This is JoCo podcast number two fifty six with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening. Good evening. And joining us once again is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. And tonight, we are going to wrap up the final installment on guidelines for the leader and commander by General Bruce Clark.

This is the subject of podcast's, plural. Two fifty one to fifty two to fifty three to fifty four to fifty five and now finally two fifty six. So much to learn. Taking the lessons that were passed on to Colonel David Hackworth.

Who served in Korea, Vietnam, wrote the book about face, taught me many leadership lessons, well, he learned those lessons from this book written by General Bruce Clark, who served in Korea, World War two, World War One, who led many soldiers, trained even more.

Including one that he may know about. Me.

And we are trying to pass those lessons on so for the final installment, let's get back to the book guidelines for the leader and Commander, Chapter 11.

Physical conditioning, there you go. Charles, I'm sure your interest just got piqued. Here we go. I would like to pass on to you for such implementation as may be practicable within your several commands and within your various types of headquarters and units. Some thoughts on the problem of physical exercise, physical condition and physical training. This is a complex subject.

Its success depends on the program. Each commander works out to fit his needs and facilities and then enthusiastically and energetically pushes while many of our units and individuals are in fine physical shape. This is not universally true in many commands.

I believe it can be made more nearly universally true by a more general concept as to its importance and to a consideration of the implementation of practical steps that can be taken in this field without materially interfering with our other activities.

What grade are you giving General Clark for simplicity on that whole opening? I'm not giving him a good grade.

Luckily, he riddim you're going to see he redeems himself in the end of this book with some real simple, clear, concise. So he thinks, you know, the simple statement is people should be working out. I believe strongly that good physical condition is one of the evidences of a spree in a unit as well as of morale in an individual. So it helps both your team and you as a person. Now, here's where we have a serious beef, serious beef, probably one of the most serious beefs ever for me with General Clark.

This topic is called Callisthenics at end of day. Echo, you're probably going to want to throw down with this one, you're going to throw in with him on one occasion I visited a unit and observed callisthenics being conducted during the first period of the morning. This was being done in the normal way by a junior sergeant conducting the exercises with the senior non-commissioned officers and officers standing around to supervise and monitor possibly the ones who needed the exercise the most were the ones observing.

That's a good one, right? You don't want to be that guy.

You don't want to be that guy that's standing there with small arms telling people they need to do more pull ups.

Right. They don't want to find yourself in that situation.

No, sir. But then he says this. I do not think calisthenics or other physical training exercise in the first hour of the day is good, of course, as we know.

I definitely think that working out in the first hour of the day is good.

If they are done strenuously enough to be of any value so that the men work up perspiration, the men then wear the same wet clothes throughout the day or until such clothing dries off them. Similarly, if men performed exercises requiring them to sit on the ground or lie on the ground, they start off the day with dirty and maybe wet clothing. Now for me, General Clark, all due respect, I think we can just take a shower and change clothes when we're done working out.

I think we can overcome that in the modern era.

Yeah, I got to admit, that kind of surprised me as being the first reason that he's talking about. Yeah. Why not to work out first thing in the morning. Yeah, because we could just we could just shower.

Seems easy to solve that problem. I will say this though. I think he's coming from a time period where they didn't have this full like this was only an idea that was just coming to fruition.

Right. So it wasn't a thing yet. It wasn't a thing to work out. So people didn't have workout clothes, people didn't have workout shoes, people didn't have workout bag. You know, these people didn't have a workout bag. They didn't have the little Freegate Reebok bag or whatever. That echo Charles takes the twenty four hour fitness. Get your curls on.

So they didn't have that back then. So he's thinking, yeah, you show up to work and the first thing we do is build up a sweat and bring me wet clothes all day. All right. We'll give you cut me some slack.

And then he says, I believe it is far more reasonable to devote the last hour in the afternoon to physical exercise and physical training so that the men can go from it to the showers and get into other clothing for supper and the evening.

This is the time when the mind is tired and training requiring mental attention is least effective. OK, so that's OK. So, all right. So we we're just going to jump past like all the whole thing about the when you're working out, because I think it's just I think we're beyond that now in the modern era. Yeah. I don't think we're I think we can work out whatever it makes the most sense, not based on our sweat and clothing.

And can we put that can we set that one aside? I agree if we can. So now this is interesting.

This is the time when the mind is tired and training requiring mental attention is at least effective.

Doesn't it take a certain level of mental effort to do a hard workout?

Don't don't you think it's Dave? Yes, I wonder if he's thinking, like, intellectual effort, right? I get that and I get that too.

Like, for instance, this might sound stupid when I'm going to when I'm going to let's say it's late at night and I'm like, tired and I've got some more reading to do. I'll read until I'm just going to fall asleep and then I'll get up, brush my teeth, whatever, take my supplements, as Eckle likes to say, so I'll do my little evening routine floss every day.

And then and then I'll have like I set up. So now I can read a little bit longer, a little bit longer, and then I go to sleep. So when you do something, I guess that what I'm saying is you get bored. So maybe this is a good plan. Hey, it's the end of the day. You're kind of tired. You don't feel like focusing on this, what you call it, Dave. Intellectual work effort.

Yeah. Yeah. You don't you don't.

You spent your intellectual energy, but you can still just go jack some steel, possibly work it out.

And I don't think that that's the case for some of us that like.

No, when you're mentally exhausted, I mean, sure, there are some circumstances, but as a general sort of way and approach to working on a moment, I don't know if I can get there quite yet.

OK, so you want to have you want to be mentally fresh for your workout? Yes. OK, all right, back to the book in two divisions and in a brigade in which I served, everyone stopped activities at four o'clock on two days a week, with the exception of the necessary duty officers, guards and everyone from the commanding general, everyone from the commanding general on down took physical exercises, this physical exercise and consisted of activities that provided a real workout.

None of this echoed Charles' real workout.

Certain well organized selected games were allowed, provided that everyone played, organized calisthenics were allowed, but the bulk of the units engaged in a four mile trot and fast walk to to be completed in 50 minutes.

Yes, we're talking 12 minute miles or whatever. We're not this is not this is not a challenge. And here's what. As I thought through this, it started to make a little bit more sense. Combat boots with proper socks worn by all personnel in order to get the men used to and prevent damage to their feet right above the top of the boots. Everyone is permitted to prescribe their own uniform within the realm of decency. This gave men a feeling of freedom which added to relaxation and benefit of exercise.

OK, so that's cool. I do not think this lack of uniformity hurt the discipline of the unit. It was not a show. Men men traveled the previously laid out mile courses as individuals being checked at the start and finish to record their times in order to motivate the slow ones by phone.

So this is just, you know, just kind of proscribes this weird, like four mile walk that everyone's going to go on, which tells me. Earlier when I said they weren't that working out, wasn't really like a thing yet. Yeah, it wasn't, because if they're thinking 50 minutes and four miles. But the only thing I can say about that also is if you're talking about a whole division or a whole brigade of people like these are not all frontline soldiers.

Obviously, these are administrative people and whatever the general himself. So, yeah, I don't know.

By following the course as individuals, instead of information, no one exercised so strenuously as to do himself damage, regardless of his physical condition or age care should be taken in starting such a program.

To work into a reasonably so as not to increase the sick call rate, I think if you if you imagine like a corporation, like a giant corporation, a division XYZ corporation with whatever ten or fifteen thousand people, and they were going to start a physical training program. This might be an OK program. You got 50 minutes. You got to go out. You've got to move four miles, go for a walk, whatever.

I think that's I think that's almost the perspective that he's coming from.

I don't know, though, because didn't he just say a real work there and there should be sweating?

I mean, I'm not sweating after a after 12 minute miles for four miles, and I swear a lot, as you know.

Well, let's just be thankful that we are where we are, where we've learned so much about physical training and which has changed a lot. I mean, did you see that picture I posted the other day of I was like yelling at one of my friends back in the day and he's doing cable crossover's.

I couldn't tell if he is crazy, but he's doing just cable crossover's.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Hard core building building the building.

The what?

The lower pex leave it to you to try to yell at him while he's doing that to sound like you dead. Listen, I think we were just messing around actually. Physical exercise program. The Secretary of the Army has written to commanders about the tendency to to move troops from barracks to work and from barracks to training areas by vehicle instead of marching them when it is practicable to March. He pointed out that is very important, that the troops retain the ability to march, and especially was and this was especially important in mechanized and motorized armor units.

So that's a great point. When you have the opportunity to march instead of riding a vehicle, you should march instead of riding a vehicle. That's one thing that's cool about buds.

In buds you run to dent, you run to breakfast and back, you run to lunch and back you run to dinner and back at and mile there, it's a mile back.

So you're doing six miles a day before anything like before the day before you get credit for anything. You ran six miles.

Yeah. As a pilot, do you. Because I was watching some videos of some pilots, you know, that I came across.

And do you guys, like, kind of have to stay in physical condition just to endure, like flying a plane essentially?

I mean, the physical fitness standards are universal across the Marine Corps.

And all the same, there is a there's a unique level of fitness that is associated with flying. And it kind of comes and goes with how much flying you're doing. But there's not like a separate type of aviation fitness other than there are things about aviation that will fatigue you, that you you won't get fatigued doing other things. And that's true of other things as well. But like the PT in the Marine Corps doesn't they don't care what your your job is.

Can you train for the like let's say you did a disassociated tour and you weren't flying for eighteen months and now you knew you were going back to a squadron. You really find is there any exercises that you could do to get ready for flying? You can't train for tolerance at the big thing.

So that's like it's a perishable thing. You know, there's there's, you know, aerobic and anaerobic. There's certain muscles that are good to be strengthened. But if you haven't flown, it's the GS that will.

That you cannot train for, you can't replicate those GS and you can't train for those GS at all. Well, I mean, OK, let me challenge you now. You can train for the technique and you can strengthen the muscles to do that, but you can't replicate the actual feeling of the GS.

But that being said, if you take someone that's in really good shape versus someone that's not really good shape, the person that's in really good shape is going to do better.

Maybe, I mean, OK, I mean, you have to use your muscles. Yeah, you do, but like, larger muscles don't don't mean better tolerance.

But what about just conditioning?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yes. A better conditioned person is going to be able to endure. All things being equal, being endured, the rigors of flying more than any other person, but that doesn't mean he's going to have a higher tolerance. Hmm. Did I ever tell you about my my buddy when my platoon's all went back seat in the 15th? So we went through the whatever training you go through so you can get called to go to the back seat.

So we all go through. Well, he showed up late and so he missed the whole briefing on how to. What is it called? How to push the blood to your brain. He missed all that and then he missed whatever. And then he showed up.

I think he was out. I think he was drinking the night before. And so there's a little cover and move and like we snuck them back into the class and put his name on the roster and it's all good.

Well, then he showed up to Fallon and he didn't know what to do. He just got in the play and he's like, cool, I know, you know, whatever. And he passed out the entire time. So he would just, like, wake up and then just pass out again because he didn't know to to put the blood to his head, you know, to do that. So he's just passing out and they had video of it.

Is that makes sense that they had video of totally. He was just he was just flopping around in the cockpit and we were laughing. And he's like, I had no idea that he didn't remember anything. He was just passing out. Yep.

Birkins, you get like, hurt like that. Like if you passed out on limp in your neck because you know, that video that you play at the muster of that guy in the what would you call the centrifuge. Yeah. Yeah. And he he passes out and it's like, oh, he's still getting smashed from the force. Yeah.

I don't think there's any real risk of permanent injury from doing that. It's more just, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That actually that's what, that's what I meant. Like do you guys train, do you guys have a specific like training routine for that. Because man you don't really realize that. I mean maybe do, maybe you don't. But when you see guys flying planes and doing all that stuff, you don't really understand like what you're going through physically in there, you know? Right.

Is there an ideal physical build for fighter pilot? I don't think so, man. I mean, just like with every Marine there, this all shapes and sizes. I mean, my my body type is drastically different than others.

And if you were going to be an eighteen pilot or let's say an F thirty five pilot, you were going to design and F thirty five pilot human. Yeah. How tall would that human be. Six foot. How much, how much would they weigh. 190 pounds. So that's it. Just like. So there is an ideal. That's because if he's six four he's cramped in the cockpit. If he's six, if he's five five he can't reach the pedals or whatever.

Right. I mean there's issues.

There are there are legitimate anthropocentric issues.

That is a choose like you get measured all these odd measurements like ankle or like elbow to wrist, like ankle to need. There's all sorts of physical measurements. The the window is pretty broad. And even, you know, for me to say six foot one ninety, I'm just talking about like a lean, strong guy. Does that mean a five foot six, one hundred and twenty five pound person can't be good? No, they totally absolutely can.

Absolutely can would that person maybe struggle a little bit with, like, looking over their shoulder.

Yeah, they would. Their body type. If you're six four, you're banging your head against the canopy. Which guys in my squadron, guys who's callsigns were stretched because they were so tall. At the end of the day, I don't think anyone would come back and say I'm better because of my build or my height.

So even that answer is like the window is broad enough to say that anybody and there's pilots out there that are pretty good pilots out there that aren't six foot 190.

Is there is there a cutoff height or minimum technically? Yeah, I think it's pretty small.

I think it's it's very short, like five one five two. You know, you can accommodate someone that short. And I think I've known guys that are six, five, six, six flying fighters. So they get there's a big window in there.

Do they call them pedal's? They do. They don't call the police now. They're adjustable. So the image of not being able to reach the pedals is more funny than anything. But I'll tell you what, as a as a taller guy, you know, a taller dude. And, you know, when you get into an airplane that somebody else has flown in there on the the shorter side, you get in your your your you know, it's like being in the back seat of a car.

You immediately have to push those pedals all the way back because the dude in front of you is way shorter than you. So it's adjustable like a Cadillac. It is. It's the adjustment is not too far away from the the cockpit temperature adjuster.

Oh, that's right.

You know, you adjust that temperature check. All right.

Go it on. I do not wish to discourage anyone who gets exercise from golf, tennis, bowling, hunting, fishing, gardening, walking, skiing, etc.. In fact, I encourage such activities during off time when spring arrives in long daylight hours of the year with us, it's good time to start physical training program, he goes on. A commander should have no objection to to the closing of any headquarters at four o'clock two days a week in order to devote this time to physical exercising.

Nor should he object to the stopping of other activities in most TOEIC units at four o'clock two afternoons a week. For this purpose, so he's talking about you should always train two days a week, which once again, I mean. In the Marine Corps, you guys do every single day, right? Well, not aviation units all the time. Yeah, I mean, when I was with GRANULE there was every single day and there was a time allocated to that.

The squadrons that I would in I was in didn't do five day, five day week P.T..

I thought that was pretty standard to me in the whole military. Well, that's what he said, he said in only two days a week. Yeah, I mean, I think what he's saying is interesting because you mentioned the common this guy was, you know, steeped in World War One.

This is a guy saying you need to prioritize time for now. I mean, two days a week now, looking back, as you know, reflecting on that. But he was probably a pioneer saying, hey, commanders, shut your unit down to go work out. Yeah. And you should do that. Like, that's OK.

As opposed to, hey, we got to get this paperwork done or this whatever other thing going on. So he might have been out in front of the curve for all I know, for the for the era that he was in saying it's OK from the general down to the private, is it shut down normal ops to go to? You know, absolutely. You're 100 I believe you're 100 percent right.

He was the guy that was spearheading working out.

Look, you got to go out there two days a week and he doesn't even say minimum. Right, because that would be sort of like a minimum two days a week. He's saying two days a week.

You've got to get out there in connection with this physical exercise program.

I think we might well give thought to delaying the evening meal on Monday through Friday in order to give the men more time to get cleaned up, showered and dressed so they will not feel the urge to rush right to work right from work to supper. This was this. And the reason I want to read this section is this would have advantages other than physical conditioning.

By serving the evening meal in the enlisted messes as early as we do, we leave the soldier with over six hours of time after supper before he is scheduled to be in bed to do things that sometimes lead to trouble. More exercise in a later meal hour in the afternoon would tend to reduce free time in the evening and would absorb energies and would encourage the men to go to bed earlier. It has been found to be an overall advantage to serve the heavy meal at night instead of a noon on duty days.

I believe we give enough time off to our food service people so they can live with these changes in the feeding program. So classic.

Alcohol, I've written before, Chapter three about the intemperate use of alcohol and the end of the desirability of cutting down on the quantity of consumption of alcohol, one of the reasons for this is to help improve the physical condition of our officers and men.

Obesity. I would like to say a word about personnel being overweight. While there are not very many such personnel in most commands, there are some who are eating more than their physical activity burns up. The commander should bring this to the attention of such individuals with a view to more exercising or less eating or both. Other problems, and this is the last section, other problems, this just a broad statement. This is this this is actually something to echo that you used to say all the time on this podcast.

Other problems, I believe that such a program, as I suggested, will automatically help to solve the problem in those units, which have one of many garrison changing out of fatigues for evening social activities. It should help reduce other unfavorable statistics as well. You used to say on this podcast all the time, echo that. The most universally helpful thing that a person can do is exercise, it will help you in all aspects of whatever you're doing, which is a good point.

And what he's saying is, hey, if you exercise every problem that you have is going to be improved.

And, you know, so Echo was the pioneer on that one. There's something you said I was thinking about in my contrast between aviation, by my time in a fighter squadron versus my time in Angélica, which is kind of the biggest contract contrast is and I don't know how it is elsewhere, but the infantry or the ground units, when I was with them, have a kind of pretty regimented like their days.

And it's kind of a typical workday, whereas a fighter squadron operates 24 hours a day. So there they are running in shifts the whole time. So a standard workweek is there's always a third or half of the unit there from Sunday night till Friday afternoon. So that cycle is a little it was kind of thinking in my head of just the the the getting the whole unit together. And it's in a squadron almost never happens. You're at best, you're going to have like even when you're doing your work up, you run in that work up his work up.

It's probably even worse because work ups, you know, the flight schedule shifts around a bunch to get all these different calls.

But you I would say routinely the best you're ever going to get is half your squadron there at any given time. Most of the time. And it's not always like that. But I would say 90 percent of a typical fighter squadron cycle is you have two or three shifts and you'll never have more than half your squadron there at any given time.

Mm.

Well, before the war in the 90s at the team we stopped as a team five days a week as a team. Maybe one day would be what they call the individual, which guys were legitimately individual ready. They'd go do whatever, you know, do jizya or whatever they were going to do. But the other days it was like, oh, Mondays are run Tuesdays and swim Wednesdays, individual Thursdays, of course, Fridays monster mash. That was kind of a typical schedule in the 80s.

Back in What's the Monster MASH?

Monster mash is just, of course, boat paddle. Just come up with some crazy sort of various. What would you call it.

I don't know what you'd be like one of those. You ever see those TV physical competitions where they're doing all these, like you'd run the obstacle course, then you would do burm runs, but you would be in a little team. So it'd just be some kind of animal. We call it a monster mash. Like American Ninja. Yeah, like American Ninja Warrior.

But as teams got you and is the platoon back and this is obviously pre-war but back. And was the platoon kind of together all the time. Yeah. So the platoon was together but the team wasn't. So there'd be two platoons out in the desert.

There'd be no there'd be one platoon out of the desert, there'd be one platoon up a foul and there'd be another platoon in the jungle somewhere, but there'd still be three platoons back at the team and all the support people from the team, the platoon is like that was the element that at the lowest level, like they were together, you didn't really break up platoons very often.

Not very often. That's cool. You're going through your work up together. But you got to remember, a SEAL platoon is small, right? A SEAL platoon is only 16 guys. Sometimes in the past, we bumped them up to 18. Sometimes we've even bumped them up to twenty one, depending on manning and personnel and mission. But the General SEAL platoon, sixteen people and post post war.

Did that become the task unit was together for the most part, almost like elevator up at the. Yes.

Then they all of a sudden they, they made the task unit which is two platoons together with a headquarters unit over it. And they and they had the idea it took them a while to like actually make it happen. So there was some good vision on the on behalf of naval special warfare.

Commanders to say, actually, you know what, we should probably put a bigger unit together because 16 guys is is very limiting, right. What can you do with 16 guys? I mean, if you man up vehicles with 16 guys you met up whatever, you man up three vehicles now. Now there's six people in those vehicles. Driver, gunner, driver, gunner, driver, gunner. You put the rest of the guys in, that gives you 10 assaulters.

What can you take down with 10 of soldiers? The answer is not very many. So went into a task unit mode with now you had two platoons, plus you had headquarters and then you get attachments of EOD and maybe you get some kind of a radio man to help you out. So all of a sudden, you know, you got thirty five or forty guys going out the door.

So it turns into a better situation is a really good call. I remember what one of the one of the first things I was in a platoon, I was in an ARG platoon which meant we were going out on a ship and we had to do hydrographic reconnaissance, which is old school lead line and slate lead line.

It's like meaning you had a lead line, you had a piece of rope with a piece of land on the bottom, and you tied little knots every six feet, four fathoms, and you would go and swim in a line and dip that lead line and see how deep the water was. And then you dive for obstacles before the Marines came in. This is World War Two, straight up udy underwater demolition team stuff.

Well, when you're in the art platoon, you actually did that a lot because you were supporting Marine Corps landings, so.

So we were we had a 16 man platoon, and I didn't talk like that with 16 guys. It was really hard because you have a you have a boat party of guys and then you have like a radio man.

So there's two or three guys that aren't in the water and somebody staying with the boat. So there's another two guys that are not in the water. So all of a sudden you've got. You've only got. Seven guys to do the recon or nine guys to do the recon or whatever, so that's that's not good. So I remember writing a point paper.

I was like an E for and I wrote a point paper to my commanding officer that the ARG platoons should have four more personnel in the platoon.

And I think we actually got like they gave us like two more guys.

Pretty cool. Jack Young, I mean, who did I think I was such a. It's pretty funny, I look back at that now, standard naval letter format when I sent it to you. I know. I tried. I know I tried.

But the cool thing was, you know, my commanding officer at the time was like, yeah, you know, that makes sense. Hey, we can't give you far, but we can give you to make it an 18 man platoon. We had an 18 importune.

I'm pretty sure I can't even remember you. What's weird is I can't even remember what. Yeah, I can't remember if he gave us two more people, maybe give us one more. I think he gave us at least one more person because I think I know exactly who it was. But anyways.

All right, so there's the physical conditioning thing. The next section is called Chapter 12, the creating of superior units. Four basic principles, I have found that there are four basic principles which apply to the problem of creating army units which are considered superior. First, the superior unit must be created from the ordinary run of personnel. How awesome is that you're going to make a superior unit, but anybody that's ever served in the military knows that you're going to get what you get.

And yet we all know that there's units that are freaking awesome and there's units that are horrible and both the awesome units and the horrible units. Have run of the mill people in them. They came from they come from the same pool of soldiers in this case, it's all the same people. You don't get to pick your little team of your superstar athletes in this case.

And it's the same thing in business, right? It's the same thing in business. You get businesses that are in the same market and one of them is crushing and the other one's not.

Well, why is that? Why is that you're both getting hired from the same group of human beings and in the country, whatever country you're in. So the superior unit must be created from the ordinary run of personnel. Second, classified according to ability, the men in a unit fall naturally into three groupings, upper, middle and lower. The excellence of a unit depends upon the ability of the commander to bring the men of the lower group to a degree of proficiency, which makes them an asset to his unit team.

So this is we're going to get some stuff where I'm I'm not sure about. I'm not sure about and this is one of them, and he talks about a little bit more, I mean, he talks about your focus being making the people that are he's basically saying he got really good people, middle people and bad people.

He's saying the focus is like make the bad people better, make the bad people a a plus for the unit.

I don't necessarily agree with that. I agree with that.

Should be a I focus a singular focus. I don't think it should be the I would rather take my people that are up the top and make them totally awesome and make my people that are in the middle like really, really good.

I'm not going to focus my efforts on the turtles. The reason I didn't say anything when you when you read that because I had a little like is I'm going to listen what General Clark has to say before I bet on its face, though, when you said that my first instinct was was OK, I don't think that's right. But obviously he's going to say something about it. But we we get this question of business all the time is that leaders will devote all their attention to their bottom performers, like almost all of their attention.

It's like, why would you invest all of your time in your least productive people?

Why wouldn't you invest most of your most of your time in your most productive people? You don't you don't ignore those people. But if you're devoting and again, he's going to say something, I'm sure. Yeah, but when you said that I had that reaction of.

Well, it's like if you let's say on a on a level of one to five, you're a five and echoes a one, one being the worst, five being the best.

So if I take my efforts and I'm able to I'm able to double your power, I can turn you into a 10. I can only TriNet go into a two exponentially positive returns on Dave Berzerk. Yeah, kind of.

Not on of the sea. All right. Next third, all men. That is this is such this is such an interesting one third.

All men desire to do what is wanted of them. All men desire to do what is wanted of them. OK, so that's that's the first part. So let's let's absorb that.

And then he goes on to just take some ownership here when they do not, it is because they have not been adequately motivated and instructed.

So have you ever had anybody in your squadron that straight up just didn't want to do what was what was one of them?

You know, I would say yes, in the sense that, yeah, there are people that I've had in my units that fit that bill and we did something about that. His point, I understand his point, though, and the idea that that I'm going to write that person off is unwilling to do it.

To me, it was more like how how much of my time, how much energy am I going to devote to try to find the way that gets you to where you need to be? So while I don't disagree with that comment, yeah, I've had people in my in my sphere multiple times throughout my career that simply didn't get where they needed to be.

And could you say, hey, that's the fault of leader?

Yes. One hundred percent. But the leader also still has to make a little measurement of am I going to devote 100 percent of my time to getting that guy from a one to a two to go, hey, man, this investment in you right now is going to take away from all the other stuff and I'm going to cut you loose.

Yeah. And by the way, what's what's what's ten times zero if the person says zero. Well, now.

So so listen, I think all men is an overstatement. I think you could throw a percentage on there. That's upwards of ninety seven percent. Ninety seven percent that want to do what they want to do.

Good job. They want to do a good job.

And to his point. As a leader, your default should be is that they are not the problem, your default to be is the percentage is so high that you might as well just go on the assumption that the problem isn't with them. So that. Ninety seven percent is, I think, actually correct, not all. But I think his point, too, is like, hey, if you're in charge of people and they're not they're not up to standards, you need to spend most of your time figuring out what you're doing wrong.

Yeah, most people don't need to be fired.

They need to be led to think. We wrote that in extreme ownership or in dichotomy of leadership. I think it's that kind of leadership. Most people don't need to be fired.

They need to be let.

Most people all people know you're going to get and you know what you know, when you see this and I don't well, you didn't get to see this because you were an officer and you went through a process. When you go through like Navy boot camp, you see some people that don't want to be there.

They do not want to be there. They're there for 15 minutes. Like, this ain't for me. And they're going to do whatever they got to do to they don't want to do what is wanted of them. They don't.

Yeah, they want out for the best unit in an organization is always the one which is excellent or better in all things. If you agree with these precepts, let us analyze this and apply them to the basic problem of the commander who is striving for a superior unit application to the unit's application of the principles to the unit, the problems of polishing ordinary units until they emerge a superior are primarily the problems of raising individual performance and capabilities to a superior level.

The many truly outstanding units which have been produced in our army given give ample evidence that these problems can be solved.

Based on the fact that they're percentile scores on the RFQ t, which is like the ASVAB, which is the it's the basic intelligence test that you take when you're coming in the military as Analytica, do you take it to become an officer? Yeah, yeah.

No, I took the ASVAB. Yes, absolutely. OK, so you take like a basic test. It's sort of an sat and act type test total.

How smart are you is basically what it is. And then he ranks it out into three groups and it's the upper third, the middle third, the lower third. But he's got this little thing in here and he's got the scores listed. And I'm not going to go into those. But the upper third. Is 11 percent and thirty four, so the upper the top two groups. Combined make up forty five percent, so forty five percent of people are in the R in the sixty five percentile and higher of that testing.

Forty three percent are in the middle.

So you're almost done. And then the last 12 percent is people that are in not the lowest group, but the second lowest group.

So if you get between zero and nine on the on the ASVAB and these aren't this is this is actually the offcuts, which is the old ASVAB. So the scores won't correlate to what we know about since we didn't take the ASVAB in 19 or we take the cut in nineteen fifty eight.

So what he's saying is you're going to get mostly people that are either in the middle group or in the higher group, which is great. Now I'm sure that there's some people that are thinking, well, that's the difference, you know.

You know, I'm in the civilian world and we get these people that they're not know. When you start talking about people that are in the lowest scoring brackets of the of the ASVAB, like they they can't get in the military, but they're also not going to be applying for a job with that's going to take some some high level cognitive abilities. They're just not going to be there. So you've got a very interesting book that I'm going to cover on the podcast.

And and it's it's really it's I've been reading it for a while. I've actually actually actually showed it to you several months ago because I've been stewing on it. But it's during the Vietnam War, they they needed people. They needed people to be in the military. They needed people to be in the military, to go to Vietnam. And so they started to lower the standards.

And the main standard that they lowered was the the IQ level or I don't know if you want to call it the IQ level, but that's basically what's the intellectual level, the the the intelligence level. And they started getting these these people in the military that were. Just they just didn't have the mental capacity to to do really any job even and, you know, you think about in the military, there's some pretty there's some pretty there's some jobs that don't take a lot of intellectual horsepower.

Right. I mean, you need people that are going to clean the toilets. You know, you got you got some you know, you've got two people that are going to and look, these are what we this what I did when I got the military right. When I got the SEAL teams, I was cleaning toilets. But then you're going to move up and you're going to move on. But at some place, you need some people that are going to have some pretty fundamentally.

Non high cognitive skill requirement jobs. Well, they started letting people in that this didn't have the capability.

It's a really sad and he's got a lot of these guys went to Vietnam. They had obviously they had a higher casualty rate.

They had to hire more of them got killed because they just didn't they just didn't understand things. And the guy that wrote this book that I'm reading, he what he's talking about going through boot camp and he basically gets paired up with one of these guys and all the drill instructors knew it. They they called him like MacNamara's morons. That's what they call these guys when they come in. And he got assigned one of these guys basically to to to help get him through boot camp.

And one of the most like one of the opening scenes is they're telling him, hey, you know.

Right. Write your address on this postcard and write a message to your family. And not only did he not know how to write, but he didn't even know what his address was. He didn't even know what his what street he lived on. It didn't he didn't know they had to teach him how to tie shoes and they had to teach him how to tie shoes, not just, hey, this is how you do it now. Like they had to teach him for extended periods of time how to tie his shoes.

So these are people that are really in a really, you know, low intellectual level.

And we we I think it was about a hundred thousand of them into the military, which is just on just just horrible. Just horrible.

So my point in saying all that is we're talking about, you know, in the civilian sector, you're not getting that person either to apply for your job in accounting rights or don't think to yourself, well, you know, my accounting department, they're my guys. My people out there, they don't they're not smart. You know what? I'm talking about that. We're not talking about that, so he goes on to say that those in the upper groupings are the best educated and quickest to learn, can be well motivated, but need to be challenged to develop their full potential.

The middle groupings are average run of American youth. They are easily controlled.

Take well the discipline, learn easily, respond to good leadership, but are usually capable of more.

And they must be pushed. The lower groupings are the ones that need special attention, and again, this is where you and I are kind of like the lower group of the ones who need special attention to the disciplinary problem. This group is higher than average. I agree with that. The individuals require special motivation instruction. I agree with that. Their attitude constitutes. A special barometer of the esprit de corps of the unit, this group contains also many of the misfits who, if they cannot be assimilated, assimilated, must be eliminated.

So it's interesting that that he's calling for, like, special attention on this lower group and then he says in a single squad crew go, well, I just I'm thinking in my mind, as I'm hearing you talk about this, just things that I've heard you say on this podcast, things we've talked about on your podcast.

And and I'm I'm trying to kind of consider what's in General Clark's head as I'm hearing this. Obviously, I'm trying to put myself in his position. You know, we've talked about this before. And I think the way you said it was, anybody on your team has the potential to undo your entire plan. You know, and I'm trying to make this connection in my head of the things you talk about, why you devote so much effort to these people.

And I'm I'm just trying to place on my head why he's saying it, the way he's saying it, which there is if they're on your team and you keep them on your team, these aren't people you get rid of, but they're on your team and they are underperformers. A little performance. They still have the potential of undoing your plan. And so I'm trying to piece the things that he's thinking almost. And I don't know what he's going to say, but I do understand that.

You know, the flip side of that is the other thing I've been thinking about. We work with companies that some of the companies we work with have this philosophy is, hey, we're going to pay more and we're going attract a higher, higher, higher bar, a higher average level, because we are a higher paying organization. And, you know, there's a bunch of economic theory behind that. And their belief is that they're going to attract better talent.

And you know what? They end up with the exact same problems as all other organizations. They still have a bell curve. They still have underperformers. And this is something you said to is even in the SEAL teams and people create this image in their mind of what a seal is. And they're the super human. And how many times have you said, no, they're people? The exact same thing at Top Gun, where people place these guys on a pedestal as if they're somehow all of them uniquely capable.

And we had a bottom 12 percent at Top Gun two. We had underperformers at Top Gun just like everyone else. So for me to think about it, if you're in a leadership role, the takeaway from this is that what is required for all this is your leadership more than anything.

Now, I do want to hear his thoughts on that, but your underperformance can still undo your plan. And there's no, like, free pass of, hey, we just have a better screening process.

We don't we weed out those people. Well, we know that that's not true.

Those problems exist in the same bell curve in every organization. Yeah. And the other thing that affects the bell curve is the bar that everyone has to be staying above. So the bottom 12 percent at Top Gun, they're the bottom 10 percent Top Gun.

They may be the top tier of some other organization somewhere, but at Top Gun, near the bottom 12 percent. And they're making the same kind of mistakes relative to their job.

It's the same thing in the SEAL teams like. Oh, yeah, the SEAL teams, they have a we have a bottom part of the bell curve. Now, those people might be really good if they had some other job somewhere. You know, interesting to Bruiser, we we had to get rid of one guy. It was a great guy. He was a hard worker. He just didn't quite have the capacity to get the job done. I guarantee he went to his next unit in the Navy and was the best sailor they had.

I can I can I can guarantee that because he was a hard worker, he wanted to do a good job. He just didn't quite have that decision making process. And maybe I should have said the best sailor, but he's going to be a really good guy, a really good guy.

And and so. But the bar.

Yeah. Is is higher for what you're being required to do. Right. This is what you're like a top gun.

You're being required to fly this jet at these at these GS and make these decisions and maneuver and remember what's happening and debrief and communicate and and pay attention to nine different things at the same time, you're required to do all that stuff.

And the people that are barely able to do it, they're the bottom of the bell curve, you put them, you know, driving an Uber and they're going to be the best freaking Uber driver, you know? Well, at least in the top, let's say, the top five percent of Uber drivers, because I've had some damn good Uber drivers before.

So so, yes, that that bell curve exists everywhere.

You're not going to get away from it. And you do have to lead.

And I and I agree with your point why General Clark might be saying, hey, you got to pay attention to that bottom 12 percent because no one in the top 80 percent is going to.

Well, there's a much less there's much less chance of them torpedoing your whole mission. Right. Those knuckleheads. They're holding the freaking trigger to the torpedo and they could fire that thing off at any moment. So you've got to pay attention to them. That might be the the the genesis of his of his focus on these individuals.

The probably where the what's the thing? You're only as strong as your weakest link kind of philosophy right now. Yeah, maybe that's where it came from.

It's from that definitely from that concept. That broad concept. Yeah.

He goes on here, a single squad cruiser section will probably contain men of all three groupings. Certainly they will appear in any platoon or company. This presents a practical problem in the handling and instructing of men, in perfecting the teamwork of the squad crew section or platoon.

The leader can afford to adopt only one approach to handling his men.

He must assume that they all want to do what he wants done. When any number do not respond to this assumption, the fault is more probably his than theirs. So his assumption is every once.

That's a great assumption to make the assumption. And that's what I like about this assumption that all men want to do what what is wanted them to do, what we want them to do.

That's a great assumption to make, because that means when they don't, it's our fault. And that's exactly what he's saying. He's taking full ownership. And then he says this is like a word for word, for something I brief almost on a daily basis to companies.

If they don't respond, he should check his procedures, instructions and subordinate leaders to determine where in lies the trouble when only one or two individuals are involved.

Punitive action or elimination may be an indicator. So if you got a platoon or a company, you got a company of 150 people and everyone gets it except for two guys. OK, well, maybe I need to check those two guys and maybe I need to get rid of them. But if you've got, whatever, 20 people that don't understand what they're supposed to be doing, guess what? It's on you. And we arrive now at the fourth precept, the best unit in the organization is always the one which is excellent or better in all things, which is based upon the premise that no unit commander has enough time to make his unit superior in all things at all times.

How, therefore, should he spread his efforts? It's obvious that his unit must be proficient in marksmanship, communication, supply, administration tactics, physical fitness techniques, maintenance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If his unit is not proficient in any one of these things, his team is not sound and will fail him when the test comes.

How then must he manage? So we've got all these things and you obviously can't be.

And he's he's making a difference or making a.

A break between superior, which means you're awesome at this thing and being good at it. First, he should avoid putting too much stress on any one thing so as to overemphasize it in order to make a show of it, if he practices this method, he will do do so at the expense of other important things. This is a common error. So you're not you shouldn't be the master of anything. You should be the jack of all trades.

Second, he must stress adequately all of the many facets of the training job. Even though he is not an expert in each, he must direct a subordinate to be an expert and the commander must then supervise and check his subordinates work. The latter is important. So you're not going to an expert as the leader, not the expert. You got some you got some nuggets under you that are giving the expert nothing. Next section is called Motivation, woven into the entire pattern are the threads of motivation.

This motivation is manifestly important because it comes from a spree enthusiasm, morale, effort, competition, an accomplishment.

The people in each of the top, middle and lower groupings need to be motivated in different ways and in varying degrees, which is a little different than when he said earlier. Since the leader can only afford to adopt one approach when handling his men little little dichotomy.

You've got different people. They're going to get motivated in different ways. In encouraging students to learn, we motivate them by one or more of the following one show, a need to develop an interest, both those are explaining why. Right. This is why this is that's what the need is.

Here's how you get someone to develop an interest in something. You explain to them how it's going to help them maintain the interest. And that's also explaining why. And then he's got some other things encouraging early success, giving recognition and credit, using competition, giving rewards, rewarding punishments. The same things may be used to incite a body of men or military unit into action. Undoubtedly, every commander, sometime during his career after being assigned a difficult task, has sued and soon thereafter considered how he would present this task to his subordinates, how he would appeal them to get the job done.

In short, on what he would base his efforts to motivate them to tackle the job with the will necessary to attain the goal sought, he will probably use many factors to motivate his unit. Some of them may be specifically mentioned and some may be implied. For instance, except as a last resort, he would not mention punishment, in this case a failure.

His men would know him well enough to know that he would not stand for failure. The real art in motivating a group of men to accomplish a common mission is to reach each man in such a way that all men in the unit are incited to the extent of their several capabilities. Of course, the kind of mission to be performed by the men will be will determine the motivating factors used. But there is one element that must be kept in mind, and that is that no amount of motivation will incite a man to undertake zealously that which he knows is manifestly beyond his capabilities.

So big chunk about motivation there. And, you know, I was talking I can't remember as a client or if it was if on line the other day.

But when you get told the the the proverbial you know, you get tasked with something that doesn't make any sense. And the boss just says, shut up and have your team do it. And what do you do? How do you how do you handle that? What do you say to the troops?

And and I'm like, I will find a reason why all day long. That is awesome. You know, I will go and I'm not going to lie down and say, hey, listen, boss just told us this is how we're doing it. And, you know, we're going to do we're going to knock this thing out of the park. That way, I'm going to build some trust with the boss. He's going to realize that we can get the job done.

When he realized that we can get the job done, he's going to start to listen me. Once he starts to listen to me, I'm going to get this changed.

So right now, we're going to crush this thing and the guys go, yes, or him and say, hey, look, no one else is able to do this.

We're the only people that can get this done. The boss knows it. We know it.

So we're going to knock this thing out of the park. Like I'm going to figure out a reason. There's got to be a reason why that makes sense to do this thing.

And believe me, if I can't find a reason to, we're getting told to do something that makes no sense whatsoever is going to get people. Unnecessarily wounded or killed or it's unethical or it's immoral or it's illegal, that's what's going on.

Otherwise, I can figure out a reason and I'm talking about a good I'm not talking about making something up to trick people. I'm talking about I will figure out a good freakin reason to go forward to make this happen.

And that's what you need to do as a boss. That's that's why the why is so important. Talks about awards. In the army, we use freely a system of awards and prizes in order to motivate men, too often these go to the men in the top of the upper group. They provide no incentive for improvement to those in the lower group and little for those in the middle group, because the men know that the award is beyond their ability to achieve these prizes, make good articles for the papers, but their overall effect on the unit is negligible.

It is well to recognize the outstanding men and we do this through proficiency pay and promotion. However, our system awards must go beyond this recognition of individuals. This is a great point.

You know, so often we're sitting there rewarding the people that are kind of doing well, who actually probably don't need any additional motivation. Look, should we recognize them? Absolutely.

But what are we doing for the middle group and even the lower group to make sure that they're feeling like they're moving forward in a positive way?

You know, when you're like in elementary school and you have like the award for most improved, that's like kind of alleviates that issue.

Right, a little bit, because usually it's like someone in the middle, maybe even the bottom.

A lot of the times where you still get that cool, like trophy or whatever because you improve so much that a little backhanded smack, though, I guess. I guess you rack up the most improved. I've gotten it before. You know, I don't think it is, though. I don't think it is a standard thing because it's true.

Like, you know, when you get, like, you know, MVP of the football game, it's always the same guy, the quarterback or whatever.

The guy, you know, obviously depends on the game.

But it's a guy that he's already training, by the way, and he's already talented and gifted and he's working hard and he's focused.

Yeah.

And the ward, the guys in the middle, you do run that risk big time where it's like the guys in the middle was like, oh, yeah, well, I don't even have an expectation of the award, you know. But if you get if you get most improved, right. You can get most improved. That's good. You know, especially if everyone respects it because everyone typically does respect that. If you're improving. I had there's something called the Navy Achievement Medal.

Did you ever get a Navy achievement medal? So Navy Achievement Medal is like, you know, it's it's sort of like it's a it's a strong pat on the back will say. And, you know, you might get one when something happens. You know, you're young enlisted guy.

I think I had six Navy achievement medals, which is totally ridiculous. I would get those things all the time for like what's it for the like.

Oh, I would run a communications course.

When these are all from the nineties, it'd be like, you know, Petty Officer Willink ran an outstanding, you know, communications course. He organized, led and developed the ba ba ba ba nam stoner.

I used to, like, laugh every time I put my my dress uniform on because I had five Navy achievement medals or whatever, like the big rack of stars across my Navy, across my names.

Get some. Yeah. But I feel like I know what I feel like. I was kind of that guy, like I was working hard and they were just give me awards and I was like cool, whatever. I don't care. I didn't care at all.

Yeah. I wasn't like, hey, check out my names.

Well then ok then I guess you kind of go into it. I mean in all kinds of environments. Right. There's all kinds of different awards like that that are, that are you can get without being the top like producer or whatever like you got, you got most improved then you got like hardest worker or something like that, you know.

How do you ever get that one from the United States as far as, like, expectations of metal that was on? I never really. But the. But you get those. How many names do you have, Dave Warner? What did you get them? I got an end of tour NAM Dave. So when was this when you were like an intern or a second lieutenant? First tour.

Yeah, first first tour in our squadron. So as you're thinking, I was laughing because, you know, when you're talking about even the way you're saying now, I'm like anybody in the Navy. In the Marine Corps. No, like the NAM is like this thing this Navy veteran is like. And I racked up five of the total legs, bro. But, you know, it's something that's something that's actually cool that you said is there's a couple of different ways to view, like the award system in the military.

It can be a little questionable. And there's people can can appeal that bango.

Man, is that is that legit or not? We had two different categories of the same award. We had what we called an End Do Tour award, which won. OK, you know, Petty Officer Willink has been with us for three years. He's leaving the squad or the unit or whatever, and he's going we want to recognize his body of work. It's kind of like a participation award. It doesn't have a ton of meaning other than you survived for three years.

We want to thank you. On your way out.

There was something else we called was an impact now or we had a term called a drive by now or we call them a spot now. Yeah, I think it was just the spot. Just the same it's the same thing I was racking up, which means like I was going out of style.

So there's no way to make the series at this five maps put. The point behind that is like you can take a middle of the road, dude, middle road guy who's who's not your all star quarterback, not your top tier guy.

And he's over there doing some good work. Yes.

So maybe that was me. Yeah. Maybe I don't know. They were trying to drive is a bit ridiculous.

I don't have five of anything, but there is a way to test it when you when you recognize somebody for the work, it's a heck of a lot better to recognize them for something they're doing when we call the impact or the spot as opposed to. Well, you've been with us for five years.

You get to watch like that's our thing. So here's your here's your you've been here for five years as opposed to, hey, that thing you did that specific thing at. You can recognize people for that in this leadership, little system you're trying to create is it's really good to recognize people for the work that they do when they do it, as opposed to, well, we just sort of have this process that by these wicket's are these little checkpoints.

You get recognition, which over time sort of undermines the value of it.

And and again, five's a war.

That's a lot. But the name is not I mean, you're talking about straight up essentially a participation trophy like you. Oh, you've been here five years. My name it was a participation award.

I was leaving. Captains got names. I don't care if you were the number one captain or the number 12 captain when you left. You got an arm and and the number one guy didn't go. Well, I actually earned this one. And the number 12 guy didn't think, well, this is garbage.

It had no real meaning. The the what you call it a spot, the spot name.

It was called the spot. That's a that's there's a lot more legitimacy to that than hey, thanks for being here.

You got to look on your face, bro, like you're all fired up from my man. Look, here's the thing.

But that's a perfect point there, because if there is a spot name and a regular participation trophy, NAM is the same sort of thing. Then it's like, oh, wait, you've got to differentiate those two because if you're oh, you're saying you got five.

There is a differentiation on the name. That is you can get a V, which is when it becomes a combat award. So NAM with a combat V or a combat distinguishing device is what they call it. So it has a V on it. And that's, that's a legit award.

And I a lot of guys and tasking a bruiser got NAMS with these and those NAMS with these that the guys got and tasking a bruiser were hard earned. They weren't like, oh you're just going to you there was some gunfire near but not like these guys were in eighteen firefights and they got to Nam with a V and and you know the some of the guys in task you bruiser some stoners guys, they got the ARCOM which the Army Commendation Medal with a V.

That was a huge deal because those things are tough to get the record to give out those things. And that came from the from the army recognizing what you were doing, which which added that which added to that as well. There's a couple of things in the military. I have a little bit of saying that the V, whether it's a name Acom, whatever it is, the V that has, there's meat. You can't just get a V, you got to earn that combat distinguishing device.

The other one in the Marine Corps that shouldn't say the Marine Corps, Navy, the Marine Corps is what we call the car, the combat action ribbon. They don't like to just you don't just that's not a participation award.

You got to earn that car. Yeah. And the KIB in the Army, which is that combat badge, which means you you've been in combat.

Yes. Yeah.

And that's that's what that's what Hackworth called out the admiral for Admiral Boorda for wearing a combat V on his name.

It was actually I think it was it was a Nam with a V on it. And he and Hackworth said this guy was in Vietnam, but he wasn't he was on a ship. He wasn't in direct combat with the. And Admiral Border killed himself. Yeah. Over this drama. Over it. It's crazy now that I'm you know, we're sitting here laughing. You're like, oh, this. We can't ever get serious again. All we have to do is talk about Admiral Boorda and and and Colonel Hackworth called him out for wearing a combat V, and he kills himself in the Navy Yard.

Back to your five NAMS, though, if some of those were like for some solid work you did on this little thing that you thought maybe wasn't that huge of a deal, but you did some good work and people saw what you did. You're like, hey, hey, look, you didn't save the world, but you did really good with that little whatever you did that's different than a participation trophy type celebration all fired up.

I was stoked. You know, I was trying to work hard, trying to do a good job, and people were giving me cool recognition and I appreciated it. I'm just saying that you fast forward it from nineteen ninety five to like two thousand and nine. And we're back from Ramadi and I'm putting my dress uniform on and Stoner sees me and he's and we're laughing because I have five nams which is really really it's, it's also especially ridiculous. I was an officer.

It's like an officer's. If you're an officer you got I mean Dave Vork, you know, who is in the Marine Corps for twenty four years out of one Nam. And there I was walking around with five. That's kind of it. Just something funny about that day.

So it's to the officers and chiefs that gave me recognition as a young enlisted guy. I appreciate it. It meant a lot to me, but over time it did become a little bit funny and a little bit ridiculous that I was walking around with five names. I mean, I have to now post a picture.

I don't think I have any of this stuff anymore, but I realized that I'm probably coming off as nam obsessed at this point. You are a little bit, but I should say and I'm going to write you up for one.

So you ever get employee of the month. And, you know, I was in the military my whole life. I know you work there. Oh, yeah. I was never an employee of the month.

OK, but isn't that the same thing? Employee the month. I would rather get a name than employee of the month at Wendy's, but it's the same thing, it's just not in the military. So I'm saying it's a similar thing.

Names were harder to get that employee of the month. There was no guarantee that a name was being issued. They got to choose somebody, but still same deal as far as like the structure is something where it's like you're getting awarded for something you did, even though in your mind it might not be that big of a deal.

But as an individual like process, it's kind of a thing. It's something it's just not nothing you see will go with it.

Will go with it. All right, back to the book summary, in conclusion, the job of those of us who are privileged to command, to create superior units from the run of the from the ordinary run of manpower made available to us, this manpower falls into upper, middle and lower groups about equal in strength that have different capabilities, present different problems and need to be handled differently. All of the men in a unit must be assumed to desire to do what is wanted.

And when they do not, they have not been properly handled and instructed and I would add the word led.

They're the best and most reliable unit is usually the one that is excellent in all things, even though it might not be superior in any way.

So that's the difference, he he breaks out the hierarchy of adjectives, the highest adjective being superior, and then below that is excellent and excellent is better to be an excellent everything than superior in one thing throughout the whole job runs the problem of motivation.

This problem is not solved unless steps are made to motivate the unit carefully thought out and applied in such a way that their effect is felt by all men in the unit. Finally exits of the unit, as measured by the extent to which those of the lower third of the unit are developed to play their part of the unit team. You know, still not 100 percent on board with that one. As far as I'm concerned, motivation is about understanding why you're doing what you're doing and giving people ownership.

You want to motivate people, tell them why they're doing what they're doing and let them take ownership of it and run with it.

Yeah.

I feel like motivation is like kind of there's like short term and long term and, you know, like I was thinking of something very specific at the time where, you know, people get mad when they get angry at something that motivates them, like super hardcore, but only short term.

And then if somebody someone's the opposite, if someone's really happy or, I don't know, thankful or whatever, that, like, keeps them sort of motivated long term.

That's good. I would agree with that. Unless they have, like, some sort of weird underlying fear of something that might, you know, sustain them long term, I don't know.

Yeah, you could get into some details, but I think a broad statement that, like some kind of an anger would be a short more of a short term motivation and a.

Happiness, a satisfaction of gratification will be more of a long term, I, I would agree with that seems like that I would tend to agree with that.

All right, now we're going to get into man, I thought those were kind of like, hey, we'll just burn through some of those chapters.

I'm sorry, because I wanted to get to this chapter, which is called Chapter 13 Mission type orders, the problem of control in World War to those who served in armored divisions and probably in other units as well, learned that mission type orders were a requirement if the most was to be obtained from a command. Since then, we have hat and mission type. So what mission types orders are just in a nutshell is you tell somebody what needs to happen, you let them go, figure out how to do it.

It's very it's it's it's the basis of decentralized command.

Since then, we've had to consider the control of operations in the fluidity and unpredictability of nuclear battle. As battle becomes more complex and unpredictable, responsibilities must be more and more decentralized. Thus, mission type orders often will be used at all echelons of command and probably will be the rule at the division and higher levels. This will require all commanders to exercise initiative, resourcefulness and imagination operating with relative freedom of action. And this is what's weird.

You know, he he oscillates between these sort of like everyone should be, you know, how do we control the man? And he literally says in that earlier chapter, the the middle group is easier to control. And now he's saying, hey, you need to let them go and operate. And it's really scary. I thought it was going to start talking about nuclear war. What do you when you think about nuclear war? I think centralized control.

I want 17 people to make sure that that is the right move before that freakin fire button gets hit and those two keys get simultaneously turned.

But he's like no decentralized command. That's pretty scary to me in our tactical in our tactical forces, we have built in organizational flexibility. We must recognize this and capitalize it in our orders to get maximum combat power. We must have plans flexible enough to meet rapidly changing situations.

But careful planning is not enough. This must be coupled with the readiness to change and adapt to situations as they are, not as they are expected to be. Awesome, what's interesting about that is he says we need to make plans flexible enough to meet rapidly changing situations and he says, but careful planning is not enough. When I think of careful planning, I think all this guy is going to sit there and plan every detail. I don't think of somebody that's thinking, hey, we're going to come up with a very flexible plan.

A flexible plan to me is not careful planning. And I guess I might be reading too much into that. But I always felt like I cheated all the time because I came up with flexible plans for things.

Yeah, yeah. It seems like a carefully plan or a plan. Plan carefully is like you care. You carefully plan for like contingencies. Yeah.

I guess carefully plan doesn't necessarily mean to be doesn't need to be overly detailed. In fact carefully plan could be like, hey, we want to be careful that we don't put too much detail in here.

And then yes, being able to adapt to situations as they are, not as they were expected to be, that's a critical way to operate, to train commanders and staff officers for operations in war where mission type orders will be widely used. It is necessary that tactical courses in our schools teach the use of such orders and that we widely employ mission type orders in our peacetime operations. I love that, so when you're going to give people assignments to clean up the building, you don't say you mop and you scrub and you clean and you go, no, you stay here with building clean.

This is what time it needs to be done by and you let them go execute it. BOEM decentralized command mission type order and think about that.

I just kind of blew that off, but that's a real thing, like if you don't train people and you don't live like this, then you won't get good at it.

You have to actually live like this. This has to be your way of life. If the way that you run your day to day operations is micromanagement, how can you expect anybody to do anything other than be micromanage when you get into a bad situation and get in a combat situation?

He said something really solid on the phone line that I was exposed to when you were like, hey, when you're in a meeting or you're having a meeting or something and everyone's there with their pen and paper waiting for you to say something, to write stuff down, and then when you start talking, then they start writing stuff down or whatever. Bad sign. Yeah, it's a bad sign, but it even. But it feels good. Feels good.

No one can do anything unless big man rolls in the hand with the big ego in the plan.

You're really a horrible leader. If they're all sitting there waiting, you got two or three questions. We already know what we're doing. We know where we're going.

We're good.

Oh, this is beautiful scope of a mission type order.

Basically, a mission type order needs to cover only three important things.

One, it should clearly state what the Kamandi what the commander issuing the order wants to have accomplished. That's number one. This is what this is what you need to accomplish. Number two, it should point out the limiting or control factors that must be observed for coordinating factors.

So, OK, you can't go across this area. You can't fly over this region. You can't enter into this zone. Here's the limitations. And then finally, it should delineate the resources made available to the subordinate commander and the support which he can't expect or count on from sources outside of his command.

That's all you need to know. Tell me what to do. Tell me what the limitations are and tell me what resources I have. Other than that, leave me alone. I'm going to make it happen. That's that's that might be the clearest definition of a mission type order I've ever read in my life. That's all you need.

I got asked one time I was in my first deployment to Iraq.

And my boss is like, what information do you need and how much time do you need to launch on a mission? And I was like, I need to know what where that the location of the target, the frequencies of the friendly forces. And I need 15 minutes and we'll go. Yes. Confidence in subordinate commanders, there is a strong reluctance at every headquarters to relinquish the authority to direct the details of an operation.

This reluctance is clearly seen in the embellishments added to an order as it threads its way down to company level. Careful judgment must be made at every echelon of command in stating the limiting and controlling factors of a mission type order. Confidence must be placed in judgment and ability of the subordinate commander.

Too often, what starts off as a broad mission type order at the high echelon ends up with volumes of my new detailed and restricting instruction, specifying how to get the job done when it finally gets down to company level.

Many officers hearing this may think they would like to have a command functioning under such a system, meaning I would love it if people would just do exactly what I told it to do. But you don't want that.

Others who may say they would like to work under such a system really are disturbed by thoughts of it. There are some officers who require something in writing before they will take significant action. A mission type order requires the subordinate commander and his staff to make basic decisions and plans based upon a careful analysis of the situation. If the basic decisions or plans are not successful, there is no paper foxhole into which they can crawl. Mission type orders require initiative, promptness and resourcefulness which are not always forthcoming.

Problems in service schools based upon such orders bring forth a variety of solutions which are difficult for the faculty to grade sometimes looms as a very important problem.

What do you got to add that there is so much there? You can give this example of just cleaning the building, just that little example of cleaning the building. The worst thing I can do as a leader is to tell you how to do that, because the minute I tell you how, you know what you're going to do exactly what I told you. And I'm going to say this, this, this and this.

What are the chances I get at all as a leader in zero? Right. So what you're actually going to do is what I told you to do. But I'm going to miss a couple of things. And actually, the outcome is not going to be what I want. Then I as let him go and inspect him like he didn't do this, meet him, do that. And what happens is I trust us. I'm going to micromanage you even more, which means you have even less initiative the next time.

And the connection from how to initiative. And what I wrote down was how by me telling you how to do what I want you to do. And I'm not saying like teaching you how to do something. I'm telling you how I want it done. That's the how you're talking about. Of course, I want to teach you how to do a task or a job. I need to train you.

He's talking about I want this is how I want you to do this task, which is totally different. That is the exact opposite of initiative, because if I tell you how to do it, you're going to do exactly how I told you to do it.

And then the things that I've missed, the things that I as a commander don't know because I'm farther away from the problem than you are.

I'm going to trust you less because the outcome is going to be the right one. I'm going to micromanage more. I'm going to undermine your initiative even more. And then when you're out there doing it on your own and I actually can't get to you, which is the connection from the training to the real world. So I have to live this all the time. That's when teams and organizations fail because I'm not going to be there to solve these problems for you.

But I've read this in you the entire time because I'm always telling you how I want you to do it. And you're like, cool, I'll do exactly how you told me to do it. And I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. You don't even know about this over here.

I'm not even touching that because you didn't tell me about that at all. But if you go the exact opposite, which is, hey, how are you? Want to get this done, that's all good. Well, we need to get it done. Is about sixteen hundred on Wednesday because what happens at seventeen hundred on Wednesday is this, this and this and it impacts all that. Go make it happen. All of that is your initiative to go make that happen, just the connection between me telling you how I want it done versus your initiative and the and the the inverse relationship between those two and how often we see that done wrong.

That's so true. Thank you for your drive with a micromanager like direction giver. You know, like, you know, driving with you, you're just like whatever it takes to hear whatever kind of thing. And that's a good move. Even if I make wrong turns, whatever, you know, you'll help me with that occasionally, you know, and you help whatever. But you get in you ever drive with somebody who's like, hey, don't be in this lanes lane is like too slow or whatever.

And it's like, OK, make this turn. It's, you know, like a micromanager, what do you call them? Front seat drivers, taxi driver or whatever. That kind person. Let's say it's your significant other. I'm not saying it's my significant other. Not for a friend. It's not hypothetically.

Hypothetically. Yes. Someone who you drive with a lot is saying so.

And every time it's like, hey, you know, we're going to go this route, hey, get out of this lane. Go in this lane. OK, take this turn. You know, OK, it's it's coming over, you know, like really kind of micromanaging your driving situation.

After a while, you you kind of get used to that.

And now all of a sudden, you're not paying attention, they say you supposed to take that turn, you're like, why didn't you tell me? Yeah, it's a weird subconscious. Why don't you tell me, Sarah? Charles.

It's a subconscious almost dependence for sure. That's one hundred percent what it is. Yes, a hundred percent.

That's the initiative comment that I'm that connected to is like I got I'm going to take no initiative because I'm I'm you've been trained to just wait to be told what to do.

Exactly right. Just like you're saying where now if let's say I'm depending on you to give me directions, you don't you know, the leader, whatever, he doesn't always get it right or whatever. I make the wrong call or you don't give me direction.

We'll say, you don't give me direction. I take no action. And then, of course, it's done wrong. Now you trust me less.

And now and around and around we go, you know, and I micromanage you more and I stifle even more of your initiative even more. Exactly right. You know what's crazy about this, Dave? You and I were talking about this before.

We press record is like I basically think in commander's intent. Like I think the way my mind works, I think in states and and everything else to me is just sort of this almost like an annoyance of reality.

And I'm so far like when I want to do something, I'm so there that everything else is just sort of going to fall into place. And I'm not even thinking about it, you know, whether it's like when I'm starting to write a book, like I know whether I know what that book is, I know the insane and what it looks like. And now I just have to get those words out of my system when we're going to launch something.

It's like I already know what's going to happen.

Even if you think about something as stupid as this podcast of me being like Echo, can you make a podcast? You're like, let me go figure it out. You figure it out like I don't even care. Nothing I care. Zero. You show up with what you could have shown up with with a freaking a tape recorder. And I would be like, OK, that sounds good. All right, we're good because I know what will I know where this is going to go.

I know where we're going. And so we're how we're going to get there.

It's like an annoyance to me. And it's a it's an annoyance of reality. Yeah.

Because of where my mind is, what I'm thinking about, where we're going.

And that's that's a positive thing for a couple reasons. Number one, if you're working for me, if you're making stuff happen and you're good to go, I mean, you could just you make stuff happen. We're good. We're good. We're totally good. I'm never going to bother you. I'm never going to bother you. So that's rad.

And then also the the. I'm not getting caught up in these details, which means that step that I take is going to be a big one. It's going to be a big step. It's not to be a little I'm not going to take half measures.

Yeah, we're going the distance.

So I'm thinking and acting in kind of living in, like a commander's intent kind of way.

Yeah, kinda. Yeah. For those of us that are inside that sphere, the byproduct of you is a leader thinking in outcomes and states. If that's how you're thinking and leading your people, the natural reaction of the people around you is to fill in all those things to make sure that happens.

And if you can take it a step further, if you can take it a step further as a leader and also be comfortable with the other side of it, which is a phrase that you use all the time, which I love, which is you got to expect those things to happen, then it's no factor of exactly how you had this picture in your mind.

You got a little detour, a little roadblock, a little problem here. Yeah, those things are going to happen. And we and we could solve those things, too, using the exact same approach, which is if you have that attitude as a leader, when your people run into problems, they're not going to be panic stricken about what is the boss going to think, because he's you say, I expect those things happen, those things are going to happen, and I'm going to end up solving that as well.

And so if you connect the idea of thinking in and states around your people and also letting your people know you're not going to fly off the handle and jump right in there, start to micromanage them when get these little hiccups, these little deviations, because you actually, in your mind, JoCo, haven't thought about all the things that happen between here and here.

You only care what's going on in here cuz you go off, they have to cool. I expect those things to happen. But the minute you lay that all out, like all these 30 steps to get there and one doesn't go right and then you're involved in that. What that does to stifle your people makes it so much harder for them to get to your end state, so just combine the two of thinking in those states and then letting your people solve those things along the way and not overreacting to the problems that occur as you're getting there, because things are messy, those things are messy.

But by the way, if you're thinking about all those things in between, you don't even you're not even going to think you're going to think about the bigger picture.

You're going to be thinking like we need to move to this next ridgeline. You're not thinking about where you're going to end up in two days on this operation or we're going to end up strategically in three months. You're like you're not even thinking about that. You're thinking about, wait a second, there's an obstacle right in front of us. What are we going to do? And meanwhile, I'm like, OK, where I literally don't get is 19 different ways to solve that problem.

Pick one of them, roll with it and. Oh, oh you. Oh it didn't work. And you've got to try again. Cool. Whatever. I'm still over here and guess where I'm looking off in the distance so we're good.

That's a good point and maybe, I don't know, maybe in my experience, which is nothing, but in my experience is like under appreciated or whatever, like not flying off the handle when things go wrong.

Like if you hit, you know, you're like, hey, but it's true, though, like, you know, people have this misconception that you like, oh, what if JoCo gets mad at you for making this or doing that? The reality is you don't really get mad at mistakes. You know, like you might tease me a little bit of whatever, but yeah, like you don't get mad that.

But what that does is and when I was listening to Dave say that and stuff, it it made me remember.

Yeah, that's true. Like, I don't have a fear of making the wrong move if we both know where we're sort of going, you know, and guess what that means. You can move. Exactly. That means you can you can make two, three, four, seven moves.

You can make seven moves. And you never had to talk to me. And six of a more right. Nine of them were right. 11 out of twelve were right. There was one wrong one.

It set you back a half a move and then you press forward and there's no factor.

If if I was concerned that Jock was going to get mad at me for I don't know, what if I make the wrong decision on this? Like, should we do this or should I do this or should I not do this or whatever? But I'd be like, you know, make a decision, like it would work.

We were yeah. Somebody quoted you on Twitter. It was like a great way to not waste your people's time is to not make the does not make sure that you're the one that's making all the decisions for not make them reliant on you to make those decisions.

That's a great way to not waste their time. Yes. And the beauty of that is that they're going to get you to where you want to go faster for sure.

I think you're right about that for sure. All right. So this is how they close out the section. And this is once again, this is such a there's a dichotomy with General Clark and this is part of that dichotomy right now.

And he's talked about it before, the channel of suggestion.

I have said many times that a commander has two channels within which to operate, he has the channel of command barking orders and the channel of suggestion, I believe that a good commander who has subordinates who are trained and have the confidence to use mission type orders can operate almost exclusively using the channel of suggestion, reserving the channel of command for for use only when he wants to give special emphasis to in order to relieve someone or to take disciplinary action.

That's the only time he's talking. Other than that, it's like, well, how do you want to do it? What do you think we should do? The only time he's going to bark orders is when he's going to fire someone, which is what Gleave means, by the way, in the military believe someone means you're firing them or to give disciplinary actions every other time, almost exclusively. It's channel of suggestion.

You just made the leap by saying it was in my head as when what I'm hearing suggests and I'm not even hearing suggests and I'm hearing questions. Hey, what do you think? How do you think? Which isn't even what it is saying in word can suggest. It means like, hey, maybe we should do this. You're taking it a step further, which is how do you think we should do this?

And then the flip side of, too, is that the hammer of, you know, as a commander, you have that hammer, you can drop that hammer. I can fire somebody. I can relieve somebody. I could reduce their rank. I could take their pay. There was a lot of authority in command.

How often do you want to pull out that hammer, man? The more you know.

Well, you just pulled out the big the big hammer, right? Well, what about the little hammer? If the little hammer is even worse, the little hammer of like, actually, Dave, we need to do it this way.

Smack a little. You know, actually, Dave, I don't like your idea smack. And meanwhile, you're getting all dinged up and now you don't want to make any moves anymore.

The suggestion is, is is actually question how should we do this channel of suggestion?

Here's the final little section. And this is I briefed you earlier, Dave. I said there's going to be something I'm going to read that you're going to say. Yes. So this is that section further the mission of the higher headquarters.

I went to Leavenworth and people think of Leavenworth, they think of going to prison because there is a military prison there. But there's also the war college. I went to Leavenworth over twenty years ago, so it is difficult for me to remember all the things which I must have learned then at the Command and General Staff College.

The one thing that I have never forgotten and which has stood me in good stead was the teaching of General McNair, then commandant, when he stated, quote, When you receive an order or a directive from your next higher commander, do everything you can and in the best way you can to further the mission, which he wants to accomplish. And quote an officer who follows his advice and uses it to interpret his instructions will find that he can act wisely, promptly and aggressively with confidence.

He will have no problem in operating in an environment with mission type orders. So when your boss tells you to do something, Freking, do it and do it to the best of your ability, leadership, strategy and tactics.

I always have to go to this page, but it's it's the things that says how to succeed as a new leader.

Page one fifty seven. And then on page one fifty eight, it says, lastly, get the job done. Get the job done. That's what you're supposed to do. And that's what he's talking about. When you get told to do something, do it. People talk to me about how do I build a good relationship with my boss, do the job and do it well, kick ass.

Give your boss credit. You'll start building a good relationship with them.

Chapter 14 organization for performing tasks on the company and small unit level, the purpose of this chapter set forth the concept of which I found from experience improves training, uses time devoted to training more efficiently and increases responsibility, prestige and morale of the non-commissioned officer, leader and platoon leader.

Organizational use, organizational units or teams, even for work details, and I'm not going to read this section, but what he says was we're using this example today of cleaning the building. What he's saying is when you clean the building, do it as a platoon. Yeah. So use mission type orders and then do it as a platoon. And that just helps them get used to how operating together, what people are like, what it's like for that leader when that leader what what how that leader relates to the to the troops, how the troops relate back to the leader you train, how you operate, you work, how you train.

And then there's the last section in this part is let the leader lead his men, which is the same thing. Under the detailed procedure of performing necessary unit tasks, all training teams are represented at all scheduled at training. This may make a good showing in their training accomplished records, but does not necessarily mean that they have actually received as teams the training that is shown on record. However, maintaining unit integrity while performing daily tasks will also enhance real benefits, which we derive from our team training.

So every day you should live, you should operate the way you are going to live and operate. Chapter 15, Wasting Soldiers Time, the value of time, we Americans have always been conscious of the value of time. Benjamin Franklin expressed this by saying that time is money in our country. The efficiency expert who comes in to examine ways of doing things to eliminate wasted motion is highly paid for his services. He commands that high price because he is a saver of time in the Army.

We speak of resources in terms of the three M's men, money and materials. To these three, we must add time. However, there is a distinct difference between time and the other three resources.

If we do not use our money or materials today, they are available tomorrow to a lesser degree.

This is also true of men. It is not at all true of time for the time. For Time is a highly perishable commodity and our loss today is lost forever. Echo Charles, true. I feel like he's training a lot of soldiers today, sir. It cost several thousand dollars a year to maintain each soldier in the Army.

I consider that is probably a cost of five dollars per hour per man for the soldiers training time that is available to the company commander. Thus, when the commander wastes an hour of his company's time, he may be wasting as much as a thousand dollars. We would not want to be embarrassed if some agency became interested in investigating this in the field. That's an interesting way to think about think about, you know, companies one hundred and fifty men. But think about your company, think about your business, think about your team.

You've got people sitting and you weren't prepared for the meeting or the meeting starts late or whatever.

Whatever it is you think about what you're throwing away, you're wasting people's time. We are engaged in a contest with the communists in which there is no civil matter in which no silver medal will be awarded for second place. I'm certain that is unnecessary for me to dwell on the importance of the role the US Army in this contest. Our mission is to be combat ready to my way of thinking. Combat readiness has no upper limit. A unit is never one hundred percent combat ready because there is always room for improvement in the development of military skills, reaction, time, marksmanship and the like, combat readiness is a goal toward which we are constantly moving, but which we should never feel we have wholly achieved.

Our progress will depend on our use of the resources, which I mentioned previously. I want to stress the importance of using time wisely.

And then he goes through a bunch of, you know, how we waste time, time is wasted and administration and paperwork and red tape and. He says this, You should consider it unforgivable, you should consider it unforgivable to remove a man from a scheduled formal period of instruction or practical work to take care of administrative matters.

You cannot requisition a replacement for a lost hour of training.

He also says here we waste time when we overcommit our units, or perhaps I should say we do not make the best use of our time. That's something we got to pay attention to on an individual level. You over schedule yourself and you actually end up wasting time.

The same wastage is presented on the individual level when the strength of a unit is filtered away to participate in contests of non-military skills to paint rocks. Or plant flower beds in a likeness of the unit's insignia. That's a shot right there you go around military bases in America.

There's some painted rocks out there, people. There's some white painted rocks that are white and some roads. And I tell you, some privates painted those rocks.

They probably got in trouble. It's a little bit of a punitive measure like punish. Yeah.

It is training activities themselves which have the greatest potential for wasting a soldier's time. This comes about mainly because of inadequate planning, lack of foresight and lack of preparedness. Soldiers expect to be well trained. They feel shortchanged if they're not. If you're in charge of training people, which if you're in a leadership, you are position, you are in charge of training people and you're wasting your time, you are completely wrong. Here's another section I got to read.

Were the instructions clear? There is no end of time wasted when one who is to perform a mission or job is not fully and clearly instructed, the instructions are misunderstood. The end result is not what was desired. It must be done over.

In fact, if things go wrong, the leader in fact, when things go wrong, the leader should check first to see if his instructions were not the cause.

It is said that General Grant assigned his adjutant the mentally slowest officer he could find, Grant read his orders to his adjutant, and if the adjutant could not understand, Grant rewarded his orders until he could ask yourself, are your instructions and orders so clear that every man underlined every doesn't underline much nearer every man in your unit can understand them.

When you issue orders, you are instructing someone, remember that as an instructor, you only teach. When someone learns. That's the I always tell that story about the lowest common denominator, right? It's a matter of fact, it's it's in I think it's in dichotomy.

Well, hey, laugh and Seth, I'm telling them, hey, I want you to brief to the lowest common denominator in the platoon, who whoever you think is going to have the hardest time brief to your machine gunners, your new guy, machine gunners. I want them to fully understand the plan. I mean, that is the entire second law of combat brief, almost verbatim that he just described about the plan, that's understandable the way he communicated and then to the lowest common denominator.

And then to me in my mind, that actually comes back to the comment he made earlier, which was the effort you got to expand from your lowest, you know, people in the you know, the the bottom of your folks to for them to understand that that comment he made before about devoting time to that, that's the time he's talking about.

So it takes his adjutant, who he considers to be of the lowest intellectual level, you know, his bottom third guy. And I'll spend as much time as I need until that guy gets it.

Yeah. And if he gets it, we should be are good to go. And so even pulling that together, that comment made, I mean, that is that is simple right there.

So good. Do you feel this is the last section here? Do you fully utilize your soldiers time? I am not optimistic as to believe that we can eliminate wasting of time as we have yellow fever, but we can improve our performance in this regard. We can control this problem by the exercise of sound leadership techniques among which are planning good job management, issuance of clear instructions and thorough follow up. The most valuable resource available to a commander in the army is the soldier's time.

As leaders, we must use this resource to the best advantage I know of, no better reputation for an officer or non-commissioned officer to have with his men than that he is a good manager and does not waste his soldiers time. If he has that reputation, he will probably not waste his men's lives in battle either.

That that's powerful.

I've been doing a lot of talking about leadership capital on the phone line. In fact, I've been going kind of bezerk talking about leadership capital on the phone line and I've been talking about how to build leadership capital, how to lose leadership capital.

And this is one that I haven't mentioned yet.

And it's probably one it's probably a little bit of a blind spot to me because I am a freak when it comes to time and wasting time. And so it's one of those things where I wouldn't it's so important to me that I've never.

I've never walked into a meeting two hours late to have a bunch of people waiting around for me to show up like that. That hasn't that's not happening.

But if you want to expend leadership capital unnecessarily and lots of it make people wait around for you, make them waste time.

The phrase being late is unacceptable. The reason it's unacceptable is it because it wastes people's time.

You could be the best pilot in the squadron. And if you waste people's time, you're going to lose leadership capital, you could be an average pilot.

And if your reputation is that you don't waste people's time, they don't care if you're an average pilot, you actually your leadership capital is is directly correlated to how you treat them and how you respect them and how you respect their time. Time wasted was always the it was always the most frustrating and the most obvious thing that would happen. And I think I've said this on the podcast before, everybody has had their time wasted by someone else, knows exactly what that feels like.

You can think about it right now, sitting around in the auditorium, sitting around whatever it is that time of yours that's being wasted because of somebody else. I don't care how good that somebody else is at their job, their task or anything else. If they are a time waster, you are losing leadership capital. Let me ask you this about Pemulwuy. Oh, here we go. I need your opinion.

What if it's, let's say, a Halloween party and they're like, hey, Halloween party? You know, there's going to be about a hundred people. It's a lot of people.

Fashionably late senario you're getting two or what have you, you know, so there's a hundred people invited or whatever, 100 plus because Bringelly you want if you know it's not like a guest list, you're not invite.

It's not that, it's just we're having a party whatever and starts at wasting time.

How long is this going to take. All right. It starts at five.

OK, say five p.m. OK, goes all night and I don't know, whatever. And you're like, all right. And you get there at six.

Thirty other people are there, but you get there at six thirty is that we seen people say, is that bad as far as being late, I send you an invitation to my Halloween party and I say the party starts at five and goes till midnight. I don't care when you show up. If I say echo, be there by seven and you show up at seven thirty. There are a difference between those two. I think so, yes. Yeah, but yeah.

So my question is more about that first scenario.

Whatever, like if it's like, hey, it's the party starts at five, you're going to say the party starts with or without you super concerned about you.

Yeah. Nobody, nobody sitting around waiting for you to get the contrarily the podcast starts when you're here. So when you're not here, the podcast doesn't start. You're the ones with the SD memory cards that go in the little machines over there. So when you're not here at three o'clock, the the party's not starting.

We're waiting. I understand you're you're talking like it's for real. I was here at two fifty eight. What's up. You made it. It was legit today.

As much hassle I give you about Hawaiian time and being late. You're not late very often. No, sir. Do you do you play with fire? Yes, sir.

Every day I think I'm technically a lot of times there's a minute. Maybe maybe if you were one of those people, if you set your watch like five minutes fast, you'd probably be on time all the time.

Yeah. If I if I believe it or if I didn't know. Is that the way I've done that before too. Well, you know, I used to tell you like, oh, I come from a long line of late people.

I remember my dad cracked up because I said, like, you got your DNA. You said you got your twenty three.

Me, I it came back when I got there, but and you know, you kind of look into it like why am I late or whatever.

So I would, I wouldn't go to work late. When I used to work at the club I would be there late.

I was there late one minute, two minutes to five minutes, sometimes probably more time than I was on time, probably for I'm not finding this hard to believe. It seemed like a stretch. And the thing is, technically, you are right, like I'm wasting people's time, especially if I if people depend on me to get there at that time, you know, I'm not getting paid, you know, the kind you got to clock in.

So you're not getting paid if you're not there. So it's not that. It's like if you were depending on you to be there, but is there like a briefing to start the night?

No negative like clock in. And I mean, it would piss me off. You know, I use an unreliable person. Yeah. That I put no I put no value in as a human being.

Yeah.

And I dig it, but I analyze like why am I like that.

Because even if I'm like I need to be less, you know, I just wouldn't change one more. And you should change the statement.

I need to be late. Let's do. I'm not going to be late. Yeah.

Much more a little bit of a harder line in the sand. I understand. And, you know, the thing is, you're you're right.

But when I when I really be truthful, it's because I don't care about what's going on there, you know, like, why am I going to prepare, like, take thirty minutes to prepare this and prepare that for something that I don't have to be there at that I have to be there at a certain time. So of course I'm running the risk. In fact, if I were to have my way I would never be late at all, but I would never be early at all either for things I don't care about, you know, like like that.

I had one time in my life when I was going to college at and it was really hard to get parking.

And eventually I figured out a system, but I had a SEAL buddy that he was going to college to and we would study together and we are. But we were both on time all the time for everything. And eventually we made a deal where we gave ourselves like a waiver to be five minutes or eight minutes late. Because if you were going to be there at two o'clock in order to be there at two o'clock, you had to show up at 1:00 and driver.

And so we were just like, you know what, hey, if you're five minutes late, temas, it doesn't matter. Like, I don't care. I don't want you being here an hour early so that you're not one minute late. Yeah. So we made a little pact and just said, hey bro, I'll be there between one and one. Fifteen, boom, all good.

And I try and get there and wanted maybe I get there, I want to wait, maybe he get there at one twelve or whatever. Eventually I figured out I would just put my bike in the back of the car and just park at the top of the bike. No factor. Yeah. See now you figure out how to solve these problems.

So on the flip side, and this is all in the spirit of getting down to the whole thing, because I agree with you at the end of the day.

And if you think if you really be honest, like I'm not late, really, you know, anymore back in my day. Yeah, I was late.

Yeah. What are you going to think of when I was late? Know you were late a little bit at the beginning, but then but then like it didn't I probably remember you being late three times total. Yeah. And this is not not including a four minute grace period which sometimes I think you do. Just to just to you know what I mean. Grace period. You know, like sometimes if you're supposed to be here at 1:00, you're here at go for four minutes late.

It's possible. Yeah. The late times, I'll tell you, hey, I'm late because of this specific reason or whatever, but that's already.

But nonetheless, like that is I agree with you where you're wasting other people's time. People are waiting for you like that. It's it's kind of inexcusable in a way.

But if you show up fifteen minutes early, aren't you wasting your own time?

A little bit. No, because what do you do when you get there, going to prep? Well, that depends, I guess, depends on the Sun Tzu told us. Twenty five hundred years ago that the one that shows up the battlefield first wins. Yeah, you know, as far as battlefields go, for sure.

But certain circumstances, if you're there, let's say, OK, yeah, I'm going to meet you for brunch.

You know what's in my bag right now? Like the next book I'm reading on the podcast when I show up here early. If there's no one here, cool. I get to read. I get to get ahead.

Oh, yeah. OK, so that's a good point. OK, yes. Question answered because yeah, if you show up and you've got to be thinking I guess at the end of the day. So if you show up 15 minutes early, you're not wasting your time because you can still choose what to do.

You're not forced to wait around for not waiting. Yeah. You should be proactively making something happen.

Yeah. And you have that option. I mean, technically, I guess if you're waiting for someone, you have that option.

But like they're putting you in that position rather than you making the decision, putting yourself in that position potentially.

I understand.

Just went back to the book, Chapter 16. So I was super fired up when I read this chapter title.

And then be honest with you, I got a little less fired. I got into it.

But because the chapter is, will you wait for it or will you go get it?

And I was like, oh, damn, this is the chapter I've been waiting for.

But what he's talking about is information. I'm so fired up for gathering information. And are you going to wait for information to come to you or are you going to go get it? I'm still I'm so fired up about it, but I'm not as fired up as I was. It's just like it's going to make things happen.

But he goes in here. There's more than one school of thought concerning how a commander can acquire reliable information. One school contends that the commander should analyze reports that come to him from his subordinate units and staff, the other advocates that the commander should go see for himself. Yet another endorses a combination of these methods. As a commander from company to army group and an observer of others holding such positions in three wars, that's got to feel a little bit cool to write.

I have come to certain conclusions myself. Moreover, since my retirement from the Army, I have worked as a consultant to research organizations making studies of command, control and communication problems for the Army. The result of this active and retired experience might be helpful to students and practitioners who should who would like to excel in the art and techniques of commandership and generalship. And then he goes here, looking back, it seems to me more than ever that my best information on both our own forces and the enemies was obtained by visiting or observing subordinate commanders.

So there you go. I guess he's saying, go get it. This is done either by Jeep or fixed wing airplane borrowed from the artillery, small radios.

He goes on he says this As a corps commander in Korea with five divisions on the line, I often left my headquarters by chopper by chopper after morning staff briefing. And I visited the five division headquarters in turn from left to right, the division's new home. When I was coming, the division commanders were told that they need not wait for me and that I would talk to the chiefs of staff over a cup of coffee.

We discussed the latest situations, then we discussed the problems which had been presented by them on a previous day. Then I noted what they wanted my corps headquarters to do to help them.

So that's all good. He's gathering information and then he says, I told them the situation of the Eighth Army and of the Corps as I knew it.

So not only is he out there receiving information, he is telling them what is going on. So and he ends up saying that he that he did that and it's funny, I was I was I was reading this and he says generally the next day repeated this. As a result, I was not only the corps commander, but the corps commander, liaison officer, and to a large extent the corps communicator with the lower units.

And I put in parentheses when I was reading this, it was a static war, because at this point in Korea, you know, it was it was almost trench warfare, like they weren't moving.

And then what's interesting, fast forward a little bit says this wasn't a static situation, but such command techniques are not unusual.

Noble warfare, so. Get out there, get that information. He's got this section in here. History is full of instances where the commander being at the critical point at the critical time turned the tide of battle to victory or conversely, the commander not being on scene. His force was defeated. Few such examples have been related so dramatically, as in the poem Sheraton's Ride by Thomas Buchanan read. So we're talking civil war. We're talking General Philip Sheridan.

Union general who was five foot five, we're talking about a little bit earlier, well, he was known as Little Phil, also known as Fighting Phil and the Battle Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864, is when this went down.

One will recall that early in the morning, Charatan was at Winchester, Virginia, 20 miles away from his command when news of a new battle arrived.

He mounted his horse and took off at full speed for the field of combat reads stirring verse traces Sheridan's progress through five stand, his stanzas giving equal credit to both him and his horse. The six stanza shows what happens when the commander arrives at the critical point of battle and at a critical time.

Quote, The first the general saw were the groups of stragglers and then the retreating troops.

What was done, what to do, a glance told him both, then striking his spurs with a terrible oath. He dashed down the line amid a storm of huzzahs which I had to look up.

That's an old form of hurray. So the people started Garah.

And the wave of retreat checked its course there because the site of the master compelled it to pause.

So there you go. The commander shows up on the battlefield and he turns this retreat into an advance. And they ended up kind of smashing the Confederates in that battle.

It's it is inconceivable that the same result could have been attained on an automated battlefield. Nor could Sheridan have been brought, could have, nor could Sheridan have brought order out of chaos while seated before a display panel 20 miles away. You need to get there.

Need to get there and then he talks about why commanders should be forward. He talks about the the like computer stuff, and again, he's writing this this originally came out, I think, in nineteen sixty three and then this version was nineteen seventy three.

So he's talking about computers, so God only knows what that consisted of in nineteen seventy three a like a mobile command computer.

We need to get a I need to do some research on that one. And he says these are fine until disorderly and confusing conditions that occur. So often the battle materialize, they do not realize the roles of judgment. So we talk about all these computations and these things that they set up.

And then once those are those are cool and everything's cool.

But then once the mayhem happens, they do not realize the roles of the judgment and experience factors which must be used in handling tactical battle reports. Inevitably, these lead to a working principle such as.

And so here here's here's what the commanders are using to judge their information when they're using computer based data discount by 50 percent, all very favorable or unfavorable operational reports which come into your headquarters from your subordinate units and then question the remainder. So it's basically like this just junk. It's just junk.

And then he talks about the helicopter and using that to stay forward, which is effective as well. He's got this whole this whole chapter. ADP in war will at work. Automatic data processing, so we're not going to cover much of this and he sets up this sort of hypothetical situation where he starts asking a bunch of questions about how well this is, how well it's going to work to use ADP during war and a lot of this.

You know, he's he's literally talking about like, are there going to be power sources available? So it's really kind of nitty gritty stuff.

But then he says, I wouldn't I would not be honest with you if I did not point out that commanders at all echelons are apprehensive of the tendency to use ADP to facilitate centralization of command and control.

I can foresee disastrous effects from indiscriminate from indiscriminate centralization or overcentralization and loss of flexibility in modern fluid war.

Why is that?

Because now all of a sudden, the leader can track everything that everyone's doing. Hey, like Dave's in his aircraft and he's like, wait a sec, go a little bit further to the right, go a bit further to the left.

We know exactly where you are. We don't drop the bomb yet. OK, drop it now. And we're trying to micromanage.

Will ADP cause the commander to be more command post bound and thus reduce his ability to be at critical points at critical times?

And so that ended up being a yes with its increased speed and capacity for information will add up in the hands of staff officers or of higher headquarters, tend to encourage them to put increased burden of reporting on lower echelons who are often busily engaged in the vital conduct of battle. How crazy is that, Dave?

It's nuts picturing what I saw, you know, from the top and the in the command center, you know, picturing this being nineteen seventy six where they said yes.

The answer to that question is yes, it will, yeah.

So that's what happened. The military all of a sudden we have the ability to get information. So we're going to require any information. We're going to want more of it. And you're going to demand at a time that is totally incompatible with when they should be giving you the information. They want to know what's going on. Yeah, right. Well, the reason I don't know what's going on is I'm in the middle of doing something right. Yeah.

I got a little situation I'm trying to handle.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's how he explains the whole ADP thing.

Chapter eighteen, Making Progress and improving a military organization. It is the aim of anyone who's privileged to command a company, battalion, brigade or division to leave in. It is to leave it in much better shape than he found it. And to be sure, his superiors recognize that fact.

And he goes through this little plus's message method, which he's gone through before. And one of the earlier podcasts which you're going to make little little incremental changes to get better. He goes over the section about protecting your image as a commander, a word about headlines most commanders who have sought headlines to establish their image. And I'm using those he's putting those in quotes in the minds of their men.

And their superiors have sooner or later have been plagued by unfavorable headlines, produce a superior, well rounded and solid unit.

And your image as a commander will be secure, as will your military future.

And then this is the this is the last thing that we are going to cover, I think. No, no, it's not. Not yet. Not clear that. That is all right, so Chapter 19 techniques of troop orientation and informed education, one of the most important duties of a commander is to keep his troops informed and oriented. This is done in many different ways, with varying degrees of effectiveness, a technique I found very effective was to inform and orient by posters and personal visits.

So he's talking about posters, literally posters that you hang on the wall.

And this is why when you were talking about simplicity earlier, Dave, this is this is kind of knocking out of the park. And when I said earlier on this podcast, when I was giving him a grade of a D minus for his simplicity of language in his opening, he makes up for it here with these posters.

In nineteen fifty six, I took command of the 7th U.S. Army in Europe at a time when the relationship of the troops with their German neighbors was at a low ebb due to a number of things.

I think this is also what Hackworth was working for him. After studying the situation, I concluded that the transition from an army of occupation to the status of a guest army and a host nation had not been accomplished.

So there's the wrong culture. There's the wrong culture. From from occupation status to like hosts to to a guest to a host nation, this is in Germany. So we went in there with an occupying force. These were our enemies. And now all of a sudden we're saying, all right, that's not the deal anymore. Now they're the host nation and we're the guest.

So he. Can you imagine trying to shift that culture? That's a tough culture shift.

I set out to bring about this transition not only for the soldiers, but for the dependents and US civilian employees in Germany. And so he comes up with this poster that the poster is called Soldier. And the sold the poster just has this picture of a soldier who looks badass and it says, Soldier, this is why you're in Germany.

And it's got bullet points to play your part on the NATO team to help maintain peace by being constantly combat ready to be a good neighbor to our German neighbors, to fight, if necessary, for the rights of free men in the world.

Simplicity score, Dave, would you give it a that's a significant improvement over the most improved or big time, most improved award?

So, so very obvious. So that's what he did. He made this poster and and then he did these visits.

He did these visits where he would take the troops and send them to check out what was happening at the Berlin Wall. So that's another way to make people understand why.

And not only would he send the troops, but he would if he could send the dependents there as well, so they understood why you go see the Berlin Wall. And then he made and this is the last thing we're going to cover again, he's making this so simple and so clear.

So along with that campaign to get people to see the wall, to understand what the purpose of being there was, to understand why we were there, he made this poster. There's a couple pictures of the wall and it says, why? And it says, have you ever wondered why must the communists build walls and fences to keep people from fleeing the land where they were born?

Why must they charge their fences with electricity, which can kill people who try to escape?

Why armed guards along these walls and fences shoot and kill their own people who try to escape from their homes.

Why, despite these walls and fences and guns have over four million people left their homes, property and friends and risked their lives to escape in the past 15 years, why the communists surround themselves with walls and fences when history shows that this has often been the first step in the self-destruction of an empire?

And then he says, why why were these effectives, these posters and Operation Look See, which was actually traveling to the Berlin Wall, were effective because they used the most efficient techniques of a way of informing and orienting the soldier and of having his commander tell him in basic and simple terms about situations which are close to him and affect or could affect him personally. He gets it across as simply as possible. So there you go.

That is the that that wraps up our review of guidelines for the leader and commander.

I have initiated the publication through JoCo Publishing of this book. We are reaching out to try and figure out what needs to happen there. But it's underway. Bozak has it for action, so we'll get it out. We'll get it published.

I'm sure that we will continue to refer to it. There's so many good lessons here, even that last lesson that the that these posters were effective because they used the most simple. Terms to explain to the soldiers why they were doing what they were doing, something that I've been talking about for 20 years, explaining people why they're doing what they're doing and that is such an off that such and such a as a response we use all the time. It echelon front all the time.

My people aren't doing this. My people my people don't want to get on board with that. Tell them why they're doing what they're doing. Explain it to them in terms that they can understand. That's what he did. That's what he's telling us to do. Telling us to be more effective, telling us to be more efficient, telling us to not waste time. Telling us to be in good physical condition. And to strive, always remember what he said, you're never a 100 percent combat effective, you never get there.

You always have to strive to be better. So thank you, General Clark, for that. Echo Charles is speaking of getting better. Mm hmm. Or at least always trying to get better, striving to get better, striving to.

Yes. Do we have any recommendations on making that happen? Yes, we do. Def we do.

I just saw Dave look at his watch as watch thinking. All right. I know I have work to do. You know it's you know, it's funny. You know what I know Dave has work to do.

I know I have. Yeah I know. There's one person. I'm not saying they don't have work to do, but they might have less work to do, they might have a less of a stringent timeline to follow. Well, you did say might because, you know, you never do know.

OK, all right.

All right, OK. OK, so getting better. All the work I have to do, I'll tell you, part of the work I have to do is inform my people. Our people.

All right.

Let's do it on how to get through or should I say move forward on this path we're all on. Boom. We're working out. We're taking jujitsu if we can. We're reading. We're we're surrounding ourselves with good people. It's a sliding scale. I understand.

Nonetheless, these are things we're trying to do on this path.

We need supplementation worry. JoCo is fuel. It's called JOCO fuel supplementation for your whole body all the way up to your brain.

The last cell in your brain, anyway. Well, we got joint warfare. We got work. I told you, my wife has an injury. Not any more feeding her joint warfare. She's on her feet.

All I'm talking about. Yeah, every day. So don't wear her super krill oil. These off her, your joints, free bones. Keep yourself in the game. Don't even have to worry about them anymore. You take this stuff. Also, we have discipline.

Just for your brain ish. It's not just for your brain, is what I'm saying, everybody to so discipline, discipline, go and then discipline go in the can.

It's all the same. Family will say that accurately to it.

Accurate. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. A little note on discipline. Go in the cans.

So. Look. Are we at war? Yes, I would say yes. I mean, from a business sense, we're at war. We've had we've been attacked. We had an act. Let's just say this at a minimum. We've had an act of war against us. A. Another very large energy drink company has spotted an insurgency happening. They didn't like it. They're trying to maneuver to shut down some of our manufacturing. But guess who had contingency planning?

Yes, us. But we're at war. So right now, hey, we are in Walwa in Florida. We want to be all over the East Coast and Walwa and then we want to hit the rest of the stores across the country. If you're in Florida, go to Wawa, get some go. Try some go. What flavors do you recommend, Dave?

All of them. Let me ask you this, are you how many are you or have you drink one flavor enough where you shifted to another flavor like I've done that with milk, where I'll go on milk, I'll go on milk for three weeks, then all of a sudden I'm like, well, that strawberry.

But right now I'm on that pumpkins. I'm on that Smashing Pumpkins pumpkin spice.

That stuff is crazy good. So have you, have you gone or you go. Do you rotate daily. Are you doing random out of the box. What are you doing.

I try to go random out of the box or out of the fridge. I try to go random out of the fridge.

I have not done that the last seven days because you're just straight. Dude, I am straight after orange.

That's what I'm right now. So my my older two daughters kind of speak their own language. And one of the words that they've been using a lot lately is if something is very good, then it's a fantasy. And they say it in various funny ways. But then they've shortened it to say, oh, that's a fact.

And so the other day, my middle daughter took a drink of Afterburn Orange and she said, Oh, that's a fant like a Fanta. So there you go.

There's a little. Yeah, like an orange Fanta fan. I'm going to have to agree with that one.

The orange. The after burner. Orange.

Yeah, that's the kind of the number one, you know, it's good factualness. I'm still just just JoCo Palmer all day.

Yeah. And I've, I will have probably four every four JoCo Palmer. I will have one orange or one sour apple sniper, maybe a dark savage even though dark savage like my wife's dark savage all day.

Yeah.

Yeah I could see that sometimes I just want to get a little like Dakota Meyer mindset. Let's just go get back to that. Can just that that can is legit. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes sir. But yes. So yes. Discipline energy drink essentially as I said it.

Yeah I said what I said energy drink ish health and it's a health energy drink.

It's real energy is what it is. It's real energy. Yeah.

So nonetheless, yes, these are the supplementation elements that we can call upon on this path.

Also you mentioned, Molk, so you've got all these different flavors of Molk protein in the form of dessert. You just made a smashing pumpkin. I'm with it. I'm with the Smashing Pumpkins. Oh yeah.

Good. What about kid approved to buy. Oh yeah. Kids kids are all over that. It was declared a full fantasy in my house.

Fantasy is that I daughters declared Smashing Pumpkins for fantasy football fantasy. OK, I'm going to kind of remember that, see if it sticks. Well actually I don't know if I wanna do that.

Nonetheless, it does sound cool when you say that your daughters say it, but you can start bringing, though I can tell you that I won't start calling things like, oh, that move in UFC was a full fantasy.

Yes. It's not really going to flow.

No, probably not. So speaking of fantasy. Oh, that was cool. Yeah, was cool.

It's a cool and full fantasy. JoCo it is also out there another light, refreshing element that we haven't spent that much time talking about. But that's fine. It's still out there. It is still going strong. Of course you can get that in again as well.

Right. You can get all this stuff at Origin Main Dotcom. You can get it at the vitamin shop nationwide.

You can get it at Walwa, Florida. This is what what is it right now? It's November and hopefully will get that whole East Coast. Now, look, when I posted that we were in while while the other day I was all fired up and like, OK, what about seven eleven? What about AMP and one local.

Well, that's well, that's the goal, like I said for is a little bit of a battleground state.

So we hope, you know, you you're hoping the people in Florida will get after it fully.

We just walk away in Iowa or just the discipline. Just go. Yep. Yeah, OK, well, there you go. Boom.

Also at Oregon, Mint.com, you can get this stuff also told to me, dotcom, you know the stuff, jiujitsu stuff, ghys cards, some various, you know, whether it be workout clothes, clothing, shirts.

But on top of that, American made denim jeans also. Did you get any deltas? No, no. OK, did you get any deltas?

Yeah.

So the new Deltas, they're freakin legit and. Yeah, they're just the old Deltas I thought were the best thing that you could put on your legs.

But now the the new deltas, which if you're ordering Galtos now they're the new deltas and they're freakin the best thing ever.

And they're what they're kind of like stretchy ish.

I mean, obviously they do have they do have stretch to them that way when you throw that full fantasy roundhouse kick.

Yes. You're good. You're not ripping your pants. Yeah, that's good for sure. Okay, well, there you have it. Full fantasy stuff. Yeah.

Jeans, boots, all American made stuff. That's a big deal. And I think we all know that and we all know why.

Also we have our own store. Yeah. I said it, I said when I said, all right, it's still JoCo store.

So that thing what you just said, I said what I said, you know, that's kind of a thing to write from.

I yeah. I don't know.

OK, well, that's another thing that my daughters are saying, OK, my older daughter like one. I think it's very funny. I said what I said it's there is this joke like, you know, the means online.

There's this joke that it was like I forget even the joke, but it was it was really funny. And since since then I, I appreciate memes.

Oh, I mean, I appreciate memes and I even appreciate people that have, you know, like a hat that says veteran of the meme wars. And they have they've awarded they've been awarded whatever awards you get for them. Maybe they got a damn good five five spot this year.

So, yeah, the memes are good.

Yes. But somehow I don't know, the memes don't flow to me. It's always my son that shows me memes. Yeah.

I don't know what the hell he subscribes to cram as you call it, but he shows me some names that are funny.

Yeah, they're really funny. Yeah. Whoever is making that, they're smart people like me. You know how you can you know, some jokes are like, wow, that's like not even a it's like a cheap joke. That's not funny. And then some are like you got to be whoever thought of that made that joke up is like a smart, funny person.

Right. You know, like there's some impressive stuff on there for you.

Like I, I inadvertently or advertently, whatever I subscribe to, like a bunch of really good. That's really good. And Yeah. Full grown man fully Meems all day. But yes I said what I said it's our store.

OK, still called JoCo store.

So anyway, yes JoCo start this where you can represent with clothing, t shirts, hoodies, discipline equals freedom. Good. All this stuff.

Here's the thing. I said this last week and say it again. It's a big deal.

We have a T-shirt club guesses what the t shirt club kind of is. It's like, OK, look, the t shirt club is echo coming up with a lot of different t shirts and missing. Dude, we can't make a million different t shirts because how are we going to keep a million different t shirts in stock. Yeah.

And how many and all that stuff. Yeah. And then you come up with a big creative idea. Yes.

That well you know, I guess it depends on you had the end state in mind. Yeah. Right. You figured out a way to solve that problem. Well I think it's good because also on top of that which yes, that's true.

But on top of it, it's like sometimes we like even you'll be like, hey, put this on a t shirt or I'll be like, you know, like suggesting like a t shirt. And it's a good it's fun.

It's a fun good idea or cool or cool because let's face it, you come up with ideas for t shirts that are fun and I come up with ideas for t shirts that are cool or super cool x OK.

Are you denying about that. No, not at all.

Good. It's true.

It's 100 percent true actually. But we can't just start, like you said, just throwing these shirts on like or whatever. But the idea of, you know, so these ideas for shirts that they they're doable.

Also people the people always say, can you make this teacher can make a teacher that bicycle T-shirt. Yeah. And there's some that I'm like that are shirts that we talk about and then someone behind you should do the shirt. But yeah, we just talked about that kind of thing, you know. So it's like all these ideas, hey, we'll throw it in one month.

We'll have it, you know, you can have it and it just goes on and on. It's good. A little subscription situation anyway. It's good T-shirt fun.

OK, so because you're kind of kind of just giving me a look when I said I come up with a cool T-shirt ideas, I'm going to say one that will be available through the t shirt. What is it, subscription, sure. Yeah, so here's what a podcast number fifty three, there's one part. This is the chosen reservoir.

We're talking about the book Colder than Hell. And there's one point where the Marines are fighting for their lives and they're assaulting down a hill. And there's a guy, the guy that's writing the book is writing what he's seeing and he sees these guys getting up and charging in. One of the Marines is not holding a gun. He's holding a freakin axe and he's charging at the Chinese communists and assaults their position. And so that's what I want to put it on a T-shirt, a silhouette somehow of a crazy picture where you can tell that there is a Marine with an ax running down, assaulting a communist position, and all it's going to say is on that is like colder than hell podcast.

Fifty three. That's it. I want that T-shirt. Yeah, I agree. That is actually Dave. Impressively awesome.

That's a cool shirt. Well, she'll be approved in agree still so anyway, yes. So, you know, stuff like that. Check it out if you want it. That's on Dakotah Dotcom as well. Also.

Subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already, you know, I mean, I don't know, I don't subscribe, right. That's the thing. It'd be cool if you subscribe to that. You're listening to it. Yes, we're making them. Yeah. We're probably making them fast. And you can listen to them, which is interesting. Yeah.

Yes, you are. Cause you have we have to talk about gas, the unravelling podcast. Well, that's that's on a different thread now, by the way, someone I talked to, a different thread.

Yeah. They're like, hey, you have an unloaded unraveling, whatever. Even though you said you did his thing, it's a different thread, so you got to look for it.

So it's called the unraveling. It's actually called the JoCo Unravelling podcast. So search for JoCo unraveling and you'll find it is Darrell Cooper and me talking about I've been listening to him, the freaking logit.

It's it's awesome. So check that one out. We also have the grounded podcast, which we haven't recorded one in months, you know, because we've been on quarantine. So we haven't had 08, we haven't recorded Ground Ground podcast.

So we will knock on doors. And I know I a warrior kid and I got Warrior Kid for coming out. So we'll get some more kid ones done as well.

We've got a YouTube channel if you want to see EKOS videos that he's super proud of, where he makes a bunch of stuff blow up and whatever, or with airplanes, whichever.

Yeah, it's good. Also the video version of the podcast, by the way, if you want to see a good deal, Dave looks like.

Yeah. Yeah. Nonetheless, yes. YouTube channel. Good. You can see that. Yeah. Subscribe to that one. As you say, we're like a fish or whatever on their official. Yeah we're. Oh yeah. Like farofa. Yeah.

So yeah that's how you can tell that that's the real one. So it's just JoCo podcast and podcast.

YouTube channel. Oh good. Boom. Also Psychologic or de-brief podcast. Did we say. Oh yeah. No we did ok. Yes. De-brief podcast JoCo and Dave Berzerk. Choco's read my notes.

Yeah. Oh I can see. You know I see you write something. I'm like oh wait a second, we got another podcast but it comes out on this thread. We haven't broken it out yet. On to another thread. I don't know if we will. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see what happens.

But anyways, it's really it's us talking about what we do at Echelon Front, working with clients. And it's just all it's like one hundred percent leadership, right. It's a leadership injection directly into your veins. There's no there's no books to be read. They're shorter. They're like half an hour. Forty five minutes.

Yeah. Would you call it like a case analysis kind of situation over our case? Now, some are just lessons learned. You know what it's like? It's like some of those books that that I've covered. Actually, I've been covering them recently. Those direct reports from combat from World War Two, they're like, this is an interview.

We want to get this information to the troops as quickly as possible. That's what the debrief. It's a freaking debrief.

It's Dave and I debriefing what we do on a daily basis to help companies and help leaders lead their companies. So that's a debrief.

Podcast is also psychological warfare. It's an album with Tracks JoCo getting helping you pass your moments of weakness data in whatever capacity that you might run into moments of weakness.

Flip side, canvas Dakota Meyer's company making cool stuff to hang on your walls that will keep you on the path, written a bunch of books and got a bunch of books. We got a book called About Face. I wrote the foreword for that. It's by Hackworth, this whole series of whatever. We just did six podcasts about guidelines for the leader and commander. I found that through About Face, which is my favorite book, which I wrote the foreword to to check that out.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual.

We got the code, the evaluation, the protocols. We got the new edition of the Discipline of Freedom Field Manual. This is the Christmas New Year's gift book. This is what your people want wrong.

Am I right? You're correct. I'm correct about the new material in there. It's like something like forty new pages in there. And if someone, you know, wants to get on the path, back on the path, needs to get on the path. If you want to stay on the path, get them. That new version of the discipline equals Freedom Field Manual got way of the Warrior Kid for Field Manual coming out how the kids like in a day.

My kids are so stoked on that. That's one section that they really like. Oh, right, right.

That's good. There's let's just say there's layers in the book layers. Let's say that there's layers.

So where the Warrior Force Field Manual young Mark meets a kid like last day of school. The kid wants to be a warrior kid, but he's leaving. He hasn't said anything because he's shy. He comes up and says, Oh, Mark, I really wanted to hang out with you and your friends, be a warrior kid like you. But I'm leaving a moving. And so Mark goes home last day of school. Now, Uncle Jake's there and he says, I you know, I met this kid.

He wanted to be a warrior kid, but I can't help him. And Uncle Jake, of course, says, yes, you can. You get to write him a field manual.

What's that? It's instructions on how to be a warrior kid. So that's what the book is. Way to work it for Field Manual, don't forget about where your kid where to work at one, two and three. Don't forget about making the Dragons and of course, don't forget about extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Don't forget that I have a consulting company. Leadership consultancy, we solve problems through leadership, whatever problems you have in your organization, it's a leadership problem.

And what we do is we solve those problems through leadership. Go to front dotcom for details. Go to Heff online. If you want to ask me a question, if you want to ask Dave a question live, we will be sitting there answering your questions. If you want to go deeper on the materials that we talk about, we have video courses on there.

So check out if online dot com, we only have one muster. In twenty twenty, it's in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th, go to extreme ownership dotcom for details. This is our leadership conference where we get granular, where we interact, where we explain these principles so you can take them and make your business and your life better.

We have overwatched dotcom. If you need executive leadership inside your company, you need middle management inside your company. You want people that understand the principles that we talk about here. Go to Jeff overwatched dot com.

And if you want to help service members, if you want to help active duty people, you want to help retired people. You want to help their families. You want help gold star families around the world. Then check out Mark Leighs mom's charity organization. She has an organization called America's Mighty Warriors dot org. You can check that out if you want to donate or if you want to get involved and if you. Let's say you want more pain. You just want more pain, we can deliver, you can get more of my distressing diatribes, you can get more of EKOS misplaced monologues and obviously you can get some more of Dave's concentrated confabulations.

You can find us on the website, on Twitter, on Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as the Grim. And on that face, Dave is at David Aaberg EKOS adequate.

Charles and I am at willing. And thanks to General Bruce Clark and Colonel David Hackworth for passing these lessons on to us and for your service to this great nation and to everyone out there in uniform. Thank you for standing the watch and for keeping us safe and also to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service.

Thanks to all of you for standing the watch here at home. And everyone else out there. Remember this one thing from General Bruce C. Clarke? On our loss, today, is an hour lost. Forever. Don't waste time. It is running out. And with that, until next time, this is Dave, Eneko and JoCo.