteration, like recently. Yeah. He sent me, like, OK, this should be it. I put them on, I sent him a text. I'm like, execute, send me two pairs immediately, put me above everyone else and wait. I got it back.

And so I have all my other genes are in the garbage because now it's just Delta. Delta 60 is the best things ever. Yeah, totally good to go. So if you want those you can get those.

What's funny is like now you're not too mad at Pete for his design and fashion.

It's functional design, functional fashion.

Can we say functional fashion. Yeah. Sounds good. Finless. Good job, Pete. Man keep up. Keep being you, Pete. Great guy. Anyway, also we have a duco as the store is called JoCo store. Got some nassauer if you want to represent you want discipline equals freedom. Shirts, hats, hoodies, some board shorts on there.

Boom. All that stuff. I'm wearing them right now by the way OIA but heavy rotation. Oh yeah. Camouflage and black. Once a mother went on there to some good stuff on you say we'll have other ones out there. You will have other ones on there. Oh day.

Oh you look at you should be centralized command when we're doing the best we can over there anyway. Yeah. Some good stuff on there. Christmas is coming up.

Maybe not this month but soon I'm saying the same.

There's, there are good gift items on there. Yes. So JoCo store dotcom. You want something, get something.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast because Echo Charles thinks you should. Don't forget that we have some other podcast ones called JoCo Unraveling, which Echo should be putting out some episodes.

It has its own thread, it has its own thread feed, so don't feed it. So if you want to get the unravelling podcast, it's on its own feed that one you can subscribe to to make sure you're getting them when they come out. There's we have some in the bank. Let's get them out. OK, I'm not talking to everyone else, Echo Charles. I'm just talking to you right now. This is like this is the kind of a universal statement to the people.

This is the most I mean, for one person. Yes, sir. We have episodes in the bank. We don't want them in the bank. We want to spend them. We want to get them out to the people.

I understand fully is that what's the man hours that it takes to take that down?

Roughly what point to OK, an hour.

So maybe it's something we could make happen this very possibly, yes.

Here's the thing about that, though. OK, so the unravelling podcast used to be called the threat used to be. So if you subscribe to the thread, if you were and then it's in your, like, library, I don't know the different sections.

And I'm talking about like iTunes or the podcast or whatever.

I'm not sure if it works for Steytler. I'm not sure it might very well. But it'll be in your library still. But you'll when you click on there, it won't indicate that you subscribe. So you just got to click it again, OK, so you don't have to go search for it is what I'm saying, if you're already subscribed. But you know, if you're not, then.

Well, so the Unraveling the JoCo Unravelling podcast, subscribe to it to me and Darryl Cooper, grounded podcast for your Kid podcast. We have a YouTube channel if you want to see a good deal. Dave Burke looks like or if you want to see what Echo Charles looks like, if you wanna see what I look like or you want to see some enhanced videos that Echo puts his effort into allegedly in a lot of the videos, you've got to remember, some people giggle, oh, echo, good job.

And they always forget that Echo might be the guy that press record, but I'm the assistant director to these videos.

There's no the I'm the the kind of the the glue that brings it together. Assistant director. That's me. So keep that in mind. If you want to see videos that have me as the assistant director, subscribe to our YouTube.

Hey, we got an album called Psychological Warfare Bunch, me talking about how to overcome whatever problem you're dealing with. Flip side canvas Dakota Meyer making awesome things to hang on your wall. Bunch of books about Face by Hackworth. I wrote the foreword to the newest addition Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual Discipline. He goes from Field Manual.

Brand new version is out right now where the Warrior Kid for Field Manual is out right now.

I just brought the first copies in one for Dave and his kids, one for Echo in his kids way. The Warrior Kid, one, two and three are out making the Dragons.

Just got elected some. Elected on Amazon.com as a teacher's pick, teacher's pick. Kind of a big deal here, kind of a big deal. Very cool. So thanks all the teachers out there that selected making in the Dragons to be a teacher's pick on Amazon.com, extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership where it started. Also, we have Echelon front. It's our leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. Go to Echelon front dot com for details. We also have Heff online, which is online.

Interactive training for leadership is a skill for leadership member not sitting there earlier saying, hey, why would you go into a room if you haven't trained? Why would you think you could know how to have a conversation if you hadn't? Yeah, it takes training. We know that. So we made online training if online.

If you want to ask Dave a question, if you want to ask a date, if you want to ask Dave about dropping the first Jadallah in history and what courage it took to do that, then you can go to Heff online dotcom.

And Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we are live. We are there. We're answering questions.

If you want to know how awesome it was when I was doing shipboard things in the Gulf, overcoming fear to board these smugglers' vessels, those series.

If you want to ask this question, do you want to talk about leadership, go to Heff online dot com. We also have the muster. There's only been one monster this year. It's in Dallas, Texas. It's December 3rd and 4th. Check out extreme ownership dotcom we've got. We've got social distancing covid protocol in place. We're not going to do jujitsu, we usually do jujitsu the last night. But are we going to do instead of jujitsu, we're going to do a jujitsu philosophy course of instruction, slash Q&A myself.

And another black belt will be there, maybe two other black belts, one of them will be Echo Charles, I'll probably get another one. Yeah, I'm going to talk about jujitsu, how those how the jujitsu principles apply to life. And I've been doing some writing about jujitsu, which should be coming out shortly. So I might read a little precursor of that.

And then if overwatch, if you need executive leadership inside your company, go to EAF, overwatched dotcom. We have military veterans that understand these principles that are ready to go to work if you're a company that needs veterans. Go to Jeff Overwatched Dotcom if you want to help service members active and retired their families, gold star families around the world. And check out Mark Leigh's mom. She's got a charity organization, Mammoliti. It's called America's Mighty Warriors. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved and go to America's Mighty Warriors dot org, and if you find yourself.

Thirsting for more pain.

And you want more of my droning drudgery or you want more of echoes, farcical folklore, or maybe you just want some more of Dave's overzealous zingers, then you can find us on the website, on Twitter, Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as the Graham. And on Facebook, Dave is at David Aaberg. Echo is adequate, Charles, and I'm at JoCo Willink. And thanks to General Bruce Clark and Colonel David Hackworth for leading our nation's best in combat and for passing on those lessons to us.

And thanks to all the people in uniform out there right now putting those lessons to use.

Keeping democracy and freedom safe in the world and to police and law enforcement, to firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service and other first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here at home and everyone else out there, remember what you have heard from General Clark. Remember what he said, that it all starts with discipline, the army is built on discipline. So. So are us, so are we as individuals, General Clark said that the one thing that will keep a trainee on the right track is discipline.

That's the one thing, the supreme thing. So maybe we should be more disciplined and maybe we should stay on the right track, maybe we should stay on the path every single day. By getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave, Eneko and JoCo.