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E53: From Spec-Ops to Business - 6 Principles of Success · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Juneto podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for,
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Hey, America. Welcome back to the Ginto Podcast, and we're on episode 53.
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Thanks for staying around.
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All right. So, past couple episodes, we've been on a theme,
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a little bit of a theme, not specified, but we've talked a lot about leadership
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and business and different traits and characteristics that you might want to latch on to as a leader.
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And today, specifically, I want to talk about one of the most sort of succinct,
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and simple frameworks of mission analysis,
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whether it's a high-stakes combat mission or whether it's a project at your
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company, high-stakes, sort of high-dollar project.
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And the execution of that. And then I want to take that framework and merge
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it with one of the most, well, comprehensive outlines of leadership characteristics that I've seen.
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So, retired Admiral William McRaven, you may know of him.
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And you may have feelings about him one way or the other.
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But that's not what we're talking about. any of his post-military whatever.
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It's irrelevant here.
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He, I worked under McRaven twice, once when he was the SOCUR commander and then
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once when he was the U.S. SOCOM commander.
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And I think he's a smart guy. Yeah, he's a smart guy.
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And he wrote a book called Spec Ops.
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All right, let me set this up. He's Navy, right? So it's not special operations. It's Spec Ops.
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At any rate, I think his master, I don't know if he's a doctor or not.
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I think just master's thesis when he was in the war college or whatnot was these
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case studies he did. And he made a book out of it.
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And the book is called Spec Ops, Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare, Theory and Practice.
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Now, yeah, this is all, these are all case studies on wars gone by.
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Anyway, let me continue on here.
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So from that book, he outlined some core principles that he pulled out of these eight studies.
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And again, these were all like legendary raids from past wars,
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anywhere from World War II all the way up to, I want to say,
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possibly Somalia or maybe Granada.
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I don't think he went, it wasn't into the global war on terror yet.
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But these core principles that he pulled out of these raids,
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and the question he was answering was, what makes special operations special operations?
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What is a special operation versus a conventional operation?
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But the principles, however, we're going to stack those up against modern business models.
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And furthermore,
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I've, I've been dropping John C. Maxwell a lot lately. Now I've read his,
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his book, 21 laws of irrefutable leadership, irrefutable laws of leadership twice already.
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And I reference it a lot and because I'm trying to soak it all in,
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but it's, it, it works. It works.
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It's good. And like I said, it reads like a textbook.
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And so does McCraven's book kind of reads like a textbook.
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Which, you know, I'm a simple human. I'm a simple animal.
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I'm not an intellectual friggin' dynamo, all right? I need simplest in the textbook.
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Yeah, it's easy for me to pull it apart and take it in.
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Now, these principles we're going to talk about and then these leadership traits and whatnot,
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as they match up against your business, it is already implied that everybody
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up and down the chain is technically and technically, tactically proficient,
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that they know their job,
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that they're technically proficient
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at their job and they know how it fits into the broader structure.
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That's not advanced level stuff. That's just everybody knows their job.
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So we're going on that assumption, right?
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Everybody knows their job in whatever field. It doesn't matter.
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Everybody knows their job. Okay. Now, back to it.
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And in the book, McRaven's book, Spec Ops, he broke down eight real world,
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well, what were special operations or small unit raids and whatnot.
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One of them, I'm not going to name them all, but one of them was a raid on even
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a male. And that was in Second World War.
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As was the, there was a midget submarine attack on, on the Tirpitz,
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which was a big battleship.
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And then he looked at the raid on Entebbe, the hostage rescue that the Israelis did in Uganda.
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And he looked at the Sante raid, and that's just to name a few.
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Now, if those of you who are familiar with the Sante raid, and you may say,
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oh, well, that was a failed raid.
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Well, yes, intelligence was faulty on that, or maybe even just slow.
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But the raid itself, any Green Braille will tell you, and at SWCC,
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the Special Forces Schoolhouse,
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that raid was essentially a textbook, perfectly executed raid.
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Anyway, that's just a few of them. And what he did was he distilled down a very
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clear, succinct theory called relative superiority.
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Because, again, the question is, what makes special operations special?
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Well, one of the common themes in special operations is that you have a smaller,
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a much smaller group of humans versus a much larger group of humans.
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And so the theory of relative superiority says that the gist of it is that a
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small outnumbered force can beat a much larger,
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better defended force by creating a decisive edge or a pivotal moment in the
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execution and then being able to hold that.
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That moment and hold that edge just long enough to ensure mission success and that point.
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And that's the point of relative superiority. Once you've reached that point,
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now there's a chart out there and we'll talk about it in a minute,
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but once you've reached that point of relative superiority, that moment when
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once you've reached that,
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all the friction and chaos and all the gunfighting and all this stuff,
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it doesn't matter.
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And like once you've reached that point, you are going to win.
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You may, you may take casualties.
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Yes. Or, or something, but once you've reached the point of relative superiority,
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you're the, the outcome is it's yours.
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You're going to win. Okay.
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And what he points out in here is all these raids, well, especially the successful
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raids, but Sante as well.
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I don't want to say that Sante wasn't successful and just didn't accomplish
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the goal of rescuing those hostages.
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But all these things, these eight case studies he did, and they were pretty different, too.
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They had the same six principles.
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And he broke these six principles down into phases of the overall operation.
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And so they happened over the course of three different phases.
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And we're just going to briefly go over them and then we'll get in deeper detail
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into them here in a minute.
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So of the three phases, there's the planning phase and the preparation phase
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and the execution phase.
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And then of the six principles, during the planning phase, there's simplicity,
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right? A simple plan, keep it simple.
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And then in the preparation phase, there is security and repetition.
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And we'll go into these. And then during the execution phase,
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there's surprise, speed, and some of you are going to say violence of action. Purpose.
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Surprise, speed, and violence of action is the principles of CQB,
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which is great on a very small scale level.
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But purpose, especially over a long protracted operation or project that you're
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working on, the violence of action is hard to keep up at a high level.
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But purpose, right? Everybody knows the purpose of this whole thing.
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That's what's important. And he backs these principles up with a graph that
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I talked about a minute ago of the relative superiority graph,
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which is pretty sweet. And it's, I don't want to say it's simplistic.
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It's simple, but not simplistic. And it plots, it's got like an area of vulnerability, right?
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When you're going into a project or into the operation, there's a space to where
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you're most vulnerable.
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And then during that, and that's before you actually hit an objective or whatever,
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you're vulnerable at being found out so that the execution of the mission is sure to fail.
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All right. And there's the fog of war kind of pulls you in and all the friction
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tries to that's where you're most susceptible to it.
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And on this graph, he also kind of has little little points for moral factors
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like like courage and trust and drive.
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Right. Those are things that, yeah, their team trait, but their individual traits.
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And it's these, this small group of individuals acting in concert,
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but the individual's got to have these factors, these moral factors.
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And that's what carries you through, well, tough stuff, you know?
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And if, anyway, if you get these principles right,
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you, you are exponentially more
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apt to succeed, even if like conventional odds are against you, right?
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Because conventional odds are going to tell you that a smaller.
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A smaller organization cannot beat a larger organization, just resources,
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numbers, you know, manpower, et cetera.
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But if you get these principles right, you can, whether it's a combat operation
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or whether it's a small startup.
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All right, so now let's break them down a little bit, these principles,
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and see how they really affect us. So simplicity, the principle of simplicity,
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that lives in the planning phase.
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I did a podcast on the show Shorzy talking about his leadership.
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And one of his primary things was you got to keep it simple, keep it simple.
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So in your plan, whatever your plan is, your plan needs to have sort of like
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the fewest, you know, like objectives.
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Like have a primary objective to work for.
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If there's a bunch of scattered about objectives, people and ideas and things
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start to get fragmented and priorities start to get sort of confused and muddled.
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So so have you know one or two main you know priority objectives and then have
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a clean just a clean plan that's yeah easy to understand i don't care if you're
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a big brain intellectual,
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simple plans usually work better period and then have it as much as possible
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you know have minimal moving parts.
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Now it depends on the job.
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Everybody has a role, but in the business world, you know, again, there's priorities.
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So whatever your moving parts are, you've got a few that are the main effort, right?
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So have minimal moving parts because complication,
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complex, you know, things Things that on paper, they sound just whiz bang and stuff like that,
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that the execution somewhere along the way, the missteps and mistakes,
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they compile and they accumulate.
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So keep it simple. Businesses that are wildly successful, their strategies are
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pretty simple and pretty clear.
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Don't chase, you know, 10 different priorities.
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Pick the one that matters most and take that objective.
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And then if you need to pick another objective that matters most, do so.
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But I ain't saying just do one task at a time.
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We're well beyond, you know, kindergarten level stuff. You can do multiple things,
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but your priorities, you need to have one priority at a time.
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Simplicity, keep it simple. And everybody says, kiss.
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You'll hear this a lot. Keep it simple, stupid. No, no, no. That's not correct.
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Keep it short and simple. That's correct. That's the kiss principle.
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Keep it short and simple.
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And then you have security, the principles of security and repetition.
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And this is during the prep phase, preparation.
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So planning, we got the plan. And now we're starting to put the pieces together
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to make the execution possible.
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Well, in the military, clearly security matters extremely.
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But if you're doing a deal, a thing, if you're a software developer,
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you're a video game developer, things like that, you have intellectual property
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that needs to be protected.
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And you lock that plan down so that you
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that leaks aren't getting out there and the
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the competition is getting wind of what you got going on and then they undermine
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you because they're bigger and they can put more resources at a thing so they
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get your idea then they throw the the resources at it before you have a chance
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to so you see what i'm saying as far as that goes Security does matter,
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right, in the civilian world.
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Guess what matters to everyone? Repetition. And what does repetition mean?
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Well, I'm going to say in this context, it means rehearsals.
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Now I can tell you this, rehearsals for a combat operation are absolutely critical.
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Absolutely critical. And I mean like, yeah, you walkthroughs,
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talkthroughs, full dress rehearsals.
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It might not be on the objective, right? That you're going to go hit,
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But you can do something similar in a different place.
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You can still hit all the moving parts and make sure everybody is synced up.
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That is absolutely critical. Rehearsals, rehearsals, rehearsals.
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So that the task, that your task, whatever your element, your team,
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your little crew, that it's burned into your subconscious.
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You know what you're going to do, and then you're going to know what you're
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going to do in a result of any kind of contingency that may pop up, any unforeseen.
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And that repetition, those rehearsals build confidence, folks.
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I say this all the time in training firearms. the
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more meaningful repetitions you get in and and
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you start to see your skill come up the more
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confident you are the more confident you are the
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more open you are to to actually applying
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yourself to becoming better and better and it's and it just builds on itself
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the positivity the goodness builds on itself and now you're no longer scared
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of failure right you're you're not worried about looking bad in front of someone
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else, or you're not worried about dropping a ball,
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those fears are mitigated down because you have built skill and knowledge to mitigate that fear.
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And then, and that becomes routine. That becomes the way you do business.
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Then again, security matters in the civilian world. You don't want your competitors or rivals.
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You don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want them knowing what you're,
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you got going on. If you're in a competitive type market, I mean,
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everybody is. That's capitalism.
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Everybody's competing for market market shares.
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Yeah. So your circle, remember, we talked about trusted circles during the 21 laws there.
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If you're having little strategy meetings and then you got somebody in your
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crew that may be unhappy and they may be looking to move somewhere else.
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And you sit and talk about some very unique strategy and very specific intellectual property.
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And then, boom, they bust out and go get a job with the other guy. Yeah, that's bad.
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So trusted circle, it matters.
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So security and repetition or rehearsals, that's during the preparation,
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right? Then we have the execution phase.
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Surprise, speed, and purpose.
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Well, surprise, yeah, man, if you're the first company to drop a new thing,
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especially technological advancements, if you're the first company to really
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get a grasp on it and put it into action, that's good.
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But that gives you an advantage for sure.
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And it's good to try. Now, you can. There are some ideas that you put them in
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the oven and you let them cook for a long time.
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And then there's some ideas that they're inspired in there and you want to action
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them straight away as thoroughly as possible. Yes.
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But but fast in order to seize the moment, because we talked about the law of timing as well.
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You want to be able to seize the moment. It might be the right time for that
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thing that nobody else has quite yet got.
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So there's a lot of factors going into the speed part and surprise part.
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But purpose, I think more important than speed and surprise is purpose.
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And purpose is the thing that keeps your team, one, focused,
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and two, when, well, when bullets start flying, sure.
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But when business in business, when this distractions, right,
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when things start trying to derail your plan, that sense of purpose that everybody
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has and that you as a leader instill, that's what keeps you on track.
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Purpose, motivation, direction. Boom, there it is.
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So that purpose is what keeps everything moving in the correct direction.
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And from this deep understanding of purpose, you also, everybody's got to be bought into that.
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And we've talked about that, buy-in, right?
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That's why it's important that every individual on the team understand the purpose
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so that they can buy into it.
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Because if they do understand the purpose and then they disagree with it, we've got a problem.
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We've got a problem. Got to have buy-in.
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And then that understanding and buy-in is what affects all your moral factors, right?
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The drive and the stick-to-it-ness, whatever they call it.
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The moxie, that's what keeps it. That buy-in is what keeps that stuff tight.
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Your individual character traits that help you get past the bumps in the road
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and defeat the friction.
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There's always friction, man. There's always friction.
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So this theory, this special operations theory of relative superiority translates
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straight into any boardroom or any business, any warehouse, anything.
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Thing because it parallels.
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I mean, the parallels, that's why the parallels with military execution and business execution.
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Well, I mean, just let's just go back to the OSS. I'm going to get side rail
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here for a sec, but I just want to talk about why these days there are very, very,
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very many retired military people doing leadership coaching or,
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or CEO of whatever business, their leadership,
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their leaders in the, in the civilian world.
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And this goes way back, obviously, right? If we go even back further,
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we got West Point and, and, and you're back then it was not so much right back
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in the old days, the enlisted men were just labor.
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And then you had all your highly educated upper class people who wanted to be officers.
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But guess what naturally smooth kind of leveled that out a little bit? Combat did.
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Yes. All throughout time, throughout the history of the United States.
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Combat kind of leveled that gap out.
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Because in combat, smart guys, enlisted guys, right?
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Whether they're formally smart or not, they merge. They rise to the top a little bit.
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And then you got all these, not all, all right, some educated upper crust officer
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types who can't or couldn't function in the heat of the moment and the friction
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and the fog of war and all that.
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And I've seen that in action actually but the military teaches a whole lot of
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leadership principles, characteristics,
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how to function practically as a leader and a combat operation is no different than a product launch.
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There's a whole planning phase. so.
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Businesses out there now that, oh, well, you know, that's where I was going.
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I wanted to bring up OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, back in World War II.
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They were only around for a few years.
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I think from 41 or 42 to 45.
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But what the OSS did, that was special operations. And they were kind of modeled
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after the British Special Operations Executive, their version.
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And you could say there was spy stuff there. And there was some spy stuff there.
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But it was special operations, small unit operations.
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And I'll point you to the Jedbergs.
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And then even the operational groups that were force multipliers,
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they went and trained up indigenous forces.
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But even then they they took educated men
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the oss recruited you know
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ivy league types they recruited ceo types
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and back in the 40s you know they recruited professional athletes yeah language
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was a desired thing men who had traveled the world as civilians or whatnot They were desired.
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And so these men who were already successful at civilian type things, business and whatnot,
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especially like high level corporate type stuff,
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They were now doing special operations. Well, they didn't have to relearn everything, right?
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They instituted things that they, and these men were recruited and sought after
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for their ability to operate successfully in ambiguity.
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Because one of the Jetbergs, for instance, you know, there would be an American
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officer who would, you know, smart guy.
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Probably an American radio operator who
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was enlisted and then like a foreign guy
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you know Belgian guy or French guy or whatever three dudes
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would jump in behind in Europe and behind Nazi occupied territory and just hey
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go about your business and report once in a while let us know what's going on
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go build a resistance so you have to be smart you have to be adaptable You have to be all those things.
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And these were businessmen doing that.
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The OSS, I think, and you know what? Now that I think about it,
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I think there was a catchphrase called like the gentleman warrior or something.
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Don't quote me on that. Something to that effect. They call them gentleman warriors or, or something. Yeah.
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So anyway, back to it. There's parallels, good people.
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There's parallels that, well, if you ignore,
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especially when you have things, the internet exists, there's no reason not
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to let information at least look at it.
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But businesses, and I'm saying especially small businesses, but even big businesses,
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if you operate like a special operations team, you're going to win.
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You're going to succeed.
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And like I said, I'm thinking like startups or these elite consulting firms that are lean.
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You know you got you got four or five like superheroes on your staff there and
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then just a minimal administrative staff you're very focused they achieve relative
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superiority on a daily basis,
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just by doing the work and hustling you know a small like tech startup who's
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putting out some bizarre app with maybe 15 engineers,
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they can outmaneuver a Fortune 500 behemoth because they're small and agile
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and they keep plans simple and it's easy to guard your intellectual property on a smaller scale.
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And they can do meaningful rehearsals on their product launches or whatever,
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or just the product itself, making sure it is tuned up correctly.
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They have the time to rehearse those things until everything is,
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is, is all synced up and then they can drop their product, hit the market fast and hard,
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deliver fast because it's based on one crystal clear mission,
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one, one crystal clear priority.
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And for examples, you know, like I said, I'm not a business analyst or anything like that.
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But if you look at early SpaceX when it first started up, yeah, they were lean, man.
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And you're thinking, why does NASA take all this money and they can't put out,
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you know, allegedly we went to the moon in 60-something, three.
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What was it? I don't know. 63, 64.
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We haven't been back since. NASA. It's a behemoth.
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SpaceX is up launching rockets all the time. Some of them blow up.
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Some of them don't. They're just fighting through.
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You got early Airbnb. You remember that? What a great idea Airbnb was. Yeah.
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Were small but they had very minimal
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bureaucracy and it was a great idea
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and then people started taking advantage and then when advantage
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is taken then you got to go i got to sue these people because they had a friggin
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party in my in my house that i live in you know nine months out of the year
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and destroyed things that there's always something it always gets tainted but
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yeah those companies in the early stages, SpaceX, Airbnb,
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they were small,
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agile,
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low bureaucracy, and they got things going, man. They did things.
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Now, I said even big companies. So think about this.
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Even in big, gigantic firms, you can deploy, you can organize small groups within, Right.
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Small teams, surgical teams, you know,
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that go that can turn around projects quick and
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efficiently and they can operate like a special operations team and and they
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can deliver more sort of personalized delivery of whatever the product or the
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or the consulting or whatever it is or service.
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And it's more personalized and it's very specific and you can have a big impact.
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If you break these teams up and let them operate in a somewhat autonomous way.
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They're not out there just willy-nilly doing whatever the hell they want.
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You still got to report back, but give your, your leaders enough autonomy to make decisions that,
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well, and it may be uncomfortable, right?
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The question is, do you trust your, your leaders, your mid-level leaders,
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your junior leaders or your whatever project manager?
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Do you trust that person to make the right decisions instead of having to wait
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for him to send up, okay, are we allowed to do this?
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Then you wait for, then you got to go sit in a board meeting.
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Then with the board, hey, our guy down here doing this project that's three
32:07
weeks overdue, he wants to do this X, Y, Z. Well, what do we think?
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Well, you know, he's been blah, blah, blah, blah. Come on, man.
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That's too much. It's not efficient. Bureaucracy.
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So I think small Small businesses kind of in general have more capacity for
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the six principles that we talked about and identified.
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The simplicity that the smaller businesses are able to pivot and adapt quicker.
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Security, the smaller the team, the easier the security to maintain your uniqueness, your edge.
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Repetition, even everything's easier on a small scale. but that repetition helps
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them stay smooth and consistent.
32:59
Then the surprises, if you're a small business one, maybe nobody's ever heard of you.
33:04
And that's the one way to have the ability to disrupt the market with surprise, right?
33:12
And it's easier for small elements to move faster. That's it.
33:15
But speed is one of the things that helps you keep clients.
33:20
Now, I'm of the opinion that customer service is king.
33:24
And any any time I get inquiries
33:27
questions about courses questions about whatever whatever I get a lot of them
33:31
I answer them if not that evening that day I mean the next morning less than
33:38
24 hour turnaround on on things like that now I may have dropped the ball once
33:43
or twice but generally speaking,
33:45
inside of 24 hours, you're getting an answer on something.
33:50
That's what, to me, builds client trust and longevity, their retainability.
33:57
And in small teams, it's easy to have a less complex goal and purpose.
34:04
And it's easy to get employees to buy in because they feel like they have a
34:09
small company, very small company.
34:12
Most employees, I think, feel like they have a little, not ownership,
34:16
but a little bit, right? They're a part of it.
34:19
They feel like it's part of it, maybe even like family in some cases.
34:24
So that to me is why small businesses have an advantage over big businesses,
34:28
that are run by boards of old men making decisions.
34:36
Based on just cold numbers and things like that.
34:40
And that may be the way, who knows, you know, cold numbers may be the way, but I don't think so.
34:45
So the big businesses, I think, so especially like these massive,
34:51
like legacy corporations, right?
34:55
I mean, like we know, everybody knows that out there in the world,
35:00
like in the, think of a grocery store and everything inside that grocery store,
35:05
all the various products to include the medication over in the pharmacy,
35:10
all of those things are owned by like seven corporations and,
35:18
and they're making all the money and that's great.
35:21
But the levels and layers that they have to deal with on approvals of things
35:27
and changes and whatnot.
35:29
And they got these massive, you know, 800 page strategy decks that reads like
35:35
the, the national security strategy, you know, it's madness.
35:39
And, and then you got, like I said, these, these boards and these committees
35:43
of old dudes who are risk averse, but they don't understand the changing culture and whatnot.
35:54
They eventually, they drown themselves in what is just self-imposed complexity.
36:03
The army's horrible about the self-imposed complexity, like the big army.
36:09
And in these big corporations, there's always leaks, always leaks,
36:13
because they have endless meetings with different people from different sections
36:17
and this and that and the other.
36:20
They always inevitably have leaks. And then do they do rehearsals?
36:27
Maybe down at the smallest team level, possibly, but really they just kind of check the block.
36:32
They just do what they've always done. and they move at the speed of fricking
36:37
glaciers across the Arctic circle.
36:41
It's, and that stuff, whatever their company purpose was when it,
36:49
when it began and, you know, 1890 something or whatever,
36:54
it gets diluted and it starts the.
37:02
Purpose starts conflicting with all the administrative, like the key performance indicators.
37:08
That's one of those catchphrase acronym, KPI.
37:12
So now you got all these check the blocks that got to happen.
37:16
You got your red, yellow, and green blocks that you need to be in the green,
37:21
whatever, down the board.
37:23
And you got to track this. You got to track that. And then you got a tracker
37:26
that tracks the tracker.
37:27
If you're in the Army, you know what I'm talking about. The trackers that tracks the trackers.
37:32
And there, and now you're just chasing your, your, you know,
37:36
your, your quarterly earnings, you know, or whatever, or you're chasing government contracts.
37:41
Every look, everybody wants a piece of the government contract,
37:44
but along with that government contract comes all the red tape.
37:48
Yep. All the red tape, all the requirements.
37:52
Now you got to jump through all these government hoops.
37:55
You might not even be, you're a small agile company, but you got to have this and you got to have that.
38:02
You got to have your cage number and you got to have this insurance and you got to have that.
38:05
And then that's your area of vulnerability when you're fighting for those things
38:10
because other companies will undercut you that are bigger.
38:13
Yeah. Or the approval, just waiting on the government to approve a thing can
38:17
take months and months and months.
38:20
So the big business is doing that. They kind of have an end already. Think Lockheed Martin.
38:25
Did you know because of this Iran situation, Lockheed Martin just awarded,
38:29
the Navy just awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.5 billion project for a new,
38:36
I think, rocket of some sort.
38:41
It was Orwell or somebody said wars.
38:45
We used to build weapons to fight war.
38:49
Now we fight war to build the weapons to get those contracts.
38:56
Now you guys are going to ask my opinion on Iran. Iran's bad.
39:00
Leadership's bad. It is an evil regime, but I'm also a libertarian.
39:05
I think everything, when it comes to combat, some conventional war is just inevitable.
39:12
But I think a lot could be done with special operation in a surgical, more low-key way.
39:19
And that's not to mean without oversight or visibility. That just means more
39:25
surgical, more efficiently. But anyway, carrying on.
39:30
Yeah, I think small companies, when you start trying to dabble with the big
39:33
boys, it's going to start to add layers of things that you don't really want.
39:41
And I think what these big companies that go after these government contracts
39:47
and these big deals, I think that opens space up, though, for small companies
39:51
to get market share just in a different way.
39:54
The people that those big companies kind of ignore.
39:59
Behemoths, the big ones out there, they kind of assume superiority because of their size.
40:06
But I think they're vulnerable to lose little bits of market share.
40:12
It might not matter much to them even, but what's a little to them,
40:17
it might be a lot to you as far as business goes.
40:20
But I think their systems and the older ways,
40:25
I think the big companies are slower to modernize And I think that creates, well,
40:32
friction for them, but an opening for small businesses to sneak in there and
40:39
get some of that market share.
40:42
That's what I think.
40:45
So the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership from John Maxwell,
40:51
not only do they complement McRaven's relative superiority framework and the
40:57
principles that we outline,
40:59
But, I mean, they complement perfectly, both of them, because any operation,
41:04
which we're talking McRaven with operations here, and then we're talking Maxwell
41:08
with, like, leadership traits.
41:12
You got to have them both. Leadership, it's got to be there, no matter what the op.
41:17
So they build on each other and they feed each other.
41:23
And the leadership ability and quality that Maxwell tells us about is the law of the lid.
41:30
The leadership ability and quality is what is what tops your organization out.
41:39
As a leader, you you are well in military parlance.
41:43
You're responsible for what the organization does or fails to do.
41:48
So is your lid. Can you raise that lid? Yeah. so that your organization can rise up to it.
41:55
If you raise your lid, the whole organization, the whole team rises.
42:01
Keep your lid low, right? Stay very restrictive and not open to adaptability
42:06
or even new techniques and things like that.
42:09
And the most brilliant plans are going to fail because when it comes time that
42:14
there is some unknown, some change that gets interjected and you're not willing to deal with it.
42:21
And then go back to the law of influence.
42:25
People follow you because of you.
42:30
Not because of the position that you occupy like by
42:33
default yeah you'll you'll do
42:36
what your boss says but when it
42:39
comes down to like purpose well we'll say it again purpose motivation and direction
42:45
are you providing that is this guy who works for you are you providing him those
42:53
things or is this guy who works for you he'll do what you say right but he's
42:56
always looking for another job,
42:59
So again, and that's sort of the old military leader, definition leader,
43:04
influencing others to complete the mission by providing purpose,
43:07
motivation, direction.
43:09
If you're not doing that as a leader, if you're just giving instruction,
43:14
not even instruction, orders, this needs to be done, that needs to be done.
43:21
Yeah, don't micromanage, but hey man, motivate.
43:25
Well, not even motivate, just give clear purpose and direction even.
43:30
Yeah. Just clear purpose and motivation or direction. I mean, those two things.
43:37
Here's the purpose and here's why it matters. And here's why it matters to you.
43:41
And this is how we, you know, roughly the way we want. And this is the end state.
43:47
You ain't got to pump him up, you know, tell him, all right,
43:50
you're awesome, you're awesome, you're awesome, go. You ain't got to do that.
43:53
You know, some people might. But without some genuine influence,
43:57
and that's what all that is, is genuine influence,
43:59
your team won't buy in, and they won't run toward gunfire, and they won't rise
44:04
up to tight deadlines with any kind of efficiency or conviction,
44:10
you know what I mean, with no buy-in.
44:13
So you got to have the genuine influence. And then the law of process.
44:18
This is, you're, as a leader and as a subordinate, you should be growing daily, right?
44:29
But leaders aren't built in a day. They're always learning and growing too.
44:34
I said, I think on the last episode, I wish I knew then what I know now. I wish.
44:42
Leaders are not made in a day. You have a finite amount of time to develop before
44:49
that opportunity is lost, and then you got to try again somewhere else.
44:53
But that, the law process, perfectly complements the principle of repetition from McRaven.
45:01
Make those processes, refine them and rehearse them, refine them and rehearse
45:06
them, refine them and rehearse them.
45:09
Because you build your leadership in the same way that you drill a room clearing, all right?
45:16
One task at a time, consistent performance, analyze it, see what you did right,
45:22
wrong, and then do it again.
45:24
Always implementing sort of constant improvement, improvement.
45:33
Navigation gives you the vision to chart the course, folks, but not only chart
45:37
the course, but to articulate it well to your people.
45:41
You can have something in your mind and then garbage comes out of your mouth
45:45
and your entire staff and company is like, what the hell is he talking about?
45:54
You got to sell the vision to your team, too, not just your clients.
45:59
You got to sell the vision to your team. You can't impose a vision onto your
46:04
team. They have to understand it.
46:08
So you have to sell your team just like you sell your clients.
46:13
So Maxwell's 21 Laws and McRaven's Theory of Relativity.
46:20
Well, not Theory of Relativity, holy shit. Not Albert Einstein.
46:26
Theory of Relative Superiority. If you've trained with me, you've heard it over and over and over again.
46:32
Know the difference between principles and techniques.
46:36
Principles are foundational. They never change.
46:39
They were developed over long history of analysis and trial and error.
46:46
Okay, here are the principles that must be in place to make a thing successful.
46:50
And then techniques, folks, are just different ways to implement those principles.
46:56
Some are better than others.
46:58
Some are more efficient than others, but you must have the principles in place.
47:02
If you're out there doing a bunch of rando techniques that are not principally
47:06
sound, you're losing. That's it.
47:10
And those six principles from McRaven are foundational.
47:15
They don't change.
47:18
Now, good leadership is founded in principle, too, but check it out.
47:23
You still have to execute this principle.
47:26
Leadership is as much technique as it is principle. Well, the principles must
47:31
be in place, the leadership principles.
47:33
But the techniques and the way you do that as a leader, as an individual leader,
47:38
those techniques are to be developed, folks. And they may change.
47:43
They may even change with personalities.
47:46
You got one guy who responds to X, Y, Z. And then you got another,
47:52
you got a lady over here who responds way differently to, you know, to different things.
47:58
So your techniques have got to be, you've got to be able to adapt and flow with
48:04
the personalities you're dealing with, with the mission at hand.
48:07
There are many missions out there that require sort of a direct,
48:11
well, a directive leadership.
48:13
I will, you know, you go do this.
48:16
And then there's other missions out there that's like, okay,
48:19
guys get together. What do you guys think?
48:21
What if? What do you think about this versus that? You see what I mean?
48:27
So you have to evolve your leadership techniques and you have to be able to recall.
48:34
So leadership, there are principles that guide that, but the delivery of the
48:40
leadership is very much technique driven. Yeah, very much.
48:45
Let's see here let's see where i lost my place
48:48
with my notes good leadership techniques yeah that's it
48:51
and but by the way those techniques every in special forces every team has has
49:00
what you might call a little team culture a personality and that is usually
49:05
set by like the team sergeant Usually.
49:10
And for better or worse, you know what I'm saying?
49:13
But still, that culture kind of develops around personality and leadership technique, kind of.
49:21
And so if you're a leader...
49:27
And you respect the law of the lid, right, and you understand that your lid,
49:34
your max capacity is the max capacity of the team, and you're open to raising that lid,
49:43
and don't accept mediocre execution of things and don't accept mediocrity.
49:52
That's where you're at on that. But you accept that you're the barrier,
50:00
so open the gate. Don't be the gate.
50:05
And if you can master the law of influence, that's everybody's goal,
50:10
right, is to be able to influence people.
50:12
But your ability to influence people is what keeps the purpose alive during, like, mission lag.
50:20
Now, even in combat missions, there's ebbs and flows.
50:26
There's downtime and then there's, you know, it goes back and forth.
50:31
And, you know, you've got to be able to kind of keep that in perspective.
50:37
Because without leadership, folks, even the cleanest plan, as soon as it meets
50:41
a little bit of friction, it's going to probably fail.
50:46
Without the leadership, without good leadership. And, you know,
50:51
throughout literature, throughout wars,
50:54
throughout great companies and great professional sports teams and everything
50:59
else, great leaders don't just apply to principles, folks. They embody the principles, right?
51:04
And then they teach everybody else to embody the principles.
51:09
All that stuff. Now this seems like blah, blah, blah.
51:13
That's how you make small teams able to achieve relative superiority in any market, in any market.
51:22
Think like a small team, be a good leader and develop your people with some
51:28
genuine, well, just as a genuine human, and you will be able to achieve relative superiority.
51:37
It may take long, longer than who knows, but you'll be able to get there.
51:44
So what's the takeaway here for the commercial business world?
51:47
Because that's who I'm talking to.
51:48
Not so much talking to the military guys. Everybody, you know,
51:52
everybody's got Rocco. No, not Rocco. Jocko.
51:56
Everybody's got Jocko and everybody's got all these vet bro So podcasts that
52:02
are leader, leader, leader, be a perfect specimen, blah, blah, blah.
52:09
And there's probably plenty of commercial business podcasts out there on how
52:13
to be the most efficient, most successful business ever.
52:20
What's my takeaway for the commercial business world? Well, first...
52:26
Your next big project, whatever it is, against these six principles that I just
52:31
laid out from Admiral McRaven.
52:35
I mean, do an experiment, right? Just do an experiment. It ain't even got to be a big project.
52:40
Okay, let's back up even. What's the takeaway for commercial business?
52:44
Audit your next small project against these six principles and let the team
52:50
be somewhat autonomous, as long as they have a clear, as long as you provide
52:55
clear purpose, motivation, direction, and a clear end state,
52:59
a clear commander's intent.
53:03
Is the plan simple enough for even a new hire to understand and furthermore
53:09
explain it? Is the plan that simple?
53:13
Are you rehearsing the critical tasks and are you, are you doing them with,
53:18
with absolute 100% effort.
53:22
Because even in rehearsals, it's still, you have to do it like it's real, like it matters.
53:30
Do you move with speed and purpose?
53:35
Or do you set something on the desk for a couple days before you revisit it
53:38
when it's meant to be your top task?
53:43
Do those things. bat your next project off of these six principles.
53:49
And then next, as a leader, not your team, not your small team or the project
53:55
that's going to launch there.
53:58
Your leadership lid? Are you, as a leader, flexible? And are you growing as a leader?
54:06
And are you allowing your team to grow, to adapt to problems,
54:10
and to maybe look at new solutions?
54:15
Are you adaptable? Is your leadership lid stopping something from happening?
54:20
Even though it may happen in a way that you don't predict or don't necessarily
54:25
want it to, are you stopping it from happening.
54:29
All right. And then third, if you lead a big organization, all right,
54:34
carve out small teams, small specialized teams, somewhat decentralized.
54:41
They still need to answer to, yeah, right. There's still a hierarchy,
54:45
but somewhat autonomous and decentralized and let them operate under the parameters
54:52
that you've given and let them operate,
54:55
you know, like I said, with a level of autonomy and then do some sort of supervision
55:01
from a distance and don't micromanage and see what happens.
55:06
If you give them clear purpose and direction, a clear end state,
55:11
chances are they will deliver for you probably better than you imagined.
55:19
Them the elbow room and see what happens.
55:23
Now, if they failed spectacularly, well, that's a cue for you to start examining
55:28
your sort of talent management.
55:31
That's a catchphrase they used to use, but I guess it applies there.
55:35
Do you have the right people for the right job?
55:39
Yeah, do those things. Do those things.
55:43
So McRaven showed us that a small force using these six principles can defeat
55:52
a numerically superior, outgunned,
55:57
outsized, out-resourced larger force.
56:03
And Maxwell shows us that the right leadership traits can take those principles
56:10
from the Craven and make them unstoppable in any business, any project.
56:17
If you apply those with good leadership, with the correct leadership,
56:22
put them together and be mindful and you will be able to dominate your,
56:28
your space. That is it. And that is all.
56:31
Admiral William McRaven, Spec Ops, Case Studies and Special Operations Warfare
56:37
Theory and Practice, and John C.
56:40
Maxwell, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.
56:46
Are two books that I've read both at least twice. I've read Spec Ops a few times
56:52
and think they're valuable.
56:54
There's a lot that can be pulled from them.
56:58
And you may consider them not to be very intellectually challenging,
57:04
or you may consider them to be very succinct.
57:08
I think they're very succinct.
57:10
I like that they both, if you're in the mind to train from these,
57:16
like I am, they kind of read like textbooks a little bit.
57:21
Not so much that you can't read in a flow, but in that you can pull things out
57:27
of them and really analyze those things.
57:30
So consider what I've said, folks. If you're a mid-level leader,
57:36
well, a high-level leader, any kind of leader, consider these things.
57:41
If you're a part of a team, consider these things. Are you a good teammate?
57:47
Are you an indispensable teammate? And if you're a low-level member of some
57:52
organization, ask yourself, do I know the purpose?
57:57
Do I know the vision of this company? And do I agree with the vision?
58:02
And I don't mean just lip service. The vision is to provide Blah,
58:07
blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no.
58:09
Do you have a deep, intimate understanding of the vision?
58:14
Well, as generations go by, I mean, people are getting more, well, I think smarter.
58:21
Well, you might argue that people are getting dumber as well.
58:23
Like, who knows what my podcast is doing to the greater society?
58:29
Maybe making you dumber. I don't know. I don't think so. I'm trying to help
58:33
make you smarter and be a more critical thinker.
58:37
Yourself, if you're a new guy, young guy, if you're mid twenties,
58:41
just now going into the workforce and you've interned with a company for a couple of years.
58:47
And I mean, do you understand the culture and the vision of that company?
58:52
And do you like it? And if you do, are you willing to go all in for it?
58:58
Yeah. Ask yourself those things, folks.
59:02
Thanks for listening to this one. I don't want to say I'm passionate about it,
59:05
but I kind of got on a leadership kick there.
59:12
And these are some of the main things that I take.
59:16
Well, I don't want to say doctrine, but kind of the doctrine that I use during
59:21
the two team guys stuff. I kind of use that.
59:24
So thanks for listening to it. As always, please follow us on all the socials.
59:30
Go look at OspreyShootingsolutions.com for all your shooting needs and competition and all the things.
59:37
Please look at TwoTeamGuys.com for all your leadership development and team training.
59:44
Please continue to listen to the Jinto Podcast, which can be found at TheJintoPodcast.com.
59:53
And on that website, there's also links to all the other, well,
59:58
at least five other podcast platforms.
1:00:00
And then please consider giving to the.
1:00:07
And go.com backslash help a homie fund so that I can continue to help those in need within my reach.
1:00:17
And beyond that, folks, please give me your feedback.
1:00:22
I'm always looking for it and I appreciate it.
1:00:25
And I do take feedback seriously and I do break it down and try to understand
1:00:32
or whatever, especially if it's a counter argument to a thing.
1:00:37
So I'm always open for that.
1:00:39
And finally, sorry, finally, if you know someone in, in, in Georgia,
1:00:44
in the Northwest or North Georgia region, you know,
1:00:49
Metro Atlanta area, whoever, who, who might want to be a guest on this podcast
1:00:54
or somebody who you think is compelling and that they should be a guest on the,
1:00:59
because they have something good to say,
1:01:01
please share that with me, share it with them.
1:01:05
And let's try to get something going. I love doing the interviews with folks.
1:01:09
Okay. That's it folks. I appreciate you guys for listening to me and I appreciate
1:01:15
all you do out there for whatever it is you do.