This is the JoCo De-brief podcast, Episode nine with Dave Burke and me, JoCo Willink, and we have a leadership consultancy which is called Echelon Front.

And what we do is we work with a bunch of leaders. We also have an online trading platform where we discuss leadership all the time. And oftentimes Dave and I will debrief the scenarios that we see that we go through, that we solve will have, whether it's a late night phone call, an early morning phone call, a midday phone call to debrief some situation. And a while back, I thought it would be kind of cool to record some of these debriefs and hence the debrief podcast, given the opportunity for everyone to learn these lessons.

So Dave usually picks a couple subjects, but this time it's my turn. So I had a couple of subjects come up and I wanted to talk through some of them. You know, I'm not even going to set up the the scenarios as as they were of Dave usually sets up the scenario. I'm not even going to do I'm going to get right to the meat of what I wanted to talk about. So the first one is. What I call the prioritize and execute hamster wheel.

We all know the idea of a hamster wheel, you're running in place, you're not going anywhere. Here's the thing, people that we work with understand our principles. They know our principles. They know the four laws of combat cover and move simple, prioritize and execute decentralized command.

They know these things and they execute these things. So.

That's a very positive thing, but there are times where they. Might get a little bit caught up in the principal without taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture.

So in this particular scenario, there was an individual who was overwhelmed with what they were doing at work and. They were working and said time and time again, you know, I'm prioritizing execution priorities and executing, but I feel I still feel like I'm getting overwhelmed and I don't know how long I can keep this up in my effectiveness as a leader is going down. So I don't know what else to do. I've got all these things coming at me and I prioritize and execute every single day.

And that was kind of the thing that that made me think I heard that comment. I prioritize and execute every single day.

And actually this was on phone line and.

You know, I was I was listening, and so life started to answer the question, life was saying, hey, listen, you've got all these different things going on. You need to prioritize and execute.

And life went through the scenario, a similar scenario that I talk about, leadership, strategy and tactics, which is when I originally talk about detaching, which is you're on the firing line. Everyone's looking forward and no one's making a decision. High port your weapon, take a step back, look around and all of a sudden you can see what to do. That's sort of the that's sort of what you need to do in order to prioritize next year, because if you're shooting your gun, you can't see any priorities.

You're just seeing the target in front of your face. Well, here's what's interesting about this. That right there is good, right?

We talk about prioritize and execute, but that is a tactical level priorities and you're prioritizing and executing what's right in front of you. That's fine. But if you don't start looking at the bigger picture, if you don't take you can't just take a step back off the firing line. Sometimes you have to step back off the firing line so that you can see what to do in that particular room. But then you have to take a step outside of that room to see what's happening in the rest of the building that you're trying to clear.

And then you have to take a step outside that building so you can see what other buildings you actually need to clear. And then you need to step outside the city so you can look at what other cities need to be cleared. And then you need to take a step outside the region and see what other regions need to be cleared. And then you need to drill back down there.

And what you need to do is you need to ask yourself if is this priority that I'm putting at the top of the list for this moment that I'm in right now, does this actually support the largest priority that I've got out there, the big priority as I overlook the entire battlefield and I'm trying to move to the north? I'm trying to clear towards the north, I've got objectives to the north and I'm in this room right now and I've got to prioritize and execute what's going on in front of this room, in this room right now.

But am I truly making progress towards the north? And does this priority that I've got right in front of me, does it support my goal of moving north to my objective?

Because if I end up running around in this building or.

Yeah, in this room, in this building, in this block of a city, and I never actually progress forward, well, then that prioritize and execute all day long doesn't freaking help me at all because I'm not making any forward progress towards my strategic goal.

So, David, are you in on a conversation about Ouda loops inside of Ouda loops, and it's the same that's the same basic principle that I'm talking about now.

You're running an outta loop of, hey, orient, observe when you decide not to beat this other fighter pilot.

Right, to beat this other jet. Observe way to Sinak.

OK, I see where the enemy is. I'm going to I'm going to adjust. I'm going to decide what to do. I'm going to do it. And then I'm going to reorient myself to observe again a myself. And so I'm doing that rapidly. But guess what, that gets me that gets me a victory over that one aircraft, which is good, but if then I immediately look at the next enemy aircraft.

That's the next thing. OK, now guess what, now I dogfight the next enemy aircraft and I and I used to loop again and it works good. And now I, now I, I see another enemy aircraft and I do that so. So you can see where I'm going with this.

Meanwhile, if I took a step back and looked at my radar screen or I talked to the the E two.

Is that right. I talked to the E to Hawkeye. What's it called. Yeah.

That's the E to Hawkeye above me and say, hey, you know, I've just down two enemy aircraft. What is the status of the battle space. And the E two says, hey, there's nine enemy aircraft coming your way. And you have just you and your wingman, of course, you're probably going to say that's no factor, so we'll make it 30 enemy aircraft are coming your way and now you say, OK, well, I can sit here inside this outta loop and continue to fight these singular battles, but I'm going to run out of fuel.

And B, we're not making any real progress towards my goal.

So we have to be cognizant that being doing prioritize and execute, which is absolutely mandatory, because we have to we have to we have to figure out what's most important. We have to solve that problem. We can't solve all of our problems at the same time. And sometimes, like in jujitsu, sometimes, look, if you don't protect your neck, you're dead. So sometimes you've got to win that.

You know, if I walk into a room and and there's an enemy shooter, we have to solve that problem right now.

That's got to be a number one priority. It doesn't matter what's going to happen with the rest of the building if we all get killed in this particular room we're in right now. Now, could we back out of that room? Sure. Could that be how I prioritize and actually, sure, I'm going to leave, but to get caught up in the daily tactical prioritize and execute. Is not correct, and unfortunately, I lead people down this path all the time because it's such an easy example to give a tactical example of, hey, listen, when you walk into a room with a weapon, you've got an open door.

That's a priority. You've got a civilian unarmed with their hands up and you've got a hostile with a knife and you've got a hostile with a gun.

Guess what you need? You can't handle all those problems right now. You need to pick the biggest problem. What's the biggest problem? Hostile with a gun. Handle that one first. Next biggest problem, hostile with a knife. Next biggest problem, open door. We don't know what the threat is, but we can see that the civilians not really a threat, they got their hands up. So now I'm worried about this door. So I get cover on that door.

Now I can assign somebody to handle that civilian.

So it's really easy to explain that.

But if we as leaders get caught up in a situation where all we do is go from room to room and prioritize and execute what's in these tactical rooms, we end up not moving forward. And that's why we end up feeling overwhelmed, even though we are following the third law of combat, which is to prioritize and execute. So part of that law is detach.

So make sure that you are detaching far enough back and you're getting enough altitude that you can actually see if you are making progress toward your broad strategic goals. When you made the connection to a dog fight or that one against one scenario, when you've got 30 other airplanes out there, that dog fight after dog fight, the way you describe that connection to me makes sense.

That's the hamster wheel, because what we're all supposed to be trying to do is move it forward in a direction. We're trying to move somewhere towards our strategic objective. And it sometimes seems impossible to be able to break the cycle of as a trap room to room in this tactical prioritize and execute. And I think the piece that I was, the piece that hit me when you when you talked about this in real time was if you take a step back, what do you see?

And I was thinking, oh, you see everything? Well, actually, no. If you just take one step back, you just see a little bit more than you've seen or a little more than where you were. You use the fireline example. When you take a step back, what do you see? The firing line. OK, then if you take another step back, what you see there and that scale of how far back you need to step away, that actually you might need to continue to step back after step back.

And as a leader, that's the freedom that you want when you're talking about other people on the team doing things. You want to have that freedom. And if you get caught up in the tactical piece of it, it's actually possible to think strategically while you're operating tactically. This isn't that we hey, we're going to stop dealing with the shooter or the hostage with a gun. We actually have to do that. But you can actually think strategically and view things strategically by mentally stepping back while that's happening.

And I think what the dogfight example, all this example is the reason it gets exhausting and you don't see any way out of it is you're doing tactical for tactical sake, tactical for tactical sake. And that cycle never ends. And that's the hamster wheel is how do I think strategically? Well, you can you still need to handle those tactical problems, but you can think strategically simultaneously with those tactical problems. And that's what a leader is supposed to be able to do.

You know, it's interesting when you go far enough back from a dogfight, guess what you can see you can see that what we need to do is create an aircraft that the enemy can't even you see what I'm saying?

And go back to the point where you're going, wait a second, why are we having dogfights? Why do we why don't we have a system where as soon as we, you know, we monitor their airspace and as soon as they launch, we've got tracking drones that are just going to go and take them out.

That's stepping back. And I'll tell you where this because we're bringing up so many combat examples where you see this in the business world is and even in the business world, everybody uses this term firefight. Right. I've got a fire to put out. I've got a fire to put out today. And so you have a fire to put out. You have a client. You have a number of clients that complain about your product. And hey, Dave, we got we got we got so-and-so.

They're complaining about our product. OK, you know, go, go, go straighten out and get it set up form correctly. OK, got it. And then the next day. Hey Dave, we got two more clients. Can you go get with them. You've got be able to spend all day going out there. Hey Dave, we got three more. We have three more complaints about the product. OK, we're gonna go out there and fix it.

I'll take one. You take it. You got it. And that's what we do. And that's what we do. Our hey, wait, this one is our big client, so let's both go there. That's the priority. So we prioritize and execute and we'll get to the other ones later this afternoon. OK, good job. We prioritize, execute high five and this goes on and on.

Whereas what one of us needs to do is take a step back and say, wait a second, we have a systemic problem with our product. How do we get to our manufacturing and say, hey, guys, this is a problem with our product, let's take a time out, let's get this product fixed so we can send it into the field and we don't have to have these fires to put out anymore.

There's your example. Yeah, that's what we want.

We want to take a step back far enough not just to see that, hey, this is our biggest client. That's where we should go help first.

That's that's that's good for the day.

But make sure that at the end of the day, you take another step back and you say, wait a second, we need to give feedback to our manufacturing line so they can correct these problems so we don't have to put out these fires every single day.

That was my first thing for the day. Here's number two, so so number two, this kind of got triggered from me during a I think it was an F on online call.

Yes, it was. So F online call. The the conversation was about someone, you know, that hadn't been performing. Actually, I don't even remember the route. It was something, you know, something somebody hadn't been performing or someone had made a mistake or multiple mistakes. And so the conversation moved to, OK, well, what needs to happen is you need to have a blunt conversation with this person.

Right.

Which is a place that people like to get to because people think that, you know, when I finally things get bad enough that I just sit Dave down and say, you know what, Dave?

The way you put these things together doesn't work. And that's a problem. And if you can't figure out how to put these things together better, I'm going to fire you. So. So people like that. Right? Because look, what's what could possibly be more efficient than that, right? What could possibly be more efficient than a blunt conversation? Well, the fact of the matter is blunt conversations like that, what they actually do is put Dave on the defense and Dave says, well, you know, actually the reason I can't put these products together correctly is because the timeline that you got me on actually doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

And by the way, the two people you've got supporting me, they haven't been trained.

And so you see where I'm going with this. All I did was create a negative relationship. And by the way, there's a 20 conversations that I should have had before this that weren't blunt conversation, conversations. So blunt conversations. Look, do you get to a point in in situations where you do have to have a blunt conversation with them? Yes, you do. It does arrive.

It arrives very seldomly prior to that.

I would like you to try replacing your blunt conversation with blunt questions. But then I actually don't even want you to do that, because a blunt question is, Dave, why can't you get your project done on time? That's a blunt question. It's also accusatory.

It's also bad vibes and a negative question.

So I want you not to use a blunt conversation, and I don't want you to use a blunt question.

I actually want you to use a nice tactical, honest, revealing question. And I say revealing because what my goal is, is to reveal to me and to the person who I'm asking the questions of what the answer is.

Because it's always much better for Dave to figure out what's going on or what the problem is than have me tell him what his problem is.

So I'm going to ask Dave questions.

And, you know, I've I've been saying lately that. Listening is the most underrated tool of leadership, and I will tell you that I now believe that the second most underrated tool of leadership is asking people questions instead of saying, Dave, you didn't get this project done.

It's Dave.

Hey, can you explain to me what happened on this project and why we're going to miss the deadline? That's a question that's not that's not an accusation, and there's a big difference on how you phrased those questions, you have to actually ask real questions.

Questions are and here's another one. Hey, Dave, can you can you talk to me about what you're what angle you're taking with Fred and and and Fred, you know, his shortfalls with the last project? Can you explain to me the angle? Because I did I hear yelling that I hear you yelling in the office this morning. So these are just questions. And you go, yeah, well, I was Matt Dave's job while I was Matt.

OK, so. We're actually going to be able to mentor, we're going to be able to lead, we're going to be able to build relationship with questions.

Instead of blunt conversations, here's the thing about questions, here's a beautiful thing that's that's wrapped up inside of a question, what's beautifully wrapped up inside of a question, as long as you pose it correctly, as long as you pose it honestly wrapped up in a question is humility.

Wrapped up inside of a question is humility, which is an amazing thing because we're talking about you need to be humble all the time.

So when I say to Dave, Dave, hey, Dave, can you explain to me what happened on this project? What what what what it was that caused this timeline to get missed? That's a legitimate question. And wrapped up in that is the fact that I don't actually know, don't know that's actually wrapped up in there, that I don't know.

I'm I'm humbly asking you a question.

So the idea of utilizing questions and Leif Leif tells a story in one of the books about he's he's spending time in the back of the train in the jailhouse.

And I say, hey, Leif, what are you doing back there? And I don't say, what the hell are you doing back? I say, hey, what do you what are you doing back there? And in my mind, I'm thinking, hey, look, I don't know what he's seeing down there.

The leader on the front line is always trying. I say, hey, what are you doing back there?

And he says, well, I've always been told to be in the back. And I say, OK, well, OK. Can you tell what's going on up in the front of your social team? Do you know what's going on up there?

And he says, no, I don't know what's going on up there. Way back there, four or five rooms ahead of me down the hallway. I don't know what they're doing.

OK, well, if you had to make a decision right now about what they should do, do you think you could do it if you're not really even sure where they are? No, no.

There's no way I could do that. Do you do you think maybe you should or could move up a little closer to the front so you can actually see what's going on? I'd love to do that, but I just you know, they always told me to be in the back. OK, so that's what I'm saying. Those are just questions. Those are legitimate questions. And I use those kind of questions all the time in so many different situations.

If you can take and put a what is it in Spanish, you know, that they put the question mark in front and in the back of the sentence, which I think it's a beautiful thing, especially when you're reading sometimes you're reading something and you don't know until you get to the end of a sentence that it was supposed to be a question. So you your tone has to change right at the end of the sentence, which is a pain when you're recording a podcast and you see a question mark on something that you didn't know, had a question mark on the end of it.

So what you should do is you should put that little Spanish question mark in the front of your thoughts. And instead of saying, Dave, you missed the project, you didn't square your people away.

You say, hey, Dave, it looks like we're going to miss this project again.

Hey, is there something that's going on that is causing us to miss this timeline for the second time? It's a legitimate question. Yeah, there's a fine line there, too, because when you're asking that question to leave, you have to be asking it with it. They might give you an answer. So here's the reason why I'm back here. And it might be right in that case, could be there is a time that he's supposed to be there as opposed to where I'm going to use this technique to ask questions.

But I already know the answer to my way of getting through to this guy. If you ask it, you say it's wrapped up in humility or what's wrapped in this question is humility. If you can do that, then the question you're asking, if he might come back and go, I'm doing it for this reason, go. Oh, good to go. That's actually a really interesting point. I hadn't even thought of that. There are times I might now add to my repertoire that I'm going to be back in this formation, or it could be that he doesn't know, like you just said.

But the only way to get to that answer that he wants to listen to is to actually have the humility to ask it. Not thinking you already know the answer. Yeah.

What if I looked up at me and said, hey, you know, oh, I. I led the last couple from the middle. I got my job up there. I got I got the lieutenant J.G. up there in the middle of the train. I'm letting him make the calls. OK, all right. All man sounds good. Yeah. Get him trained up. I like it. That could have been. And that means if I would have said, what the hell are you doing?

The back of the train, here's that. I'm letting my DJ freaking get some runs an idiot. Yeah, right.

Or so so this idea of utilizing questions and then you so use the second most underrated leadership tool first, which is ask questions and then use the second or and then use the first most underrated tool of leadership, which is actually to listen to what the answers are. All right, the next thing I wanted to talk about was alignment.

Why does it always take longer for me to get through my stuff alignment?

So. Here's the deal with alignment. And it's strange because I've had to bring this up recently in a couple different occasions, and the first thing I did was ask myself, as you know, and the reason I have to bring it up is because. Alignment is freaking important from a leadership perspective, what alignment means is we are both going in the same direction, we are going toward the same broad strategic long term goal.

That's what alignment is. Now. Why don't. If it's so important, which clearly that's more why do I end up not talking about it very often? I can tell you the answer because in most cases, in most cases, people are aligned. Right.

So.

If we have alignment, we we are both heading in the same direction, we're all heading in the same direction, but if we have problems, if we start experiencing problems, getting to a resolution, if if we can't agree on a plan or we can't agree on an idea, and I've got my ego in check and you've got an open mind and we're still not getting there.

We still are not getting there.

This could be a problem of alignment, which is which is a serious problem.

So if I'm in charge, Dave, and we're aligned about want to kill bad guys and want to protect our guys and want to accomplish the mission, then they don't our vision and our ideas and our plans should be close enough that when you bring a plan to me, guess what?

We can use it. We can use it because we are trying to accomplish the same thing, and if we're trying to accomplish the same thing. Look, your plan might be a little bit different to my plan, but it's going to be pretty freaking close. Now, could you come up with a wildly just freaking ridiculous plan? Yes, you could. And then if people come up with wildly ridiculous plans, then it's really obvious.

You know, I have to do is ask you a couple of questions about your plan. And it becomes pretty obvious that it's not good. But if you come up with a plan, that's not wildly ridiculous, but that's somewhere in the ballpark and we can talk about it, then we can reach a compromise that will make some kind of sense.

So so that's what should happen. But if there is not alignment, if we're not aligned, this can become a problem.

And this is what I was saying on on F online the other day.

If Dave if we're on a deployment and Dave thinks that zero risk is acceptable, if you think we we can take zero risk or if Dave thinks that we don't have to follow the rules of engagement, the rules of engagement for somebody else, if that's what you think.

If Dave doesn't believe in cover and move, if you think, hey, you don't want, I'll just send my element out there by themselves.

They don't need anybody cover form. We have a problem. We are not aligned. Those are fundamental misalignments. And and. We will not be able to come up with a plan that we both agree on. Because we're not aligned.

So when we talk to companies and this stem from the fact that on phone online, a guy was asking a question and I could see that what he was saying and what he was saying, he was hearing from his leadership, it was blatantly obvious that they were not aligned, they were not aligned. And so how are we going to come up with a plan? How are we going to come up a plan that we both agree with when we're when we don't even we're going to two different places.

It doesn't work. So if I run into this situation where all of a sudden Dave has these issues with what I'm saying or I'm sensing that we're not aligned, you know, maybe I said, hey, Dave, wait a second.

Let me just make sure I understand this. You're saying that we can accept no risk whatsoever to that. That's what we're saying, is we're going to run combat operations, but we can accept zero risk. Right.

And Dave, you know, because what I'm trying to do is bring Dave into alignment. Right.

I'm trying to get you to say, yeah, look, I'm nervous about getting my guys hurt, but you're right. You know, like there's going to be some risk and we can mitigate as much call. Now, we come up with a plan because because we we pulled you in alignment. If you think you don't need to follow the rules of engagement, I say, Dave, wait a second here.

Are are you trying to say that we don't need to follow the rules of engagement and that we can just go out on the battlefield and behave however we want and we don't care if our guys end up going to jail for breaking the rules? Is that is that where you're at? So I'm asking once again, I'm using a question to ask you this question for you to go now, and I don't want my guys to go to jail. I get it.

I get it. Look, some of the rules of engagement seem too strict, but I definitely don't want to. OK, cool. So let's let's work those into the plan and let's make sure we're fine and we get alignment. We can move towards that if you don't think cover and move is important. Do I attack, you know, I might ask you a question, I may hold on a second, Dave, you're saying that you want to put a maneuver element out on the battlefield with no one to protect them.

You just want them out there naked by themselves because that's the plan that you're setting up there by themselves. They no one can support them. Everyone's too far away.

And, you know, now I know the guys need support.

OK, so if we see that there's misalignment, then then my job is to. Is to. Get that alignment together, right, is to bring it there. In most cases, like I said earlier, the reason why this doesn't come up very often is that in most cases we're lying.

I'll give you those examples I just gave, like, oh, look, there's going to be risky. I know there's going to be there's so it's not like we're talking most of the time we can get there. And it's the same thing in business. It's the same thing in business. Because in business.

Hey, Dave, listen, you want to be profitable, right? You know, we want to be profitable. We want to take care of our clients. We want to do things in an efficient manner. We we want to take care of the people that are that are there are our employees. Right. Right. Those are all like really simple, easy things to align.

And if we have those alignments, then we should then be able to work through some of these differences of opinions, because what we're doing is we're both going in the same direction.

So if you and I can have a conversation about what it is we're trying to make happen, then we should be able to get to a point where we can resolve our disagreement because we're both trying to get the same place. But if you are having and the reason I have to bring this up is because if you're having conflict after conflict after conflict that are difficult to solve and the way that I end up solving them is by saying, by ordering, they've shut up and do what I told you to do.

If that's how I resolve it, then we have an alignment problem. Well, if I've put my ego in check, if I've seen your perspective right, if I've detached, if I've done those things and I still can't get to a resolution, if I'm flanked and looked at it from a different and we still can't get to a resolution now, I need to start pulling on the string to figure out if you and I are aligned and where we are trying to go.

Could it be that you as a subordinate, have a have a goal, your long term goal isn't quite as elevated as mine, you know where you're looking at. Why do you want to make my bonus? I want my team to get their bonuses this quarter, you know? And you're like, hey, I'm cut some corners right now, but I want my guys now. It's my job to say, hey, Dave, you know what makes sense, man?

Makes sense. I'll tell you what. If we make those short term sacrifices right now, we're going to end up paying next quarter. So I'll tell you what, let's take a look at the compensation. Let's see what we can do. Because if you're just going to, you know, turn out bad product so we can make it so that your team can get their bonuses this quarter, I've done a bad job of compensating you guys and incentivizing you guys correctly.

Let's do this. Let's take a look at that compensation plan so that right right now, look, getting a lot of product out this quarter is definitely important, but there's something that's more important than that.

And that is not getting a bunch of returns, because if we get it, we sell a bunch of crappy product this quarter and you guys all get your bonuses and we're all and you're all high five ing. And then next quarter we start getting a bunch of returns on our product. Look, I know I can't take those bonuses back from you, but trust me, the reviews will come out and we will be in for a strategic loss.

And all of a sudden, Dave's nodding his head and going, yeah, you know what, got it. So I need to do something to pull our alignment together. Could it be that you look at me and go, OK, this is not my company. I don't care how much money they make. OK, now we have a problem with alignment and now we could get to a situation where we're not compatible.

Right at all, the powers of persuasion that I can muster can't overcome your personal agenda, and if we have that, if it comes to that, if we cannot get aligned, then we have a serious problem.

If it so happens that your goal, your short term goal is aligned with mine just by luck. That's great. We would never even notice. We would never even know that.

But if it's not and it's off and I can't convince you, persuade you, explain to you, then we might have irreconcilable differences where now what I have to do is figure out how to get you out of the situation. Yeah, and you have to know you have to know if that misalignment occurs, because that's what allows you to figure out where the difference is between simply put, your way in my way. If I'm going to sit down and I'm from a position of genuine humility and listen, I'm not following your intent over here.

Help me out. And I don't have I don't know if we're aligned. I don't know if what you're doing is actually supporting the overall objective, because that might be different for you than it is for me. So I might be solving a completely different problem. But if I know that we are aligned, then you and I can have a conversation about what you're doing. If it supports the larger strategy, supports that alignment, then it's much easier to go, oh, you know what?

That makes sense, because you're going to the same place that I'm going. We can do that. So that understanding of the alignment is critical because you could have a difference of how to do something with alignment. And that's that's a conversation. We can have no factor. Hey, tell me what you're doing, your help. I understand that better. That's a really interesting point. Let's do that. Have you thought about this in this adjustment? And we get to the same end, but we're misaligned.

That conversation never gets resolved because you're going somewhere else. And if I don't know that ahead of time, this conversation, is it going to get us is it going to get us anywhere?

Yes, but here's my point is that one of the ways that you discover that you're not aligned look, you go into many conversations and you might not know beforehand that that day is not like I might be looking at you going, hey, man, I see that you're you're selling a bunch of product right now. But I also see the data that you're getting the product created in a very short period of time. And that's making me wonder what's happening.

I go into that conversation. I don't know that we're not aligned. It's not until I start pulling the thread and we can't come to agreement. So what happens is people go, I got my ego in check.

Right? I'm seeing what their perspective is. I'm detached. And and I still can't reconcile Dave's plan with my plan. And that's the point of me bringing this this whole idea up is because the answer could possibly be that we are not aligned.

And if we can't work to get alignment, if we can't bring alignment together, we are going to have a situation that cannot be solved.

Look, now, if I can compromise, I say, you know what? That's a good point. We can make a bunch of money this quarter. And what we'll do is we'll we'll get some of that money aside and we'll we'll be ready for the to give refunds out. Well, look, maybe I can do that, you know, but then that's hopeful. But there are going to be times where you are not aligned with the person that you're working with.

And if that happens, you have a real problem and you may have to. Bifurcate the relationship and move in different directions. Now, that actually is even clear, my head is that it's the alignment might be might be what you discover is wrong when we're going to see that that might be the relic.

Oh, in the way you said is I have to get all those other things. Yes. Yes. And that's why we don't know. That's why I don't talk about it very well. And the reason I don't talk about it very often is because ninety seven percent of the time it's going to go and it's oh yeah, my ego is in the way and Dave actually has a perfectly good plan, but I just want to do it my way. Cool.

That's done. Right. Or or you know what they have now that you show me your perspective. OK, now I get in order now that you see my perspective, OK, now I get on. Now I detach and take a step back and I go, oh well now I see what's going on. OK, you got it.

So any of those problems solves ninety eight percent of these things. You throw in a frank in there and now we can really solve a lot of problems. But occasionally, very rarely, you, you, you, you put all those things through the mechanism to check that they're OK.

And when you look, they're still we can't come to a conclusion about this. And when that happens, we are not aligned. And if we're not aligned, this again should happen so rarely. But if we're not aligned, we have a real significant problem that may not be able to be overcome. So pay attention to it and also that means make sure that you explain to people what it is we're trying to do. Make sure you often explain what our strategic goal is.

Make sure people understand what the vision is, because if they don't understand it, you can't hold them, you can't hold them accountable, or you can expect for them to come up with plans that support your strategic goal when you're not even explaining what the strategic goal is, which is also a good thing that happens.

Right. I start talking to you, Dave, and you're not agreeing with me and I start pulling the thread thread on this thing. And finally I figured, oh, you're heading over here. You're heading, you're heading, you know, you're heading due west. And I never even told you.

Oh, by the way, we don't want to head west. We want to head northwest. And you go, oh, OK, what's northwest? Oh, there's a there's this goal. Oh, I thought you just were looking at this goal over here that's only a mile away to the direct west. I thought. So that's where we were going. Thank you for telling me. So sometimes these conversations can lead us to bring alignment, which is great, which is super.

And if it turns out that you don't have alignment, that's a problem. All right. I think I got one more of these things to cover.

This is flanking.

And on one of the last podcast, which you already mentioned, I think on the last podcast, which is this idea of how ego and detachment and perspective are sort of their tools that we have to employ in order to make things work.

Right. If we talk about covid move, but our ego is out of control, it's not work. And if we talk about prioritize and execute, but we're not detached, it's not working if we talk about decentralized command, but we don't know the other person's perspectives, it's not working. So there's these there's these things that we have to do. We kind of have to put into check. We have to run that mechanism in our head to make sure that we're seeing things.

Now, as I thought about those three, I thought about one more thing on that list.

And that thing is flanking, which is a term that I use it all the time, I use in jujitsu, I use to try to talk about, you know, in the business world, I talk about on the battlefield, we have to flank right you flanks swings.

He who attacks from an from an unprotected angle is going to win who he who doesn't attack straight head on and and and attack the main defences of the enemy is going to win if you come to the side, if you flank.

So that's what it is. But. Flanking is not. Just attacking from a new direction, it's also seeing from a new direction and beyond that, because seeing from a new direction is just it. It could be explained as just perspective. Right.

So if I see something from your your direction that could be described as perspective. But here's the difference. When I talk about perspective, when I talk about seeing it from your perspective, I'm implying that I'm seeing it from someone else's angle, from your angle. In this case, if I say I'm going to see Dave's perspective, OK, now I'm I'm I'm seeing it from you, from your position.

But there's a limiting factor there, and the limiting factor is that it's someone else's position when I talk about flanking. It's about seeing things. From a completely new direction, from a completely new position that no one even occupies, no one's there.

And it's not just seeing because seeing is the is the metaphor, but it's actually thinking about things from a completely new angle, a completely new direction.

And and I do this all the time.

I do this all the time.

When I think about problems, I'm not only thinking about it from the perspectives of the people that are in the problem. I'm thinking about it from other perspectives that that can't be pointed to. You can't point to that position because it doesn't exist. And that's my goal. That's what flanking is to be from somewhere that no one expected. So. When I answer questions, when I solve problems, I do this so so I was trying to think of like basic ways to break this down.

There's a leak in that pipe. You and I are in the kitchen and all of a sudden we see a drip on the floor. Open up the. Open up the. Cabinets underneath the sink, we see the little water pipe coming up and it's and it's leaking. What do we do? Well, OK, you got plumber's tape, Gary, you got some waterproof tape, you've got some epoxy you can put on there. We put a put a bucket underneath.

That's what we are. I'll just hold it for a while. Right. Which those are all solutions. What's the flank, the flank is, hey, yeah, I'll go outside and shut off the main water, right?

I'm just going to shut down that problem. Neither one of us are outside, but how can we look at it from that other angle? How can we how can we detach? How can we step back? How can we see something from an angle that no one else is seeing it from? Here's a common question that we get.

And this is this is again, I'm trying to just think of the of the easiest examples. And part of the reason I'm thinking of the easiest example is because. You can't manufacture in Esperanto to the, quote, Tenacious D, you can't you can't just say, oh, I'm going to think of a cool flank. It's like I have to be put in that situation where you say, oh, this is what's going on. How. But here's a common question.

How do how do I get how do I get the troops to buy into the plan? Right. People say, oh, you know, how do I get my troops to buy in? And sort of the rote answers are, well, you know, you need to explain the why, make sure that they understand why. Hey, you need to make sure they understand the long term strategy. Hey, you may need to make sure that you connect.

These are these are my answers, by the way, too. I'm not saying that these are bad, but, hey, you know, you need to connect the threat of Y and make sure that they understand that when the team wins, this is how it benefits them. That's how you can get them to buying the plan.

And all those are correct. What's the answer, cancer, and here's and this is one of those flank answers that I probably gave for the first time seven years ago or whatever, when someone said, you know, how do I get people to buy into the plan? And and I heard someone said, well, you know, explain the why and explain the strategy. And you give them an order to do it or whatever they were going to say.

And I said, actually.

Let them come up with a plan.

It's it's it seems real obvious right now because I wrote about it leaders of strategy and tactics, but I remember the first time I said that to someone, it was like, oh, wow.

And I still get that, you know, for working with a new client that I've never worked before. And they go, hey, you know, we're just having trouble getting buy in from the troops. They don't want to buy into the plan. Well, how do we get them to buy in? Let them come up with a plan. People are blown away by that. People are blown away by that. Why? Because it's it's a totally different perspective.

It's a totally different angle to hit them with. So don't just see or think of a flank. As a different way of attacking things or a different way of seeing things, think of it as a different way of thinking about things. And if you can do that, it will open your mind. Once again, my turn took a little longer. Good place to stop.

And if you want to hear us talk about this stuff even more or you want to ask us specific questions about what we're talking about, maybe you want to bring your problems or your issues to the table and see what we have to see if we can flank those. Well, you can join Dave and me and the rest of the Echelon front team at Eugh online dot com where we are live.

We are there. You can ask us questions. Where you probably been doing.

Look, it's what is it, September 20, 20.

You are probably doing zoom meetings with people in your organization, with your family, with your friends, whatever. We're doing that too. You want to talk to us? Come on. If online dotcom, we solve problems through leadership. If you want leadership guidance inside your organization, inside your company, we do that as well. We have a leadership consultancy. That's what we do.

We go in and get people's leadership aligned inside companies.

If you want that, go to Echelon Front Dotcom. I've also written a bunch of books about leadership, extreme ownership, the dichotomy of leadership and leadership, strategy and tactics. I've got some other podcasts where I talk about these types of things. JoCo podcasts, another podcast called JoCo Unravelling, a podcast called Grounded and 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 origin main dotcom.

Thanks for supporting us and thanks for listening as we debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and JoCo out.