This is the JoCo De-brief podcast, Episode five with Dave Burke and me, JoCo Willink. Dave, let's debrief. What do you got? We've got someone that just got promoted into a key position in a big company. She's now running operations first female ever to hold this position on this company, East Coast Company, long been around for a long time.

And everybody in this position for her has been a man. It's been kind of a male dominated organization a little bit. And she's stepped up to this role. She's awesome. She is totally ready for this job.

And she's getting some feedback from from folks kind of helping her prep her, how she's going to introduce herself, how she's going to announce herself to the team. Hey, I'm the new head of operations. This is who I am. And a lot of the advice she's been getting is, hey, you got to go in there hard. You kind of got to come in there. And I think the phrase that they're using is you got to announce your presence with authority.

You can't come in Ultimate in Meador. You got to come in strong and let them know that you're here to run this department and that you're going to make this happen.

So she calls me, she's like, hey, I've got this thing coming up, this is the advice that I'm getting. And she's she's like, I don't I understand what they're saying, but I'm not sure if that's right. And of course, my perspective is like, hey, actually, I think your instincts are on on the mark. I don't think this is necessarily good advice. Now, look, the advice that she's getting, it's coming from a good place that they're trying to get her.

They're trying to set her up to be successful. And they understand that. And they're right. She can't come in meager and meek and frail and like, oh, I'm not sure this is right for me, but here I am. I said, but you don't need to announce your presence with authority. I said, as a matter of fact, listen, if you don't want to, you don't need to announce yourself at all. There's there's a little announcement.

They went out to this company in the form of a memo that said announcement new head of operations is this person. So if you don't want to announce yourself at all, you don't need to because it's already happened. So but what you really should think about is what are your expectations for this role, for you in this role? So what are the things that you think that you need to do in this role? So why don't you tell me what are your expectations?

What are the things you're thinking about?

Well, I want the team to do well.

I want to give them the things that they need. I want to help them and give them the resources and the tools and the training they need so they can be successful. When we kind of went down this list of all the things that she felt was her job. And as you can probably tell from this list, she's a trooper. She's in the game, she understands it. And of course, like with eighty three point nine percent of every question that gets asked, it's right in leadership strategy, in taxes versus, hey, what do you do on day one?

You don't need to walk in and say, listen up, I'm in charge now.

Here are my expectations for you. Here's what I want you to do.

Just walk in, tell them, hey, listen, I am honored to be in this role. I am thrilled to have this opportunity. I care about this team and I want to help this team be successful in my expectations that I will do whatever it takes for us to be successful. And so did the role players. And hey, if you just come in and you're opening speeches 30 seconds long and that's all you say, how do you think they're going to react?

She's like, well, they'll probably be fine with it. I said, Good, then why don't you just do what you think you should do? And it's not that that advice was bad in the sense of like they're trying to set you up to fail. But how do you think it's going to come across if you can go, hey, listen up, I may not be the person you thought was going to be in this job, but I am.

You might have had some ideas of how things used to be or who should be in here. But I'm in charge now. And this and it's so when you're on that detached perspective, that's it's so obvious when you when you see that. Again, you do not want to go in there to be a pushover, I said, but the opportunity for you to show who you are as a leader, your opportunity to really reveal what kind of leader you are and what they can expect from you, is it going to come from the speech?

As a matter of fact, the speech probably using maybe even all that memorable. You don't need to make it a big deal. You, in enough time, are going to get challenged with leadership issues. You have to get engaged and get involved in. And that's we're going to see what kind of leader you are.

So open up a book. Refresh that a little bit. Do not announce your presence of authority, come in and let them know what you expect. The expectation is that you're here to help the team win.

I'm clearly when you get in a situation like this and and you knew what's going on with the company.

But just for someone that's not that some of that doesn't understand the whole concept. We work with companies. So you have an understanding of what the situation is on the ground that she's going into, which means that, you know, that she's going into. A functional team, right, not a bad team, not a team that where there firing the leader because everything's all jacked up. Those are different scenarios. And those are also scenarios that I talk about, leadership, strategy and tactics.

And even in those scenarios, does that mean that you roll in there and you come off the top ropes?

Not usually. Not off the top ropes, unless unless you've got some catastrophic morale or catastrophic ethical issues, then it might call for, you know, some some heavy hitting coming out of the gate. So so there's that. And there's but you have a team, a functional team. Well, how do you take over a functional team? Yeah, you you go to you go to page one fifty seven, a leadership strategy and tactics and you follow those.

Those. Guidelines when it comes to here's an issue where it makes me a little nervous and probably does probably make it her nervous, too. Hey. Here's what you better do, like if someone if I was getting ready to go meet my team for the first time and someone says, hey, listen, here's what's going on, you better do this, that would start to make me question like, wait, wait a second.

If you're needing to tell me how to introduce myself to the team, this this you must not have a lot of confidence in what's going on here. And you must be worried and and you must see me as weak and so so that I'm sure that starts to creep into someone's head. I was doing my first interviews for the officer candidate program that I went into in the Navy.

And so, you know, I was talking to the executive officer at the time at SEAL Team one, and he was heading up this officer review board, I think the officer review board, where I would go in and meet with these three or four officers and they would ask me a bunch of questions and and they would give me a recommendation based on how I responded.

And I wasn't really nervous or anything. But, you know, he just as a good leader, he said, hey, let's let's talk about the the thing that you're about to go to. He's like, are you nervous? I'm like, not really. And he goes, OK, well, good. He goes, check this out. When you go in there, there's no reason to be nervous because you're in there for a reason. You're in there because you've been recommended to get this position.

And so you're in there because you're professional and you are smart and you come up with good answers and you've shown leadership potential. That's why you're going in there. So when you go in there, essentially what he said was and this is really good advice with the little caveat when you go in there, he said be yourself. Right. Which is essentially what you said to this woman, hey, what would you what do you think you should do?

And she said it. And you're like, so you should be yourself. So you have to be yourself. And the caveat is, listen, you're going into an environment, you are going to be professional.

This is why I say there's a little caveat, because being yourself, you have to use at least some level of caution because you might be a very nice person. You can air on the side of being too nice. You can air on the side of being too hard.

What I recommend is you air on the side of being a little bit too hard. Does this mean come off the top ropes now? But it is much easier to to start with a tight leash and give it and give slack as people earn trust and whatnot than it is to go in there with a bunch of slack and then all of a sudden you've got to jerk the chain and and and now that's a problem.

So er on this, I mean we joke about it all the time, laugh jokes about it all the time, because when you know, when he came into tasking Bruce approval rating, smiled anyone for six weeks and, and Colonel Hackworth didn't smile at anyone for the first month. And so why is that. It's erring on the side of being professional. It's erring on the side of being. Was that the right word? Hard, I guess, being professional error on the side of being professional, not overly friendly because overly friendly is hard to judge the way people are going to respond to that.

People might go, oh, cool, she wants to be our friend. And she you know, that's that's the way it's going to be. Cool. I don't really have to listen to her. So er on the side of being professional. The last thing I had was. And now this is the counter to being too hard, the counter to being too hard is why would you need to come in there and be all authoritative?

Well, it's because you're insecure about people thinking that you're a good leader, which when you go in and you act all authoritative, everyone thinks they don't think, wow, that person is really authoritative. What they think is they're not very confident in their leadership skills and that's why they're trying to browbeat us with their rank. So you think you're coming across one way, B, by being hyper authoritative, but what you really do what you're really doing is putting yourself on being on report for being insecure about your leadership.

So we want to be balanced. Right. We want to er towards being professional.

We want to air with enough confidence and authority that people go, OK, we get it, but we don't want to go to a point where people go, oh, insecure. Got it. And don't underestimate, especially if they know you, how easy it is for them to see what you're doing.

You're walking like, whoa, JoCo man, this is it's so easy for them to see if you're overshooting the mark kind of by design.

So just like you said, I mean, you need to be yourself, be authentic.

I totally what you said about that and using the examples of, hey, I'm going to come and I'm going I'm going to make clear, like I'm going to hold the line and those things, these are the things that are important and this is the way we're going to be. And I can throttle back. That's much easier than trying to tighten up the slack at the beginning. But if you overshoot the mark, they're going to seat a mile away.

And it's it's it's that thing we talk about as far as perspective is what are they going to see versus what you're seeing? And if you're detached enough, it's very obvious how clear it's going to be that you are hyper insecure. If you walk in and out of the blue like, whoa, that was a really aggressive introduction speech. We've been working together for four years. Where did that come from? And here's the problem with everything that we're saying right now.

Everything that we're saying right now is going to edge someone towards completely overthinking this.

Right. Which is why, you know, look, you're in this position, you're being promoted. You're being put in that position of leadership because people have seen the way you perform. They trust you. So be yourself and be yourself and then add six percent of professionalism, extra professionalism, and you'll dial it right in there. What's funny is that the conversation that we had took about like 90 seconds. You know, when we when we talk on the phone say, oh, that's great.

I just want to get your take on it.

It was it is like you said, we we've talked we're much more longer than we than we did because it was, hey, don't overthink this yourself. Think about what's important. You announce that, you know, come in, know what's going on and then move on from there. And that was kind of the entire thing. Did you debrief whether or totally and I mean, all good on it, was it? Well, two things. One, yes, it was all good.

And to the beauty that she was like it was she said it was a non-event. Yeah, it was. Of course it was. And that's what we talk about. Hey, this is not this thing.

If your introduction speech don't if you're taking command of a battalion or a brigade or if you're taking command, is I see those speeches, those things, they're not important.

What matters is what you are, who you are during that entire time. And we create these things in our mind, like I got to get this speech out of the park, you know, like it's some big thing. Ask me how many seal introduction speeches I remember in my twenty three year career.

If you feel the need to go in there and make a big statement, what part of your brain do you think is feeling that need? It's a little something called your ego daughter. So heads up for that. I have my de-brief term.

I think this is my first debrief and I'll do look, we did something called the F battlefield as a pilot. Course we we are taking people to battlefields across the country and at some point across the world. And the first one that we did was the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War.

And I'm going to actually do a podcast to go into some of to go into more detail on that battle, lessons learned, leadership, etc. But when I got done with it, I had my notebook.

And so, you know, there was I was there. Life was there. My shoulder was there. Steve Ward was there. Jason Gardner was there. Jamie was there. And then a bunch of clients. So it was it was a pilot. So we were all kind of checking out, seeing what the deal was.

But as I went through it and I got done, I just took my notebook and I sent you a bunch of words basically to say, hey, here's some stuff to debrief you on.

So. Because and the reason is, look, there was a bunch of things that were kind of look. Extreme ownership laws are combat leaders of strategy and tactics, stuff that there's no reason for me to send you a text and say, hey, here's here's something. Here's something. Here's here's here's an anomaly that I, I may not have thought through. Or and most of this boils down to me thinking, you know what, I just re-explain this to everyone.

And and people said, oh, yeah, OK, got it.

So here's a couple of things. The first thing that I sent you was implied intent, implied intent. So we've all heard of commander's intent. We all know what that is. Commander's intent is, hey, this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it.

And again, I'll go into some of the details about why this came up in the Battle of Gettysburg between the various generals that were there from Robert E. Lee and his subordinate generals.

And so so I will absolutely get into that stuff. But so this idea of implied intent, it's this look, if I tell you, hey, Dave, the intent of this operation is for you to secure this mountaintop so that we can then push forward with cover from the high ground. So if I tell you all that right, it's very obvious that's the commander's intent. What I what I realized. And it's something that I realized that I've never.

Put into words before until I was talking through this and explaining that when you're in charge.

You have not just your commander's intent that you give verbally, but you also have an implied intent that is the nature of your very being.

And I realized that so much of my commander's intent throughout my entire career was based.

On the implied intent by knowing me, you knew that.

This is what I would want, I knew what you expected. Yes, this actually happened at Ashlawn Front and it was Jamie and Jen and Lynn and the rest of the team during a muster. And they were going. Incredibly siko to test everything and make sure that the line was going to be through as quickly as possible to make sure that registration's would go through and make sure people weren't waiting in line and make sure that the the things that needed to be handed out were in the right place at the right time and that the everything was going to be perfect.

And I never pulled them aside, I actually did it after I did it during the debrief, I said, you know what, Jamie, you and your team realized you never I never said to them, but here's the deal.

As I said to him after the fact, I said, listen, if this event is disorganized and people have to wait in line and people are confused about where they're going and there's no one to check them in. And if all those things happen and people are coming and paying money to a leadership event and we can't even execute the leadership event smoothly, I want my money back immediately.

Jamie never had to ask me, hey, should we should we should I hire an extra two people to make sure that the launch didn't ask me that the implied intent was this better be the best thing ever on the battlefield?

Hey, when it came time for life to either close with and destroy the enemy or, you know, maybe leave a situation to avoid contact, he knew Seth knew the guys knew what the implied intent was.

Look, if there's bad guys and we have an opportunity to fight them, that's what we do. So there's an important part about implied intent.

So. So do you see where I'm coming from, the commentary on that?

Yeah, it when I was writing down his thinking is it lets me know what I should do without you ever telling me what to do, because I know you well enough as my leader, as my boss is. Whatever. I know what you want so I know what to do when you're not around to tell me. And I also don't need to go. Hang on. Let me call JoCo and see what he's thinking here. I don't have to do that when there's no time to do that.

Another good example, it was we were at desert warfare training in the beginning of our work up and tasking Bruiser and guys, we had a night off and normally, guys, we have a night off. They go drinking in town and have a good time. They come back and no one even asked me because the implied intent was, we're here to train. That's the most important thing in the world. So so that's part one of implied intent. Here's part two.

If I am sending you. On an operation or on a mission and my implied intent. Is not valid for this situation. I better be damn sure to explicitly tell you that my implied intent or I better make it perfectly clear what is happening.

So if I'm always telling you, hey, you know what, Dave? If my implied intent is always, look, you know me, you know, I'm aggressive. You know, if we get in a firefight on the battlefield, we better take the fight to the enemy, take them out, destroy. That's what we do. What we train like that. We go and work up. You've done twenty, twenty five thirty missions like that with that attitude.

Now, all of a sudden we get put into a different AoE and we have a very sensitive politician that's there and they've started to assemble some coalition supporting troops. And the last thing we want to do is cause collateral damage or have any kind of civilian casualties. When we're going out before you go, I say, hey, Dave, here's what's going on. I know normally we are default aggressive tonight. I actually want you to be default passive.

I want the security and safety of the populace and the infrastructure to be the number one thing that you think about that is infinitely more important tonight than closing with and destroying the enemy. So that's it. We have implied intent and we better know what that implied intent is.

And if you're going to go against that implied intent, you better be you better make it explicitly clear.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think of how I have always been as a subordinate when I have worked for other people throughout my career. One of the things I try to discover very early on about my leadership is what that implied was intent was. And that can be really, really strong. If I'm working for you, I am working. I know what you're implying is that is the strongest thing in my mind to guide my decisions for decentralized command.

So if we're going to go out and do anything that's going to be different, that implied intent, you've got to almost go out and say, listen, I know what you would do in this situation and I'm telling you why you're not going to do what you're not going to do and why. Because that implied intent is for me, like that is the most powerful force that I had as a subordinate leaders. What would my boss want me to do here is making sure I understood that.

So you saying you got to go out of your way to make it clear that that rings very true with me, because as a subordinate, my leadership intent was something I sought to understood early on and really understand because that allowed me to go do what I was supposed to do when there weren't around and do a good job. Yeah, it's interesting. This has had no name before. I'm naming it now, implied intent. Now this links very closely to the next point I want to bring up, which is and I've been talking about this, but I just want to I just want to tie these two things together.

It's decentralized command and culture, so decentralized command and culture. Look, this is a very easy connection to make. And it's a very similar to what we just said. You have implied intent. And then we have from that implied intent, you start to develop a culture as an organization. And if our culture as an organization is default aggressive, then I know that you can make decisions based on that culture.

So culture inside of an organization is like the highest form of decentralized command.

And then you can marry that up with another word, culture and values. So if your culture and your values are strong, then people in your chain of command should be able to make ninety nine percent of decisions. Just knowing the culture and the values, you add some implied intent to that and it's ninety nine point nine percent. You tell them why they're doing what they're doing and what the parameters are. They can make it if you don't ever need to talk to them again.

So just recognize that values and culture is the highest form of decentralized command. And if you haven't instilled values and culture into your team and your team doesn't know what your implied intent is. And the thing is, this is like I've never, never use that word, but we've all seen it. Right. But now, hopefully people can become conscious about what to imagine if you were working for Free and Chesty Puller, like you don't need to hear anything else.

You don't need to be told anything. There needs to be no brief's. He doesn't need to say a word. The implied intent is there. We are going on General Patton. Same thing. What's the implied intent? Implied intent is we are not digging in. We are going forward. That's what we're doing. So if you're not going to do that, you need to pull them back. But also as a leader, think about what your implied intent is and then take that implied intent, capture it, write it down, simplify it and then distribute it.

And guess what you have you've got a culture. You've got values that are that that create your culture, which then become the backbone of the decentralized command inside your organization. The connection between culture and decentralized command it as simple as you made that sound. And and as I hear it, it's so clear the connection is the first time you said it. When we were talking about it. I had not thought of it in those terms, though. So if you're listening, you're thinking about eight.

Why am I creating value for my organization? Why am I describing what these things are?

Decentralized command is what all the leaders want, leaders want decentralized command. They know that's the end, the end state they want to get to with their team because they can't be everywhere. There's a million reasons why decentralized command is a goal. But if you don't really think about the connection from culture that it's part of decentralized command, you can miss that in your mind. And when you're doing these exercises where you try to capture a company's vision and writing down the things that define the culture, if you're not making the connection to decentralized command, meaning you're not realizing that those things are what is going to allow your people to do what they should do when you're not around, you're going to miss something.

And when you made the connection, it was still even for me alive. Like, wow, that's it's important to say that, like, why I'm doing this as an organization, we're creating these things because I want you all to know what to do. That is in the best interest of this team when I'm not there and make that connection for your people. You going to take it one step forward, one step further for you, Dave Berg.

Yes.

Check this out.

When someone on your team does something that was wrong, that didn't make sense, that you can't understand why all you have to do is start to deconstruct that decision and you're going to get to a place where there's no guidance, where there's no values, where there's no there's no understanding of the why.

So when you see people in your organization that are doing the wrong thing.

It pull, pull, pull, pull the string on that, you're going to find out why it's your fault, because you haven't given them the implied intent. You haven't even given them the commander's intent. You haven't given them the values and the culture that will drive them to make the right decisions. So how do you fix it? You start to put those things in place. That's what you do. Yeah. All right.

I guess we'll do one more of these. There was disagreements amongst the leadership at the Battle of Gettysburg, and there are often disagreements in the way that we get things done.

We hear a lot. And is a quote, actually, life quoted me during one of these debriefs at one of the things that I used to say was, look, if you look, Dave, if you and I and I'm the boss or you're the boss and we're in there, have an argument about how to do an operation and finally say, listen, JoCo, we're doing it my way. So. Get on board and go start start planning your execution.

This is what I used to tell the young SEALs when you walk out of that. Room. You execute that mission as if it was your own. OK, and LifeCo quoted me on that, which is a legitimate quote. Here's the thing. And again, this is all from leadership strategy and tactics.

It's not even like it's that big of a deal. But so they talk about the two generals generally in general, Longstreet generally was generally and General Longstreet was his one of his immediate subordinate subordinates who he called his war horse, meaning they had a good relationship. General Longstreet did not want to execute what General Lee's plan was. And so. What they said was, listen, when you saw what he did was when he walked out of the tent. With the plan, General, it is what we're doing.

General On-street walked out of the plant, walked out of the tent, and then he waited and hesitated and wait four or five hours and didn't execute. And they had to send a bunch of people like, hey, what's going on? Are you going to do this? And finally, he did it dragging his feet the whole time. And it was like, hey, this is why when you leave, you execute as your own. Right? And then I forget who asked a question.

We had one of the clients, but and as I stood there and was thinking through this, they were talking and talking. And I said, let me say something here. If you don't agree with that plan, don't leave the tent, you don't leave the tent. Until look, Dave, if you have a plan that's so good and you can't convince me of it, we got a problem, bro, especially once I've removed my ego once.

Once I've removed my ego, once I've detach from my emotions, once I've seen your perspective, after I've done the right things over here to try and you still can't get me there. We got a real freaking problem. And that means I'm not leaving the tent. I am not leaving the tent now, that's the goal. Now, look, once you get beyond that, there's a bunch of different ways we can go there. We can go to leadership strategy and tactics where, hey, you know, if you say, hey, JoCo, shut up and do it now, what is what do I do?

I can say you can fire me. I give up all my influence. You bring any look, these are all spelled out leadership strategy tactics. I can say, OK, boss, I got it. I'll do the best I can. I go out, I do the best I can and I mitigate risk as much as possible. Try and take care of my team, try and execute the plan. But maybe like I said, mitigate risk.

The stories in Vietnam were seals a few times got ordered to do things that they did not think was good missions. And so they said, you know what? Yeah, OK, cool. We don't want to do that, boss. And then boss says, no, shut up and do it. The guys go, OK, cool. They walk outside the wire, they go one hundred metres into the jungle. They set up a perimeter. They sit there for the night, they come back, hey, we didn't run into anything.

Same thing with Dick Winters in Band of Brothers. Oh, you want us to do another? One of those reconnaissance is where we just lost a guy last night and the war is going to be over in any day now. OK, got it. No, I don't think it's a good idea. No, shut up and do it. OK, got it, boss. Go down to the cellar and drink wine.

So that's a whole nother thing.

But all those all those all those subsequent decisions are based on the primary thing, which is don't leave the tent until you've got to a point where, you know, you've you've completely exorcised all the demons of the conversation because the chances that you and I on the same team, working for the same company with the same goals, which we want to make money, we want to support our clients, we want all these things or we're at war.

We want to kill the bad guys. We want to take our objectives. Would you and I are aligned at some level?

We have to be aligned. And if we can't come to a conclusion about what is the right thing to do, I'm not going to leave the tent. That's the first part of it.

If you leave the tent, you better figure out which one of those courses of actions you're going to take. I'm going to do this thing to the best of my ability. I'm going to mitigate the risk as much as I like. There's a bunch of things that happen, but it starts with if we don't agree, I'm not leaving the tent.

I wrote down as you started this, I just wrote down in my little margin, I wrote an ego because I'm thinking I'm putting myself in that situation. So I'm I'm Longstreet. Usually we're in the tent. We're doing this thing. And we've been we've been doing this thing, actually, you and I've been doing this thing at Ashlawn Front for about as long as they probably were. You know, I got three or four years under my belt here.

So now I'm in a situation. JoCo gives me the big picture brief I'm seeing.

And I'm like that, actually. That seems wrong, so already right away, that's a very low probability, I'm not saying it's not possible.

That's immediate red flag. When I wrote down Igoe, I was thinking of myself as before I leave the tent. This isn't about me trying to convince you that your plan is wrong. It's like for me, it's the opposite of, hey, JoCo, I'm still missing something. I'm not understanding this. And the the and it's not always there's always that caveat. But the likely issue isn't that your plan is bad. It's that I'm missing something about what you want.

And when I wrote down Egoists, I'm not there to try to change your mind. I'm there to really figure out what am I doing wrong so I can't leave the tent until I actually get past what I don't understand. Now, there may be some times that I got to I have to come up with a way to maneuver around what you're doing, too. But the likelihood if we are this aligned and you kind of covered a lot of what I was going to say, which is, I mean, think about the situation here.

This is you and I after three and a half years with all the same goals, objectives and and all of a sudden I can't get past what you're asking me to do. OK, what's really going on? And more than likely what's going on is I've created an answer my mind that's different than yours. And I want to dig in and get in and and get you to see it my way. I got to I can't leave the tent until I actually understand what you're saying.

And that to me is much more likely of a problem, that it's me instead of you. And actually, if I take that approach and you see me take that approach, you're actually more likely to go, oh, hang on, hang on, hang on. You keep pushing back.

Let me see if I really understand this myself. Anyway, that's just what I wrote down, is thinking of what's going to be the biggest problem for me in that tent. It's going to be me.

I have this goal when I'm in a disagreement with somebody and this shocks people all the time. But when I disagree with Dave, my goal is to understand why Dave is right and I'm wrong.

It's not to win the argument. It's not even not to win. It's like, how am I wrong right now and how can Dave be right? My goal is to have Dave be right. Yeah. And if you go with that approach, it disarms your ego. My ego is factually disarmed because I'm trying to prove that you're right. And what that allows, it allows the actual problems that we're facing to rise to the surface so we can come up with a good solution.

Well, we always try and allegedly keep this podcast a little shorter, so let's try and do that tonight. It's a good place to stop. If you want to dig deeper into all these aspects of leadership in any arena, you want to hear us and the rest of the Echelon front team talking about these things, answering questions. But if you want to ask a question, go to EFL mine dot com, join one of our live webinars that are happening all the time.

We'll sit there and talk to you about it. That's what we do. We solve problems through leadership. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, come and check out our leadership consultancy at Echelon Front Dotcom. I've also written a bunch of books on the subject of leadership, extreme ownership, dichotomy of leadership, leadership, strategy and tactics.

Got some other podcast, JOCO podcast JOCO Unraveling, Grounded in the Warrior Kid podcast. And if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from JoCo store dot com or from origin main dot com.

That's it for tonight. Thanks for listening to the De-brief NALGO lead. This is Dave and JoCo out.

So we could do one more than get through the last of us do these are there I mean. That was fun.

I don't know how that I assume that the conversation sounds like the way I think it sounds in my head, but because I'm hearing this for the first time, trying to think about what you're saying, I mean, those to the implied intent and then don't leave the tent.

I mean, those two words that was cool. That was really, really good. I was looking I'm like, holy crap, man.

There's ten more like ten more things on here that.

So I'm almost that that was I don't know in your mind like that's three because I did one and you did two. If that's like three.

If our format is three per podcast. Because remember I did the first one of this podcast.

This is our podcast. We can do whatever we want. Yeah. No, I'm just saying, like you said, you want to do one more.

I don't know if you wanted to do a whole nother podcast, one more de-brief podcast with these other things if we can get through them.

OK, not not all of them. They should be shorter. What is it? Number six is this number six.

This would be six. Right. Here we go. Hang on. When you say they should be shorter, you mean like we should talk about these topics, like more succinctly? No, I'm saying these these are not as. As as big as those first couple, you're not saying we should have been shorter, you're saying no, these should be shorter because these are like not quite.

You won't be like, oh, I won't have to explain it as much. And it'll be like, oh, yeah, OK, I totally get it.

OK, I understand what you mean now by they should be shorter. Not those should have been shorter. You're saying the course of these topics, these should be a little bit quicker to get through.

Yeah. Should be still do those two really until I look at these things. Well that's what I'm thinking like bro. We could I mean, I got to just not talk because.

I could probably talk about this next one for like an hour, which is off. Yeah, all right. I do, too. What are we doing? We'll see how long it takes.

So good. And three to one. This is the JoCo De-brief podcast, Episode six with Dave Burke and me, JoCo Willink. So, Dave, we got some more debriefing to do. We didn't get through my Gettysburg debriefs that I had for you.

So if you haven't listened logic, go back to Episode five.

But moving into some of the other things that I had on my list that I texted to you and said I got some debrief points for you. So the next one I wanted to cover. Is again, this is something that's in leadership strategy and tactics, and I I believe it's fairly well spelled out and I've been briefing this a lot lately in the current environment that we're in.

It's it's 20, 20 right now.

There's a there's a virus that currently seems like a a it's a world a world impacting virus.

And so we've all been dealing with it and been helping people make decisions and and maneuver their companies. And one of the things that I've been talking a lot about is iterative decision making, which is a good way to lead in unknown circumstances. And what you do is you basically make a small decision and then you take a small step in that direction.

And what I realized during this Gettysburg during this Gettysburg battlefield walk that we did discussing the various leadership decisions that were made, was there was certain situations where leaders on the battlefield could have made small moves instead of big ones. And in no case did they do that.

I mean, I'm sure I'll find some eventually.

But in the major movements that were made, especially the major mistakes that were made, there was no time where.

Someone made a small decision and made a small step in that direction. So what I was saying and again, I'm there with almost the entire world, with a bunch of people from Ashlawn Front, it's me, it's life, it's Micarelli.

It's who else is there?

Oh, Steve Ward, Jason Carter and Jamie, so like we've got this big crew there and I started talking through one of the things that could have solved one of these major problems, and that is when when when General Long Street didn't like a plan that generally had come up with.

And he dragged its feet for an extended period of time and it ended up being a total disaster.

And I said, hey, you know, everyone's kind of going on. What would you have done? What would you have done? What would you done? Right. Either if you're either person, what would you have done and say, I'll draw a line in the sand. I would never do this. I don't agree with it. I would ordered him to do it. I fired him as I went through all those things.

And I said, well, here's what I would have done if I was either person, if I was generally or General Longstreet, I would have done iterative decision making and therefore iterative execution. And I think that there's just a gap. And I I want to explain that gap in of decision making is not just making a decision, it's the execution of that small decision.

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

How does that sound and you go, that actually makes sense, or you could also say that to me. You know what, JoCo? I don't know about assaulting that hill. Here's why don't we start with this. I'll move one hundred meters closer. I'll send a couple scouts up. We'll see if there's any cover that we could get. If it looks like we are taking fire, I can pull them back. If we're not taking fire and we find good cover, I'll proceed a little further.

That's it, that's it of decision making, and it includes a of execution, and what you find is that when you make a small decision and then you take a small step, when you make that small step, you learn more.

When you learn more, you can make a decision on which direction to go. Now. So that's fairly straightforward, the next note that I had is that itour of decisions are actually aggressive. You can make aggressive, much more aggressive moves when they are small. So I've been telling a lot of clients that I had a reputation in the SEAL teams of being very, very decisive.

But I was cheating. I was cheating because I wouldn't make decisive, massive moves, I would make many small moves very rapidly.

So if we started taking fire, I didn't say everyone assault now because I don't even know where we're taking fire from or how many people there are or what the situation is. So I'm not going to say everyone assault now. And I'm not going to say everyone run away, we're taking part, that's a big decision. I'm not paying I don't take that bold. What I say is, hey, two people go up to the roof. Dave, Dave, Dave and Mike go to the roof.

Tell me what you say. Everyone thinks I just made a power decision. There's absolutely no risk. We're in a building that we already own.

You have cover up on the roof core that is being aggressive. So eater of decisions where some people where some people might think, well, that's kind of weak, right? What do you do? And that's weak. You're just going to you know, you're just taking small steps. I'm taking small steps rapidly. And that is the best way to be aggressive. Look, caveat sometimes. Do you have to make a bold decision that's big?

Yes, you do. Absolutely. Should happen very seldomly. It should happen very seldomly. And hopefully it doesn't happen at all.

Yeah. One of the reasons why you and the team we've been talking about it decision making so much more recently is because of what you just described. I wrote down at the very beginning. I wrote down the word unknown, of course, you're talking about. And it's it's we all understand that this is kind of a period of unknown.

Nobody was holding a playbook for Kobe. Nobody saw this thing coming. So part of the reason why we have been talking about iterative decision making and several fast short movements is how you maneuver in this unknown environment. And it makes sense and what we should be talking about. The other side of that, though, when you talk about it'a of decision making, is if you kind of take this whole situation, let's go back a year where things were just kind of jam and everything was was going really well.

It was actually there's actually a lot of unknown there, too, and and the thing that complacency creeps in when you think you've got the whole situation, you got the whole way, the way you think you know what's going on, and you start to make these bigger, longer lessiter decisions. If you're not complacent, even if you think you know everything, you've got all information. You still you know what? There's things out there we don't know.

I've got all the intel I've seen is 50 times. I've done it throughout my entire career. Everything is the way. If you keep that mindset of, you know what, there is something out there, maybe we don't know, you're actually going to end up doing the exact same decision making process now what you would a year ago or a year from now. And this idea of iterative decisions, is it just because we know there's unknowns is because there's always unknowns.

It may be really obvious now. And it is it's glaringly obvious that we don't know what's going on sometimes.

But the truth of the matter is, is that if you're in a leadership role, it's always like that. And if you think you've got this whole thing figured out, we go, hey, I'll just take your team, go ten miles down the road and plant the flag on that hill. If you think you know, between here and there, you're going to set yourself up. You need to make those same decision making approach, that same error of decision making, no matter what the situation is.

And if it turns, they get there. Hate no factor. You can do it quickly. But you don't not do that just because you think you've got the situation understood.

You know, as we've been as I've been explaining this to clients, I've been doing a little set up with them.

I'll say I'll say what you want to do as a leader in this position is you want to take a guess on what to do next.

And then I say I say nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that. The leader is taking a guess as to what to do next. But guess what?

In any situation, if you're in a leadership position, the number of times that you're going to have one hundred percent accurate information spoon fed to you and you're going to be able to line up that and come up with a perfect decision is never. So if you're in a leadership position, guess what? You are making guesses. That's what you're doing. That's what leaders do. How do we mitigate the risk of the guests?

We take a little tiny step. Yeah. So you have to guess.

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

And it cost you so little and even that. Guess there's nothing wrong with me admitting as a leader. Hey, you know what? I don't have all the answers here. As a matter of fact, when you give me those orders, go take that hill. And I'm thinking this is a terrible idea. I'm not doing that. Why would I come back and go, hey, that's a terrible idea. We're not going to do that. I'm going to go, Hey, boss, I hear you're saying, look, I don't have a good record in between here.

Let me take my team and push them out. Give me about an hour already you back. What you see, we're going to take this first move us out some scouts. I don't need to dig into my position. I need to go, OK? I can make that happen. And I apply the same thing. But if I come in and go, this is a terrible idea, we shouldn't do this. And it turns out I go out there and like, wow, this is actually really easy.

Now, I had to call back like, hey, you were right. And I got to there is no reason not to just say, I actually don't know. And the best way for us to know is we're going to go out and start to move in this direction. Yeah, that's the other thing I've been telling all my clients is after you make that guess and it turns out your guess is wrong, what do you do then? You tell everyone, hey, I guess a little bit wrong.

I assessed this wrong. Here's some things that changed. Here's a different view now that we now that we see this part of the market or this part of the battlefield, here's the adjustments are going to make. You have to be humble enough to make adjustments.

But doesn't it make you look really dumb and weak when you get something wrong and it goes back, goes back to, you know, your perspective, your ego being able to detach? Because everybody knows that if I stand up and say, listen, I know we're meeting more resistance than we thought, but we're going for it anyways. Everyone looks at me and goes, You're a freakin crazy.

Yeah. All right.

Next the last one of these debrief podcast that we did, we were talking a lot about intent and implied intent, meaning just through my attitude, you know what I want. Then there's actual verbal or written commander's intent. Here's what I want you to do. Here's my overall intent. And then there's culture and there's values. And you stack all these things together. And we have we should have a situation that if you take my my verbal commander's intent or my written commander's intent, like, hey, this is what I want to do, the implied intent, the values, the culture, you should be able to make ninety nine point nine percent of decisions.

Without having to talk to me at all, if you're working for me, that's the way it should be. How do I know that? Well, here's a here's a little drill that I can run through with you to see if you understand these various forms of my intent, and that is discussing contingencies. Because if I say, hey, Dave.

What will you do if you get into an enemy contact before you get to the target? And you say if we take enemy contact, we're going full auto and we're going to assault from wherever we are, and what I actually wanted you to do was not reveal your position.

Well, guess what?

I've obviously not explained any level of these intense to you.

So if you're in a leadership position and you want to understand if people look and if I say, hey, Dave, the commander's intent for tonight is you get in and out without being compromised and you say, got it, boss. And I go, OK, read back to me what the intent is. And you say it's to get in and out without being compromised. OK, cool. Got it. This only means that you could repeat the words that I said, then I said, OK, let me run through some scenarios with you.

Here's a contingency.

You roll up, you get out of your vehicles and all of a sudden there's dogs barking and lights start coming on inside the village. What are you going to do? And you're like, shoot the dogs, right? That's all right. So that's why I'm saying it's really simple.

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

Yeah, as so we didn't and we don't rehearse anything. You sent me this text last week and I'm like, cool, I wonder what this is. And we're talking about it now. And and as I as I read this bullet, you know, the contingencies reveal understanding of your intent. It took me a minute to kind of understand the context. And as you're describing it and then same thing, I was just I put myself in a position of being a subordinate and and everybody should understand and this is true for you, you and I, despite the fact that we've commanded teams and we've always also been subordinate.

I've been a subordinate my entire career.

I was never not without a boss in the military. So the role of being a subordinate is something I'm very familiar with. Even when I was a commander, I was a subordinate to some other senior commander. The question of just, hey, what would you do here? Sometimes when, like my boss would ask me that, I would feel like, is he questioning what? Is he questioning me? But really, what a good boss is doing there is actually evaluating how good of a job he has done to prepare me to handle, which he absolutely knows are going to happen, which is a contingency.

Contingencies always happen. Nothing ever happens the way you plan. And as a leader when you're saying, hey, OK, JoCo, walk me through the scenario. You've got my intent, but this happens. What are you going to do? That's not me testing you.

That's me testing me. Have I explained myself well? And so when I went as you're explaining, I'm picturing again, you know what? How many times did I hear my boss run me through a contingency scenario? I'm thinking that was wrong with this guy. Why is he asking me all these questions, questioning whether I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing. It's like, no, he's actually measuring himself. Did he explain it well enough to set me up to be successful when he knows full well there are going to be problems as I go execute because he knows what's out there waiting for me?

The understanding, the ten. I mean, how critical is that that I know your intent as a leader so I can do something in real time and get it right. You know what else is interesting?

I had this conversation with Jamie the other day and Jamie has been participating more and more and answering questions and stuff.

And she goes, you know, she's like, I'm starting to feel like I am doing a better job answering questions. I'm like, yeah, you knock it out of the park. And she says, Yeah, you know, I'm just trying to I'm just kind of answering the way I would answer a client when they ask me a question.

And and of course, I know I make everyone nervous.

Right. You're like everyone wants to say the right thing. And she kind of alluded to that.

She's like, you know, sometimes when I know you're on on the phone line and I know that if I say something, I want to get it right and it makes me trip up and I don't want to do that anymore. And I go, Jamie, trust me, you nail these questions. And then I told her, look, this used to happen when I was running training for the SEALs. You'd get these young SEAL leaders and I'd put them in some pressure situation and I would be looking at them and they would do something really stupid.

And I'd go, I go, why did you do that?

And they were like, I thought you'd want me to be aggressive. I thought you'd want me to whatever I thought. You want me to take the high ground, right. And I go, bro, don't do what you think I want you to do.

Don't try to interpret what you think. I might want you to do what you think you should do right then that's what you need to do. So that's another thing that walking through contingencies reveals.

Look, I don't want someone in the field that is going to make a decision based on what they think I might want them to do if I was there. I want them to actually do what makes sense in that situation.

So let's go through some contingency so we can remove that. And then we truly understand if they know what the intent is. And again, now we've got multiple levels of intent to try and comprehend.

And they should obviously they're all aligned, but they all had a different spectrum or a spectrum and they're all important. And by the way. Do you have your pen ready? By the way, there's a hierarchy of these intense. So if I've told you, you know, that, hey, you're going you know what, I want you to avoid, you know, getting an enemy contact tonight. But something happens where. Your troops are in danger, right?

There's a hierarchy of intense, which we actually need to have understanding of.

Now, look, most of the time they're aligned. I mean, I want you to complete the mission. I want you most of the time they're aligned.

But there can be nuanced scenarios where a leader is going to have to say, look, I know the intent that Joko told me was to was to make sure we make money on this deal.

But right now, the only way we make money on this deal is by me screwing over this client. Yeah. I know there's a hierarchy of intense here, and I know that I'm not supposed to do that.

So not only do we have multiple intense, they should be aligned, but there is a hierarchy that makes that makes sense.

And it's it's if you understand the strategy, if you understand what you really want us to do in the long run, it makes it easier to do that. You've used example like this before, too, which was you can say, hey, Dave, my intent is actually don't give away your position, keep a very low profile. And if there's any risk that I want you to withdraw and back up, that's what I want you to do. But there are times that that might actually put me at more risk.

And you don't want me to come back. Hey, we lost two guys, but I followed what I thought you wanted me to do, which was back.

And that's the thing you're talking about, is don't do what you think I want you to do. When we all first joined Echelon Front and you started talking and training us about how to do Q&A and hey, how do we answer clients questions?

The goal that you said was, I want you to answer the question in the way that you would actually solve that problem. So if you have a question, you think about what you would do. And if you have the humility to say, this is what I do and it turns out that's wrong, now we can actually have a debriefing and go, hey, Dave, let me talk to you. Why maybe this wouldn't work and I can learn from that and get better at that.

But I'm spending all my time thinking about what you would say.

And I know what Jim is talking about.

We all know what it's like to have Jocke on a gig with us like a God. He's watching me answer. If I can have the humility to just do what I think I should do, I'll actually learn more and get better at it than trying to calculate what would JoCo say. And I watch and I just do nothing but causing problems for me. And you actually don't want me doing that any way. You want me to do what I think I should do.

And if it's right, great. And if it's wrong, then we can debrief it and learn from it and get better.

Yeah, there's a there's a a level of detachment reflection that goes on there, too, because.

Saying here's a classic example of seen guys get caught in it and it's a straight up, well, what would JoCo do, right? What would Jako do? Well, they have this is why this is so scary. They have their implied intent that they've received. Is it possible that the implied intent that someone has received from me is not accurate?

Yes, it's absolutely possible because Jack was aggressive and he makes things happen. And so what do I think when I get asked a question, you know, what should I do in my subordinate just says, hey, this sounds like a horrible plan and we're not doing it. And the thought is, well, Jack, default aggressive. You know what? You shut up and do what I told you to do. And so here's what I tell people.

Actually, ask yourself if you could picture me doing that. Actually say, wait, wait a second, if I was to put JoCo in the situation and I was saying, hey, I don't want to do your plan, would democracy shut up and do what I told you? No, actually, he wouldn't do that. What would he do? He would say, why do you what is it that you don't like about the plan? And do you have a different idea?

So there's a whole there's a whole level. And what this comes down to is these really good conversations that you can have based on contingency contingencies and how people are going to act in certain situations.

And then you take this hierarchy of intent that we're we're now exposing to the world because it exists. Yeah.

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

Don't ask me any questions, do what I tell you to do, that's that's an implied intent. And they actually some people kind of like that implied intent.

You shut up and don't ask me any questions. Do what I told you to do.

All right. The next thing. This one should be relatively simple, what winning looks like to you versus what winning looks like to the troops.

So this is again, this is aligned with intent, but. You have to make sure that what winning looks like to me is what winning looks like to if you're working for me, not not not actually you're not working for me.

But if you're on the front lines and I'm the boss, I have to make sure that winning looks the same to both of us. Because if winning to you looks like closing a deal and it doesn't matter if we ever do anything with this, you know, if you're a car salesman and you're you want to close that deal and make as much money as you possibly can and get that person out the door and you don't care that it's a lemon and they're going to complain about it on Yelp.

That's a win for you. It's a loss for me. So what do I need to do, I need to make sure that winning for you looks the same as winning for me. And if I do a good job of setting up my compensation's and the missions in the way we're doing things, I can make sure that those are aligned. But oftentimes you see situations where, hey, the what the front line troop thinks is winning is not aligned with what the senior leadership.

Thinks winning is so we have to be careful that. As I'm thinking about what you're just saying, and then think about things that you said before and kind of piecing together a lot of conversations, we have one of the easiest ways to make sure that what winning looks like for me, some of her I'm now the big boss, whatever. I'm in charge. I think you're four levels down your front line, guys selling cars or whatever.

That scenario was one of the best ways for me as a leader to make sure winning to me and winning to you look the same as I actually have to care about you more than me. I have to really believe that you being successful is what this is all about, that this team that I'm in charge of or responsible for or tasked to lead wherever that is. And you have said that so many times and you really have to think about what that means is that when you as a task unit commander, made decisions and you talk about the challenge of, like, understanding that you're putting your men at risk and knowing what you what what really was out potentially out there for them, that you cared about them more than yourself, how much easier it is to align them winning with you, winning than if you actually are in it for you.

And what kind of what what what how destructive that is in the long run for an organization, when you as a leader, see your own success as the kind of like the secret to that goal that you really want at the expense of your team.

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

Yeah, yeah. We did that podcast's not too long ago and I forget the quote I wish I could remember off the top of my head, but it was something like if you if if you provide evidence of you caring about your troops, you don't even have to worry about morale. They will fight. They will fight. I think it was I think it was the JoCo podcast. Two forty five. Yeah. And it was. Yeah, provide evidence, let your people believe that you could show them that you actually move it up now that more and all of the problems take care of themselves because they'll go fight the next thing.

There's some really dumb things that happened in the Battle of Gettysburg, people. That's really, really dumb things. And there's a bunch of reasons why there's a a bunch of.

Things that could have helped that mostly being relationships, if if I have a relationship with you, Dave. Look, if I have a relationship with you, I at least have a dumb detector.

And I can say, you know what, Dave is going to he's he has a propensity to do some dumb stuff. I'm going to keep him in my back pocket. I'm going to keep an eye on him. I'm not going to give him the the the the the mission. That's going to take a lot of decision making.

But. If I don't have a relationship with you, then I don't know how dumb you could be and there's a chance that you could do things that are so dumb. That.

I really didn't even conceive of a contingency where you could be this stupid, so what you have to do is you have to think about the parameters, wrapping some wide parameters around stupidity in situations where you don't know somebody well enough.

And I'll tell you, even when you do know people well, the first time you put them in a combat or first time they get put under stress or the first time that they're in an unknowns, either of their situations where even someone you know and trust, you might need to throw some parameters around the most outlandish things that people could do.

So. What that is, this is this is extreme ownership, right?

Listen, if Dave does something, if I'm in charge and Dave does something that is so stupid. That is my fault because I didn't put the parameters in place, I didn't know well enough. I didn't I didn't I didn't anticipate this level of stupidity. And you know what? That makes me stupid.

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

I hate when people do really dumb things, and the reason I hate is because I know that I screwed up. Yeah, I know that I screwed up. Here's the question, was it a good move or not? Was that call a good move or a bad call and where this comes into play in the Battle of Gettysburg and elsewhere, but where it really comes into play is we want our people to be default aggressive. We want our subordinate leaders to have a bias for action.

We want them to step up and make things happen. We want to have decentralized command. All those things are good. Well, guess what, Dave? If you're in the field and I'm in charge, you could show initiative. You could you could maneuver your troops to beyond the limit of advance because you saw an opportunity or you saw a situation that needed to be dealt with immediately.

And that could cost us the battle, it might have been the wrong move and it cost us the battle, it might have been the right move. And it won us the battle, there's situations that happened at Gettysburg and the situations that have happened throughout battles, throughout history. And there's situations that happen in business where somebody makes a move, somebody does something, it destroys the whole business, somebody makes a gamble, somebody throws out a product that they should have.

And there's just all these things that happen. Was it a good move or not?

So you can so you can sit back from a hindsight is 20/20 perspective and say. Well, how do we know if something was a good move or not? Right. How do we know if something was a good move or not? Well, what we have to do is we have to look at the fundamental principles that we are operating within and what that so cover move is a good example.

Cover move. You could take that as implied intent from me if you worked for me and you weren't covering and moving. Look, I said it to you, but you better freakin just know it as well.

Cover moves the way it is. There's a principle that doesn't change. So if if you came back to me, if if you came back and you said, hey, JoCo, here's what I did. This element was moving, I, I moved to a position where I could better cover for them. They were able to move, but then I got flanked and I had to retreat and then they retreated and that's why we had to failed the mission.

Was it a good move or not? Did you violate covid move? Nope, you didn't. So I can look at that and say, you know what? You didn't get the result you wanted. You failed the mission, but at least you didn't violate the principles. If you came back and said, you know what, Jocko? I saw an opportunity. I started flanking. I lost contact with the element that was supporting us. I got let's try.

I'm trying to drugs in a good way. What really happened? You got Target fixated, you moved too far, and now all of a sudden you're out of supporting distance and they can't help you anymore. Now you can't cover for each other. And that's when they got ambushed and there was no support for them. And that's why we took casualties. But I was just being aggressive. Actually, bro, you violated a principle. You violated cover and move.

So now if we want to stack things up, we get these we go back to this idea of implied intent, commander's intent, values, culture.

We stack all those things up. And if we start violating these things now, we can look back and we can objectively say this was a bad move, it didn't support the intent, it didn't support the implied intent. It didn't support the commander's intent. All those things are bad. Now, where I have a problem is. I can't count on you, I can't hold you accountable for understanding my implied intent if I never talk about it with you right, I can it can be a reason.

But unless I turn that implied intent into a value, a culture and a commander's intent, then it doesn't help me.

So those are some ways if you think about situations and you want to debrief your people properly. And you say, well, you know, Dave, we've talked about cover move since day one. I've seen you rehearse it and practice it and you got out there and you're wondering why I'm thinking that you made a bad move, it's because you violated the only principle that I told you never to violate, because because that's where we're at as a leader.

We've got we've got people that are going to do things that we have to be able to explain to them why it was right or why it was wrong, because we want initiative. And all this comes back to decentralise command, because we want people to have initiative. But so so where this is all going.

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

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

Yeah, so. Good things to think about when somebody makes a move. When they do something and and you want to explain to them why it was wrong, you have to have you have to be able to display to them what they violated so that you can explain to them in a more clear manner what the violation was and why it can't happen again. This one's pretty simple and straightforward. There's heroic activities. At the Battle of Gettysburg and and I just got to thinking, what is the how is it that we as human beings can look at someone and say, that was heroic?

Why is that?

Why is this heroic? Why is this of why is what this person did heroic? And why what somebody else did not heroic what is in it took me 20 seconds of thinking about it. What makes something a heroic act and is so blatantly obvious? When somebody does something heroic, they do it not for themselves, but for others. And like I said, I'm going to cover the Battle of Gettysburg and probably multiple podcasts, but you know, this guy, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who was in charge of the 20th Maine and he just made a heroic effort of leadership and and.

Personal fortitude at the moment of truth, and it's awesome, but as I looked at all these different things as they unfolded and you also see other things that happen in the Battle of Gettysburg, we think, well, that was a that was a move.

But we're not looking at it as heroic. Why? Well, it's because it wasn't done.

It was done really for personal glory. Or at least there was elements of personal glory in there, and as a matter of fact, what's interesting is when you start looking at the personalities, you start getting these caricatures of personalities, the Battle of Gettysburg and and just one, you know, you'll hear the word like, oh, this guy was flamboyant. And it's really hard to then take that person who's flamboyant and start. Start applying the heroic to them because you feel their flamboyant and they made sacrifices, but you get that.

And look, I'm not being critical.

I'm just saying that you get this you get this tinge of, oh, this person was flamboyant and all of a sudden you think, well, you know, but you see someone that's not flamboyant, someone that was a former freakin schoolteacher like like like Colonel Chamberlain.

And you think he's doing this not for himself, not for any level of glory whatsoever, he's doing this to help, to sacrifice and to help others.

That's what he's doing.

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

I want you to remember that this isn't a character in a story, this isn't a person. This isn't an actor playing a role in a movie. This is a person. And they did this. And as I was at Gettysburg, and you feel very you can feel the gravity and the weight of of the battlefield, you can feel it.

And I know some of it is because. You know, we have been to war, and so we all kind of have some. Some taste in our mouth, some memory of of loss and of fire and of blood and of fear, and so we know it and you're there and you hear these stories.

And it was very. It was very heavy for me because you start recognizing these stories and I did a podcast about this with with Darrell, with Darrell Cooper on unraveling. And we it's it's about the fact that way, the way human beings observe, observe, absorb stories and how we actually create stories in order to better understand the world around us.

Like it's a it's not. This isn't this isn't hey, theoretically, this is what we do. This is what we do. Our brain is programmed to do this. Our brain is programmed to look at a set of circumstances and build a story around it so that we can survive better in the world. That's what we actually do. And you hear these stories of the way things unfolded at Gettysburg and.

You realize that our current situation, it's America, it's 20, 20.

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

It reinforced the fact that stories that truly matter. And so if you're on a team, if your organization if you're running a business. The story that you elevate. Has a massive impact on the mindset and the culture of the people that you are leading.

So think about that and know that and understand that.

I mean, Dave, in the Marine Corps, think about the story of the Marine Corps and then think about the little stories that make up the Marine Corps.

It's it's it's a religious law.

It's a it's a biblical level story. And it provides the Marine Corps time back. It provides the Marine Corps with an implied intent with with the culture and with values that are rooted in words. They are absolutely rooted in stories.

And I've covered a bunch of Marine Corps doctrine. They root their values.

They root their their statements in stories so that they have meaning.

And if you're running an organization, think about that, because stories absolutely matter.

To to have an organization that you can take you can take someone like me and have those stories be so powerful that somehow I, I Dave BRK feel connected to Smedley Butler or Chesty Puller or people I have never known and will never meet, but feel obligated to perform in some way that makes them proud of me being part of that organization.

That when you talk about culture like that, I.

I haven't thought about the stories in the way that you describe what they mean, but as you're saying it, that's why I became a Marine was the stories. I didn't know these people. And it wasn't even that I read about these people like in a chronological sense. It was that the stories of what these people were and feeling, the sense of wanting to be a part of that and feeling obligated to meet some standard that almost seemed impossible. The tying in of as you're going from, what makes someone heroic to the meaning of stories.

I mean, think about what you're what an organization can do if you can make that connection for your people. I mean, that's and that's why I became a Marine. That's why I became a Marine. That's why millions of people have become Marine.

And with that, I think it's a good place to stop for tonight if you want to dig deeper into these and all other aspects of leadership in any arena. You can join Dave and me and the rest of the Echelon front team live. We are actually there. You want to talk to us people like all people on social media. I'd love to meet you someday. Come on to EAF online dotcom and come and meet me, meet Dave, meet the rest of the team.

Where there. We will answer your questions. We will help you solve your problems through leadership. And if you want leadership guidance inside your organization, inside your company, come and check out our leadership consultancy at Echelon front dot com. It's what we do. I've also written a bunch of books about leadership, extreme ownership, the dichotomy of leadership, leadership, strategy and tactics. We've got some other podcasts. JoCo podcast is my main podcast. I guess that's the root of everything.

JoCo unraveling with my friend Darrell Cooper. We talk about a very in-depth subjects. We also have grounded, which is pretty much about jujitsu and the Warrior Kid podcast for all the warrior kids out there, and if you want to support any of these podcasts, including this one, you can get some gear from JoCo store, dotcom or origin main dot com. That's all we've got for tonight. Thank you for listening to the de-brief NALGO lead.

This is Dave and JoCo out.