This is JoCo podcast number two sixty seven with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink Good evening Echo. Good evening. And also joining us once again, becoming a regular perhaps. I don't know. It certainly seems that way, at least when we're dealing with the Marine Corps. Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening.

All right. So we are three chapters down of Marine Corps doctrine publication, one attack, four called competing.

We're going to knock out the last two today.

I feel like we can do it.

I feel like we can push through these last two because there's some examples that I'm going to skip over last time.

I started this off talking about how a tactical battle that can cause strategic defeat isn't attackable battle at all, it's actually a strategic battle.

You've got a big smile on your face when I said that last time, Dave, and then I actually heard you talking about it to a client. So that was cool. So where where where we're soaking up knowledge here.

And here's something else to think about. So. We're competing all the time, right? That's sort of this theme or as Echo would say, that's sort of the theme. Here's the question.

Are we competing in the right things? And this is where strategic thinking comes in again, how much time and effort am I putting into a competition? That doesn't matter. We we we have to think strategically how often are we competing and the sole reason that we are competing is because of our ego.

How often is that happening? It's insanity, actually, and it happens all the time. New car. Got to get the new car. Got to get the new car. Got to get the Rolex watch. Look, I got nothing against Rolex watches, whatever, I kind of do have a fondness for Timex watches, perhaps, but there's people that they want.

They're competing.

They're looking at my watch as if I'm a lower human being, legitimately. I'm a lower human being because their car is nicer than mine, because their watch is nicer than mine, because they have a title.

At their business, right? And so now I got to compete with them, maybe I could get that title, maybe I can try and get better watch, maybe I can try and use the plan that I came up with instead of a plan that you came up with. It seems so obvious that that's not that none of those things are good moves. To get to get caught in the eco system competition. Because if we take one step outside of that ecosystem, one step outside of that ecosystem, and no one cares, there's no one that cares.

About whatever that thing that seems like you need to win, you need to pour your effort into to win, and you take one step outside of that ecosystem. And it's meaningless. I can't tell the difference between a Rolex watch and and the Chinese made whatever. What is that called?

A knockoff. A knockoff? I can't tell. The difference doesn't matter to me. Some people would freak out about that. We all like to win. I get it. I get it. Our Arrigo's love to win our egos, love to win at everything, at anything.

Our egos are addicted to winning. And you just think about this. Addicted to winning.

There's a lot of people that kind of they think, yeah, oh, yeah, I'm addicted to winning. It sounds cool, actually. Sounds cool. Because I want to be a winner, right, obviously your winner. Because if it's not a winner, what am I? You're a loser, I'm a loser, and I don't want to be a loser. I want to be a winner.

Well, let me ask you this. What are you winning? What are you winning and how does that victory that you just achieved? Does it move you towards your long term strategic goal? Does it? I was talking about this on on Heff online today.

I was talking about ruthlessly destroying. My youngest daughter in Monopoly, where she doesn't want to play anymore, right? Tactical victory. Yeah, I like to win.

I mean, we're talking about I think she was probably nine or 10 at the time, a couple of years ago, annihilated her, had the entire had every property, hotels on everything, put her into debt, permanently traded when she would land on me, I'd trade, you know, rent for four of her properties.

Just completely annihilated her. Right. OK, great. Now she doesn't want to play Monopoly with me anymore. She's not going to play the game with me anymore. So that's how is was that a strategic good move for me now? Because it could be it's a great way to teach people to great way to teach your kids about investing in real estate and mortgages and loans from the banks and interest.

You can do all kinds of cool stuff with Monopoly.

I took all that, threw it out the window, took it all and just threw it out the window. Why? Because I was going to just win.

Now, was there some strategy behind it? A little bit. Mm hmm. Don't mess with that. Yeah, but what.

But what. But really. Did that victory help me? The answer is no. No, I would have been better off to had a good time. Had her win. Would have been it would have been a better strategic move to play a good game, let her get some moves.

Look, win or lose doesn't even really matter. But to have a good game, a more balanced game would have been a better strategic move. Now we have something fun to do, right?

And again, there's all these teaching points that you can educate, you can negotiate, you can do the training during Monopoly's, all kinds of things that I threw away. So that's bad, and when we look at look, we all want to say, oh, I'm super competitive, hyper competitive, I'm going to tell you, I know I am and I know a lot of people are.

We're competing all the time. But don't waste your time competing in short term contests that don't lead you towards your strategic goal.

Remember that competing in the wrong arenas is bat. Competing in the wrong arenas is bad. Pay attention to the arena that you're competing is in. It can be bad for you, it can be bad for your family, it can be bad for your business. It can be bad for your life and can be bad for the world.

Because you're focused on things that do not matter at a strategic level, that's what you're competing at.

And by the way, we can all name people that win and compete and win and compete. And they compete and they compete and they win every single day. Every single day they win and when you assess at the end of the day where they end up, they end up. Losers, despite all those wins, they end up losing. Because they're they're winning and they're competing in the wrong things. So as much as as much as we've been sitting here this whole time talking about you're always competing and being all fired up for that, here's the caution.

Pay attention.

Pay attention to what you're competing in, make sure it's having you in the right direction. Anything on that day, I saw you scratching scratch some doubt, so when you were talking about addicted to winning, I wrote down at all costs. I'm going to win at all costs.

And then as I'm listening to talk I wrote down, even if the cost is you, the cost is to yourself. And and you concluded with what do you end up being you end up being a loser. When you do that, you win all the time. And it's the willingness to compete, to win at all costs.

And your ego is strong enough to let you compete at all costs, even if the cost is to your own success in the long run.

Yeah, yeah. I think we talked about on this or on the underground podcast, but the winning at all costs monster thing that I did, I should we should, I should record, I should capture that and release it.

The winning at all costs setup to make everyone think your weight at all costs and then realize, oh, he's talking about something totally different.

Winning at all costs means subordinating your ego means thinking strategically. It means taking losses when it makes sense.

All things to think about, all things to think about.

And with that, let's jump into back into the final day.

I'm going to go and predict is the final day of Marine Corps doctrinal publication of one tank for competing.

And this first chapter is How Rivals Approach Competition Starts Off.

A friend of mine says that to try to describe what life is like in Russia to someone who has never been there is like trying to describe the mysteries of love.

To a person who has never experienced it. That's from George Kennan, and then there's another. Quote here, complete competing effectively requires knowing your competition intimately, how many hundreds of times have we heard that one?

Only by understanding your competitors, world view, decision making and behavioral proclivities can one outmaneuver that competitor. Only by grasping arrival's weaknesses and fears can one exploit them. Such understanding, in turn, requires sustained intellectual and economic investment. That's from Hal Brandts. He's a historian. Son of H.W. Brands, famous historian, I guess they're both famous. That's a really long sentence. Perhaps we could have just quoted Sun Tzu in that one, but it's good to show some different angles.

Why are they doing that?

Well, because it's worldview, it's decision making, understanding, trying to trying to show some things that you need to understand because Santa would just say, no, your enemy. Boom, done. We're done. Here's some details.

First, second is called the test, this chapter explores how political actors who view themselves as rivals of the United States and its allies approach competition. Usually this means states with an authoritarian, with authoritarian governments or non-state actors who ascribe to an extremist ideology.

In leadership strategy and tactics. There's one section where it's on page one, fifty seven and one fifty eight where I talk about what a good leader in a new a new leader stepping into a leadership role, and it actually ends up just applying to all leaders.

But one of the things I say and there's be balanced, extreme opinions and actions are usually bad. And what's interesting about this. America. The way America is supposed to be. Is balanced, that's the way it's supposed to be, and you'll notice that when they're talking about who the rivals of America are, it's talking about authoritarian governments. That's an extreme. Or non-state actors that are ascribed to an extreme ideology. So just a clue when we're thinking about our country, about America.

We are trying to have balance when trying to not be extreme. That's not a good thing. We're trying to our rivals are extreme. Continuing, we label these actors rivals because they either use competitive methods that run counter to accepted international norms or they pursue interests that clash with those of the United States and its allies. Frequently, they do both. Truly understanding how our potential rivals approach competition requires serious reflection and critical thinking. Once again, Marine Corps telling us to be reflective and tell us, telling us to apply critical thinking.

We didn't hear we didn't hear any talk of serious reflection and critical thinking from Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann in the first 45 minutes of Full Metal Jacket continuing on with such intellectual discipline. It will be nearly impossible for Marines to to see beyond their own patterns of thought, the patterns they develop from living in an American society and serving in an organization like the Marine Corps. So you have to break out of that box that you're in. However, those who do this kind of intellectual work, which is a strong word work, give themselves the opportunity, as discussed in Chapter two to create a model representing rival approaches to competition.

OK, for people like Marines who carry hundred pound rucksacks up and down a hill, who want machine guns, who come over the beach, who dig in to foxholes to use the word work. To describe how we're going to think about things, that's that's an important thing to note, this is not easy. It's not easy. And I'm going to give everyone a little hint here, myself included, you know how you know you know how you can do intellectual work.

Echo, you got any guesses, how do you do intellectual work? How do you think about something? What does that what does that look like? Me? Yeah.

CAJOLES How do I do intellectual work?

So if you read about something or listen, somebody will talk or whatever and then try to think of other examples outside of their specific context.

OK, excellent. I like this answer. That's the first one that came to mind. I do that all the time. I obviously you sit here and do that with me all the time because we're sitting here reading books and talking about the context of that book and then what it looks like from different angles.

We study the same material from war over and over again and look at it from a different angle.

So the whole idea of trying to and again, we've talked about this before, but yes, my one of my biggest take no straight up my biggest takeaway from this whole thing campaign, whatever, is recognizing that there's a short game in play and long game at play.

So to be able to see the long game in every little move you do, that takes work, that's a good exercise. We'll see for the work.

OK, I like where you're at. You brought us closer to my answer. Mm hmm. Dave Burke. Any additional information? Yeah, I mean, the thing I would add is when I listen to other people talk or read or hear whatever that is, and it's certainly a habit I've picked up, haven't always had this habit forming at the beginning of my reading.

Life is just trying to figure out why people think what they think. Like, why do they see it that way?

And not for the sake of finding out what's wrong with them, but by actually wondering if they're seeing something. And I'm not seeing like, why does this guy see the same problem, the same problem that I think I'm looking at and see it so differently? And what does he see that I don't see? And a lot of where that thought came into my time in the military is when I started flying up a top gun was the first time we really got invested in our adversary capability.

So we always knew what our threats could do was kind of pretty binary, pretty linear. They can do this. They can do that. We can do this without this problem, you know, get solved by when you shoot a missile over where you maneuver, things like that. When I went up to Top Gun, I became the advisory officer, which means my job for about a year was to pretend to be a Russian pilot. Basically, those plans build tactics, do things.

And my what I supposed to do is see the world through their eyes. And that actually helped me learn that when I see what they're doing or other people are thinking or saying is why are they seeing the same thing differently? And that to me leads to what are they trying to accomplish.

One more example, which I think is important, though, that's the only reason I bring it up, is the ability to separate your feelings from your behavior, because usually, like if you're just not doing any mental work or whatever, whatever you feel you're going to, your behavior is going to reflect that.

Typically that doesn't take much work.

But if you're and the more intense the feeling, the harder work it's going to be to change your behavior. So it's not based on those emotions, feelings, whatever. So when you can separate those two, that's work.

What are we separating how you feel and how you behave?

OK, got it. So, you know, when you get angry, you don't have to act angry like that's hard. That's work right there for that mental work, you know.

Yeah. So there's one there's one more thing that I would add to these ideas. So we have read, which I definitely like, then we're going to read we're going to question both. You kind of said the same thing like, hey, we're going to question why is that like that?

Maybe it's a little overlay of my thoughts or feelings about that or my experiences around that.

And then what I would say intellectual work kind of requires. Is to right is to actually write down what you're what you're what you're where you're going and one of the most powerful things about writing things down.

And that's another thing I said. Don't you have online today writing things down is de facto detaching from you.

So if I if Dave's having a hard time making a decision and I could tell him, hey, you need to do catch or I can say, hey, make a pros and cons list. He makes the pros. Now he literally comes out of his head onto a piece of paper and he's looking at it. Yeah, it's actual detachment.

The only way I can write a cons list of my own plan is to be detached from that plan. The only way I can come up, what's wrong with it is to detach from it. Yeah, totally.

So if you're out there and you're thinking, OK, I want to do some intellectual work, well, what you should do is read, you should question and you should write down what you think, because when you're trying to write down what you think, it detaches you from the problem. Even if you're trying to write down. Even if Dave hands me 20 pages of his concept about how Russians fly, what I should do is go, Oh, thanks, Dave, I should read it and I should actually write down.

Hey, I think these were the major points that you hit.

And now I'm now I'm seeing what I'm understanding and I'm looking at it and I go, oh, wait. He also said this.

Oh, wait, there's a hole over here. Dave didn't see this really super obvious thing that any idiot would have seen.

I'm scared, but but it allows me to look at it from a detached perspective. So even when you're when you're even if you read something, even if somebody explain something to you to capture those things, you know, even when you take notes, taking notes is part of it.

Taking notes is part of it. Taking notes is part of learning. In a way, the warrior kid, you can't just buy flashcards with math, with math problems, with the times tables, you can't just buy flash cards. You need to make them. You need to write them yourself. That's part of it. That's part of the learning process. Continues on here, we return to the Ouda loop to develop our understanding of why others approach competition differently and what the implications might be.

We accept that the that Ouda is more than a linear process.

A person's orientation interacts dynamically with the other three elements of the loop below.

We examine how arrival's orientation may be different from ours and then how and then look at how to use this knowledge to build our understanding of rival approaches to competition.

So we're just going deep into Dave BRK world.

How much did you guys focus on the topic we talked about? It's embedded in there. It's funny because I talk, I teach. I guess you could say I teach a version of the outta loop now, especially at the muster. My connection to the loop is much more aligned with the principles of shame ownership. We talk about, prioritize and execute, observe or decide is relaxed. Look around, make a call. So I make kind of a narrow connection.

And the way I teach it is is narrow by design. It's a twenty five minute class.

I'm not going to spend hours on this thing. And one of the things that I focus on is the action to a part of the loop.

But when this, you know, the inception of the thing, when Boyd talked about it and if you read Boyd's description of the loop, he talks about orientation and basically says that's the most important part, that's the most critical step.

And underneath that was his recognition of how hard it is to do what you just described, how hard it is for me to go. All right. Let me get out of my own head, my own eyes, my own vision of this and see it from another person's perspective, how hard it is to detach. And so as we're talking Ouda, the orientation piece, he emphasized that so much. Because I think he understood it's so difficult to detach and go, what are you seeing, how are you seeing this differently?

Certainly great power competition. You could go down to an airplane, but that orientation process is really difficult to do. And that was one of the things we talked about all the time, is we would teach from one perspective and fly from another. So if as a Top Gun instructor, I would go teach you offensive BFM and I would fly defense.

Sorry, sorry. That's dog fighting one against one basic fighter maneuvers. So the whole class I would give you for you and I go fly. I'm teaching you how to be behind me offensive. And then I would fly the flight as the instructor. The opposite side. You're trying to be behind me. No, no, no I am. You're behind me. It's designed to be that it's you to get that picture. But the instructor has to be able to have the vision looking over, looking behind me on it, but seeing it as if I'm behind you, the ability to have your orientation.

So if I'm going to be a good if I'm going to be a qualified Top Gun instructor, I have to teach you how to fly offensive, meaning you're behind me. I had to fly that whole flight defensive, but be able to explain what happened. From your perspective, from your point of view, that's what makes it so hard.

That's the orientation. Because in that fight, the way it is is you're behind me and I'm defensive. But when I'm actually teaching, as I'm behind you and offensive and it's really hard to do that.

So this this idea here is important because now we're not just talking about orient myself. It's what's your orientation? What's my rival's orientation?

And that's that's a radically different ballgame. And it's funny because I always use the term perspective. Right. I don't know what my enemies perspective or what my you know, what my coworkers perspective is. What how are they oriented towards this problem? What's their perspective on this? So this is something that I talk about all the time, but I haven't connected that.

What we're really doing is where we're seeing the there loop. What does it look like for them? Orientation's effects on the outta loop orientation influences all other elements of the group because it controls because it controls how people make sense of what they observe and because it shapes their decisions and actions.

Orientation consists of all things that affect how a person understands the world, such as language, culture, genetics, education, previous experience, etc..

Humans often use mental shortcuts called heuristics, which we talked about on the cognitive bias program on the on the underground they developed for orientation.

Now, this is another crazy web of connection.

When and I've been going off on this, when Darryl Cooper and I did one of the unravelling podcast and I talk about we talked about what is your story and this whole thing, and you take that, what is your story? And then you apply it to leadership and you apply it to life. That's exactly what this is.

Understanding the person's story, understanding the rival story, understanding the enemy story, understanding your competitors story, and also understanding your co-workers story, understanding your subordinate story, understanding your superior story, understanding your story.

All those things are playing into how they are oriented in this situation. So I'm going to throw this out there just a little just a little something for you if I'm having trouble with Dave.

If I'm having trouble with Dave as he's my subordinate or he's my peer, you know, what's a good little drill is to sit down and write out what is Dave's perspective? Because now I'm going to detach, now I'm going to take a step back now I'm going to have to actually do the intellectual work because I can do Auroville Dave's problem. That's cool. But that's not intellectual work. That's intellectual doodling.

And I'm pointing at Echo, Charles, when I say that because Charles has a tendency to doodle sometimes during this podcast, intellectual doodling is, oh, Dave's problem is intellectual work is, you know what, I need to sit down and write down what is Dave's perspective?

Why does he care about this project? Why is he so concerned about the timeline? Why is he say he needs more people when he's never asked what? Those are really good questions. If I answer those questions and do the intellectual work, I will actually make progress and do a better job of understanding what his perspective is and how he's oriented in this situation. For example, back to the book, when people learned to drive a car, they gain experience in making a right turn.

At first they consciously look through think through each step, such as engaging the turn signal, looking in their mirrors for other traffic, tapping the brake pedal, turning the wheel in a relatively short time. This experience becomes a mental shortcut so that when a driver recognizes a pattern, their brain knows as right turn, they automatically go through the steps of making the right turn. Little or no need for conscious thought about it. Apply that mental. A similar type of mental shortcut also happens with great frequency, often in more complex or dangerous situations.

So we're not thinking or we're taking shortcuts, mental shortcuts. What do you got if. I got to be careful we might not get through this one. I'm starting to freak out, but this is there's so much in here. You said this, I think on the last podcast was this. I know this publication is about competing with our our global rivals here, but this doesn't have to be about a competitor all the time, a competitor all the time.

And it can be the people on your team. One hundred or so people that you're trying to help. And I think the way you're describing it is is I mean, that's leadership at its core. And I was just thinking of how what an advantage that you have. If you can understand from their perspective why they're doing what they're doing. And of course, that helps with your competition. If you know why that chess player is moving the pieces the way it is, that's a huge advantage.

But think about how you can help your people. And this is just the idea that this understanding of their perspective, the leadership. Power that you have to understand that and the impact you can have to help them make good decisions or help them get to what they want to get or accomplish what they want to accomplish by entertaining their perspective. And you use example all the time.

We talk about kids and and that's actually one thing we can do is I remember what it's like to be my 12 year old daughter and the thing, and it's easy to dismiss it and be like get annoyed with them for behaving or acting or reacting to a situation a certain way.

And then you go, oh, you know what? I actually remember what that feels like to be in her situation. I know where she's coming from. I know why she sees this thing as such a huge deal. And if I take that perspective, that orientation, it's so much easier for me to guide her to where I want her to be to help her not as a competitor, but someone I actually want to help.

So just the connection between the orientation, the competition and the next piece is actually to lead them. The the that saying, hey, don't forget don't forget where you came from. Like when I became an officer in the SEAL teams who, you know, don't forget where you came from, man. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. And you don't want to forget where you came from. What is the thing that you don't want to forget?

You don't want to forget that perspective. I wrote about leadership changing tactics. I remember being the last guy on a patrol. No idea where we're going. No idea how much further we have to go until we get there. No idea when we're going to break. No idea if there's any streams up ahead. We can go on or not. I don't know anything. And I hated it.

And when I was in charge, I remember I didn't forget where I came from. I didn't forget what it was. I didn't forget the perspective of being an A.W. in the back of the train.

So it's like the opposite of the curse of knowledge.

Remember that cognitive bias, the curse of knowledge when you kind of forget that you know everything and everyone else doesn't. Right? It's the opposite of that.

I wouldn't be the opposite of that. But it's a similar thing where I think everybody knows what I know. And in this case, don't forget. Yeah, I guess it is. I guess it is. You could utilize that cognitive bias as a warning, make sure that everybody, not everybody knows what you know. Yeah.

Continue on. It is essential for Marines to understand the role a person's orientation plays in the choices they make and how this relates to the actions they take in the world. This also applies to groups of people where a kind of collective orientation can work in a similar way. Oh, wow. If everyone on the team sees something the same way, it's going to be a better it's going to be easier team to lead and they're going to get more stuff done.

They're going to get it done quicker.

Yeah, now that when you said the earlier podcast, the whole reason that I was so fired up for this podcast is because it's not just about competing, it's it's equally about leadership.

Yeah, my my note on the cover of this says competing and then or influencing, which is leadership this.

This also applies to groups of people where a kind of collective orientation can work in a similar way, we must constantly study the components of a rival's orientation if our understanding of their approach to competition is to be useful, useful in crafting our own campaign. Keep in mind that two people can look at a set of facts and come to very different conclusions about what these facts mean.

This applies to groups of people as well as we learn in Chapter two narratives. Narratives, stories, narratives are what people use to give meaning to facts.

Isn't that an interesting way of saying it? A narrative in this sense is the story that explains how the world works.

This narrative or story is constructed from the components, language, culture, experience found in orientation, thus people make sense of the world based on their orientation.

And again, the podcast that that Daryl and I did on this. Called What is your story on the On the Unraveling podcast, the way that the mind works to formulate stories so that you can survive and make sense of the world? There's all these. We cover them on the podcast.

But these psychological experiments that that psychologists have done that show clearly that we will connect the dots in our own head and just believe that to be the truth, we will we will make up a story. It's the extreme of a leadership strategy and tactics of, hey, if you don't if you if you don't tell the team what's going on, they're going to make up a story. And it's not going to be a good one, by the way. That's what we do, so we do it in groups, we'll fill in the blanks all day long, you're if you're in a SEAL platoon and you don't know where you're going.

Believe me, guess where you're going. You're going to go to to Siberia for a six month deployment. That's what's happening.

And then, you know, I got fired up with the title of this next section, Language Shapes Behavior in that interesting their 1984 George Orwell, which some people have commented, echoed Charles Moore that you didn't read that book in high school. No.

Scary. We think it's scary. I don't even know if it was because they didn't assign it or because I refuse to read it after it was assigned, refused or or failed to.

OK, just wanted to make sure that language that we were using was going to shape our to correct unretouched if we didn't have that.

But I don't think we had that big check.

It's a hard book to get.

I mean, it's not like people use words to describe things around the world, around them and to describe what is happening in the world. These words influence their actions.

Language affects groups of people in a similar way as the words they choose, provide the meaning they want to communicate to each other.

The words they choose provide the meaning they want to communicate to each other, the meaning that is understood, then causes the group to act in one way or another. Note that this applies to the word competition in the Western world.

The word has various meanings that bring to mind sporting events or perhaps to businesses trying to win market share. When we add descriptors to the word like great power competition or nation state competition, the context, the descriptors provide adjust our understanding of the competition we face.

Have you ever heard that the Eskimos have one hundred different words for snow, in fact, or fiction where you are? I don't know the fact that they have 100 different words.

Hundred, one hundred. I don't think that that's true, Dave. Fact or fiction?

I'm going to say it's not true. It's probably just to say OK, but it probably is rooted in something.

Yeah. Maybe that there's a lot more than just one word, like 14 words or something like this.

I don't know how many words is probably this is really dumb of me to do this. I like did research and didn't write it down. I think the number is around 50.

There's around 50 words and but but it's words like frost versus snow on the ground versus snow in the air versus hard packed snow versus soft powder. You know, they do have different words.

Makes sense. Yeah. I remember I was telling you in in Hawaiian, there's different words for water for that exact same reason as ocean water. There's river water, there's rain.

You know, it's different words. Yeah. And those are really actually very different things. I mean, let's face it, those are really different things. Why don't we have I guess we descriptor ocean water, river water, lake water. Yeah, but why?

Some things need the descriptor and one things kind of need a whole different word, you know, what's the differentiator, really?

I don't know.

Look, if you're going to be like if you're going to be like rain water, river, water, lake, water, waterfall, ocean water wave, these are all things that have water in it. Why not just go go deeper, go oxygen, there's oxygen and all these other things?

I was I was trying to think of an example of like, well, what words actually are like that?

Here's one road. Sure. We have a road. Totally. We have a highway.

We have an exit. Exit. Yeah, we have what I can.

OK, there's three words. Well then then there's street street. OK, good. Good. Yes, thank you. There's a bunch more and they can actually do it. It's like, it's like, it's about, I think it's about perspective and the orientation of it. Oh by the way like I was thinking of when you said snow is like well if it's is it. I don't know.

Is it, is it a dusting or is it like a dumping like the perspective that actually really matters? Like what would you go do and what road? I don't know. Is it a like unpaved single lane, dirt hard drive?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. And if you're going to go on one of those crazy hikes, is it like what kind of road is it. Yeah. And that's the word you describe is going to matter a lot based on on your perspective on it.

Yeah. Mystery. We're never going to get through this stuff.

Where's the line. Where do you draw the line.

But yeah, you're right to compare the Western use of the word competition to words authoritarian governments use to label the same relationship. The contrast helps us see how language might shape behavior.

For example, some rivals use struggle.

Or embracing while fighting, which is a pretty cool thing, we call that jujitsu, by the way, embracing or fighting to name what we know as competition to most Marines, hearing something described as struggle or fighting would shape an initial reaction, quite a bit different than if we had heard it described as competition because of the mental shortcuts built into how we learn to use the words and what our experience tells us.

Those words typically mean this should alert us that we need to employ critical thinking.

When considering the language our competitors use, it can and does cause them to approach the situation from a different perspective, which leads them to consider using different tools than we might choose.

That's just. If you don't think through that right there, you're just going to fall short, if you don't think about how your competitor or more important.

What is your what is your subordinate how what words are they choosing we. I'm getting oh, I'm in charge of this oh, I'm in charge here and once you take charge of this. And then I hear Echo in the locker room going, yeah, JoCo tasked me with using it as opposed to like, yeah, I'll be running this now. Oh yeah, we're saying the exact same thing. Totally different meaning. Yeah. One Ekos happy about how I'm going to run.

I'm running this now and one is a jockey tasked me with doing this.

Of course I'm throwing some tone on there I guess. Yeah but that's true though.

Like if you know, if you tell me hey, you're in charge of mowing the lawn, I'm like OK, you know it takes a response.

That's the feeling, you know. But if you be like, hey, you got to go do some chores and and one of them is going, that that's your problem. How about then mowing the lawn? That's your problem now.

Kind of like, I don't want to do it.

You you're going to do it. Both situations. I got to do it. Same Dielman, different attitude, though. Different approaches. If I understand the approach, if I understand that the words that I use or when I ask you about it and I understand that those words reveal the situation clearer for me as a leader to make decisions, that's a powerful thing.

And of course, it applies to our competition as well.

The words people pick to describe things can also reveal biases or tendencies, which is what I just said. And these things can be exploited.

Our competitors across the globe recognize Western societies tendency to think of themselves as either in a condition of at peace or at war. This is a significant contrast from Mao Zedong's political politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed, Mao chose the word war. He chose the word war to describe the enduring relationship between political actors and in essence, said that while the relationship is violent some of the time, it's always at a state of war. Marines must consider how using words like these differs from how the United States describes it and the corresponding impact these differences might have on the ways and means a rival might use in competition.

Man there think you're thinking we're in competition. They're thinking we're at war. The culture of a group can be defined as the group's accumulated shared learning of how to solve internal and external problems. The group, this culture, by the way, I miss that the title of this is Culture. The culture of a group can be defined as the group's accumulated shared learning of how to solve internal and external problems. The group then determines that this shared learning is valid, so the new members learn it as they as the correct way to perceive it, to perceive, think, feel and behave.

That's what culture is new members come on and that culture is going to tell them how to perceive things, how to think, how to feel and how to behave, the group then start to take this accumulated learning for granted as a system of beliefs, values and behavioral norms.

This is culture.

This is what you're trying to build inside your company. This is what you're trying to build inside your team. That's what you're trying to build inside your platoon. When this happens, the system turns into both turns into basic assumptions and eventually drops out of the out of conscious awareness. You want that culture so ingrained that people aren't even thinking about it.

What's the deal? Dave, what's the deal with Marines wearing flip flops on base?

Is that legal or illegal? Illegal. So being that when I was you know, when I was in the dirt and I would go to McCard, right.

And I would I would have like a short haircut and I would be dressed just whatever. And I surf shorts, t shirt, flip flops.

And sometimes occasionally I would get a look a second look like bull, you know, you could see and you and I never actually had anybody say anything to me.

I never had somebody cross over and say, Hey, Marine.

And maybe it's because by this point, I never really went to Muqtada a lot until I was a little older, you know, if I would have been younger, I probably gotten called out, definitely. OK, that's good to know.

So that's culture, right? Yeah. I mean, so that's the culture in the Marine Corps. You don't wear flip flops in civilian clothes. Certainly not on base. I mean, I remember one of my first overseas deployments where my wife actually came and spent a little time with me, which is kind of uncommon. It was a Japan deployment. So, you know, not obviously a combat deployment. But she came out and spent a little time and just up the road was the seven day store, which is like on every Marine base you can get, like, you know, sodas or whatever, and you can rent videos or do it.

And there she was in there getting something and two young Marines walked in and there was like a Marine gunnery sergeant just standing there on a Saturday afternoon, not doing anything but at the front door. And every Marine that showed up with flipflops, he made him turn it made him leave. And it was like a three quarter mile walk getting up. There was a total bummer. You know, they don't have vehicles or young kids are 18 years old.

And just the looks on those young Marines face just the dejected look.

And she came back and she's like, what is the deal?

My Marines don't wear flip flops on this. That's the deal.

But that's you know, that's that's the culture. That's the culture. And, you know, you can argue all day long about, hey, you know, is this a big deal? It's not a big deal. There's an argument that says, like, dude, is it a big deal? You can make that argument.

And then the other argument is what is more important than the culture in the Marine Corps?

And so I, of course, was like the Marines don't wear flip flops on base.

Like, I don't know what else is there for me to say. Yeah, exactly. Marines don't wear flip flops. Thank you. Next question, beer now. Yeah, but yeah, that's the thing. That's absolutely a thing. Yeah.

And that so that's like the perfect culture, right. That's the perfect exactly why I asked you that question. Because what is more important than the culture of the Marine Corps. Marines don't wear flip flops, period, end of story, there's a level of professionalism that is we don't go below. That's right.

And I just use the word we to describe. Marine Corps culture is similar to a computer's operating system. It is the basic rule set about how the computer works, but it operates in the background. We have to purposefully examine the operating system if we want to learn how it affects the computer's operations. Culture is like this rule set operating in the background while influencing a group thoughts and actions.

Culture, like an operating system, receives updates and adjustments over time as more is learned and as it adjusts to new threats and opportunities, culture, however, changes organically while an operating system relies on human intervention. Now, what's interesting about that is.

You have to check your culture sometimes, how do you check your culture? I'll give you one guess. What you do is you take a step back and you write down what the culture is. Now, here's where you might be led astray, I might think.

Oh, I want to know about the culture, my platoon. So I write down my platoon, you know, gets to work first. My platoon puts the job first, my platoon. We take care of each other, my platoon. We look sharp all the time, whatever, whatever these things are. That's the culture in your platoon.

I can't just say I can't just interject a new culture line into that and have it just be what? Well, that's the new that's that's now the culture. You can't do that.

Cultures, how are they describing it? Cultures organic. Yeah. Now, listen, over time, you can make it hardcore.

Kandos, hardcore Kandos. Right. The four thirty ninth with Hackworth. He interjected, hey, from now on the the salutation is hardcore Kandos no fucking slack. And he says at first what did they do.

They laughed. Coco lifer. Who's this freakin lifer. Right.

And then it started to creep in, start to creep into the consciousness so you can interject something and just expect it to be accepted.

And but as he as you interject something and if you are a good leader and you set a good example and you start keeping your troops alive, which Hackworth did, and you start going on offense and you start winning and people start to embrace these things that you brought on board, you can make that culture have a shift.

So what you have to be careful of, though, what you have to be careful of and why it's good to step back and do an assessment and write down what you think your culture is.

And so you make sure there's nothing in there that says platoon comes first, screw everyone else. We don't want that culture now. We need to start thinking, OK, I know I can't just line out, screw everyone else and now we're good.

I have to say, how am I going to slowly, organically change this culture into what it should be? Do that's not easy, man. I mean, like you're describing that, I mean, God, I'm almost embarrassed to give my version of that or my example of that as a commander, because compared to Hackworth, it's just so ridiculous. But when I took command, my my first operational command as an F thirty five squadron commander was the very first F-35 squadron, the Marine Corps ever.

And what I was given in that squadron were Hornet guys and Harrier guys and their West Coast Hornet guys and these cowhorn guys. And you know, this probably similar on the team's East Coast and West Coast. They're actually in a lot of ways, very different. So if you flew hornets on the West Coast, you got a lot of cultural norms that are different than hornets on the East Coast. And that I got a whole different side for different cultures, really, Hornets, Harriers, East Coast, West Coast.

And the first thing one of the first things I instituted when I got there as the commander Turner like we are thirty five guys, there's no more Hornet guy. There's no and I don't care if your background if you fly Harriers and Cherry Point or Hornets and it doesn't matter because there are some connotation like, oh, the Hornet guys were better air to air, the Harrier guys are better air to ground because that's where they came from. Well, this new airplane, we need to do it all.

So it was there was some resistance of that's where I came from. That's my identity and that's what we are. And it took some time to resist against to to push against that. But what I wanted the rest of the world to know about us was this is what we do not this is where we used to do this, where it came from.

And so even some simple resistance of that, I thought everyone would be on board of that.

It took some time for guys to release that I that former identity of what what we were.

And I think in some ways it's good because it speaks to how strong the culture is. But the bigger issue is how hard it is to change the culture. And if they don't buy into it, it's not it's never going to happen. If they don't buy into that change, that change will not happen.

Has to be it has to be organic. It has to take it's going to take time. You have to plant the seeds. You have to let you have to let it grow inside their own minds. Right. You can do your best to plant seeds, but it's going to have to come from inside. You can't really. And it's very difficult.

Can't see you, can't it. Difficult to impose culture.

Yeah. Although culture has a wide variety of attributes, we will highlight time, risk and mindset as we consider how culture might affect the way our rivals approach competition, collectivists or group focused cultures emphasize the importance of the group over the individual and often feel compelled to reach decisions by gaining consensus, which frequently takes time to develop from an American orientation.

This may appear to take too long from a collective culture orientation. Achieving consensus might be considered so important that taking months or even years to reach a decision is given higher priority.

Neither perspective is objectively right or wrong, but each is logically consistent when viewed from its respective cultural orientation. I have a note here, my note says both these are wrong from a leadership perspective. Let let them come up with the plan, let them come up with the idea and provide support to it. That's a lot faster.

It's a lot faster for me to say, hey, Dave, you know, hey, what does your team want to do here? I'll tell you what. Come up with a plan and brief me on the plan. Not arguing, I'm not looking for consensus, I'm just looking for a good idea that's pretty close and we're going to run with it and just how much easier it is to get consensus when you're not trying to create the consensus.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, wait. I agree. OK, we're done. We don't try. We're done trying to get consensus. I love your idea.

Oh, yeah, yes, yes. What about when there's nine people.

Cool. Help guide those guys, those nine people to give consensus to each other.

Consensus is consensus becomes a battle when you inject ego into it.

Otherwise, we just ask some questions and we figure out what the best solution is and we move forward. I had a question the other day, two days ago, what do you do when you keep when you check your ego but you still want to do your plan? So someone talking about two people on their team, they both had different plans, same outcome, but the different ways to do it. What happens when you check your ego and still want to do your plan?

Like, well, actually, if you check your ego and you see that their plan is going to get to the same outcome, you'll do their plan. And it was going. How often would you do that?

My answer was one hundred percent of the time or like is often as humanly possible.

And just the only how many had the only barrier to the things you're trying to accomplish. The barrier to consensus is you.

It's if if as long as you're aligned, as long as you're going to the same place. The only reason why you won't do it their way is your ego, and the minute you agree to do it their way, you have alignment and consensus and you're moving and it's your life gets so much better.

Yeah, because when I want to do it my way and Dave wants to do it Dave's way and I spend nine hours trying to present my case and he's arguing against me and he's actually going to do some research and bring him back some facts and figures.

We already executed the plan. And I said, hey, Dave, that looks pretty good. Go with it. And by the way, also now, when I say, hey, Dave, dude, your plan looks awesome.

Let's roll with it. How can I support and then two hours later go, Hey, Dave, there's this thing over here. Do you think I could adjust this? What's your attitude? Your attitude? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Make my plan even better. Right. That's what we're doing. And you mentioned it the only time that we're the only time I can't come to consensus with you if, like, I'm not getting there. If we can't figure out, like my plan or your plan, I need to say, OK, where, where, where, where, where do you actually want to go?

When are we aligned? Because if we're not actually going to the same place, if we're all in the same place. Subordinate, you're going. Let's go. I'm good. This sounds like a great plan to do my day, and it's going to take an extra two hours.

Cool. I'm net five hours gained because I didn't spend seven hours arguing. Different orientations also result in different attitudes towards identifying and weighing risk, this may lead to behavior that is surprising to us. For example, Chinese and Russian ships and aircraft have maneuvered in close proximity to US forces, which appears to us as unnecessary, unnecessarily dangerous and operating against agreed international protocols. We may especially view such behavior as strange when we think of ourselves as at peace with them.

Taking these risk might look quite different from another viewpoint, operating this way may seem justified to those who see themselves in a condition of war without bloodshed or embracing, without fighting.

Finally, different cultures produce different mind sets. As mentioned above, culture is a system of beliefs, values and behavioral norms that operate in the background below the level of conscious awareness.

This produces a frame of mind that seeks to make the right choice in a given situation with right being defined by these background factors, they have they have both those rights in quotes.

This produces a frame of mind that seeks to make the quote right, this choice in a given situation with, quote, right. Being defined by those black background factors. This is also often labeled intuition.

When somebody makes an intuitive choice while within their own culture, the choice is often judged as correct by others from that culture. This is because the criteria they use to determine if correct aligns with the beliefs, values and norms that originally informed the intuitive choice. However, people from a different culture have different judging criteria originating from different values, beliefs and norms, which leads them to intuitive choices likely quite different from ours.

It will be difficult for people to explain why they made these choices because the criteria they used are below conscious thoughts. That's why. When you are building a team, that's why culture is the purest form of decentralized command, because.

Because they're making decisions without even without even thinking about it and they're making the right decisions, if the culture is there, they can make a decision without even thinking about it, without even thinking about it. They're making the right decision with with no thought because the culture is strong. That's what we're trying to do. Hey, should I should I cut corners on this safety protocol?

No, actually, I'm not even thinking about I'm going to do the right thing. Hey, Dave, actually, hey, you can't go out there without your proper PPE. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Got it.

Not you know, what am I going to say anything.

Well, if the culture is there, the decision's already made. The decisions already made. We're doing the right thing. Think about that. With everything that you're doing inside your organization, your culture should drive decision making all the way down to the front line troops. And if you don't have good culture, what do you end up you end up with Abu Ghraib, you end up with some front line troops that are out there on their own. They don't have good culture and they do dumb things.

Dumb things that have a negative strategic impact, and I don't throw that word around lightly. Yeah, and of course, I wrote D.C. in the margins, as you're reading that I write down D.C. and you're coming back to that and you even went like, that's a you're talking deep decentralise.

I mean, all the way down at the highest level. If you're if you're running a team and just the the basic level of decentralized command is what that culture allows them to do is make decisions without asking you questions, you know, in the first step of your decision to come out as well. I've got seven people on my team. I can't be with them all the time. And I need them to do stuff without me. How do I make that happen?

And the culture is what allows that to happen so they don't go, hmmm, maybe I should call JoCo to see what I should do in this situation. I don't have to call you because I know what to do. So at the most basic level there and then that there's just a little warning inside there though that just that tiny little warning that you highlighted is oh by the way. Right. Is in quotes.

So just just. Let's not let's not be so committed to our culture that we don't recognize that that has to evolve over time as well, and we don't have to, just like you said, write down and make sure, hey, are are are my people not even critically thinking about anything anymore, those decisions that are subconscious and so natural?

I am I to the point now where where they are almost like devoid of consciousness of of contemplating. Is this the right thing to do in the big picture and. That the orientation and I'm just pulling it back to the orientation of when it's it's almost perceived like an error when somebody on my team, the team that have good culture, they do something that's that's an outlier. It's like a it's like the crash on the computer. Like it is so obvious in this operating system, you have a massive error and everybody sees it.

But they made this point of like.

It might they might not even be able to explain why they did it, because it's below the level of consciousness, they are seeing something. Their perception is different. And that's a that that is a warning warning, it's a warning that that their culture is not there. That's right. I got two things on this. Number one, this is just a classic example that happened today. Jamie, operations director, Ashqelon Front. I'm talking to Pete Origin and we're going over something and Jamie calls me.

I'm like, I'll call you back. Give me five. I texta, talking to Pete. Forty five seconds later, about two minutes later, she text me. Don't worry. I made the call. And you know what I wrote back approved.

I don't even know what the call was. I don't know what she was talking about.

But I know that Jamie, she called me kind of probably is just like a basic check. But then she's like, I've got this.

Yeah, that's number one. Now, number two, I used to I used to give this example of.

Decentralized command, extreme ownership of I try to think of the most extreme example of where I'm the CEO of a manufacturing company and.

There's a thousand people that work in each one of my ten factories, so are ten thousand people, and one of those people has a job where they're in a room by themselves and their job is to take part A and put it on top of Part B and and that's it. Take part put it on top of Part B and let it go. And if that person screws that up and doesn't do it right.

How can that be my fault? How can that possibly be my fault? And there's there's. It's really easy to fall in the trap of well, actually, Doc, I mean, you got 10 factories, they have a thousand people each. This is one person that literally the front line, this is a minimum wage individual. How can that possibly be your fault? And that's that's a that's the reasoning behind that is pretty that's pretty good logic.

Look, there's ten thousand people. In 10 factories, there's one guy in one room, he's the lowest paid guy, and he screws up this job. How can that possibly be my fault?

You know what? That can't be my fault, you know, fire the guy, move on, that's one thing, and I can fire the guy and move on. Right. Here's the problem with that. What did I change? What did I change? I didn't change anything. So if I if I take extreme ownership of that and say, hey, listen, here's what's going on, I didn't get the guy trained as well as I should have.

I didn't explain to or you know, it's not in the system. It's not in the training. I haven't set a proper training. I don't have the manager explaining why it's important for me to go on top of B, I haven't given the training. I haven't screened my people properly because maybe this guy just isn't capable. Maybe he doesn't have the cognitive capacity to do that function. That's also my fault. So. So all these things and all these things are things that I will change.

And that's going to make us move in the right direction and look, am I going to ever get to a point where no one is going to make a mistake in that room on those? No, I'm not. But I'm an unmitigated as much as possible every single time. And that's that's infinitely better than say. No, it's not my fault that the front line got fired and move on. No, take ownership of it. How can we prevent this from happening?

So I was that was kind of my example of how I could really isolate someone that just totally detached.

I was talking to a company the other day and I was like, I think I think this one might be even better if one of my seale's. At my training command, where I've got one hundred and fifty seals, one of my seals gets drunk out in town and gets into a fight and gets arrested. How can that possibly be my fault and maybe it's easier to understand, of course, what have I done wrong?

I haven't explained why it's important not to get in trouble. I haven't explained the behavior. I haven't explained how it impacts negatively impacts the team. I haven't explained how it negatively impacts the training that you're supposed to be teaching. I haven't explained to him how how important it is for his family and how this is going to get him busted and how it's going to get him to lose pay.

And I haven't explained that your negative impact to the teams impacts America, by the way. And so, look, am I going to prevent every person from, you know, every guy on my command from ever? No, but I'm at least going to make efforts to prevent that from happening. And what's the best way to do that? The best way to do that is through culture. The best way to do that is through culture is by saying, listen, our mission here is to get these guys trained up so they can go and be prepared to go overseas, do their mission and bring all the guys home as much as humanly possible.

That's what our mission is. Everything else doesn't even doesn't even come close.

That's what we do. That's what we do every single day. We save our friends lives every day by giving them the best training.

You got to get that culture.

So that's on me. That's on me as a leader.

And I got I got to look at the culture. I got to step take a step back and say, what is the culture? And I'm going to to change it overnight. No, I'm not. Is any leader going to change it overnight? No, we're not. But do you need to start shifting in the right direction? Yes, you do. And by the way, who's in charge of culture at an organization? Every single person that's there, if you're if you're in an organization, you are the culture.

The way you act impacts the culture. The way you think impacts the culture, the way you behave impacts the culture. And that's that should be empowering, that should make you feel good that, look, my boss acts like an idiot, doesn't matter. Our culture doesn't I'm not going to act like an idiot.

What you tolerate impacts the culture, you're telling the story, I'm just thinking about why Marines don't wear flip flops on base and what you tolerate in agriculture.

I mean, that that whole story. I mean.

Echo, what what was and I'm embarrassed I'm losing the word we're talking about last time, when you when you eat a donut, you convince yourself it's OK, it's not justification.

What's the word that you you tell your association now when you when you rationalize the rationalization and then talk about it last time?

I like how that's all. Those are all lies. You tell yourself, you rationalize, you justify. It is hey, there are ten thousand people in this company. Come on, man, I'm one guy. What do you really expect from me? I'm supposed to now manage the junior guy at the at the farthest away plant on a different time zone.

It's just and that scenario we get asked a question, some from the question all the time. And there's a rationalization of I can't I can't actually do that.

And when you rationalize that conventions off of that, what happens is nothing changes, nothing. Nothing changes.

And how easy it it go. Well, look at the scenario, dude. It's not for people in the same room.

It's. That's my overseas plant with a different country in a different light. You can rationalize your way out of that and guess what's going to happen is not going to go on top of the and that product isn't going to work.

There was a little like guideline that I kind of implemented, obviously on a very low level. But when when you talk about extremely long time ago, when you talk about extreme ownership and those kinds of scenarios where it's like on the surface obvious, that's not your responsibility, seemingly. Right.

You're saying seemingly. Yeah.

So basically the little guidelines would be like, OK, don't look at it like whose fault it is or isn't. Just consider that automatically. It's you're like, let's say you weren't even part of the whole situation.

You're just some outside consulting consultant, whatever, let's say you were tasked with.

Hey, from an external perspective, what moves can you make to be sure that that never happens again? So instead of like because, you know, when you say extreme, I'm going to take the blame, that blame kind of indicates that, like, well, you should get in trouble kind of a thing which can kind of trigger some people. I think it makes people scared.

Yeah, it makes people scared. But you shouldn't be scared because who do I want? Who do I want working for me, Dave, that comes in and says, hey, project failed because the contractors didn't do their job or EKOS that says, Hey, Project fail because I didn't do a good job managing the contractor to make sure they held the line.

Yeah, fully so the so like I said, like an easier way to get to the point where you can understand, OK, this is on me is to kind of use that guideline, pretend in your head kind of thing. Like like what if you're tasked with making sure it never happened again. And that's when all those little things that you would always say start to make so much more sense where it's like, oh, yeah, because there is a scenario where that guy who's putting trying to put on top would be where we're like, he's straight up, just doesn't like you.

He doesn't like this company. He doesn't even want the job. He just his grandma to get it to, you know, all this stuff. Right. And he should not be there. Yes. And whose fault is that? Is there but again, let's not look at it. Whose fault it is. I'm saying as far as my little guy. So, no, this isn't a guideline. What this is this is the little this is a nice little trust.

There's a nice little trust to use that kind of crutch that kind of helps you move towards this direction. So helps you understand if your ego has a hard time saying this was my fault, if you need the crutch of, like, OK, I'm going to I'm going to look at this and just see what I can do to make sure that doesn't happen again.

If you need that crutch, go for it and maybe Echo Charles is going to write a book called Kerchiefs How to sort of take ownership of some stuff without feeling bad about it. Yeah, OK. OK, the last part was acceptable, but here's the thing.

Oh yeah. Like I was just pushing the title The Crutch Know Echoes sort of leads it anyway.

I'm just saying that will help solve the problem of these scenarios where it's like how could I possibly be responsible for X, Y, Z like that.

That to me made it like a lot more clear, way more automatically. Yeah. Made it easier for you to digest.

A little bit of sugar with the medicine, it's OK, next section, how rivals view the competitive environment. Rivals operating from within different systems often perceive that they are under threat, especially competitors with authoritarian governments. Regime survival is usually the top priority in these states. I look at look at North Korea, how it's all just like where we are about to be attacked.

These rivals also look for opportunities to reduce perceived threats while also working to expand their competitive options, are rivals constantly study the elements of U.S. national power in an effort to exploit to either either to offset U.S. advantages or to find scenes to exploit.

For example, the Soviet Union during the Cold War developed an elaborate system to measure the correlation of forces between the United States and the USSR, which was further broken down in the correlation of economic forces, the correlation of military forces, etc.. The thought process heavily influences Russia today as they continue to deeply study the United States since his famous statement No, You're In Me No yourself highlights a perhaps even deeper cultural imperative for China to study the United States in the West.

Damn, that's true.

Finally, some rivals have a different outlook about the legitimacy of using aggressive action like offensive cyber operations, interference in another state's internal politics, disinformation, etc.. You can tell this is a recently written document to change the status quo in international relations.

Their actions, their actions show they do not feel bound by standing international agreements and norms unless they can use those agreements to their advantage. Instead, their behavior shows they recognize resource constraints or hard power deterrence as the only kind of limits they might respect. This is when you're playing by different rules. Basically, this is when two people A to two countries are playing by two different rules and there's just violations. I know that's one of your favorite words, Echo Charles violations.

People do violations that they can kind of know that they can get away with.

So, yeah, and we are sitting here like, well, you're not allowed to do that. And what do you think we're doing? I'm almost one of those. Well, what do you think I'm doing? Of course. Of course. Somebody he'll hook you were wearing.

Oh, well, you know, we're grappling kind of. Right.

Yeah. Differing approach to competition, campaigning, this is the next election, all the above leads to a permanent struggle mindset. Hmm. That's a good way to go through life with a permanent struggle mindset. It is just like enduring competition, is what we're calling it. Hey, we're always competing. They're calling it a permanent struggle.

Do you think the word struggle has a what you call like a like a like a flavor of like you're losing to the kind of imply that you're kind of losing?

I think I get what you're saying behind. Yes, I think I think I get what you're saying. Yeah. It gives you the impression that we're the underdog. Yes. We are struggling, right? Yeah.

If you were to say if you're if you say I'm struggling, that that doesn't mean I'm winning. Yeah. Yeah, right. I look different. Different scenario.

Yeah. Struggling. So, yes. So so when you end up with a permanent struggle mindset we are behind. And it continues on. There is no at peace condition even when they choose to cooperate in a particular area. So even when we're giving away our goodwill to this trade deal core, there's still a struggle going on behind the scenes. It will be question. It becomes a question of when and how they will compete, not if they will be competing with this.

With this as the mindset, the tools used to create competitive advantages are limited only by human creativity and available resources. These rivals might take an action primarily to advance their economy, but they also will attempt to leverage that action to gain an advantage.

This mindset causes them to try and exploit that any chance they see emerging when they believe their competitors are distracted by other world events, they will seize on any opportunity this presents.

Distraction distracted by other events. It's so obvious how this stuff plays out every single day in the news, the following are common characteristics of our rivals approach to competition. There's a bunch of bullet points, strong Central Command and control.

Clear strategic goals, you know, people talk about China and just these they're like they're playing this massively long strategic game, they're playing way long game. They don't care. They're looking at their people like, oh, yeah, kind of like, oh, it's a whatever look, we got some people that are working as slaves or human rights are horrible or we got to eliminate this group. No factor. We're playing the long speech game here. We've got a game to win.

Clear strategic goals, powerful narratives. Hello, propaganda, weaponized benign activities.

And they actually gave a big example what that was all about, weaponized like tourists and cutting off tourists from going to certain areas, recruitment of ethnic diasporas.

So those are fleeing ethnic groups. Find out who's kind of been hard done by and see if we can bring them into the fold. Domination of ethnic media, interference in local politics and strong enforcement action, fostering relationships with local groups, including criminal and terrorist organizations. Assertion of extraterritorial rights. Intelligence and covert operations, encouragement of dependencies, powerful military cover, expanded concept of combined arms, acceptance of high levels of risk postured for the long term.

They combine these characteristics in a novel in innovative ways to pursue their goals while taking advantage of United States and its allies at blintz spots, and then they have Broonzy's like being, quote, at peace. That's like a blind spot for us where peace, we're not at war with them. I think what you know from from this whole this whole time we've been talking about. Winning without the enemy know that we're even fighting. They don't want to provoke us, they want us to be like thinking everything is cool.

And meanwhile, there's maneuvers happening. A rival concept for competition next section, the idea of a theory of victory applied to competition warfighting explains how the Marine Corps uses maneuver warfare to shatter an enemy's cohesion throughout through a variety of rapid, focused and unexpected actions which create turbulent and rapidly turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope. That's a good idea, rapid focused on expected actions. That's what we're trying to do. This is maneuver warfare theory of victory to splinter the enemy's system so that it can no longer function effectively.

We can apply the idea of a theory of victory to competition to discern how rivals approach at each rival uses its own theory of competition. But we can make some useful generalizations Marines can use to analyze specific competitors. First, each of this class of rivals governs itself through a third authoritarian power structure, with regime survival as its top priority.

This heavily influences all the other competitive choices made both domestically and internationally in these rival theories.

Next, these rivals strive to avoid war with the United States.

That's what I just said. And its allies note that war is not the same as violence. These rivals will selectively cross over the threshold of violence against the United States or its allies and partners, but will be careful to keep a tight rein on it so it does not escalate into war.

These discrete pulses of violence can be useful for boundary stretching and to create hesitation. This is not a fixed principle. As rivals continue to study United States, there may come a time when when they believe baiting the United States or its allies into war gives them an advantage if they also believe they have developed the strength to prevail.

A little warning there, a little warning with these two principles as background, our rivals approach competition as a constant state of being. So every decision and action affects it.

Thus they are either setting conditions that will make it easier to achieve their goals or they are reaching their goals through slow increments or opportunistic lunges.

This is what they're doing, they're constantly paying attention to this. They constantly have this massive strategic goal way down the line that they're playing that long, long, long game.

We can summarize their their theory of victory and competition like this, these rivals think of the relationship as winning without fighting or winning war before it starts and not as competition.

Regime survival is the number one goal, and they believe the regime is constantly under threat, so competition is one of perpetual struggle. Every action they take shapes the environment to make it easier to reach their goals, either domestically or internationally. In this environment, they are they are either incrementally moving toward their goals or on alert to seize one if an opportunity presents itself. So that's what we've got to pay attention to.

Wrap up this chapter with the conclusion to compete effectively, Marines need to focus their potential on their potential competitors, especially those who see themselves as rivals to the United States and its allies. Truly understanding these potential rivals require serious reflection and critical thinking. The group offers a model to examine why and how rivals approach competition differently. The strength of orientation affects all aspects of the model, the elements contained in a person's groups or in a person or groups. Orientation work in the background.

It takes deep study to first identify these elements and then learn how they affect the decisions and actions a rival takes.

And then it just goes on their their mindset of perpetual struggle means they are constantly shaping the environment to make it easier for them to reach their goals. It also means they constantly take incremental steps toward their goals while remaining alert for the chance to pounce on them if an opportunity arises. That's a tough competitor. That's a tough competitor, constantly, constantly making maneuvers.

And now we move into Chapter five, the conduct of competition, the challenge, the challenge is to develop a concept of competition for Marines that stays in balance with our preparation for war, remains consistent with our understanding of the nature and theory of competition and accounts for the realities of international strategic competition. So we've got to be, but this is a big balancing thing we're working on manouver warfare's influence. Marines can use maneuver warfare principles to great effect in competition.

We still seek to achieve our goals in a flexible and opportunistic way.

That's a beautiful statement about leadership. That's a beautiful statement about leadership, not just about manouver offer, but what leadership you'd seek to achieve your goals in a flexible and opportunistic way. Isn't it way better for me to say, Oh, Dave, you want to.

You want to go into that market area, great, I'll tell you what, run with it. That's an opportunity for me to grow the business based on Dave's drive. And by the way, I was thinking about going somewhere else, but Dave wants to go there called the Flexible. We seek to achieve a relative tempo advantage that we can gain the initiative. Marines in-depth understanding of the outta loop is relevant everywhere on the competition continuum. Marines should not seek to reinvent maneuver warfare for competition, but rather think through how it can be applied across the competition continuum and not just to the continuums subset that deals with war and the various forms of warfare.

Orienting on the competitor next section, orienting on the competitor is fundamental to successful competition, we develop our understanding of the competitor system and then exploit the weaknesses we find in it. I read that with the wrong voice, sorry, to the United States Marine Corps. Let me rehash that. We develop our understanding of the competitive system and then exploit the weaknesses we find in it. Much better we develop models of the rival system and then use these models to share our understanding of it with others.

We then develop ways to test our model in the real world, real world. We observe our tests, then use feedback from these observations to improve the model. Marines learn about the loop early in their service, which helps them move through the cycle smoothly. Warfighting teaches that we should try to get inside an adversary's thought processes and see them as they see themselves so that we can set them up for defeat. There's Dave BRK, adversary wing commander. What was your name, sir?

Officer. I kind of elevated you left wing commander. That's good. That's that's a beautiful thing.

We take you and we say your job is to think like the enemy. Yep. It's cool at a trade that we did that to. We didn't do it in such an official manner.

But it was OK to say that opposing force guys, the guys that were working directly for me at trade at you're going to go and act like the enemy. Did you call it Red Cell?

If we called it up for for. Yeah, we've heard that. I've heard the different terms. Yeah.

I think it's all the same thing. It's you behave like the enemy partially is it. It gives your guys realistic training, but it also is to think why are they doing the things that they're doing? Why would they acquire the weapons and do the formations? There's a whole bunch of reasons why you would do that.

Yeah. And then what's cool is because we'd read Azar's what the enemy did. You know, the enemy started using false walls. We started using force was the enemy did birdcages. We do. So we would follow the reports and do what they did. But what's really cool, too, is when you're when you're up for.

You can see what it looks like, you can see what our tactics look like, you see where the strengths and weaknesses are. See you see how obvious it is when a guy is doing something stupid, like, I'm never going to do that.

Yeah, I was just going to say, it keeps you from falling into the trap of thinking everything they're doing is stupid because everything they're doing is different. Right. Like we see that you're saying the enemy. The enemy.

I mean, that that so we don't fall in the trap of, oh, they're doing this. That's dumb. We'd never do that. And being dismissive of the fact that that move that they are making, which we probably wouldn't make. Oh, hang on.

Why are they doing that? Exactly. And there's those moments of oh, hey, hang on a second. This is why they're doing that. And if you don't put yourself in their eyes, the easy trap, the ego trap is dumb. What do they know? And that's the and that's why it's all centered around orientation, is if you understand their perspective, you're far less likely. We have this saying, like when we see something that we don't think is a concern to us, we.

SCOFFING, scoff Hey, you did this. Scoff No factor. Don't care. And over time, what you will do is everything that's sort of different from what you would do is wrong. That's like the classic ego responses. You didn't do it. The way I do it. You're wrong.

What's this golf term? Can you explain that to me again?

So let's say you and I are fighting in our airplanes and you do some move, you beam out to the west or you flank in some direction. And I think it's a no, it's not a concern to me. I'll scoff that move. I don't even acknowledge it. Don't even care. Do whatever you want. Scoff No factor. No factor.

Because I'm always it is it isn't an arrogant move. Well, it it it can't be. There are times I actually don't want to respond to what you're doing. You might be baiting me into something, making a bad decision. You might be pulling me into a place that I don't think I want to go. So there are times that I want to dismiss, just I'm not going to react to that. I am not going to respond to your move.

But if it's habitual and I determine every single time you do something, it's no factor. Sooner or later it actually will be a factor. And one of the ways that we counter that is the orientation of of recognizing while they're doing that. And that's what I got to do, is the adversary officer is think like them.

And I hate this way. I did that. And we would build scenarios, the training scenarios against the students I would create. Those are helped create those. We're turning this we're turning that. We're doing all these things to try to get to this outcome. And if the student could dissect understand that, then he understands what's going on.

And if not, then he doesn't. And that's a bad thing.

Chuck, continuing on, it is essential that we understand our adversary on their own terms. We should not assume that every adversary thinks as we do, compete as we do, or shares our values and objectives. Marines in the Marine Corps are strong tools for our nation to compel or deter our rivals. As discussed in Chapter two, we know that the target of our compliance or deterrence must cooperate.

Even if they are unwilling, if we are to be effective, our knowledge of the competitor's system will help us understand their thinking enough to make good judgments on how we can force this possible unwilling cooperation.

That's such a good.

Such a strange way of putting it. Unwilling cooperation. But it happens. It happens in jujitsu. I start to choke. You echo. You have to defend your neck. It's unwilling, but you got to do it to do with the same as coercion, right?

Yeah. Similar to Marines in the Marine Corps are also strong tools and a strategy of attraction.

We can demonstrate our national values through efforts such as humanitarian assistance programs, providing highly credible support to the informational element of national power.

Marines regularly play a large role in building and then sustaining relationships with allies and partners. Strong networks such as these increase our competitive options and create challenges for our competitors. Next section is shaping the action, our competition goals are derived from our vital national interests, and we must think ahead if Marines are to support reaching these goals.

Boy, if you're in charge of a company, don't you hope and pray that everyone in your company, every division in your company, everyone on your team is thinking about your vital interests inside your organization? And thinking ahead, we established that what we want to accomplish. Why and how this provides a vision for succeeding in competition, which in turn helps align the actions taken towards reaching the goals.

In both the near and long term, we orient on our competitor to develop our understanding of their system. We continually refine our models of their system so that we can focus on their weaknesses, including increasing our understanding of how their culture affects their decision making process.

Man, you've got to know what your competitors are thinking. They just say this over and over again.

Similarly, we must try to see ourselves through our competitors eyes in order to identify our own vulnerabilities that makes that they may try to exploit to influence the future. We consider how we can exploit our competitors weakness while protecting our own. This usually takes the form of planning. I think beyond planning, it takes the takes the form should take the form or at least extend to the form of a war gaming or read selling or whatever you want to call it, totally force on force training.

Our plans will not always produce a detailed timetable of events as we accept that competitions may unfold over a long time. Instead, we attempt to shape the general conditions of the competition. Since Marine support our larger national competitive effort, we first need to determine who we are supporting. This support, limited only by our imaginations and available resources, can take a variety of forms across all our operating domains. For example, our force posture exists in all domains and can contribute to the deterrence in these domains.

Through the diplomatic and informational elements of power can also improve relationships with our allies and partners, force posture can help develop ties with partner militaries that lead to attracting top performing international officers to our service schools, which further deepens the relationship.

Expanding relationships like this shapes our campaign of competition by increasing the potential number of competitive actions we can take. Think about what you can do inside your organization if you're in business. If you just take that section about working with other people, get training other. What if you took people from other companies, maybe, maybe not quite competitors, but maybe competitors and you brought them on board and you train them and you help them and you develop a relationship and you find out that they have areas of weaknesses that you could help them and maybe you have some areas of weakness they could imagine if you took that long term strategic vision of how to grow your influence.

Look, man, that's kind of that's that's kind of my career in a nutshell, this this exchange thing of this sharing of information, your Marine Corps, my Marine Corps career.

So as a Marine, I spent so much of my time not being in a traditional Marine Corps role. And, you know, early on in flight school, like the Marine Corps goes to Navy flight training. So we're all very similar. And it's not a Marine Corps centric thing. But even in my my experience, my first four years in the Marine Corps, I was in a Marine Corps squadron, but we were attached to a carrier.

So we spent a lot of time with the Navy doing things in Navy way. And then when I went to Top Gun, that's a Navy command, I was basically kind of an exchange officer. So I'm kind of really seeing how the other services do it.

I did a full Air Force exchange where I was basically in the Air Force for three and a half years.

I commanded that Air Force division as a Marine to serve the Air Force.

And then my all these different things that I did very much interacted as an exchange to other services. And what it got me out of is kind of that classic Marine Corps echo chamber of this is how the Marine Corps operates. And I learned so much. And just that sharing of information from rivals is a strong word. We were not rivals, but the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps are different. So we're all looking for the same end.

But the point you just made of the power of that, I'm not going to go to a rival company that isn't going to want to give me their people.

But inside different divisions that have kind of competing interests inside your own organization and getting one guy from marketing to go spend six months on the operation side or one get, you know, a couple of guys. The operations I spent some time with sales where they see it and truly understand what's going on, the power of that inside your organization. So you don't just buy off on the narrative of, listen, you join the Marine Corps, you're not going to get a lot of feedback.

But the Marine Corps isn't doing everything right until you get out of the Marine Corps, go, oh, damn, you guys are doing things a lot differently than us. And that seems to be working really well and of course, vice versa.

But I think there's a ton of power that I was really lucky in my experience to get to do that way more than most Marines get to do. And it it helped me individually. It helped the services and it helped the Marine Corps. It was awesome.

Yeah. Old school shipboard deployments that I did working with the Marine Corps. That's so lucky. I was working with, you know, calling in battalions and working with the air air wings on the on the flat top and just was so awesome for me. And I learned so much. It was ridiculous. It's so easy to create a story or a narrative in your mind of how dumb everything else is when you don't experience it.

And it's so it happened so naturally in your subconscious of the differences means they're wrong. And the minute you spend some time over there doing it and you see from the perspective, the orientation changes as you think you you see how valuable it is, whether it's your competitors, whether it's your peers, whatever it is that change the perspective, that change in orientation immediately reveals a whole bunch of things you would never see. If you just look at it from your perspective, like, no, I'm not doing that.

That's I was very lucky in my career to get to see that over and over from different perspectives and changing my orientation of the problem all the time.

Yeah, yeah. If you're in a leadership, a very simple way to do that. When you're in a leadership position, go down, check out some and see what they're doing. Like go run that thing through the line, go operate that piece of equipment for half an hour, go check out that job site, see what's going on. So many good ways to change your perspective, improve your perspective, see more next section. Combined arms, combined arms.

Is the full integration of arms in such a way that to counteract one, the enemy must be more vulnerable to another.

We pose the enemy not just with a problem, but with a dilemma, a no win situation.

This is the way Marines fight and win battles. This idea also governs how Marines compete, even though we brought in a no win situation to include careful consideration of positive some options win win options.

The governing idea is to orchestrate all of our tools together in ways that are most favorable to us. A combined arms mindset leads one to consider how to use moulted domain tools for to of all potential partners in an effort to reach one goals. The idea is to use all available resources to best advantage enter the Marine Corps, we look to combine complementary characteristics of different types of units to create a competitive advantage. Externally, we look to combine our capabilities with those of joint force to create advantage.

We apply the same mindset in competition when we combine our capabilities with those of our joint and interagency partners. Well, what is the Marine Corps saying here? We're going to look. We're going to look and utilize and work with and cooperate with as many different elements as we possibly can to to get the best advantage we can over our our rivals. The same mindset applies to combining the complementary characteristics of Marines with other partners, whether they're from other US government departments or from an allied country, we orient on the competitor because we want to make sure the combined arms dilemma we intend to present in competition is actually a problem for them.

This mindset leads Marines to develop holistic plans designed to reach specific goals in both war and along the larger competition continuum in competition, the idea of combined arms extends through Joint Force Agency to allies and partners.

So we don't necessarily have to we don't we don't have to be at war at all to go out and work and combine our efforts with other.

Other elements that can give us advantages. Next election campaign of competition, embracing the embracing the competition mindset leads to the realization that the Marine Corps plays an important but supporting role in our nation's various competitions.

Now, I have to take a pause there, because this idea of supporting role in the military, it's the word supporting in the military is is can be taken as offensive. Right. Because what it means is, you know, if they've got a platoon and I've got a platoon, Dave and Dave is assigned as the supporting platoon.

And I'm the main effort.

Dave is inferior to me. The backup. That's the backup. That's the second string.

He's the JV team. You can throw whatever you want to throw on. The idea that you're in a supporting role is generally viewed as a negative, especially in in military doctrine.

Well, if you let your ego get totally and what the Marine Corps is doing here is beautiful, which is saying, hey, we play we play an important but supporting role. They get it. They're like, hey, we're supporting. It's fine. This forms our approach. And by the way, that was one of the best things that we did. And to ask you to bruiser in Ramadi, it was, hey, we're here to support.

Hey, hey, battalion commander. Hey, brigade commander. Hey, company commander, we're here to support you, by the way. We're going to kill a bunch of bad guys.

We're going to have the freaking do the best operations we can possibly. Do you want to call supporting or supporting? That's fine. And by the way, by by us being by us supporting a battalion, that means that battalion is rolling out, Kaziranga is rolling out tanks, is rolling out fire support. We're getting all the air. We we're getting everything we want. We're getting more assets and we could have ever imagined, and we're we're supporting them, even though we always said we were supporting what we had, 13 guys in an overwatch position.

Meanwhile, they have a battalion out there to help us get to that position and get out of that position.

It's amazing. Yeah, but the attitude of, hey, we're here to support.

Well, that's the attitude that gave you all the flexibility to do what you wanted. It's the exact same approach that I took. And I remember when I first got there, I went around to all the units in the area that I had a connection to. And the question the literal question I asked all of the commanders was, how can I support you? And what they want to know is, well, what do you have?

And you know what, I had I had 80 million dollars worth of airplanes that they couldn't have in my car. I've got this this I got Marines.

I have we had gun trucks. So I owned Humvees with 50 cows and more to 40. So I had a bunch of stuff and it was just. Any way you want to use these tools, I can provide them for you and that attitude coming to them as I'm here to support you is what led to me kind of being able to do whatever I wanted on the battlefield.

Almost anything had I walked in be like, this is how I operate. This is the exact opposite thing. They you know, and the other part of it, too, is I didn't own any battle space. They could have just said, you can't come here and get off the mountain. They could literally could have pushed me off, mean I had no authority at all to operate, that we were in the same exact scenario, same exact approach.

Back to the book. This forms our approach to developing our campaigns of competition. Campaign goals are established by analyzing enduring interests and how they are being affected by current policy. For Marines, these goals are further refined by aligning them with the theater combatant commanders objectives at every point on the competition continuum, both in day to day operations below the violence threshold and in the event contingencies in the event of contingencies.

Ideally, the theater objectives will be aligned with inter agency goals as well.

So they're really paying attention. And breaking things down.

By orienting on the competitor, we start to develop theories on how we can reach our campaign goals, even though we are in competition with our rival Marines, understanding of the Ouda loop leads us to conclude that the campaign choices we make in the planning are hypothesis.

The campaign actions we take test these hypothesis and the other loops and the uta's many feedback loops to help us refine our decisions.

The discipline get creative application of this process is what allows us to gain the initiative in competition and set it simple, disciplined, yet creative. Disciplined, yet creative. Timelines associated with competitive campaigns are often quite long, some extend over several decades. Yeah, that's that's that's where it's tough on America, that's where it's tough on America, because our our regimes only last four to eight years out of whack.

Right.

And then generally, there's going to be a change in regimes. There's going to be a different, you know, different campaign of competition happening. Yeah, you were talking about the long game and you were talking about China. I was thinking like they measure it and they call them Dynasty. They're a lot like thousands of years. And the history that they have compared to our history and the recognition of, hey, you're here as part of the long game, their version of the long game is a lot different than our version of the long game.

Yeah, and there's also the party.

That's it. Yes, that's part. Absolutely. And that that strategy is going to stay the same. Not not a ton of infighting going on over there.

Yeah. On that. That's a that's a different viewpoint. Different orientation. The iterative nature of competition matched to disciplined use of the loop will help planners determine how aggressive one should be in pursuit of campaign goals. Acknowledging these long timelines leads us to consider the consistency of our competitive goals. If we believe we may need to take many small steps towards a goal over the course of months, years, decades or decades, then our objectives should remain relatively stable during that time.

This is why we look first to our national interest before we derive our competition and campaign and goals once those are determined. We then decide how Marines can support achieving them.

The campaigning mindset needs to be applied when considering competitive activities, especially long term thinking and integrating our actions with others, consistency and sustainability lead us to consider the pace or tempo of competition.

This tempo is often driven by a cycle of action and counteraction. Each campaign and I'm skipping through some stuff here. Each campaign has a narrative which provides context and purpose for the competition.

Our narrative competes with that of our rival. To defeat a competitor's narrative, we need to replace it with a more persuasive one, simply denying someone's story may actually reinforce it in the minds of target audience.

You can't just you can't trust that that rumor is going to come. You got to tell the story. You've got to tell the right story. That is why we need to replace it with a more compelling story. Sorry. Next line, for example, two firms may sell an identical commodity. Their respective narratives will explain why they are the right choice to win the business of a particular customer. The stronger narrative will displace the weaker one conclusion.

Our war fighting philosophy of maneuver warfare is the philosophy that animates our approach to competition as well. So far for the Marine Corps maneuver warfare is the way we are thinking about everything. Marines take the same flexible and opportunistic approach to competition as they do towards fighting battles. The most important tenant of maneuver warfare is to orient on the enemy. And this influence is also felt in competition. We orient on our competitor. Now. This one, when I read this, I was like immediately freaked out because it's the most important thing of maneuver warfare is dawning on the enemy.

I was like, oh no, the most important tenet of maneuver warfare. Because maneuver warfare without leadership doesn't do anything. Leadership is the most important thing. But if we want to talk Tennant's, I guess we can break it down that orienting on the enemy. Or on the competitor, sorry, I'm going straight to war, I'm all the way there on the continuum, we need to develop an understanding of our rival. If we are to create an effective plan that will help us prevail in competition, we must understand their system where it is strong and where it is weak.

This allows us to shape the environment by developing a clear vision for our competitive activities.

This vision also allows us to identify the partners with whom we need to coordinate.

Marines fight using combined arms, and we must compete in the same way, this is the foundational mindset for determining how we can present a dilemma to our competitor. Marines in the Marine Corps are essential tools in our nation's effort to advance our vital national interests. The Marine Corps makes its greatest contributions near the threshold of violence. On the competition continuum, this this means that individual Marines. Need to prepare themselves to act on both sides of that threshold and to do so in disciplined ways that advance the nation's interests.

And here's the closing paragraph for podcast, Deep competing is a way of thinking. Like maneuver warfare, it is a state of mind born of boldness, boldness, intellect. Initiative. And opportunism. It's very interesting that you they really start chiming in on this word opportunism. They really start chiming in on that word. And and if you start to pay attention to that.

If you start to pay attention, the fact that what you should be looking for is opportunities and how often do opportunity go to waste, you want to talk about a life lesson, boldness, intellect, initiative, opportunities.

Where they at?

It is about understanding our competitors systems so that we can develop, sustain and adapt our competitive advantage so that the Marine Corps will always be a useful tool for the nation in the enduring competition that is the normal state of international relations. One last little plug for the Marine Corps long game. They're playing the long game for sure.

That is it that. That wraps up that wraps up this publication for us. I think we probably spent eight or nine hours talking through this book, and this is the fourth podcast, didn't do too bad today.

God only knows how much time and effort the Marine Corps took and put into. Putting this together, I mean, what's the man hours behind this? How many people what were you saying, you think it's six, seven, eight people? That's what I'm picking on the team that's on the team that's in there, that's in the room, that's got the sections. And and then there's someone kind of overseeing the whole thing. And then it's getting signed off by by the commandant.

He's he's he's given guidance. You can tell the components in the game with this stuff.

He's not he's not just signing this off. He's making corrections. There's there's red lines on this in the written with the commandant's pen. Am I wrong? No, I think you're right, and I'm thinking, too, like how many of these pubs are out there, these Marine Corps doctrinal pubs? It's not I mean, it's not some massive numbers on a thousand of these things he's had to in the last two years, like there are probably common on to the entire time is coming up.

And none of these pubs came out under their watch. He's done two. And for sure, obviously, this is this is clearly an important thing for General Brugger. This is a thing for him. Yeah, well, learning was the first new pub in how it was like a decade ago. It was a long time. Yes, it was a long time. And this one came out one year later. Yeah. So this is this is wheelhouse priority for him.

And this isn't like some big giant stretch from learning either. This competing pub is not like unrelated to this is I was going to say that we got cousins here.

Yes. Right. Yes, we got learning.

We got competing. Those are cousins.

There is a thread between those two, a clear thread, the the leadership thread that's in both of these as well.

The leadership thread is really important when you start looking at that continuum of leadership in the continue of influence and the the the way of thinking for competing. And you start thinking that way of thinking for competing as also a way of leading.

Yeah, that's a huge a huge asset to your toolbox of thought. To bring to the table as a leader, that's that's what has been on my mind this whole time from the beginning to the conclusion is how tiny little tweak you need to make in reading just this pub about competing, which is really at least at the top level, is the Marine Corps fighting against other countries? How tiny a tweak there is to make that this is a leadership public.

This is a leadership book and it applies to running a business, running a team. This kind of language change goes from fighting competitors to leading your own people. Like this is a leadership publication from beginning to end. You want to think on the third one? One of the previous two, you did the influence continuum and you've just pulled from that. I'm my just listening to that. Just eating that up of. And I remember thinking, man, the Marine Corps should have just said that in here.

And yeah, they probably would have to double the length of this thing because every time I read something, there's a place to go diving deeper into that.

But despite that, there's no question in my mind that they, the authors recognize and the leadership influence is sitting inside there and even the examples they pull from they're pulling all these examples. If you're running a business, this is what you should do.

So. There is that when you know the way broadly, you see it in all things and I'm watching and seeing in this same hearing you talk and just making the leadership piece to that. But from beginning to end, that connection is absolutely there. And it doesn't take some big change in perspective to see it inside here and learn from it totally.

And the fact that the Marine Corps looked they could choose a bunch of different things to dive into and the fact that they dove into this to run their organization and help their organization be prepared and grow.

That that's just an indication of the importance of this mindset, of this way, of thinking of how to compete. How our rivals compete and how we can compete. In a better way. And with that, you see that softball just get tossed up Echo Charles with that, speaking of trying to compete better and do better, echo Charles.

Do you have any suggestions on that?

Yes, thank you, softball very compared the they said in a different chapter that competing in an influence. Right. Is like the same thing. No, that's me.

That's what I said. That was my whole that's that was my whole. That's what really made me think. We need to cover this on the podcast was, hey, we talk about competition.

That's good. That's that's if we eliminated all the leadership talk and influence talk out of this podcast, it would have been done in three hours, two hours, two and a half hours. OK, I guess maybe maybe half the time. Maybe half the time. Once we started talking about leadership and influence and that that that definitely adds to it.

But yes. So we have been talking about it from a leadership perspective and an influence perspective.

So like competing can be even at the end of the continuum or the spectrum or whatever, where it's like war, it's like you're influencing them to submit essentially.

Yes, I can beat you into doing what I want you to do. Right. Which we don't want. No, we don't. We don't even want to cross the threshold of violence. So. That's the leadership continuum, the leadership influence continuum, which, by the way, is also very closely related to leadership strategy and tactics, a little something called the escalation of counseling. Which is, you know, I'm doing I'm using the minimum force required omniscient hey, Davian, I notice you were late today.

Is everything OK? That's where it starts.

You know, I use the escalation of counseling, by the way. It's a good thing to want to see children in my household.

And it was good because it was the kind where you don't really it was basically, hey, do this chore right in or else.

But I'm not the kind where I'm like, hey, do it now, you know, because I want it done now.

They just you just do it right.

He straight up forgot forgot next date not done.

And it's not the kind of arbitrary chore, it's the kind you just kind of gave away the child in question. Unless gender reveal the less the so busted. When I was a kid, that kind stuff happened to me where I forgot to do the chore. Then not only did I get told to do, I agreed that I would do it by a scolding was coming from you, but forgot in quotes.

Does that mean you really didn't forget you just gaffed it off or did you actually forget? Not all the time.

Check but you if. Yeah, like that.

If you get scolded, that's crossing some threshold at some point. Right. What is it. The cooperation. I don't know.

I know there's a threshold you cross over when you start scolding them rather than hey like you always do.

Hey you are good, you need anything or whatever you help.

Speaking of success, have been taking joint warfare consistently for the last, I don't know, one month to call.

Joint warfare is what we're taking to take care of our joints. We're not stuck on the wharf or on the workouts or taking the joint warfare and super oil. Also, good ways to support your immunity. Vitamin D three and Cold War. Don't forget about these things.

Very important.

Also, discipline and discipline go in a can capsule's powder. That's a little, let's just say, disappointed in your whole approach on that section today, I don't know if you like feeling down or maybe you didn't drink enough discipline. I didn't feel any of that. What you just said. Oh, like my energy was our energy was low.

I'm not like you.

Let me let me let me let me give everyone a little something to be happy about since you're, you know, not feeling it today, apparently.

Check this out. Check this out if you want to get any of this stuff with free shipping from Origin, Maine, Dotcom, all you have to do is subscribe.

And that's a good call because then you're not going to miss you're not going to look in your cupboard one day. Is covered in East Coast word, no. OK, you're not going to look in your cupboard one day and see that there's no joint warfare, there's no super crill, there's no vitamin D, it's there. It's waiting to make you healthy and strong.

So there you go. It's like you'll never need to be reminded to get it. Yeah, it's a grim reminder.

It just it just shows up. Yeah. That is a big deal, too.

If only if only your son could subscribe to doing chores, they would just got kind of like. Oh, like a little reminder actually that's a good idea.

So look, you just establish a system that you don't have to be told to do the trick. You just say, hey, every day at this very specific time, you check the trash.

That's a system that would say we're good. Yeah, the challenge you have is trying to get him to recognize how that's to his benefit with this other stuff. It's it's sort of undeniable that it's to your benefit. So there's not some big negotiation going on, like why this is good for you.

There is. Yeah, I just get it. I have a lot more challenges than that on the last like in like getting your spirit up a little bit.

Anyway, speaking of this, so you got to look at me like that, you make it worse with with the looking at me like that, by the way, we really look at it, but you look at it anyway.

So yes, they sent me the whole thing, a whole package of the discipline.

And and I understand what you mean by when you're looking in the cupboard and seeing it like, oh, right. Yeah. You know, when you run low, you'll get like a little sense of panic.

What's the one right before panic. Well, I what's the what's a tormenting like before. Like not anxiety. Like a little, you know, nagging, nagging something. Yes. You see it full up when it fills up satisfaction like your gas tank, you know, when the gas tank goes all the way to empty and you're like, no, I don't know what that's like.

Some of us do.

But so when you do fill fill it back up, it's like a really like a satisfying kind of feeling.

I went in the cupboard the other day and and there was a one supercool left.

And I actually walked through my bedroom and I told my wife, emergency.

I said, hey, emergency. There's only one supercool left.

And she goes, What? And she walks out and then she comes in like, oh no. Is in the other cupboard. You got a box.

OK, you're actually that's the exact terminology I use to fulfill my new one go package to be little emergency. Emergency.

I was right on it, by the way. So no no need for emergencies.

No need go on. Their origin may not come subscribe. That's free shipping and you and it's ten if you subscribe it's ten percent off. So it's a good deal. We're trying to trying to hook it up also.

You can get the stuff out, you can get the cans out while you're on the East Coast full chain. Any Walwa you can go in there, you can get some Vitamin Shoppe, you get it there too. So, hey, if you want something. Get something. So we're going to get getting something, get some jeans as well. Not at all. Yeah.

By the way, so this is American made denim from the roots to the to the jeans. You understand what I'm saying to you?

Understand either way, boots, jeans, jiujitsu stuff. These rash guards, you know, all these at Orjan mean all made in America.

Also, we have our own store. JoCo store Dotcom, this is where you can get your display, Niko's Freedom Apparel, if you will, shirts, hoodies, hats on there, some more cards on there as well.

Got some news where your kids soap. Got that on there. That's a critical one.

I've been getting reports that the JOCO. So this because. OK, so this three. How many flavors?

There's multiple flavors, bro. There's a difference through perso. Yeah. And where your kids go. Oh yeah. The word gets up is yellow and blue or kid colors. Yes sir.

The chocolate soap smells the best as far as a consensus goes. Interesting. Something interesting. What's the deal anyway. Drugstore.com.

That's where you can represent. While you're on the path, what about the shirt locker that you're all excited about? Yes, very excited, by the way, every new shirt, every month.

So you subscribe to that. You know, if you're into that, there's probably a lot of people that are saying, oh, wow, it's called the shirt locker. That's cool. I want to check that out. As opposed to the old name.

Yeah, T-shirt. All right, cool. Check that out. Subscribe to the podcast. We also have some other podcasts, so subscribe to those. Well, The Unraveling, which Daryl and I are working on some new episodes that you can also go to JoCo underground dot com, where we do a little alternative amplifying podcast. And you can you can listen to it there. It costs money because eight dollars and 18 cents a month, but we're trying to sort of have a little contingency scenario in case things happen in the future.

And also, eight dollars and 18 cents.

Only one person has guessed it correctly. Only the one that I know of.

Yes. Well, that's I've seen one must be the same one. Yeah.

And through this, though, through this process there, like so many different like people who are putting layers on that, I'm like, oh, that maybe that's cool, but I have no more sense.

So eight dollars, 18 cents, we actually there's a reason for it. There's layers behind it. But now there's layers that we didn't know about that now are now layers. Layers have been added, you know, added we've put it to you that way.

But at some point we've got to announce the official. So, hey, if you want to check that out, if you want, check out our podcast, go to go to JoCo Underground Dotcom, eight dollars and 18 cents a month. And if you look, we want information out there. If you can't afford that, just email assistance at JOCO Underground Dotcom and we will get you taken care of. Like I said, we also have the unraveling.

We have the grounded podcast with the Warrior Kid podcast.

We got a YouTube channel where Echo makes videos that cool EKOS makes videos and it's cool.

Psychological Warfare, an album with tracks and P three availability, their flip side canvas dotcom stuff to hang on your wall.

Got some books? Oh, I got a new book. It's called Final Spin. It's a story. It's a novel, it's a poem, it's. Well, it's available for preorder now, leadership strategy and tactics, field manual, the code, the evaluations, the protocol discipline equals Freedom Field Manual, where the Warrior Code for Field Manual Field Manual Warrior, your kid one, two and three might get the Dragons about face extreme ownership dichotomy leadership. We got Ashlawn Front, which is our leadership consultancy, where we take all this information that we have learned and we help you apply it inside your organization to solve problems through leadership.

Go to Echelon front dot com for that. We had EFF online dotcom, where we are teaching leadership, there's courses that you can take.

That will help you and everyone in your organization get aligned and win. Go online dot com for that. We've got musters which are live events that we do. They've been shifting due to covid. So check extreme ownership dotcom. If you want to come to one of our live events, they're freaking awesome.

Just just saying, if overwatch executive leadership for your company go to if overwatch dot com and if you want to help service members, if you want to help active duty, if you want to help retired service members, if you want to help their families, if you want to help Gold Star families, then check out Mark Leigh's mom, mumbly.

She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors dog.

And if you want more of my tedious tales and you certainly heard some today or you need more of EKOS convoluted contemplations.

Or Dave's NAVCENT narrative's, you can find us on the website, on Twitter, on Instagram. And if you only speak Echo Charles, that's also only known as the Graham. And you can find us on Facebook, davita's that defne, our work that goes out adequate control. And I imagine William and thanks to all the servicemen and women out there on the front lines worldwide.

Worldwide. Protecting us. From forces of darkness and tyranny and to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service and first responders, thank you for standing on the lines here at home to keep us safe.

And everyone else out there, yes, you are competing all the time, but make sure you are competing in the right arenas for the right reasons, don't waste your time and your resources and your effort on competitions that are driven by your ego. Make sure the competition makes sense.

Make sure that you are competing not just to beat someone else. But infinitely more important, you are competing to get where you want to be. That is how you win. Well, that in actually going out every day and getting after it and until next time, this is Dave and Echo and JoCo out.