this is jocko podcast number 244 with
echo charles and me
jocko willink good evening echo good
evening
and also joining me tonight is mike
cirelli and george randall
and if you haven't listened to when mike
came on
the podcast for the first time go listen
to that it was
number 134
mike was in task unit bruiser in the
battle of ramadi
and after that he did another nine
combat deployments and he is part of our
leadership consultancy
echelon front where he also heads up
our talent acquisition firm which is
called ef
overwatch mike welcome back and also
george randall is an army vet
came up through the ranks from enlisted
to officer
which i guess we all have that in common
and then left the army for the corporate
world where he eventually became a
talent
acquisition executive
that sounds impressive always keeping a
focus on recruiting veterans
and coaching them through the transition
to civilian life now there's all kinds
of things we could talk about
um but today we're going to focus on
well it's been one of the focuses that
we've had for several years at echelon
front
and it's a focus that you guys have
taken and absolutely run with
and that is talent it is
finding recruiting acquiring and
retaining the best
people obviously all those things are a
subset of leadership but it's a subset
that both of you have been focused on
and
it's a subset that gets left out a lot
and people ignore it
and mike you you you started
df overwatch and you guys got so
possessed by this that you guys have
just written a book
and the book is called the talent war
and you've done a great job of
covering you know this topic in the book
and i want to jump into it
i'm going to do something right now that
might be considered lame
i don't know i'm not 100 sure but i'm
going to start with a quote from the
book
but the quote that i'm gonna start with
from the book
is a quote from me because i wrote the
forward
so maybe that's lame but here it is
leadership is the most important thing
on the battlefield
and the most important thing in business
and in life
it is leadership that sets the example
it is leadership that makes decisions
it is leadership that unifies a team
around a common goal
and it is leadership that takes care of
the team and gets the mission done
but one of the most important roles of
the leader
is often overlooked the responsibility
of
building the team in the first place
the leader is responsible for training
equipping and directing a team
but before any of that is possible
the leader must recruit screen and
acquire
the right people for the team
and that's a little bit from the forward
and then
it jumps into this book that you guys
wrote
uh before we jump into it
at what point did you start thinking
that
that we need to write about this that we
need to do something about this were you
thinking about this
as as you stood up ef overwatch as you
guys
started banging your heads together and
moving forward with this
mike at what point did you start looking
at at hey we need to start telling
people about talent and how they need to
handle it as leaders
you know i love how you just said it
it's a subset of leadership it
absolutely is and you just said it's one
of the most overlooked parts
is before you even step out of on a
venture
you got to formulate the team and that's
hard and
really uh you know george and i nerd out
on this
where other people are talking about you
know jiu-jitsu we're talking about time
acquisition
um and if anyone calls me a nerd i'll
gladly provide my address
you can come have a conversation with me
no i'm joking um so
the amount of companies we run into that
reach out to us and say hey we need help
and you know we're very genuine we we
want to see
our clients succeed that's that's our
primary goal we also want to see our
candidates
uh you know prosper in those positions
positions
that we place them in but um they are
at a loss for what the correct steps are
and as we looked at it sort of out of
frustration of
wanting to help them and them not always
following our guidance
we during our conversations we talked
about a lot about the special operations
community
and how it's taken them decades to
create a
world class talent acquisition process
do they call it something different it's
not hiring we call it assessment
and uh and selection so one day i you
know
usually how i carry out my ideas i was
probably watching tv and something came
in my head i picked up the phone called
george and said hey we should write a
book on this
and he said okay and then we started
researching it you know we didn't think
uh all the way through it you know most
my ideas are half-baked
and you know we we found somebody to
assist us through the process because
neither of us had written a book
um i knew uh two guys that wrote a book
i didn't reach out to him which was
probably the biggest mistake and we're
learning a lot of that
um the hard way uh but
this journey has been awesome
and it's actually solidified and changed
some of the views we have on talent
going through this process and all the
interviews so george how did you two
link up
what was funny i was actually listening
to podcast 134.
yeah and so i'm listening to this and
then he you all mentioned ef overwatch
in austin i'm like you got to be kidding
me
so i reached out to mike on linkedin and
i said hey you know what we need some
world-class
leaders where i work you know and he
wrote back within minutes
and the next thing you know we're at
breakfast at kirby lane in austin
and you know it was like wow i found my
counterpart
i got somebody who thinks about talent
like i do
and it rapidly took off from there
um you know ultimately leading to the
wedding which
at some point we might talk about i
didn't marry george let's just
there was no wedding i'll let him
continue he asked i was already spoken
for
so um but yeah and and
and we just really started to think okay
how do we pair up
my 20 years in town acquisition in his
20 years in special operations and and
there was just so much synergy there in
an instant
um and we were fortunate to see it and
take off with it
yeah you know from when when mike
originally started talking to me and and
leif about
you know doing something with talent
acquisition for people it was such a
no-brainer
because all these companies we work with
we got to work with the company we spend
two days with them
and at the end you know what they say
they say we would really love to have a
couple people with your backgrounds or
you know do you know where we can find
people we were getting we heard that for
years and years and years where can we
get people that have this mindset
this leadership skill set where do we
find them and you know life and i would
kind of shrug ourselves as well you can
try and hire vets or whatever
and then when mike got on board and you
know i just said hey
we can actually do this because your
background with vetted
and it was it was just such an obvious
answer to help
the clients that we have at echelon
front be able to get good people
and on top of that take
veterans that are coming out that have
been institutionalized because i don't
know of a better way to describe it
because i know i was damn sure
institutionalized you know i spent my
entire adult life in the field teams had
no idea
i tell people people will be like well
you know when you started
teaching leadership like how did you
know it was going to work
in the civilian world i didn't i didn't
the first time i sat down with the ceo
and was talking to him i had no idea
that almost never mind almost that
that line for line the leadership that
we taught to
seals was the exact same leadership that
was needed
in a company or in a team and as soon as
i realized that i said oh we've we've
got something very special here because
we had distilled it down and it
made so much sense and had been tested
as soon as it got out in the civilian
sector
same thing so when mike started saying
hey we could actually
help the military folks and
help the civilian companies i mean this
is just a win-win
across the board right you know you
gotta you've got both sides of the
equation
that absolutely benefit from doing this
math and it doesn't get any better than
that
um so so to actually now
jump into the book a little bit uh
kickstart kicks this off in chapter one
you can't see talent
a navy seal instructor told dr josh
cotton tell me about josh cotton before
i continue
so josh is our uh our counterpart help
with uh
write the book josh and i connected
through multiple multiple uh contacts so
josh's story is interesting um you know
you think we're nerds josh is the uh the
ultimate nerd and i give him a crap for
that
uh he loves data he's an industrial
organizational psychologist
well when he was finishing his doctorate
he worked with the navy out of
millington
and eventually uh a contract came along
which was offered to him to
work with the navy seals to assess
how they assess and select talent into
their community
so he also worked with a little bit with
the marsaak community the the arms army
uh special operations
or special forces community and he
gained experience that most
you know doctors i o clinical
psychologist don't
receive and then he took what he found
based off assessing high performance
which arguably the special operations
community is
a bunch of high performers and how do
you apply that to a business
setting and it resonated extremely well
so as he stepped out of that contract he
stepped into the fortune 500
right now you know he's the director of
talent assessments
for a major fortune 500 company
throughout
the the organization and so his you know
he's looking at all this data uh at
performers at different levels of the
organization and that's where he came
into the book
you know what that reminds me of so um
at some point i was talking to one of
the guys
that worked at buds as a civilian
contractor
as what's what's the real word for an
athletic trainer is it just called an
athletic trainer is that what it is
is that the job especially someone that
looks at your sprained ankle or whatever
is that what it is echo charles trainer
yeah
trainer so i was talking to one of those
guys
and he was talking about patella
femoral syndrome so patellofemoral
syndrome is this thing that you can get
and it's where your your your patella
uh somehow rubs against your your femur
or your patellar tendon rubs against
your femur and it gets sore and swollen
right
and he said you know in the civilian
world at a football team at a baseball
team at a college football team whatever
he says you might see a case of patella
femoral syndrome you might see
three in a season he said
i see seven cases of patella
femoral syndrome a day at buds
so what i'm saying is you take this
doctor that's used to looking at
what whatever the assessment of some
civilian organization we're gonna assess
some candidates and
you know see what see where they're at
and see where that mentally and see
where that psychologically and
you have to wait for months and months
to see how they actually perform when do
they get put under pressure
at buds it's like oh here you go
here's a here's 180 people that are
about to get the biggest mental stress
of their life
in the next four weeks and you get to
look at that's
that's free that's an amazing way to get
to get experience and that's what
happened with these guys that would
were athletic trainers and it was a
couple different approaches that guys
would have some guys would
they would leave like a pro sports team
and and come to buds and they would
never want to leave because they were
so so much help or they'd come and get
all that experience
and then they'd go to a team because you
know after you've seen
hundreds of cases of patella femoral
syndrome and
itb issues and whatever all those little
injuries that they deal with all the
time
they show up at a baseball team they can
identify things so much easier than
anybody else
it could and so that's what it sounds
like this this uh dr
cotton is and to take it one step
further following that experience he
created something completely based off
special operations
and how we classify you know high
performers it's called the elite
performance indicator the epi and he
developed
that personal assessment tool which is
now
used by businesses and and what we're
going to be using
sort of is our index as just one of many
assessments of our candidates
for the ef overwatch candidates that
come to us from the military
legit yeah all right so now that we've
got dr josh cotton we know about him
and so i'll take it from the top you
can't see talent a navy seal instructor
told
told dr josh cotton it's not the biggest
guy
or the strongest or the fastest you have
to trust the process
the process will reveal who has the
potential to become
a seal dr cotton was working with the
navy seal community to improve their
assessment and selection process to that
end
he had been asking all the instructors
what do you look for in recruits
he had received a lot of insightful
answers people who don't quit team
players who step up
and lead resiliency people who are calm
under pressure
problem solvers this was the first
instructor who had taken the
question literally but it was a good
answer because you can't inherently
see talent not in somebody's physical
appearance and especially
not on their resume now we go into this
uh little case study
which is interesting about this is uh
people ask me you know like who's gonna
make you you think that guy's gonna make
it i'd say
i have no idea because you can't tell
in fact there was a guy who's a captain
and a great guy and he had never
signed anyone off and said this guy's
gonna make it
and and and he eventually he got this
candidate
through whatever relationships he had
this candidate came out this guy was
like a multi-linguist
really diverse background seemed like he
had a bunch of
bunch of experience highly educated
and he signed off on the guy and this
the one guy he signed off on
to be an officer in the seal teams and
the guy quit and he said i'll never sign
off and he interviewed him the whole
nine yards like i was a captain in the
seal teams
signed off on the guy he quit he said
i'll never sign off on anyone again
now let's be honest it doesn't start
that way when it was 25 year old jocko
you're like hey that guy
as you watch all the candidate lines up
you're like he played football in a d1
school he's gonna make it
or hey that kid that did uh speech and
debate he's gonna be gone within the
first two weeks dude
and like you say life humbles you you
slowly learn you don't
know you don't even have to go to 25
year old your jocko you can go to 19
years old as i'm watching guys that were
infinitely better qualified and you know
athletically
more talented than me and i'm watching
him quit and i was like okay
i guess there's no telling who's going
to get through this program
and uh speaking of which this is where
you get to uh going back to the book
mike embarrassly learned this lesson
firsthand when he was a student at going
through naval special warfare
underwater demolition seal training buds
mike was a prior enlisted recon marine
and by the way i'm talking about mike
mike sorely sitting right here
mike was a prior enlisted recon marine
one of the marine corps special
operation capable forces which later
became an official part of the special
operations community in 2006
and scout sniper in may of 2003 he was
disstar discharged as a sergeant and
commissioned as a naval officer
and issued immediate orders to buds the
marines had taught him how to
lead a team and he foolishly and
arrogantly believed that his natural
that this naturally led to the ability
to determine which candidates would make
great seals and which candidates didn't
deserve to be there
his six months in buds would be a brutal
lesson in humility on how
wrong he was in his ideas about
evaluating candidates
how could he be in a position to
determine who would make great special
operation soldier when he was competing
for the very
honor the other students were striving
for in this class mike made the same
classic mistake that every business
leader
or hr manager makes when they toss a
resume into the trash
because the candidate doesn't have the
exact education or industry experience
required like most hiring managers today
he judged a book by its cover that book
was ryan job
ryan didn't look like a seal he was on
the heavier side
for a seal at least and nobody knew how
he'd make it through the initial
how he'd made it through the initial
physical standards to even get into buds
mike looked at ryan and he made a snap
judgment this guy's not gonna make it he
thought
mike wasn't the only one who thought so
the rest of the class and the seal
instructors all
thought ryan didn't fit the mold of a
seal since everybody expected ryan to
quit
the instructors decided to speed the
process along they threw everything they
could at ryan with
within ethical and legal means of course
interesting note you made there of
course interesting of course it was
within ethical and legal means
buds is already among the most intensive
physical and mental training a person
can endure
and it was even harder for ryan the
instructors made him run extra miles and
do more push-ups they forced to be
cold-wet and sandy longer than the rest
of the students
by the end of hell week approximately
two months into training the class had
gone from 250 students down to 35.
recruit after recruit rang the bell
three times signifying a dor drop on
request
or in layman's term they quit only 35
guys were left and mike was one of them
he felt he was truly part of an elite
organization
a brotherhood as he looked down the line
of the physical beast standing alongside
him
he was astonished a few candidates to
his left
stood none other than ryan jobe who was
smiling
mike and ryan both reported to seal team
three they eventually deployed to ramadi
iraq where they fought in the battle of
ramadi in 2006 one of the fiercest
battles of the global war on terror ryan
performed as an automatic weapons
machine gunner during his days in ramadi
after months of fierce fighting ryan was
critically wounded during a major
operation in south central ramadi a
contested
area held by al-qaeda forces he was shot
in the face by a sniper
while laying down machine gun fire to
cover a squad of seals closing on the
enemy
days after ryan was wounded doctors
declared he would never recover his
sight
insult to injury he also lost his sense
of smell and taste
but it didn't slow him down after his
injury
ryan displayed the same drive and
resiliency he demonstrated during his
days at buds he refused to quit or feel
sorry for himself
despite all the setbacks he finished his
bachelor's in business with a 4.0 gpa
he ascended the 14 411 feet of mount
rainier
and he even shot a and killed a trophy
bull elk
all this without his sight smell or
taste
ryan underwent countless surgeries and
rehabilitation in years after ramadi
in 2009 only a few weeks after he found
out he and his wife his
high school sweetheart would be having a
baby
he aspirated and died during his 22nd
surgery
for his injuries he became what seals
call the last fatality of the battle of
ramadi
he was the third seal from his task unit
to die
fellow seal mark lee was the first and
the second michael monsoor
who was awarded the medal of honor for
jumping on a grenade to save two seals
one of which was mike czarelli
it's hard for mike to believe now that
he ever doubted ryan
he was always waiting for a time to
apologize and he found that time while
they were in normality while they were
in ramadi after mike apologized
ryan said it's okay everyone's been
misreading me
all my life
so i don't know if there's a better
example
of why we can't judge a book by its
cover
than ryan and um
you know it's he ended up rolling into
charlie platoon and tasking a bruiser
and
and he got some he got some personal
love and encouragement from his platoon
mates
to make sure that he was uh gonna be an
awesome seal and he was
um but this is a a metaphor
for what for what you guys see in the in
the civilian sector with people
looking at resumes and judging books by
its cover
same thing every day every day thousands
upon thousands of resumes coming in
managers like yeah this guy's been in
our competitor this person's done a b
and c
they have all these experience yeah
gotta hire them gotta hire them right
away
no process i just know it gut call
when i whenever i'm talking to companies
and i'll yeah a common question is
what you know what what question should
you ask during an interview it's a
pretty common question
or what assessment or what what should
we do how should we screen
and you know i'm always saying hey look
try and put the person in
in a position or a situation that's as
similar as they're going to be working
in
because that's the best way to assess if
they're going to be able to do it or not
and it's a similar thing that they're
doing now
you know for years they trying to figure
out who is going to make it through seal
training
and now what they do is they send them
to
what is i think it's chicago they send
them chicago and they go through
a pre-training situation where what they
do
is basically freaking train really
really hard
and a bunch of people don't make it
through that but then they find that oh
yeah more people that made it through
that are going to make it through actual
buds
well it's like is that not true i've got
to look at the numbers i don't think it
was a substantial increase
in the number that actually made it
through buds but again we've got to go
back and look at the data but
it's the same thing with dr cotton and
we see this with people who build
assessments we even
it's funny you brought up trainers for
the screening for
jsoc there were physical trainers that
believed
they could give you an 80 uh you know
sort of
answer on whether somebody was going to
make it through the training or not
everyone claims oh well my my personal
assessment test will give you a 80
probability of whether the person will
make it through the training and it's
all wrong
that that's what what's the perfect
question we need to answer an
interview we hear that all the time
there is no one perfect thing
there's no one perfect uh personal
assessment you know some people like the
hogan other people like the disc
and what you're not gonna find in this
book is it's not prescriptive
it's not gonna be like okay step one
this is what you do
step two these are the questions that
you need to ask these are the personal
assessments that you use it's different
for every company
what it is you've you've got to identify
your process
what's the process that works for you
that results in
statistically the most quality hires
and that is a as you know that is a
decade-long pursuit
and it's taking special operations
they're still redo they're still
constantly evolving the process 50
decades
and they're still evolving that process
so yeah
you know we hear it all the time and
somebody says this is the number one
question i ask that determines whether
somebody's going to work at the company
or not
and and if that works well you know
we're not here to judge yeah that's
great
you know we get people coming to us all
the time saying what are those questions
and i kind of cut them off like do you
know what success looks like in your
company
yeah they're already starting down the
interview path before they've determined
what success looks like what they're
even looking for exactly
what gaps do we have what are we trying
to do here you know
and you know when i was coaching
veterans and and you know mike and i do
this webinar
and i said can any of you tell me a time
where you've left the wire
and didn't clearly know what success
looked like
but you watch people walk into the
hiring process all the time
and they're like okay here's a list of
objective requirements i want them to
come from these companies
okay let's figure out the interview
questions yeah like you have it
literally backwards yeah so i guess this
is going back to what i was originally
starting to say that i got sidetracked
on so when i ask companies or people ask
me hey what's the question you ask i
always i always ask the group a question
i'll say who here
has ever hired someone that did the best
interview
it was outstanding you thought this guy
was a was a rock star
you bring them on board in their total
disaster and 100 of the time every
single person will raise their hand
because
everyone has done that we this guy
interviewed great super kill
she was terrific in the interview all
charismatic they do a great job in the
interview and they're
duds when they show up to work and then
i ask the the opposing question
which is who here has look you needed to
fill a seat
you took a risk on somebody you weren't
really sure it would work out they got
in there and they crushed it
and same thing everyone raises their
hand so
it's a it's a common problem and it's a
common problem that we all have where we
we think we know better than life
yeah and i got to tell you um
you know i've been doing this 20 plus
years and you know i worked for a
fortune 50 company in one year
my team hired the team that i led hired
23
000 people in one year so i can say from
a scale perspective
that i've probably hired more people
than most on the planet
and i promise you i i've got to trust
the process
there's no part of me that goes oh yeah
i got that down i know that person yeah
they're going to rock it
nope nope that process if you don't have
a process and if you haven't defined
success
hiring will humble you yeah you know and
you've got to approach it
and you know one of the things that mike
and i went to great lengths about in
this book was
no process is perfect and and
it's it you know and you know one of the
big things when we were talking with
josh was
you know how do you know when you're
doing it wrong how do you get a feedback
loop
and and people just do hiring as
something mechanical
and they don't think about this oh we
got to go do this so it's outsourced and
your hr is just okay they're turning the
cranks man they're they're bringing
people in the door they're funneling
through resumes
yeah but even with my years of
experience you know
you know i'm always questioning myself
what am i missing what am i missing did
i get this right did i evaluate
all the right traits for success in this
role and
you know i'm still gonna miss and i'll
get humbled by it real quick
every time i think i'm confident
murphy's law comes around and and
humbles me quick
it's an art it's an art
there's a science behind it but
ultimately much like you can study war
in the united states and train for for a
decade
but until you step you know into the
arena of war you really don't hone that
art and so
you're going to make mistakes that if
you have a process
when we see the bad hires happen is when
people deviate
from that process and they put a time
limit on it
and we're not taking we're not telling
anyone that you're going to take six
months to interview somebody to hire for
the job no we understand that it has to
be
within a reasonable uh timeline but you
know and i know we're probably going to
get to this
you can have the greatest you know
world's
best talent acquisition process you can
have a great process
but if you don't have your leadership
foundation
if it's not solid within the
organization you're gonna become a
revolving door for talent
you're gonna get great people in the
company and and once they recognize that
there's bad leadership
they're gonna leave so funny enough this
book and you know it's a subset it's an
important part of leadership
you actually have to start with your
leadership foundation before you even
start to build
a good hiring process and that's where a
lot of people get it wrong
well we're lacking talent let's just get
good calendar good time will come in and
again if you're working for a bad leader
that that person is going to leave what
do we always say you you know you select
a boss
not a job yeah you select a great boss
yeah
you say something in here too it's the
same it's the same thing that you're
saying we'll get to it later
but good if you're hiring good people
they don't put up with knuckleheads
you know they don't they don't want to
work for a knucklehead so if you if you
go out and you hire someone that's
awesome and you're a knucklehead or your
leadership is a bunch of knuckleheads
they're not going to stay there that's
just the way it works and the other
thing is you know there's
you're not just like combat you're not
going to eliminate
all risk when you make a hire i mean
there's always going to be some level of
risk there but
what you can do if you set up the right
process is mitigate that risk
as much as humanly possible and then you
end up
in a much better situation uh getting
back to the book
because damn apparently we can all get
sidetracked pretty quick i guess i can
nerd out on talent too huh a little bit
uh you go into this section what is
talent at the most basic level talent
equals high potential candidates the
people most likely to become high
performers
talent is people like ryan jobe it is
the individual who never gives up who
performs in high pressure situations
and who will win when others say it's
impossible talent drives the team
forward and talent wins
and i'm skipping forward which by the
way
if this book when i read it seems a
little bit fragmented because i'm not
reading the whole
thing you have to buy the book to get
all the information
but i'm going to skip ahead here based
on our research and interviews
we have identified nine core
characteristics that mark an individual
as having high potential
drive the unrelenting need for
achievement and constant
self-improvement
resiliency the ability to persevere in
the face of challenge and bounce back
from setbacks
adaptability the ability to adjust
according to the situation
learn new things innovate and try new
methods
humility self-confidence in one's
ability while understanding that there's
always room for improvement
and that others experiences and
knowledge are valuable
integrity and ed and adherence to not
only what is legal
but also what is right effective
intelligence the ability to apply
one's knowledge to real-world scenarios
team ability the ability to function as
part of a team
placing the success of the whole above
the needs of the self
curiosity a desire to explore the
unknown
and question the status quo in pursuit
of better more effective
solutions and the last one is emotional
strength a positive attitude
high empathy and control over one's own
emotions
especially in chaotic and stressful
situations
these traits are heavily emphasized in
special operations and explain why many
veterans go
on to accomplish incredible things in
the business world after their military
service
for instance many companies including
johnson and johnson with alex gorsky
fedex with fred smith bridgewater david
mccormick
and 7-eleven joe de pinto to name a few
are run by veterans
these nine attributes are foundational
to success no matter
the industry so when you say based on
our research and interviews is this
stuff that doc
dr cotton kind of put forward or where
did you guys come up with these
so it's a combination of what dr cotton
uh sort of his discovery and then we
also went
and we interviewed people that ran the
assessment selection for these different
communities marsoc the navy seals the
green berets we worked with
a amazing individual his name is uh
brian decker
he was a lieutenant colonel he was in
charge of the
special forces assessment and selection
process and actually sort of
revolutionized it
uh really around the concept of the
whole man concept and so
each of these communities have a set of
core
attributes they're looking for and it
goes back really quickly you did make a
point about people you know you hire
somebody
who interviews extremely well and they
end up not working out
and that's what we call personality
versus character what you did was you
hired based off personality and
likability and what is personality
that's really your external
uh sort of uh show to the world where
characters the
the inner attributes that drive your
behaviors
yeah and we've all fallen for that it's
like you're you're uh you're customer
facing
self versus your internal facing self
exactly in
in you know one of the things we talk
about in the book is like the last thing
you want to hire for and people get this
you know this culture fit are they a
culture fit and it sort of becomes this
just
ad hoc term they throw out but they
don't really understand
and when people say culture fit a lot of
times what they mean is do i like this
person
and what we talk about in the book is
that some of the
the most high performing seals that i
served with and you serve with
i didn't like we were professionals and
worked uh well together
but when the job was done he went and
hung out with his inner circle and i
went along with mine
but likability for professionals is not
a requirement
now if you guys just conflict and it
creates a toxic culture that's a
different thing but
uh the least important thing to me was
likability if the
individual performs and he can actually
put his self needs aside or her self
needs aside
for the common good of the team that's
somebody that can be part of the culture
as long as their values
align with our culture they're ethical
yeah i mean i think here's the deal on
that from my perspective
if there's someone that works hard
and is there to support the team i like
them
you know like i i i don't know anyone
that has here's here's the interesting
thing i know people that have
good personalities and bad character
they exist
but i don't know of anyone and so i
might not like someone that has a good
personality but you know and you you can
think
when i think of these people i just
think of famous people right there's all
these famous people
that they have these personalities and
then they then all of a sudden the story
breaks
that they're total dirt bags right and
they're
whatever they've got the most heinous
things going on in their personal lives
so you've got that where someone has a
good personality their their
forward-facing
personality is real positive but then
behind closed doors they're scumbags
and but if you flip that over i can't
think of anybody that has
a good character like they're a good
character
but they're a bad but they have a bad
personality i don't
i don't it's hard for me to think about
now is there someone that maybe has a
has a a good character and they're
they're maybe too direct or maybe
they're
maybe they don't talk a lot or you know
whatever but but normally
if they've got a if their egos in check
if they're there to support the team
i mean i can't
yeah it's pretty rare how about a better
way of putting it is there were people
that were high performers that were just
sort of socially awkward so maybe they
were
introverted or just like they were too
direct right
where it burned sometimes bridges you
understood their
personality but other people didn't it
back to the the attributes so
brian decker is now the director of
player development for the indianapolis
colts
and so took what he learned in special
forces assessment selection he's now
applying it he's been in the nfl he's
worked for two teams for about six years
when they revolutionized and and you
know
it pains me to say this but i can put my
ego aside
the special forces army special forces
community
was much further ahead in terms of
creating a structured
and professionalized assessment of how
they select
special forces soldiers into the
community seals it was just sort of this
oral history passed down
and when i went over there as a guest
instructor
at their phase two which is their small
unit training that's when i was really
exposed to their whole process and this
thing called the whole man concept
and the fact that they were looking for
specific attributes
so when they redesigned their their
assessment and selection
they created tasks much like an
interview process
where they're trying to elicit certain
behaviors whether good or bad
and that's what they're looking for and
so that translates
to companies it doesn't matter you know
what your
interview process is or if you have
written tests what you're trying to
elicit
with every every question should have
meaning behind it in an interview
process
and ultimately that question has to
drive at behaviors
that's and people call this you know in
the civilian world behavioral interviews
they're one of the best techniques if
you do it well
yeah the uh the german army as they were
trying to
get their their officers to step up and
implement decentralized command and be
able to make moves one of the things
that i've read about they would do is
they would give them
here's the rules that you have to follow
for this training operation
and the only way that they could
actually successfully complete the
mission would be to break the rules
and so it was a test to see if they
would break the rules
in order to accomplish the mission and
then there was and look
even if you if you didn't break the
rules it didn't
necessarily mean that you were a bad
person it just now we know
more about you right now i know more
about you and you know we got into some
of this on
uh when we're up at gettysburg for free
f battlefield
you know the fact that lee didn't know
his
his two subordinates as well as he had
before jackson died so he's talking to
yule
and he's telling yule that he wants to
do something but he doesn't know him
well he doesn't know his personality
well enough
so when he tells you hey take that thing
if you can't take that hill if you can
and yule goes over and says well
i can't he could have it just would have
been a gut check
and if he would have told jackson to
take that hill jackson would have taken
that hill
so these are this idea behind setting
up questions or situations or problems
that you have to solve that reveal
some part of your character is a very
cool thing
you know when you mentioned earlier
about when people come to you and ask
what's the best interview question the
question back to him is
how are you screening for character it's
one of the things we go into this book
is that
most of those questions are about
experience
do you have this objective experience
they're
not screening for character and so you
know with the research that we did with
dr josh cotton brought to us and when we
figured these out
you know our point is is that you know
once you
meet that simple experiential gate when
you've got the basics
you need to start screening for
character and you go company by company
by company
and and i and i hate in some ways to say
this
because i see it all the time which is
executives are almost the worst
of this picking other executives and
they don't screen for character
they're looking for did you work at the
competition how did you move the revenue
how did you improve customer success how
did you move a product along
they don't go down into character and i
s i've sat in the interview after
interview after interview
and it and it's all objective traits or
you know basic subjective traits that
don't go deep into character
and that's what's missing
people will default to objective things
because they're
measurable yeah they're easy it's it's
it's the easy button
the subjective is what's hard he talked
about defining success
you know one of the mistakes we see with
companies too is they just have one
interview process
across the uh the organization you
actually have to create
talent profiles for each of the roles
and functions
and levels of and that's why it takes a
lot of time so what's going to make a
great engineer
in a company is vastly different from
what makes a great sales person
so a lot of the times why companies
don't define success and they're not
good at the
interview process is they haven't take
the time to create talent profiles for
the different levels
and the different functions within the
community it's much like a seal
the attributes that make a great seal
are vastly different
than the attributes for special
operations direct support
an intel officer or someone handling the
logistics
and we've gotten smarter about that over
the years as well and what a lot of
people don't understand is we're not
only screening
the green berets and the navy seals
we're also screening the people
that provide the support to those
organizations that ultimately come under
our umbrella they're being screened
for specific attributes as well think
about the attributes of a good point man
versus a good breacher
right it's just like two guys in the
same food but like you know that
preacher attitude
versus a point man attitude that's even
those guys are a little bit different
and they kind of get picked when you
show up at the team
you know some little guy that's sneaky
point man
some big freaking bruiser walking around
breacher
so let me let me throw this out you
often see that a bachelor's degree
is a requirement and a lot of companies
can't articulate that
yeah why why is that even a requirement
you know i'm not saying it you know it
does show somebody took the uh the
the initiative to go complete their
bachelor's degree or a master's and i
understand that but
uh he's got a great story about when c
plus plus programming came along
uh and i'll let him tell it yeah just
embarrassing for the people that that
were requesting
uh a coder yeah i had uh it was actually
python was the language that they were
coding in
and uh i had a senior engineer come to
me and say hey george you gotta go find
me somebody with five years of python
experience
i'm like well we can't do that he's like
well
why not i said it's only been around
three years
you mind if we knocked that requirement
back down to three but it's scary
that he was so wired to getting
an objective level of experience
that a didn't relate to the job and was
completely arbitrary
and wasn't timed any measure of success
so yeah i mean we calibrated them really
quickly we got somebody that
had spent most of their you know the
last few years
doing python you know coding but you
know working with that language
uh but it it was shocking that it came
from an engineer
yeah you got to watch out for that one
um going back to the book the importance
of a talent
mindset and this is this is sort of a
thread that
goes throughout the book a talent
mindset is the deep belief that human
capital is the single most important
competitive advantage your company can
have
when a company has talent mindset
assessing selecting and developing
the best talent is a top priority
a talent mindset not only accounts for
hiring talented people
but also includes the continual
development
and investment in that talent through
their tenure
in the organization so beyond
just bringing people on board it's
continuing to grow them and make them
better
so we call the high potential when
you're going through the interview
process to select new seals in
when they graduate buds are they high
performers
they're not yet they haven't been proven
they they passed the first gate that
that gate is closed they are high
potentials
so even if you're looking for a
frontline trooper frontline employee or
a brand new ceo when you bring them into
the organization if you made that
decision that they're going to be part
of the team
even if that he's been a prior ceo to
another company he's a high potential
within that new organization he's not
proven yet
so in order to turn that person from a
high potential i mean this this is what
we do for a living in national on front
now you have to develop them
and that takes a lot of time and effort
and it never stops
and if you want to turn that high
potential into a high performer it's
again
it's it's you have to pour in and invest
in those people
and that's why special operations was
sort of the
the foundational organization we focused
on in this book because they do it
so well at the core of what you know
makes special operations so special
it's their fundamental belief that
people are everything and of course when
we say people you're also talking about
leadership
and then you know you look it's one of
the things we drive through in the book
that talent mindset is that
everything changes so rapidly today
technology the economy markets companies
your only true competitive advantage is
talent
and that's what we're trying to convey
is that it isn't the hardware
in special operations it's the people
and and that's how it's got to be in
corporate america
and it's got to be where you treat your
human capital
with the same rigor and the same focus
that you you treat your financial
capital
and time and again mike and i see that
you know of course revenue cures all
people are focused on revenue they're
not
focused on the human capital which is
driving everything
uh you get into this section
chapter two what's so wrong with
traditional hiring practices
george felt as if he'd won the lottery
for a career through a highly selective
veteran
veteran hiring group he'd just been
offered a position at one of the world's
largest big box retailers
according to the company representative
they were looking for driven leaders who
know
knew how to mentor lead and provide
vision for people
sounded like the perfect fit for george
plus the job included good salary stock
options and growth opportunity
it was george's first civilian job after
nearly a decade of active duty service
and we'd set him up to be able to go
anywhere and do anything george accepted
the job
his very first day of orientation
training
and onboarding was like a punch in the
gut nothing was about talent or
leadership the position was none of the
things they had advertised or told him
they didn't want a leader they wanted
someone who'd fill vacant positions as
quickly as possible
with people who would adhere strictly to
the rules they were looking for cogs and
a machine not talent
accordingly their recruiting teams were
evaluated based on efficiency their
speed of filling vacant roles and cost
per hire
to say was a bad fit it was a gross
understatement nevertheless george soon
proved himself to be a high performer
and was promoted his new role still
wasn't a good fit
fit so he applied for other positions
within the company he felt
he would be more suitable despite
exceeding all his key performance
indicators
and being ranked in the top five percent
of his divisional employees the company
refused to move him he was succeeding in
a leadership role that others struggled
with
so the company wanted to keep him there
george made it 20 months before he quit
he wasn't the only one who had to leave
quickly several peers
who shared his talent mindset let also
left within two years
george and his peers had been able to
transform and improve their small
assigned corners of the company
but as soon as they left everything
reverted back to the status quo
attrition went up
and all the kpis went unmet george
learned a lot of valuable lessons from
that big box retailer primarily and what
not to do which can be as important in
knowing what to do
it was a firsthand look at how broken
traditional talent acquisition is
the mistakes this organization made are
the same ones we see companies make
again and again
and here they are lacking a talent
mindset not understanding how hr should
be structured to drive impact
having a butts and seats mentality
participating in fear-based hiring
and settling for mediocrity
any one of these mistakes can spell
disaster for an organization but the
most destructive mistake
is missing the talent mindset
rough first tour out of the military huh
it was it was and
you know i've got a four-year-old my
wife's pregnant
and i'm thinking okay i've had a great
career the things that made me
successful in the military they're going
to make me successful in the corporate
world and i'm just fired up
you know young don't know what i don't
know and
use one of those veteran firms and oh i
landed a job
you know what i i think is interesting
about that is
i bet that many people hear oh you've
got a guy that's been in the military
for 10 years
what he wants and what he expects
this is someone that hasn't been in the
military what he wants what he expects
is
to be told what to do and then follow
the protocol
has been as you're told and stay in your
box and
anyone that's in the bed in the military
knows that
that's not how the military operates at
least that's not how it should operate
so you go into that position they think
oh cool we've got a cog here
that we that we can just count on to you
know uh
run the numbers whatever follow the
daily program when in reality
what does a military individual want to
do wants to improve things wants to make
things better wants to grow wants to get
more efficient wants to
wants to push and improve that's what we
want to do and all of a sudden you're
trapped in a situation where
no don't do that oh yeah it was i i'm
sitting there and you walk in
the first day and and i'm like what
happened
what did i miss how did i miss this you
know the other thing they wanted rule
followers
you know this is a big box retailer we
won't we go to great lakes we do not
name any of these companies but i walk
in the door everybody would know this
one
and they're expecting me to execute very
specific rules i mean
it they had more manuals for the same
task than the united states army does
it was it was phenomenal and that's
impressive that's very impressive how
you pull that off
you want to know how to do something
there's a there's a binder up there
yeah and you know this is this is before
everything's you know
on your ipads and on your computer and
they wanted rule followers
and immediately i knew that was wrong
because to your point the one thing that
i would add is
you know military people coming out want
to win
they want to make a difference they want
to make an impact
and so when you're looking at a company
and you know you see this
this big name and and i got to be honest
another way i got humbled was those
stock options looked really really good
when i came out
i'm like woohoo i've got equity i got
something i would never get otherwise
but they wanted rule followers and and
so there was no
there were no latitude you know what i
work my commanders
you know everybody i work with they give
me my left and right limits
but they also entrust me to make good
solid decisions
to take care of my people if i need to
exceed that left and right limit and i
communicate those things
but i got here and it's literally you're
in a really really small box
and you you go from thinking that you're
going to be wildly successful and
to be honest with you i was because i
don't care what you're gonna throw at me
i'm gonna figure it out
and and i did but it was just missing so
many things and veterans
crave being able to make you were just
making a difference in the service now
you want to make a difference in the
corporate world
and you know i was kind of almost
ashamed to come back tell my wife
uh honey i think i made a mistake you
know when she's eight months pregnant
that was not coming out of my mouth
you know i was just like okay i got to
figure this stuff out but yeah bad fit
yeah and just to make sure i clarify
this point
to say that military people are we're
not saying that military people
are not rule followers correct and
look in the military you follow all
kinds of roles from the way you cut your
hair to the way you freaking wear your
clothing like you follow rules
but there's there's another level of
this and as a leader
the last thing i look as a leader i
wanted people that followed rules
and here's the key point as long as the
rules made sense
and if the rules didn't make sense i
wanted my guys to come to me and say
hey you know what jockle this thing that
we're supposed to be doing it doesn't
make any sense and here's why
i don't want people that blindly follow
rules that don't make sense if there's
rules in place and there's a good reason
for them absolutely
military guys are great military guys
and
men and women are great at taking a
protocol
and exercising that protocol and we have
the discipline to and the mindset to get
that done but what's even more important
than that
is having the mind to look at a problem
look at a situation
look at a protocol and say wait a second
we can make this better
we can do this more efficiently that's
what that's not only what we do
but it's what we want to do it's what
drives us because like you said
we want to win yeah and you want to and
you know and and mike and i try to do
this with each other
and you want to empower the people that
work for you that you're
leading to do the very same thing to say
hey you've got a good idea
and i brought a phrase from the two of
you the best idea wins you come up with
an idea it makes sense
you know it's not illegal it's not
immoral it's not unethical and it's
going to drive revenue or improve
something hey let's get after it let's
go do it
i came up with an idea that i figured
out in one year would do two million
dollars
in operating cost reduction
and the answer was is it in the book
like well no and neither is the two
million dollars by the way
and it was still no and and you know
that's kind of the environment where a
military leader goes okay
i'm not going to reach my potential here
i'm not going to be able to do all the
things that i want to do
and and and you know it was challenged
because you know i don't want to quit
anything
but you sometimes have to make those
hard decisions in your career to say
yeah i could impact better somewhere
else and i did
this supports something that i tell
people all the time
that the most important compensation you
can give a human being
is freedom and autonomy and and
and what that means is ownership
ownership over your own destiny if
people
like that's a classic example here you
were you're getting good money
you had good stock options you're
crushing the job which means it's not
like it's a tax on your mental power
but none of that was compare and none of
that none of that was
had enough value to make you stay there
exactly whereas if you would had
autonomy and freedom and the ability to
control your own fate and destiny you'd
still be there right now we wouldn't be
having this conversation
you'd be running the company yeah
exactly and
you know it's spot on and um i came into
a
a company two years ago and then i can
certainly name the company forcepoint uh
which is a uh we're owned by raytheon
but a cyber security company
and that's what the ceo and the chro
gave me
at that company and what's interesting
is we we put an ethos
a marker in the ground for the entire
team it was teamwork ownership
humility turned around the entire i mean
we walked into a dumpster fire frankly
is what we walked into
and we were able to do great things but
that value in that ownership that they
gave me that i was able to give
everybody on my team
it's everything and so when you come
into those moments where compensation
becomes an issue
that value that empowerment that
ownership you give people
they stick and in two years we had zero
percent attrition
wow is that you know what's amazing
though is that that's a surprise to
people
yeah and and you know i'm kind of
sitting back going
how can that be so
so much of a surprise that giving
somebody ownership and trust and value
is everything most important thing yeah
the best form of compensation
and the reason i've been able to tell
that to clients at echelon front is i
say look
i had people that in the seal teams in
the military and the navy
if you're doing the best job you know
three times better than anyone else in
your platoon
i can't give you a raise i can't like i
can give you a good
evaluation and then in two years you'll
be uh eligible for
promotion and then you'll get an extra
270
a month no one's doing 3x the work
because of that
but what can you give someone freedom
and if you worked for me and you were
squared away
you pretty much did whatever you wanted
to do and and
i would just do nothing but provide
cover fire for you
if you weren't squared away this is a
totally different ball game you're going
to put in a box and you weren't going to
be able to maneuver at all because
you're doing things wrong so the best
way to retain your talent
is great leadership and it goes back to
buford we just did yet battlefield
gettysburg
you know he operated within the spirit
of the commander's intent
and actually deviated from what was the
plan because he saw an opportunity
i think what the marine corps calls it
took authority on demand
and made calls that ultimately made the
uh the union army uh
you know victorious over the uh the
confederates
you know you did say something about and
we deal with this with ef overwatch
is for some companies it's a mental
leap to hire a military leader
into a senior management role when
they're coming fresh out of the military
and it's usually because those
perceptions are shaped
by what the movies
100 percent yeah walter you guys i mean
you follow orders that
it's a hundred percent cogs in the wheel
is is
shaped by movies and we literally have
that conversation
you know especially during covid
we've seen that a lot of organizations
did not select
the right leaders coming into the
organization that were not able
to innovate and adapt that were not able
to handle the chaos
could not remain calm and were unable or
ill-equipped
for uh for crisis and what we have to
educate them about these
men and women coming out is you know one
they are generalists
but generalists are much more powerful
than specialists in fact one of the
quotes from
brian decker in this is that we've over
specialized some of the roles in the
private sector it's no longer
good enough that you're an ear doctor
you now have to be a left
ear doctor and you know while i
understand that
that is a requirement for certain roles
if it's a very technical position yes
technical skills are required but in
general management roles
which are usually your top leadership
roles in the company
generalists are more equipped to lead
and this is why
because they brought they draw from a
broader
base of experiences i mean you've been
all around around the world
in the military you've dealt with
different cultures you've dealt with
different problem sets
you have this vast array of experiences
where a lot of the uh the business
leaders that have never left the united
states
uh do not and we're finding that that
that experience has not only
prepared them but it's the factor in a
lot of these military leaders stepping
into the roles the ones we place
are being highly successful they're
performing when they step in of course
there's a learning curve
but the learning agility for the the men
and women that we place
is extremely high that's one of the
things we're screening for
uh at ef overwatch is that yeah intel
intellectual horsepower matters
it does but once that gate's closed uh
the these people are placed and it's
it's been uh
phenomenal i mean you met some of the
the the clients at ef battlefield
they're like best hire ever
yeah the um the trainability you know
if you've been in the military you know
how to learn you start learning stuff
out of the gate and you learn how to
learn very well and so that's why when
someone comes with
out the skill set in the civilian sector
they can learn that skill set very
quickly because
they've been learning all these
different skill sets for eight years 12
years 20 years
25 years that's what we do in the
militaries learn new stuff all the time
going here a section called the cost of
talent when companies lack a talent
mindset it's a common refrain
cost creating a robust talent
acquisition a management process
is simply too costly they say what most
companies don't understand is the major
cost is not money
but time and devotion to creating a
world class
talent acquisition pipeline in the
process
you will actually save money in the long
run as your attrition lowers and you
consistently make better hires
the special operations community has
long understood that people are
everything
special operations soldiers go through
three main stages
assessment and selection training and
combat and war
and then you guys break this out so in
special operations it's called
assessment and selection
in business it's called talent
acquisition or the hiring process
in special operations it's called
training in business it's called talent
management
and leadership development and then in
special operations called combat and war
and in business it's called business
sales marketing production whatever it
is that you're doing
it's a a pretty good little um break out
there
of how similar these things really are
go on in another section here many
companies have a fundamental
misalignment between
upper leadership and hr where leadership
says they want talent but hr
is not set up to actually hire for
talent in fact
hr often doesn't even know what talent
looks like in the company
there is no gold standard of talent
instead hiring is mechanical order
taking
process based on objective requirements
leadership gives hr a laundry list of
what they want
years of experience required skill set
compensation range
and hr goes out and fills the order to
have effective talent acquisition
your business leaders and hr department
must be strategic
partners the talent acquisition team
must be students of the business
understanding the organizations
underlying goals and talent needed to
achieve them
since day one in my career joe dipinto
told us
and that's the ceo of 7-eleven i've
always had my chro
linked at the hip and will continue to
as joe has discovered to function
strategically
your hr department must be a part of the
planning process for both talent
acquisition
and management hr should be involved in
secession planning
and gap analysis to assess select and
develop
talent in a strategic way
you know we we found this i i
you know i kind of knew it intuitively
and i suspected it
but when we did the research chief
human resource officers are often paid
one-third of their c-suite counterparts
that's where it starts could you imagine
for a second that your
your mechanics and your medics were paid
a third
of what you make because they're not
front line could you imagine what that
would look like in special operation in
any military unit
and that's where it starts and and hr
is not you know a strategic function
and you know i had the benefit of coming
up with this mentor
um and somebody who really empowered me
and her name is tracy keough
and she is the chro of hewlett-packard
um
and she's just absolutely amazing we put
this quote in the book because to this
day it's still
it's one of the reasons that i've stayed
in my function for so long
and she went to an executive meeting one
day and they're like hey
you know tracy it's good to have hr at
the table she kind of snickered look
backed at him and she is a very strong
leader and she says
we are the table and i was like you know
what that's
that's right and and that's the theme
throughout this book is that people are
everything so
when you start out de-prioritizing your
chief human resources officer
and you make this an administrative
function or an operational function
you know how do you ever expect to get
the best talent and talents what's
driving your product talents what's
driving your service
talents in front of your customers
talent is driving your revenue
that's everything and then you sit there
and you look at your revenue and your
revenue is declining
your attrition's high your product's not
on time and you're going gee
i wonder what's going on um and
and it it takes mike and i about all of
two seconds to see that
and it's unfortunate and one of the
things that we really wanted to get
across is
you can really leverage hr in a
strategic function and it makes all the
difference to every single part of your
business
and the more of a talent mindset you
have and the more that you empower
human resources to be your strategic
talent partner
that revenue will come that product will
be on time that service will be good
it's it's not rocket science
but it in some places it's a brand new
concept let's go back to that cost
so there's there's an old adage you
can't outspend
a good hiring process yeah because the
consequences of having a poor
hiring process can sink a company
one of the statistics we found is that
for senior level executive positions
the cost of a bad senior leader
can be 213 percent of that individual's
annual salary
so giving an example if they're you have
a 300 000 uh
dollar salary uh ceo or executive uh
that could cost
the company as high as 639 000. that's
let's say that's a direct cost so what a
lot of companies can't track from
attrition
is really the the indirect costs in in
that's about two-thirds of the cost of
attrition
you can't put a number on
the damage to a culture that a senior
leaguer can cause
maybe for two years that impacts sales
and that's what's very hard for a lot of
companies because they can't see it on
their bottom line
directly good ceos can come hang out at
echelon front and go
work with some clients and you'll get to
see that all the time
a toxic leader a bad leader a leader
with a negative attitude
everyone below them either doesn't
perform well or leaves
if they're good and you know what it is
the good people as we said earlier the
good people leave
the bad people stay there and don't
perform well that's what happens under a
bad leader
it's a total nightmare what's the old uh
i think henry ford
is uh credited with this quote they were
at a board meeting and they were talking
about leadership development and
somebody said hey
what if we develop our people and they
leave
and henry ford looked at all of them
said what if we don't
and they stay this is why leadership
development matters
so as you were reading that that that
section right there you saw george and i
getting
like agitated we get we i mean this is
how passionate we are of this subject
so through echelon front i spoke with
a hr group there was like 500 hr leaders
uh from an area
uh we did it was supposed to be an
in-person conference covid so
uh it was online but uh i had like
100 hr leaders reach out they were just
fired up because i talked about the book
i'm like you guys are the key to the
success of every organization
don't let your leaders tell you
otherwise so you know tracy keough
and patty mccord you know patty mccord
was the
chro for netflix built a
strong organization both these wait
what's netflix
yeah both these ladies
should be ceos of any fortune 500
company they just have a
passion for talent acquisition in talent
management or leadership development
and i mean you look at tracy keough
harvard educated cutter teeth in sales
and marketing and was asked at one point
during the career hey we've got a
problem with
you know hr uh can you go fix it of
course the answer was no they said good
you got it
and she developed a passion um your hr
leader
has to be a business leader they have to
and hr even though i love hr sometimes
has become a
dumping ground for average
or mediocre performers and most often
those hr leaders are just compliance
leaders they're not a strategic function
so if your hr reports into
legal it's a compliance function if they
report into
finance it's an overhead function
but as tracy keogh will tell you if they
report into the ceo and have a direct
line
and they're involved in the talent
strategy then there's a chance in hell
there's a strategic function that is
going to help build the organization
into a world-class organization
and so that's where that misalignment
between
senior leaders in hr is killing a lot of
organizations
it goes back to the talent mindset yeah
that's a big that's a big
change actually it's not even that big
of a change it's a little change that'll
have a huge impact
you start getting people to really start
to grow the or grow an organization
properly with the right people that's
exactly what you're talking about
you go into this section here i'm
skipping ahead this section here that i
liked it's
it's entitled fear-based hiring special
operations community has become
world-class model for potential based
hiring
which is the foundation of their
assessment and selection process in
contrast
many companies instead of hiring the
candidates with
the most potential hire those candidates
that inspire
the least amount of fear this kind of
fear-based hiring usually comes down to
one of three fallacies number one
red flags are more important than green
flags
number two leaders shouldn't be
outshined by their followers
and number three somebody's better than
nobody
you go on in traditional corporate
hiring practices the objective
has seemingly shift from higher the best
to
hire the familiar and safe people are
more afraid of a bad hire than they are
excited by
a good hire
you go on here fear-based hiring is
dogmatic about objective requirements
you guys already talked about this black
and white criteria make it easy to say
yes or no
does this person have x years of
industry experience
does this person have y degree these
criteria don't matter nearly as much as
you might
think lieutenant colonel brian decker
former commander of
army special forces assessment selection
told us when i arrived at my command
anything easily measured was heavily
weighted in the selection process
the problem was it didn't have a lot of
predictive value
the same is true in business just
because you can measure something
doesn't mean it's important and just
because you can't measure something
doesn't mean it's not important the only
question that truly matters is
does this person have the potential to
be a top performer
don't disregard red flags entirely but
don't obsess
over them either in combat you don't
want to get shot but at the same time if
your primary concern is not getting shot
then you don't go into battle if you
make your hiring decision based on
avoiding your worst case scenario you'll
never achieve your best case scenario
it's far more effective to look for
green flags than for red flags
oh people are scared uh you know and
and and i don't want to get too far down
into the minutia but
if you're a manager and you've got an
empty seat
so many people that i've seen over 20
years are like i'm going to lose that
seat
if i don't get it filled with somebody
i'm going to get somebody in there
so anybody is better than somebody
then they go down the objective
requirements like well they don't have
this they don't have this and so they're
checking off red flags of objective
requirements to put somebody in your
role and never
asking the question is this the person
with the character attributes that can
do the job
they're not looking they're they're
literally scared well
if i hire this person and oh they don't
have five years how am i going to be
looked at what if they don't do as well
as i think
and they don't they don't think that
their leadership can take somebody with
the right characteristics
two or three years less experience than
they mark and put them in the role and
and and coach them to succeed they're
they're scared to death they want it
it just turns into this machine how fast
that how fast can you hire how fast can
you get that butt in a seat
i'll take that a step further at the
risk of being a little bit of
a stereotyping people but
who's hungrier the person that you know
has two years experience going into a
role that needs five years experience or
will you know or the person that has
seven years experience going into a role
with five years experience required
who's who's hungrier who's trying to
prove themselves a little bit more
i don't know man i'm kind of leaning
towards that two-year
hungry individual that wants to prove
themselves and and i've seen this time
and again
is you know the recruiters that i
brought up the town acquisition
specialist i call them talent
consultants because they're really
embedded in the business they'll go
hey i've talked with this guy yeah
they're two or three years light on the
experience you were asking for
i promise you they're hungry they're
hungry they want it they want to get
after it
and the manager says well they don't
have the seven years of experience
and it goes back to what brian decker
said you know they picked seven years
almost out of the year
that seven years is not predictive of
success
working for a competitor is not
predictive of success
character attributes are predictive
and you need to be watching for those
check another fear by fear-based hiring
um problem leaders shouldn't be
outshined by their followers average or
underperforming managers
often fear hiring someone who will
outshine them because they don't want to
hire themselves out of a job
there should never be a maximum standard
for talent only a minimum
if you're not hiring people better than
your current employees you'll never
raise the bar for talent within your
organization
that's just the classic surround
yourself with people that are better
than you
i want to work myself out of a job i i
want to have it we go in a little bit
later about succession planning
i need to have as many people who can
take my place and corporate america
doesn't do that
you know succession planning we do it in
the military it's muscle memory
but i always want people who are going
to push me to be a better leader
they're going to push me to get better
at my game to up the game i mean when
you roll with people do you roll with
people that are easy to beat
sometimes
that's the first moment for echo charles
to shine yeah sometimes i do roll with
people that are easier a lot easier
yeah yeah uh you do somebody's
better than nobody and you you know you
talked about that just feeling like we
better get someone in the platoon and
you know
this happened in in charlie platoon leif
had a guy a good guy but he just wasn't
really didn't really have the
just couldn't get the job done and you
know coached him we wrote about it
in dichotomy leadership but one of the
things that
i told leif i said hey leif if you get
rid of this guy
you're not getting another one and
there's there's you know you're gonna go
on deployment
you're with missing a guy and because
we're gonna we're gonna get rid of him
and you know life was like well and he
thought about it he said you know what
i i think we're better off without him
and you know that to me that was a
little litmus test for me
because you know life might be thinking
hey i'll just replace him with some
other guy and we'll you know we'll step
it up it was a litmus test for me to see
what leif really was thinking and if you
really
would rather not take someone then that
means you you don't feel comfortable
with them at all
so there's a quote from charlie beckwith
for the listeners charlie beckwith is
the founder
of delta force you know serve time with
the sas which
generated the idea for for a specialized
force he had a quote
that was i'd rather go down the river
with seven
studs than 100 shitheads
and it it goes to point that yeah i'd
rather select highly talented people
into the organization and have less
people
than you know volume quantity is not
better than quality it never has been
and and you know the uh the quote from
uh
her kill her clitus uh the uh
greek philosopher 500 bc about the 100
soldiers on the
on the battlefield uh 80 or uh or sorry
80 are just targets um 10 don't even
deserve to be there
and then there's 10 that are warriors
but that one that one will always bring
us home i mean
these guys all talked about the the the
importance of talent
and you'd rather bring talented people
in individually than build a
massive quick army that's when you
deviate from the process and it works
out poorly for you
when you bring the wrong person in
you're actually just creating more drain
on your time
just mayhem yeah mayhem and then it's a
cancer and then your a players are
looking at you going
why'd you bring a c player in and now it
reflects on you as the leader
that your bar wasn't high enough that
your standards weren't high enough that
you were tolerating this c
player this b player and we all know how
that works out
and never ever well
uh next section what makes special
operations so special
and in here you you kind of profile
one individual an individual by the name
of johnny kim
um which uh podcast 221
you can listen to johnny kim's story
it's it's just
unbelievable what what made you want to
profile
johnny in here so johnny
and i and ryan were all in the same
butts class
and what stuck out about johnny it goes
back to why i was
judging ryan you got to understand my
career prior to that i'd finished number
one in pretty much every
military school from boot camp to the
school of infantry uh finished third in
recon school
out of 30 behind two guys that went on
to be marshock debt one
uh even you know graduated number one
from marine ocs so
when you're on a successful track what
what happens you become a little bit
arrogant you think you have things
figured out and i thought i had
things figured out naturally because i
was still a sergeant in the marine corps
the class sort of gravitated towards me
because i had a rough neck style of
leadership and
they loved it and the instructors loved
it as well but
johnny i just sort of always dismissed
johnny because
small asian kid uh
korean from l.a just you know he's sort
of i
don't want to say devoid of emotion he's
not he's not a showy guy and naturally
because he he didn't have a flamboyant
personality i figured out this guy's
just non-performer he's just another one
of the
the students that he was going to drop
or he'll make it through and be a
non-factor in the seal teams
in this book i think you're seeing that
i show my ass
a lot in the these assumptions that i
made about you know who's going to be a
good seal and who wasn't
and you know usually i was wrong but
those are the scars as you get involved
in talent acquisition is like
you don't become better at this process
of assessing and selecting the right
people in your organization
unless you screw up yeah i'd say your
assessment was wrong
uh on multiple levels because not only
is johnny kim
an awesome seal and ranks you know above
among the highest of of you know respect
in the seal teams but then just as a
human i mean then as a harvard
doctor and then as an astronaut and then
just basically as an overall human being
he's right up there with very rarefied
air
so i talked to johnny what i i you know
i wanted to get approved yeah through
nasa that he was good he read it and
you know i think the instructors looked
at johnny and they just sort of
made a snap adjust judgment that you
know he's just a quiet little guy
and uh watching him because again we
both reported into seal team three
my jaw just continued to drop because he
was better than i was
was day one out of buds i mean he was
just that smart where he picked up
everything quickly
you know 18 delta now he's a high-speed
medic
quickly rushed to sniper school becomes
a sniper um
you know he'd either be treating
casualties on the battlefield or he'd be
pulling the trigger eliminating
islamic extremists and the guy was
amazing
and um humbled to uh
to uh to have served with him and based
off his podcast we had a very uh close
conversation about one night in sauder
city
uh which you know uh was a bad night for
everyone but ultimately uh
that was on stoner and i that we even
let the guys go out when we knew we
weren't ready but uh
yeah it's the the point with johnny is a
lot of people just would have looked
past him quickly because you know he
didn't have a college degree
from l.a nothing stood out on paper
but as you you on you know peel that
onion back
yeah i think i think a good word to
describe johnny
that you would pick up is just
unassuming right he's just
i think he just he's just unassuming and
he that's what he is i mean it's it's
less
now because you kind of people know his
background now so i'm sure it's that
just comes across
yeah he's super hump just a super humble
unassuming guy
and yeah uh uh a beast
now i tell people i worked with johnny
kim quickly hey
you know i start with
uh the origins
of the soft talent mindset the very core
of soft
is a talent mindset the idea that small
group of talented individuals can be
effective fighting force capable of
defeating larger enemy forces and
delivering
strategic impacts through small scale
operations three innate traits of lead
spot special operations
talent mindset and subsequent success
one no one has prior special operations
experience
so raw talent must be the selection
criterion
the most effective selection is based on
mindset and character that's a crazy
thing to think about
that when you go into special operations
there most of the time there's
zero experience in special operations
you know that's just that's like a crazy
thing to think about
where does the seal come from he comes
from high school you know
this is the story you know we're working
with business leaders and they think the
industry
experience is so important i say hey i
don't go to a high school and say hey
we're recruiting for navy seals
raise a hand if you have special
operations experience
darn it guys you're not eligible hey
french foreign legion
the uk special forces go get some
experience come back and uh
and then uh let us know uh next one
special operations forces are teams
teams win not individuals number three
special operations teams work in high
stakes environments when the stakes are
high
mediocrity is unacceptable let's look
more closely at these
traits raw talent this is this is no
emphasis on experience
raw talent is difficult to identify
industry experience on the other hand is
far easier to identify and measure
this is why business world often falls
in the bad habit of over relying
on industry experience and as a hiring
criterion
special operations does not have that
luxury because nobody has prior special
operations experience
if the soft community began selecting
for industry experience
the us would not have a special
operations community out of necessity
special operations
had to develop a core competency in
potential based hiring
where raw talent is the primary
consideration
that's self-explanatory next one team
mentality special operations forces are
structured as teams they are
incentivized as teams and they win or
lose as teams
not as individuals in contrast in the
business in the business world
egos can often rule and the team can be
less and
emphasized people are rewarded for
individual achievements so
individuals are often concerned only
about their incentives
versus the overall health of the
organization bad leaders who hire and
manage others often accept and offer
and even encourage mediocre employees
because it raises their
own value in comparison
a team mentality greatly reduces the
power of eagle ego
yeah there's nothing worse than
encouraging
mediocre people to be in your
organization so that you can look good
did you have something on that mic i do
let me hit back on the uh the lack of uh
industry experience
two real vignettes so again we we quoted
charlie beckwith
if you didn't know because we also
interviewed what we didn't
interview charlie back with because he's
passed but uh we did
interview throughout this book a guy
named general jerry boykin
um amazing individual uh was a long time
uh delta force member even the commander
was involved in desert one operation
eagle claw
so you know we went into the history
charlie beckwith was a
strong believer that before you could
even get into special operations and
this was the old
sort of mentality that that existed
within the military is that you have to
serve as a conventional
soldier either an officer enlisted
before you could try out for special
operations
and uh he was very dogmatic about that
and general boykin talked about when the
army special forces community created
the 18
x-ray program because of the needs of
the war where they took people directly
off the street that had the right
attributes passed the initial uh tests
intelligence
physical uh standards mental standards
uh that they
actually made as good of
special forces soldiers if not better
because they didn't have bad habits from
the conventional uh
forces that was one view so let's let's
put that into a private sector uh
you know context the other vignette
google did a study
on what made their most successful uh
managers
so successful they they came up with
ten criterion that made them so highly
successful
industry experience came in at number
number nine it was one of the
least important things now if you look
at extreme ownership pretty much all
those principles of how we lead
uh were much farther ahead than the
importance of extreme i'm sorry the
industry experience
so that's why this potential based
hiring
is so much more powerful than objective
trivial requirements like industry
experience
when when they started the 18x when did
they do that
i want to say that was roughly around
2003 2004 that that program came to
fruition i i'd have to go back and find
the exact uh year
yeah uh john striker meyer was talking
about that
and how there was like people in the
special forces community that were
saying oh this is
garbage you're going to get these guys
that don't know what they're doing but
like
so many of those sog operators
went right from boot camp to you know to
ait and then on to special force and
then they went right over into vietnam
and freaking just got after it he
he like was laughing about it because
those guys were just freaking legit
what what general boykin was telling the
story you know you had senior leaders
when he was the commander of yusuf which
is he's the commander of all army
special operations
and they were arguing there's two camps
of no we can't accept people without
conventional infantry experience and the
other camp was hey no we can
take people off the street and turn them
into great special forces soldiers
and of course what there was a command
sergeant major of yusuf
sitting back the senior enlisted advisor
while both camps fought
and finally he said when he piped in he
said hey
i was an ojt soldier in vietnam
i didn't go to the special forces
qualification course they sent me right
over to uh
to vietnam and i learned the job while
outside in the wire
and they all shut up and said okay there
you go that's right
last thing high stakes perhaps more than
any other
factor the high stakes under which soft
operators
under which soft operates necessitate a
talent mindset
war and combat are among the most
unforgiving environments in the world
a mistake on the battlefield can mean
the difference between life and death
not only for oneself but
for one's fellow soldiers a failed
mission can mean the destruction of
cities
and the loss of civilian life excellence
and execution is the standard
because it has to be the stakes are that
high it should be no difference in bit
different in business in business the
risk may not be life or death but the
stakes are incredibly high don't fool
yourself
business is war war by non-violent means
the result of a bad hire or several bad
hires
is the underperformance of the business
if not a nosedive to bankruptcy
it is not literal death but it is death
in the marketplace
that death spells disaster for you and
your employees whose well-being depends
on the health of your organization
look at today covid hit us
for those people that have these
attributes as leaders no factor
it's like okay hey that's that's part of
the environment we got to operate in
let's go do it
all right hey let's you know let's
prioritize what do we got to pay
attention to how do we pay attention to
our people how do we pay attention to
our product how do we continue to drive
the revenue and take care of our people
and it was it just didn't phase those
people and i've been around
quite a few of them where it was like
okay yeah we got cobit okay
and what's your point but you can start
to see those companies
where that talent wasn't there where
that talent mindset where that
leadership wasn't there
covid hits they lose their minds what do
they do
oh let's start cutting people let's cut
this let's cut this
immediately what we're going through
today speaks exactly to
why it's so critical to have a talent
mindset and get people with those
character attributes
in the roles that make a difference and
and i love what you guys have pointed
out earlier
the us military isn't the most powerful
force in the world it's the us economy
and that was one of the things we wanted
to do with this book was to
we want to continue to contribute to
strengthen that
you go into a um skipping ahead a little
bit you go into
a scenario and it just it just spells
out exactly what you're talking about
you got a guy daniel you go into this
daniel is looking to hire candidates for
sales leadership position
and he used two search firms ef
overwatch which is
what which is esl on front and a
competitor
and jeremy so this here's the two people
that got presented jeremy presented by a
competitive
search firm 3.9 gpa from a prestigious
university high intelligence
four years of industry experience with
two different companies driven highly
competent
borderline arrogant
chris presented by ef overwatch 3.2
gpa from a public university above
average intelligence
faced significant adversity in life came
from a lower middle class family and
held a full-time job while in college
recently separated army infantry officer
who held several different
functional billets in the army has all
the attributes
required to be a highly successful sales
leader but lacks
industry experience which of these
candidates would you choose
since this chapter is about hiring for
character and skill you might know the
answer is
most likely chris not jeremy but be
honest
at your company which one of these
candidates would most likely be hired
that's a good question when you put be
honest in front of it
because right because it's a fear-based
hire is to go you know what we don't
know about this chris guy he seems like
a good guy he's in the army but
man jeremy he's got four years of
experience
you go on most companies would choose
jeremy without hesitation chris's gpa
was average compares
to jeremy's but he didn't have the indus
he didn't have the industry
specific experience but he was one of
those people who performed time and time
again
whatever you put in front of him he
would find a way through it over it
around it
he was relentless and adaptable so you
go on
they they eventually chose jeremy over
chris
and two weeks later the guy calls up and
says we made a huge mistake
that's how it turns out that quick that
quick
time and time again and and here's the
funny thing is
um you remember trey holder
who who helped us out during the uh the
infancy of ef overwatch
we had this call and uh it was
either a week and a half to two weeks
after they'd made that selection
and this leader within the company who
we had a personal relationship
said hey this guy isn't arrogant you
know what he was like
we've got a problem and you know we're
not going to say hey we told you so the
guy the guy is trying to run a major
distribution center
uh he made a call we're there to support
him and
our basic question was well do you want
to talk to our candidate
he said no he said we asked what are you
going to do about it
he said nothing and i just asked him i
said
if you have somebody that you feel is
going to poison the culture
why aren't you going to do anything and
it was if i
let him go two weeks into the job
my senior leaders are gonna look at me
like what are you doing down there
and so that individual was gonna let it
ride i haven't talked to him i don't
know if that individual stayed and
sometimes things change within four you
know
a few weeks maybe he that that
individual who was arrogant
came around but uh what do you think the
chances of that are
very little it's but how often let's you
know we talk a lot about special
operations
and how great an organization is how
great they are at
selecting high potentials but how often
if we're being honest with ourselves
did we let mediocrity reign
within the seal teams yeah well i mean
you need
you need people and what was horrible
you know i didn't mind that look you got
to have people that are going to do some
of the jobs that are a little bit easier
in the teams i mean it's just the
reality of the situation
and you know when i was going through
officer candidate school
i had whatever 80 people in my class in
my officer candidate class i was a class
president
and you got to write like suggestions to
the
drill instructor and or whatever
so i guess a group of people like four
or five people because i had a bunch of
prior enlisted guys in my class
all great guys and and females as well
there's guys and girls in there
and somebody wrote to the drill
instructor and said
we need to get rid of these four people
they don't belong they don't belong as
officers in the navy
and so my drill instructor whose name
was gunnery sergeant seals
oddly enough great guy you know as you
know i mean any marine corps
drill instructor is just freaking
outstanding so he gets up and he says
hey i'll tell you what
let's say we get rid of the bottom 10 of
this class
and he says now what happens tomorrow we
got a new bottom 10 percent
what happens after that we got a new
bottom 10 percent so
eventually you realize guess what
there's going to be a bell curve in any
organization
where i have a problem with this so so
that's my explanation like hey the steel
teams look you're gonna have some guys
that are
not the not long ball hitters you know
you're gonna have some guys that are not
long ball hitters
the problem i have and and had and still
have
is when you take those guys and you put
them into leadership positions
that's where it's a problem that's where
it's a real problem in my book and we
still allowed that to happen yeah it
happened we still allowed that to happen
because hey they've put in their time
they've earned that spot that's not a
good criteria first off i'm going to say
you guys had a suggestion box in navy
officer candidate school
yeah it wasn't really a suggestion box i
don't i don't that's why i couldn't
really
name what it was but it was some way of
communicating
with the drill instructor i don't i
forget what it was because
i didn't do it but because i'm just
gonna say it marine corps
officer candidate school that was called
the trash can
and the drill instructors did not care
what suggestions you have i don't know i
don't know where i don't know where this
idea came from i'm thinking it must have
been some kind of suggestion box or
maybe they raised their hands and asked
him
i don't no but it was it was the reason
i remember it
it was somehow clandestine right they
weren't they didn't say in the middle of
the class like
because we used to basically get briefed
all the time standing in the hallways
the barracks you know you just all
staying out front of your rooms you're
all in big lines
so no one had the courage to say hey
officer candidate smith jones and and
brown need to be let go no one had the
courage to do that so they somehow
through some mechanism and i get your
humor through some mechanism
they it got to the to the drill
instructor
and yeah i don't know what that
mechanism was but
well the
the navy um officer candidate school was
pretty good to go i thought
i had a good time we so we actually one
of the candidates that came to uf
overwatch
founder pilot actually was going through
the training because we hold webinars
every friday both in leadership and then
career search and uh struck a chord with
this guy he
actually moved to austin he's like hey
just just so you know i went to uh
officer candidate school
with uh with chaka with willing yeah
he's like
that guy solid leader um so
you bring up a point that again we nerd
out on this yeah
all talent follows a bell curve or a
normal distribution curve
and you know that that that is a
fundamental truth
however the performance within that
talent distribution
is more like a i'm sorry the the the
performance is more along the lines of a
power distribution or some people call
it the pareto
principle it's just eighty percent of
the results driven within your
organization come from twenty percent of
the workforce that's
that's it's just the realities uh as you
say
but ultimately what makes better
organizations and as we did the research
is that
competing companies within the industry
all have that bell curve
it's you want the average performance of
your entire workforce
the statistical mean to be higher
than your competitors yeah and that's
what makes special operations
so great is that not everyone's a a
player
they're not it's a small element the
long tail
um but the overall performance of the
entire force
is much higher yeah you want to slide
that thing to the right yeah
that's that's the goal you can for sure
uh so we're talking all about all this
uh
you know experience
and and how that's not the most
important thing but then you guys go on
to say this which is also important
we're not advocating that you disregard
experience entirely
you're not going to hire a kid straight
out of high school for a c-suite
position experience and past performance
matters for certain positions but you do
need to be thoughtful about how you use
experience in the
selection process we see companies make
three common mistakes
when it comes to looking at experience
one they require experience that doesn't
matter to job performance two
they require very specific experience
when general experience would be just as
good
and three they prioritize industry
experience
over character so you guys aren't saying
to ignore experience
you're saying hey pay attention to it
yeah exactly it's
and ultimately it's not what counts and
you know one of the other fallacies is
you know if i have somebody with
experience that was working at this
competitor and i bring them in well if
they were successful there they'll be
successful here
that that's just i boggles my mind and i
see it all the time
but yeah these are the three the three
mistakes and and you know we talk about
this in the book about
gates once you set your requirements for
this role
and they meet those that gate then
closes
everything after that is this part of
what determines success as far as the
nine attributes
and most people and you'll and on the
ground level you'll watch a person come
in you've got these objective
requirements and you'll have
five people in the hiring process all
these five different members of the team
and they will all ask different versions
of the same questions about their
experience
nobody's digging in nobody's digging in
it
it i you know it's patience is a virtue
in my function i
assure you and but they're listing out
experience and hiring managers will dump
all of this stuff in thinking if i get
all of this
this experience in one person my company
will do better
they're looking at the wrong things it's
the character it's those attributes that
make the difference when
when a covid comes up when when uh when
another company comes out with a product
when
you know we're behind or we're short
team members it's those
character attributes that drive that
team forward when things get
tough when you're under stress
that's when character reveals itself and
in the business world
that's when it counts the most
so we over rotate on experience
and you know you know mike and i try to
go to great lengths in this book look
we understand you're a business leader
you've got 50 000 things going on if
you're a ceo
you've got a million things going on in
your head
but this will help you be better this is
the competitive advantage that you need
and it's prioritizing talent and these
things that make the difference
and yet these three common mistakes they
happen time and time and time again
they will happen 10 times a day in one
company and that's a small company
you get to a big company some of the
fortune 50 that i've worked with you'll
see this a thousand times in one
day and and it multiplies itself
but you guys have both seen and i've
seen it in my time
you get a good leader you get talent on
your team that's infectious
the game comes up you get a good player
you get a rock star
you're all like okay i'm chasing that
guy i'm coming up
i gotta elevate my game because this is
not looking good for me you know
person on my left person on my right
they're outshining me i got to step it
up
so you know you've got to get the
experience
that's minimum for the job hey you got
to be able to do these things in the job
it does matter we're not saying
disregard it
don't make it so specific that it's
ruling out talent
and that happens a lot and industry
experience is not as important as you
think and i mean google points it out i
mean it
you know statistically it's not
important but it makes managers feel
better oh i took somebody from my
competitor they were doing really well
they know our industry they're gonna do
well here
it's just a fallacy and and if we can
get people focused on character if we
get people focused on leadership
that will power your company when the
hard times come
hey you're going to rock it you're going
to survive you're going to make
the u.s economy that much more powerful
if you get the right mindset and you
focus
and you drive and get after it brian
decker
talked about this with uh special forces
assessment and selection so to get into
any of the special operations community
intellectual horsepower is a requirement
you have to have a minimum score we take
the asvab
there's a score once a person passes
that intelligence requirement
what george is talking about is that
gate is closed it no longer comes back
into the planning factor or the hiring
factor whatsoever
and what they found is that level they
put a lot of thought behind it
and what they see is that if somebody
hits the requirement dead on
and somebody exceeds that requirement is
that the person that exceeds that
requirement it's not necessarily
correlated to a higher level of
performance
so that's why you have to be very
careful up front about the gates you uh
you select you know brian decker also
told a story about again
you know industry experience versus none
so when he was running
sfas you know sometimes we bring
civilians on
and give them sort of the dog and pony
they put two groups
through some obstacles that special
forces soldiers run through
uh in groups and again these exercises
are
you know the cadre are watching to see
what behaviors
come out from uh from the individuals so
it was a group of mbas
who were off the charts intelligence had
industry experience
were were currently getting their mbas
and then a group
of undergrads you're talking 18 19 20
year olds first group of
27 to 35 year olds and
you know naturally brian and his cadre
uh
you know they were showing him a good
time but had an assumption that the mbas
were just going to outperform the
undergrads
like hands down how do you think that
ended up
the the undergrads absolutely decimated
every obstacle
much quicker than the mba group and
it goes to to show you that you know
that even though they had prior uh
experience
more vast experience um those undergrads
actually because they lacked ego you
know it's because they lack the group
the group dynamic it goes to so if you
have a lot of talented individuals that
are humble
and lack ego when they come together
it's an exponential effect one plus one
isn't two with a group that truly
unifies behind a common good one plus
one equals three
that it's an exponential effect
in task unit bruiser there was a point
where we were
i don't know how far we were from
deploying but we knew we were deploying
to iraq
and one of the senior officers at the
command
he came to me and said hey you know
you're going to iraq
do you want to switch out one of your
platoons
with this other platoon commander with
this with this other platoon who the
platoon commander has a lot more
experience than your two
you know your two oics which was seth
and leif
and it's kind of funny because remember
how the
ceilings were out because they were
doing construction so seth and leif were
in the tasking
bruiser office and they hear this
individual
basically asking me if i wanted to
swap out either one of these two so seth
and leif had very little experience they
both done one deployment but they had
just been in the teams for like two
years
and one of the platoon commanders in one
of the other platoons had
a lot more experience like he was a
prior enlisted guy and so the
the senior officer was saying hey you
know you can take one
you know you can take this guy and his
platoon and he's got way more experience
and
it might be a lot better for you and i
was like uh i was like no
and at this point i already knew seth
and life and i go um
no i said these guys have exactly what i
want them to have which is
they're tough they're humble and they
listen and that's all that's all i need
those are like my most important
characteristics and he was like
are you sure and i was like 100.
that was that
uh next section the nine
foundational character attributes of
talent
under pressure one's mental and physical
limits hard
skills rapidly degrade what remains is
character
skills are by design meant for
un meant for predictable situations and
environments
says retired seal commander rich divini
if businesses are interested in forming
organizations and teams that effectively
deal with
unpredictability and complexity they
have to go deeper than the guy
who has the best sales record or the
harvard grad
who's at the top of the class they have
to look at character
character is key because it is an
indicator of a person's capacity
general william boykin points to
capacity
as more important than current ability
quote what are you looking for hard
skills or capacity
ideally you look for both but if you
have to choose
and you have a fair way of doing so
assess their capacity
what is their capacity to learn new
skills what is their capacity to think
for themselves
what is their capacity to problem solve
i just gotta interrupt isn't it
interesting you hear general boinkin
like
one of the priorities that he puts in
there is their capacity to think for
themselves not to follow rules but to
think for themselves
back to the book according to general
boinkin
it is the focus on capacity has made
special operations so successful on the
battlefield and beyond a person's
character is the aggregate of their
deeply ingrained
attributes as we define it the nine
foundational character attributes of
high potential
individuals are drive resiliency
adaptability humility integrity
effective intelligence
team ability curiosity and emotional
strength these traits are predictors of
high performance
these attributes cannot be taught so
they should be the focus
of your hiring
check and then you go into a little spot
a little section about how different
special operations groups sort of weigh
those things out a little bit
differently but they all
are looking for the same basic the same
basic uh things dr carol green
uh air force colonel uh psychologist he
was heavily involved in the marsoc
assessment and selection
he said a grid he's like they're all
basically looking for ice cream
just different like slightly different
flavors but
as you know the the the special forces
guys the seals marsoc
uh you know the afzok guys the pjs and
ccts they're they're all interchangeable
if you throw them into a group
the attributes are are very close
totally
uh you go into resiliency here a little
bit somebody with high resiliency
bounces back from stress quickly is
adaptable and is not easily
discouraged an individual with high
resiliency resists quitting and is
focused on completing goals
essentially resiliency is how people
handle setbacks
and persevere in the face of challenges
they accept failure as part of the
process
they don't accept it passively but
utilize their lessons learned
and mistakes as a basis to grow and
then you go into a well it's a section
about a person that could be considered
possibly one of the most resilient human
beings in the world which is mike day
who is just on this podcast number 241
and you know shot 27 times and
then killed the enemy that had shot him
and
just unbelievable story you put that in
there you you going
so yeah adaptability
you talk about adaptability talk about
humility
and here we go people often asked us
what is the most important trait of any
leader
without a doubt it's humility the us
army
a 244 year old institution credited with
training some of our nation's most
prominent leaders in practically writing
the leadership manual for
leaders in any field recently added
humility as one of the key attributes of
good leaders
to the army doctrine publication 6 tac
22
saying a leader with the right level of
humility is a willing learner
maintains accurate self-awareness and
seeks out others input and feedback
and this is something that one day
on our echelon front ops call i said hey
i've got something to tell everyone in
this group
we've been talking about humility as the
most important characteristic for a
leader for the past
13 years or whatever it was 12 years at
the time
and the army just added this to their
manual which is freaking awesome because
those characteristics hadn't changed for
a long long time in the army but they
realized
if you're not humble you got problems
i just want to say plagiarism is one of
the highest forms of flattery
so if you bring your lawyers at me we
will go to tow a lot of this is taken
from
my mentors i i did not uh credit you in
certain spots
um it goes back to johnny
and i think the military as a whole
there was a point where we viewed
humility as a weakness and i think
at a young age i mistook somebody like
johnny
who's just one of the most humble dudes
he still is
as a slight form of of weakness
it is funny that the army i think sort
of has morphed as well their
their view on that the the criticality
of humility
yeah no doubt about it and you also
realize after you know
you've realized the thing that pointed
this out to me stronger than anything
else was when we would fire a guy
that was going through my training we
would be firing that person
if they were in a leadership position if
they were in a leadership position they
could get fired for safety or
a number of anything any other things
but if they were getting fired from a
leadership position
they weren't generally having safety
problems they weren't having
they knew how to shoot their gun they
were in good physical condition they
were getting fired
because they lack humility which meant
they weren't listening to anybody else
they weren't listening to the critique
from their own
platoon they weren't listening to advice
from their platoon chief or from their
tasking commander anyone else
definitely not the freaking training
cadre so they're just a disaster
and i have to bring up a comment a
youtube comment okay
uh so the johnny kim podcast on youtube
and it says something like you know the
title of the podcast is
johnny kim um you know
seal sniper harvard doctor
astronaut and the first comment on
youtube
is dude can't hold a job
which i thought was pretty funny
uh integrity you guys talk about
integrity i mean these
you go through these characteristics
kind of uh each one effective
intelligence
talk to me about effective intelligence
like what what's effective
intelligence compared to just plain old
intelligence
and i hope this has something to do with
the fact that
speaking of acquiring people there was a
time
in the late 90s where in the seal teams
in the officer community
i wasn't an officer yet but they were
the seals were starting to get popular
and they started getting really good
candidates
for the officer program and so they
started recruiting
and and beyond just recruiting they
started accepting
all these just ivy league ivy league
individuals you'd meet every every every
new group of
officers that would show up the seal
team you know there'd be a bunch of
naval academy guys
because they get a bunch of the billets
every year and then there'd be a bunch
of guys from
freaking harvard and and yale and
these really smart guys and
maybe they didn't have and i'm not
saying this about ever because some of
them were great guys
but not all of them have what i'm hoping
is referred to in this book as effective
intelligence
is that somewhat accurate it is i'm
going to take one step back
so integrity i know we sort of glossed
over that uh josh
cotton dr cotton is very passionate
about this one he's done a lot of
studies and
looked at the data organizations that
are in you know
high ethics or highly uh you know high
in integrity
the culture is much healthier
than organizations that don't and i know
that's sort of an obvious statement but
you look at enron yeah and i think also
you
you you say it seems like an obvious
statement and yet
there's so many organizations that let
those things slide and here's the
problem with letting things slide
when it comes to integrity once this is
you know this slippery slope sometimes
they say a slippery slope fallacy
because you know well just because i did
this doesn't really mean i'm gonna do
that
the slippery slope when it comes to
integrity is i think is
almost unstoppable thing because you
know if i let echo get away with
something
well now he's got something on me and
now he lets me get away with something
we go back and forth we go on this
downward spiral and there's no one that
can
i once once i give up my integrity
i i give up my ability to tighten anyone
else's integrity up
and you've also set a new standard
you've put your personal stamp on
approval
that that behavior is now tolerated yep
and you
that's what makes it so hard you can't
go backwards yeah you can't unring that
bell
it's really hard to do and if you have
to go backwards because look
you can put yourself in a situation what
do you do you own it
you stand up in front of the troops and
you say hey look i made a bad decision
it's a bad personal decision i thought
this was
a good thing to do it didn't make sense
it was the wrong thing i won't let it
happen again
that might be you know that's your
that's your first step in trying to
recover your integrity yeah but when you
give it up that's why
it's so uh you know the moral high
ground
the moral high ground and keeping the
high ground
i talked about this the other day on ef
online it's like once you give up
the moral high ground it's just like
being in combat
you now you now are gonna have to fight
to get it back and it's a freaking
uphill battle and there's a good chance
and you can't get up there
anymore so you cannot give up that
moral and ethical high ground it just
it's it's
one of the worst possible moves you can
make on the battlefield and it's one of
the worst possible moves you can make in
life so
i didn't mean to breeze over integrity
like that um
but no doubt it's a it's a core
component of what you got to be looking
for in people
and people don't scream for it that's
the weirdest thing
nobody ever asks well i should say
nobody i want to be careful on extremes
there
but i've watched you know the
predominance of the hiring i do i manage
a team but most of the hiring that i'm
looking after is executive level and you
know all of these offers combined you're
talking half million cash and more i
mean they're they're significant
compensation and i don't hear anybody
ask the question
can you give me an example of
when you had to hold the line on
integrity
and take the harder path even just that
simple question you won't hear it in an
interview process
it it would it would shock me if i heard
it but it is so fundamental if you don't
have this
the rest doesn't matter if there's if
the integrity is gone
that's it you you cannot have a person
without integrity in your organization
full stop what was interesting is we
were writing this book as
socom was dealing with a number of
ethical
issues and let's be honest a lot of them
were coming from
the seal community and you know we sort
of struggled hey do we have to change
some of the language in here
but you know one individual doesn't
speak for the organization
but they do when they're on the front
lines the way or front pages front page
they speak for your organization
and you know you mentioned ivy league
and and i feel bad sometimes because i
i over index on the ivy league guys and
sometimes i'm critical
there there were some great seal
officers that came out for sure
for sure some outstanding guys no doubt
but they were more
the exception than the uh the norm so as
i'm talking to johnny kim
johnny was like speaking of harvard
that was after he became a steal so he
gets a he gets a pass
and johnny brought up a story in my life
where i'm like johnny that's that's not
a good story
so uh you know we're talking about buzz
we're talking about ryan and him and i
are you know
you could tell we're getting a little
emotional on the phone he's like hey you
remember that time
we had a harvard officer in our buds
class
who actually worked for enron but some
officer
you know i don't know what the
fascination was they're like oh this guy
went to harvard and he was with ed ron
and you know
and he's in buds and um
this guy was i mean arguably one of the
smartest guys in the class not as far as
johnny
um
this guy just alienated
everyone he he thought he was the
smartest man in the room
and he was egotistical he was an a-hole
and johnny's like so he's telling the
story about
we're running to the chow hall and still
there's like 250 225 people in the class
and this guy
knew i was a recon marine and you know
sometimes you'll run the formation
there's one guy that
runs to the right of the uh is it the
left or the left
left this is my yeah for marine that's
that's pretty embarrassing
put his hands up the one that makes your
left mind and he's singing cadence
and he's just ripping on recon and
johnny's laughing on the phone because
the whole class saw this guy just fall
out of the main formation
run out and i just took a hand you know
sort of the the knight
nothing i can but the the hard hand slap
knocked the helmet right off his uh his
head and he goes rolling across the
street he has to run over and i just
took over the cadence and uh
i'm like johnny that was not my best
moment but this guy
i kind of like that moment this guy was
uh
he was going to make it through hell he
he was going to meet the physical
requirements and the mental toughness
requirements
but the cadre stepped in and dropped him
and that's rare
because he was just that toxic
that toxic and it's funny that the
instructors
could recognize that because usually the
instructor's like hey he meets all these
requirements we can read that out of
them
effective intelligence is the ability to
use the intelligence you have
in a real-world setting to solve
problems for which there is no playbook
and that is the heart of special
operations
so there you know we found a study what
would you guess it was the average
gpa of most millionaires that went to
college i have no idea
2.9 2.9
and that's my saving grace because i
think i got a 2.99 yes yeah so
hey average uh but no so what we found
in the people that are off the charts
smart and what we saw on the seal teams
is that they suffered a lot from
paralysis through analysis
or they made things so overly complex
and when you work in
high stake environments time is usually
a factor and it goes back to the the
second law of combat
simple yeah yeah that's that's all good
stuff and
again hey we're not banging on the guys
that came in and
had awesome education and a lot of them
were awesome and and here's another
another reason that it hurt the
community was because these guys would
be coming in
and they were had such high potential
this is in the 90s
there's no war going on they do four
years they they get
they do their system platoon commander
they do their platoon commander they
look at what's ahead of them in the 90s
and it was like oh you're gonna
you're gonna you're gonna you know ride
a desk for the next 18 or whatever the
next 16 years before you can retire and
guys would say you know i'm going to get
out and i'm going to go
do do something else so it hurt us from
just a personnel billeting
standpoint as well but that's uh the
other thing that i've seen is
where you get and look
some people pull this off and they do it
great but there are some people that
have a problem
taking their highly
intellectual view of something and
translating it to the frontline troops
where now the people the people that
have to go and execute whatever it is
you want
them to execute is doing it in a simple
clear concise way that's why
simple is one of the laws of combat but
you know part of the law of combat is
planning keep your
your planning simple the other part of
that law of combat is to communicate
simply and there's a lot of people that
have a hard time doing
not a lot there are some people that
have a hard time doing that
so that's a that effective intelligence
is uh is definitely an important thing
and that is the one
i mean one of the attributes specific to
marsoc is that they called it effective
intelligence and that's you know again
flattery we we took that one it was the
way they described it in
their assessment and selection manual
that that's one of their primary
requirements the way they described it
was
absolutely beautiful had the
advantage of having joined socom late
you know i was a recon marine
we were never part of socom back then
and eventually in 2000 was it five
six marshal debt one led by colonel uh
kaczynski
2004. yeah because they relieved me in
baghdad that's right
and everyone's like yeah this is a
no-brainer but
they could look when they were building
the marsoc assessment and selection
course
they could look at what the seals are in
the sf community and they were very
deliberate and
that's what the marstock community stand
by they're they're just going to be
powerful
they already are yeah you know we were
talking about to bring this over to the
business world
you know when we talk about effective
intelligence and people
over indexing on experience they're
wanting people to come and take a
playbook and run it over here
and and assuming that the situations
that you're going to find
in this particular business are going to
be exactly the same
and so they're thinking well they've
handled these situations over here
they'll be able to handle them here
will be successful end of story it's the
effect of intelligence that's not
assuming
any course of action for a business
problem
they're looking at it that that ability
to take the intellectual horsepower
and look at all of the data points all
of the indicators all of the
little pieces of intel collect them and
put them
into a cohesive picture
that then you explain simply with the
plan of attack
and it's so different than experience
and if we could get people to index on
that
versus the experience you see the
difference immediately you know george
we actually
we talk about the 70 solution that's a
that's a great example what you're
you're explaining in a business context
is again the guys that are wildly
intelligent
when they only have 70 percent of the
operational picture they can't make a
decision
but people high in high effective
intelligence
can draw threads parallels and make
a very decisive decision with incomplete
information and you know they
we pulled a quote out because we were
talking to tracy keough and so she was
talking about the ceo of microsoft
he said we don't want know-it-alls we
want learn-a-dolls
if you can get that how far ahead of the
game
are you uh i'm gonna i'm gonna
reach into some people's brains that are
listening to this right now and i'm just
gonna do a little
a little tweak on their brains because i
promise you i promise you that there's
some people
that when you said hey you're talking
about someone that just takes a playbook
and runs the playbook
and that's it i promise you that there's
some people that are thinking wait
that's what i want
that's what i want right there is i want
someone who's going to take that
playbook and they're going to run that's
what they're going to do
and and i'm going to reach in there and
just i have to stop you from thinking
that because i know that's what you
think you want that's what that's what
leaders think
they think hey look i've got this all
figured out if everyone would just do
what i tell them to do run the playbook
just do what i say to do we'll be good
to go here's the thing there's no
static function in the world
that what you want is non-thinking
apparatus to run a playbook and if you
do if you have something like that
yes automate that get a robot to do that
task and do them over and over again the
same way
when you're hiring a leader you want
them to be able to adapt and change
and make improvements and do whatever
they have to do to win that's what you
want
so if you hear george say hey
we don't want someone that's just going
to run the playbook and you're thinking
no way did i do that
do want that no you don't and this was
the same thing this
happened with the micromanagers coming
through my training when i was running
training you get someone that's thinking
hey
look i've been either i'm experienced or
i know i'm highly educated i know how to
run these operations
so everyone if everyone just get in line
and just do what i tell them to do we'll
be good to go
and what does that turn into it's
micromanagement that you can't tell
everyone what to do there's no way you
can be everywhere at once and everything
falls apart
you need thinking shooters is what we
used to call it so what
what we're offering at ef overwatch is
thinking leaders that will actually
solve problems
yeah you're right and and you know we
made a little vignette a little video
about this
uh but coming up through the army and i
you know jocko i was actually one of
those people that that started to get
out in the 90s i was
i'd gotten through you know i had two
years of line command and i'm thinking i
love this i i got to go to the field i
love being with my soldiers
and then you then you know your time for
command comes up in the army and you're
looking ahead and you're going
now i'm going to say something i don't
want to hear crap about it later mike
but i'm thinking i got a life of harvard
graphics ahead of me
which preceded powerpoint just to bring
you along with the program here
but and so i got out but i have to tell
you
the us army and the us military is the
world's
greatest leadership incubator and
i owe so much back to the military to my
mentors to my coaches to the soldiers to
the non-commissioned officers of people
i served with
and it created in me that thinking
leader
do i have all the answers no no but
that the u.s military when we talk about
ef overwatch we talk about placing
leaders
it's you're in a fishbowl 24 7 365 is a
leader it is the
biggest and best burden you can ever
carry is to be a leader in the united
states military it is just
it's an honor a privilege it's scary as
hell it's rewarding as hell it's
everything
but you're in an incubator to lead and
and i am so so grateful for that and and
so when we talk about the principles in
this book and when we talk about that
effective intelligence
the army helped me in my case deliver
that that
that did i know everything about the
enemy no i had to take all these cues
and start putting pieces together what
do i have to do what are my possible
courses of action what's good what's bad
what's high risk what's low risk and
anyway it just it is it astounded me
how much i learned to think about the
art of leadership coming to the us
military
i mean muskets were not as intuitive
during his days
as you know as we have now but we had
good horses mike
so you know i'm good with that this is
what i have to put up with daily
uh team ability did you guys make up
that word that hyphenated word team
ability
we we did not i we i think we found that
within our research we we liked it right
so we
we stuck with yeah it kind of because we
were talking with brian decker we were
talking a lot of people
you everybody had different versions of
that same word
so we put that together yeah the
teamwork and how different and do you
have the ability to put yourself
whatever level you're at as a team
player
and that there's a certain element of
that to be a follower as well
do you like that word yeah yeah okay
then yeah we came up with it
good to go moving on uh you say about
nothing worth accomplishing it can be
done alone there are no rambos in the
military that might look cool in the
movies but individuals die pretty
quickly on the battlefield or
worse get others hurt their greatest
success requires
that we work together curiosity
exploring the unknown and questioning
the status quo in pursuit of better more
effective solutions
is the key to innovation without curious
individuals nothing would ever change or
improve
emotional strength in the u.s military
and i'm given like these highly
abbreviated definitions and
you guys go into it not not only do you
go into better examples but then
not only not only more detailed
definitions but examples
you know you're talking about the rescue
cap and phillips i mean you got
really cool examples in here to back
these things up but that's what people
buy the book so that they can read those
curiosity already covered that emotional
strength
in the us military the whole man concept
is the belief that the individuals need
to be assessed based on the entirety
of their person mental physical and
emotional an emotionally strong
individual has a positive attitude
high empathy and emotional control in
stressful situations
many of the individuals we interviewed
identified positive
attitude as important to their hiring
decisions attitude is contagious
positivity breeds positivity while
negativity
begets more negativity an individual the
negative attitude can still produce
results
but is often at the expense of company
culture
typically that one person's results are
not worth the resulting damage to the
team
you have i highlighted this section
emotional strength is the ability to
regulate
one's emotions to remain logical under
stress stressful situations
marshawn calls this stress tolerance and
defines it as the ability to deal with
ambiguous
dangerous high pressure or frustrating
events while maintaining control of
emotions
actions composure and effectiveness it
is a universal truth in life that humans
don't make good decisions and emotional
state
people who are able to remain cool calm
and collected in the face of challenges
and the unknown are people you want in
your organization
this is the exact reason soft creates
stressful environments to mimic the
conditions of war
during assessment and selection programs
stress tolerance is so important that
some soft organizations
even use heart rate monitors to evaluate
individuals
psychological physiological
responses to stress
got to stay calm got to be able to
detach
the these were this chapter i mean you
get people that are very passionate ryan
decker was heavily involved in this
chapter
uh rich da vinnie do you ever serve with
rich i did not rich
is a brother um very very passionate
about in fact he has a book called the
attributes 25 hidden drivers of optical
performance
it's about attributes some of his
observations like empathy
you know when you think about it in the
way he described it he said special
operations is very good about
dialing up and dialing down empathy he
said it's almost like a dimmer switch
when you go out on an operation and
you're right in the home there's a
likelihood that there are women and
children in there
and you know you've got to dial down
your empathy to accomplish the mission
not you know
safeguard them while still bringing the
hurt to the
the combatants you're going after um yet
we're very good about down that empathy
back up when we come back from
from from uh operations so um
very detailed conversations very
passionate about these uh these subjects
and um those two were instrumental in uh
in this chapter
yeah you guys dug into some uh like i
said good stuff
and obviously going with getting those
that information from good people
um creating a talent
acquisition plan talk to me about that
well you know one of the many mistakes
that
you know once you get past you know
making sure that your chief human
resources
chief human resource officer is
strategic and tied into your ceo
you have to look ahead you know at that
old adage if
if you fail to plan you're
planning to fail people look at talent
and recruiting and staffing is hey we've
got these open positions let's crank it
there's not
often a plan behind it and that starts
with
looking at your company and it starts
with going okay what is the strength of
our company when it comes to talent
what gaps do we have what gaps do we
have in leadership what gaps do we have
in technology what gaps do we have in
sales
in leaders and individual contributors
do we have key points of failure
do we have only one person that can do
this job and if they go
we've nobody to step up do we have
number twos do we have number threes
okay where are we gonna grow where are
we gonna grow next year
and and you know this could go on and on
and on but the basics
are is you need to be sitting down and
looking at each organization
what are you missing why aren't you
winning in that department why aren't
you winning
in sales why aren't you winning in
product why aren't you winning in
service or whatever and find out what
your gaps are
and that's where you start with talent
and get that down into a plan that says
okay we're going to
go after this in a strategic way we are
going to go out into the market
you know we're going to look within our
own organization first but then we're
going to go out to the market
and we're going to build an organization
and talent acquisition hr
that says these are the people that are
the gatekeepers
and they are going to find and they are
going to know what our success profiles
look like and they are going to bring us
high caliber
people with those character attributes
to be considered for these positions but
you plan it out
versus going oh you know what hey um we
have an open position over here
you know we've authorized 10 head count
in this particular department
you've got an empty seat what do you
need that's not a plan that's just
that's a button to see like we talked
about you you
have to take that time to say what does
my organization look like as far as
talent and people
it's one of the many things that because
everybody's focused on everything else
they don't take the time to go
what's going to bring us into 21 what's
going to bring us into 22 you
and like don robertson said in our book
you have to be hired for the skills
and needs of the future where your
company is going to go and i think we
even brought it up it's like
the term is fighting the last war you
know you're not thinking ahead as to
what you're going to need and so there's
no plan to go after that and build that
for the future
this is one of those things where you it
happens at echelon front sometimes
you'll be working with a company and
and you know they're whatever company it
is it happens all the time companies
caught up in that firefight day to day
they're trying to survive they're trying
to make things happen they got
projects due they got all those things
going on and then you know you ask them
about
you know hey do you do you have anyone
that's looking at you know
six months down the line about where
you're gonna be about what supplies
you're gonna need or whatever just
whatever those
and and you can see they're caught
they're caught like on their heels
because they don't and
if you if you think about what you're
talking about here a talent acquisition
plan
how we're actually going to build a
company
and you think about how many companies
are out there
that the way they think about is just
it's a firefight right
we need to fill this seat right now
that's the plan the plan is hire someone
to
do that role next week we have a new
plan the plan is hire someone to
fill this other role yep there's no
unified long-term strategic plan of what
we're doing and what does the military
do better than
well there's many things they do better
than most
there's always a pipeline there's always
a pipeline there's always a plan there's
a succession plan there is a pipeline of
high quality people coming into a
pipeline so we can assess
and select and put them into those
things it's
it's a forethought we have people that
are out there doing that stuff but
they're actually thinking what do we
need for 21 22 23 24 25 well
even that goes all the way out the
systems and equipment
and but the military does it all whereas
corporations will go
to your point they're out there
firefighting oh wow wow i've got nobody
on team i got to bring somebody in
but if you do have an opening on your
team it should be hey we got a pipeline
ready talent that's banging down the
door to get into this place
because we have a talent mindset we have
leadership we are focused
we empower our people we lead our people
we drive our people we win
and people will want to be a part of
that yeah you guys break it down and
hear
what you have to do what you have to do
to create this
talent acquisition plan defining
greatness in your organization identify
your high performance assess your talent
uh objective assessments just you guys
go line by line and
explain all these things in great detail
build your talent profiles mike you
already mentioned that
workforce planning i mean you just go
through the detail
so that people that don't have a plan
can actually
open up this book and put a plan
together
so that they're moving forward with a
with a route right with a route
instead of just moving forward in the
blind which is crazy to think about and
yet it happens all the time
it's just start with the conversation
the the the senior leaders and companies
are are not having this conversation
and that that's where it starts there's
many ways to go about this you don't
need to bring
you know bring in a top five consulting
firm yes you can bring in ef overwatch
that's my plug
but you know this this isn't something
where you're going to bring in
you know industrial organizational
psychologists and you're going to create
assessments that are going to solve this
for you
this is this is this is basic leadership
that you have to have the discipline to
follow through on
and you can create these processes from
scratch special operations community had
to start somewhere
they basically started from scratch and
you can build this it's going to take
time
but you have to have those conversations
and you have to have those conversations
all the time
every every week every month are we
selecting
not only for what we need now but five
years down the line
if you're creating a talent profile how
does that talent profile
change with the digital transformation
five years from now what's going to be
required in terms of attributes
five years down the road or 10 years
down the road
next section is about
attracting top talent what talented
people look for attracting talent
requires knowing what talented people
want
many companies assume that the answer is
money and perks they offer competitive
salaries and wonderful
creature comforts high-end expression
machines fully stocked kitchens pool
tables
and more and yet they still hemorrhage
talent on the other end we've seen
countless people turn down higher pay to
stay with a company
where they feel challenged and love the
people they work with
if you want people to dedicate their
talents to your company
you must offer something equally
valuable in return
since talented people have high drive
they are interested
they're just as interested in
achievement and challenge as money
let's not fool ourselves if your
compensation and benefits are not
competitive within your industry
you'll lose out on talent but attracting
top people goes beyond that beyond money
talented people look for talented
leaders and colleagues a sense of
community
a challenge opportunities for
professional and personal growth
and purpose talent attracts talent
it's a magnet good leaders or you want
to go
even in my military career i know who
those good leaders are and i'm like oh i
got to get in that organization because
they're going to help me get to the next
level they're going to pass on that
experience that coaching and mentorship
i did that in the military i do it here
in the corporate world i've been doing
it for 20 years you know one of the
people in this book i actually followed
to another organization he's like hey
hey i need i'm like i'm there i'm there
you know he goes
do you want to talk about the
compensation i said no
let's just move let's go um and
the great part is is that you know
there's a lot of bad habits that get you
into a vicious cycle
but attracting great talent gets you
into a
positive cycle of attracting better
talent
all the time your alumni
and the people currently in your
organization are the best way to attract
talent
hands down i mean you're doing it right
now
you've probably caused a lot of
young men and women to enlist or or see
commissions
in the military based off the lessons
they're learning yes that is a factual
statement
there we go there's a lot of a lot of
people out there that are
straight up in the military um from
listening to this podcast because i hear
from
all the time it's awesome in fact we
were having dinner last night an air
force individual came up
and said hey i follow everything you do
thank you for what you do
and then he asked he handed me the phone
said hey can you take a picture of
jacqueline
mike's rally he's like yeah okay
so you know we tell the story and this
is 100 true i didn't come from the
military lineage
i didn't i'd seen the movies i thought
they were pretty cool
i thought the military was potentially a
path for me there was multiple paths um
the backup dancer for madonna was just
not going to be uh a career that that
provided
uh you know what i needed to live so i
wouldn't know that an inside joke
inside it's also a frightening mental
image i assure you
there's a sequin thong somewhere in his
house so
when i was i was 18
and uh living in colorado i ran into and
i'm not going to mention his name let's
just call him staff sergeant ben
staff sergeant ben was attending the
university of colorado
on the mesep program which is the same
program i eventually attended at texas a
m the marine enlisted commissioning
education program
where they take the enlisted sent them
to get their degrees and
ultimately earn a commission so i met
ben and at the age of 18 here you have
the staff sergeant from the force recon
community
and he was humbly confident he was
articulate
highly respectful to everyone what
differentiated him from the other
marines was even though he was
you know this dual cool you know highly
decorated is he was actually nicer
than the other marines he had nothing to
prove and
physically the whole man concept he was
there he had a stature about him
and when i'm 18 i'm like dude
that guy's awesome that's who i want to
be
that's who i want to be i mean to the
point where i enlisted in the marine
corps to become a recon ring
because of the image because of
the person the marine corps put forward
in front of young men and women like me
when you have strong leaders stepping up
representing their communities
it sends a very strong message to people
that
i want to join that and it never changed
when i went to infantry school
you know seven recon marines stepped in
front of us and said who wants to screen
from recon i'm like oh my god it's like
seven
staff sergeant ben's and then when i
finally met the seals
you know while i was in the marine corps
i'm like oh my god that's my next
challenge
and uh your alumni and current uh
employees or uh team members are your
greatest
uh recruiting tool always yeah i always
i've had many conversations with uh
businesses as
you know they're losing somebody
somebody decides to leave and they
start thinking about we're gonna hit him
with the no compete we're gonna get him
with this we're gonna get him with that
and i i say
i got a better idea why don't you wish
them luck
and thank them for what they did while
they were here and
let them go about their way because
if you send them out the door with a
kick in the ass they're not coming back
if you send them out the door and say
good luck it's been great working with
you
first of all they're not going to go out
in the street and say you know oh jock
was a jerk you don't want to work for
him he's going to go
i left them but they're good people
right and
those people will come back to you by
the way i mean eventually they're going
to come back
because you know somebody is over the
reason they're leaving is because if
you're treating people well
the reason people are leaving is because
someone is lying to them
you know they're lying they're giving
them some line that they're not going to
be able to uphold
so when people are leaving it's it's
your alumni you got to treat them like
your alumni and say hey good luck
let me know if you ever need anything
you know even though you're working for
a competitor it's all right
you know you're my friend yeah you know
we we took it one step further
we have some of the the just great
members of my team
about 90 days down the road they'll call
them up where they went
hey how are things going for you hey was
it everything that you expected i hope
you're
experiencing great success and it's
everything because there's people that
move along because for whatever reason
their next challenge may be somewhere
else
and you have to be accepting of that and
you and you have to to your point
encourage that too
and if you have good number two you're
fine you don't worry about it
but reach out to somebody and say hey
how are you doing you know what hey if
things aren't going well there
hey give me a call give me a call
because we loved having you here
you wouldn't believe how many people are
going you know what they don't have to
admit that they made a mistake they're
going
you know what it wasn't as good it
wasn't as good
we call we we call it the ultimate
litmus test
it's if there's pride in the
organization whether you're with the
organization at that time
or after look at the marine corps when
somebody says hey
you know what do you do well i'm a
former marine they
proclaim that vice somebody's saying hey
i'm a coder
no if if they're pr prideful in their
organization they say i'm a googler
and so when they identify with the
organization it's one they're
sort of identifying that there's a
talent talent-oriented culture
and that there's strong leadership at
that company to the point where they
have a sense of pride
and that becomes a talent magnet for
other people at that
cocktail party that you set it so uh
very powerful we can't uh sort of over
index on that one enough
no and it's just you know everybody in
your company is a talent scout
everybody in your company is an example
of what you hold as important
especially your leaders when they're out
in the public and
everybody should always be looking and
we talked about this like
you know the term is opportunistic
hiring most people are only hiring
for an open position but if you've got
talent scouts out there they're bringing
talent to you and saying you know what
this person's a difference maker this
isn't a player we have got to find a
place in our organization
so everybody when you have a talent
mindset it's not just you know from the
ceo
down all the way through that you've got
the mechanics and you're looking for top
talent
but it's all your employees once they're
in the door
their branding going hey you want to
come try out here this is a tough place
to work
and that's exactly what happens in the
special operations community there is no
shortage of people
signing up to get a beating no shortage
whatsoever and
in an ideal world if you have a company
with that kind of mindset
you'll have those people going you know
what i got to work there because that
that's going to make me better
you know jockey you brought a point
about when somebody leaves your
organization you show them respect and
and try to keep that relationship intact
what we found great organizations do
even in the hiring process
if they don't hire somebody is they
spill still spend time to say hey
we'd love to debrief you on why we
didn't select you for this position
and they show them a great deal of
respect the special operations community
does this when somebody drops from the
buds they do pull them aside and they
have a conversation hey what do you want
to do in the navy
what have you learned from this process
and they speak highly of the seals or
the special forces
selection process when they leave we've
seen organizations that are so highly
respectful to people that they don't
even hire
that at the end of the debrief they say
wow
no other organization has done that for
me they just simply some don't even
respond
or some just say hey we didn't select
you thanks and
they said it's not uncommon
organizations that sort of follow this
this this tactic it's part of their
culture
where the person looks at him and says
do you have any other positions
available in the
in the organization and literally make
hires based off that by showing them
such a a great experience during that
hiring process
it drives me nuts to have a bad process
because effectively and especially in
today's era of social digital media
that experience is your brand going back
out in the marketplace
and you've created an impression you've
created a customer consumer or you've
pushed one away
if you didn't select them so it you know
how you treat people in the process it
says everything about your company says
everything about having a talent mindset
yeah and the bottom line with all these
things that we're talking about all
these behaviors is your you have a
culture that people
that are talented are gonna wanna go to
and that's what this you know this
section's about
a sense of community the challenge the
growth opportunities
having a purpose there salary and
benefits giving people ownership giving
people control over their own destiny
and that all those things you kind of
sum up here with
brand yourself as a talent magnet the us
military especially special operations
has skillful marketing and branding
which is very weird for me to say
but i know it's very true their branding
i mean let's face it the marine corps is
branding itself
way before branding was a thing same
with the army i mean
i remember i was totally brainwashed
when i was a kid
to be all you can be or the few the
proud marines like that was just 100
percent
just my whole br the branding in my
mind is stuck to this day uh
you know the few the proud marines
rangers lead the way that others may
live
uh de oppresso libre libre how do you
say that i can't believe i can't say
that
the oppresso libre is that right i think
you got it right
yes sorry tim kennedy
bro i'm sorry tim kennedy de apresso
liber there you go
to free the oppressed the only easy day
was yesterday
and what you're doing with these things
is is the other
the other big part of this is employee
value proposition
what you as an employee as employer
offer
to your employees and you kind of you
kind of lay out some
you lay on one price waterhouse coopers
from empowering mentorships to customize
coaching
pwc provides you with the support you
need to help you develop your career
you'll work with people from diverse
backgrounds and industries
to solve important problems are you
ready to grow
here's the here's the ranger one
recognizing that i volunteered as a
ranger fully knowing the hazards of my
chosen profession
i will always endure to uphold the
prestige honor and high esprit de corps
of the rangers acknowledging the fact
that a ranger
is a more elite soldier who arrives at
the cutting edge of battle by
land sea or air i accept the fact that
as a ranger
my country expects me to move further
faster and fight harder
than any other soldier rangers lead the
way
branding i hate calling that stuff
branding because it's so badass
using social media to reach top talent
all right let's hear it guys you guys
apparently you know you just talked
about this what are we talking about
last night with socom doing oh yeah
socom is starting a podcast
who did they reach out to they they
reached out to me but
yeah it's very cool what they're doing
you know they've got a they just wanted
to you know get my kind of
cut on it and very cool what they're
trying to do you know they're just
trying to get the word out there and
and then you pointed out to me that
whatever a year ago
socom started an instagram account so
we see our own special operations
community building
their social media presence so that they
can
communicate with the next generation of
special operations
humans the military has been
pretty good about this so back in the
late 90s or mid 90s x games was
really coming to to to fruition
and the military started creating their
own extreme sports teams
because that's where they knew the new
talent is that that's where that you
know the demographic of the 18 or i'm
sorry
let's say 15 year olds to the 25 year
olds was
was pushing towards that time
where do you think the military is going
now for recruiting
uh video games esports teams they're
putting esports teams together now
if you asked our generation when they
said hey we're gonna go recruit out of
the esports
or video game uh talent pools we'd
probably say
no way yeah hey that
future seals and future marshal you know
raiders and
special forces are not going to come out
of those communities that's wrong that's
that's where the new talent lays not all
of the town there's still town out there
playing sports
uh you know on teams wrestling but
you know that's just this new generation
they play a lot of video games and
that's where they're finding uh success
with their recruiting
yeah um i'm curious about that video
games make me nervous
because people get addicted to them and
yeah it's really it's a real thing it's
a real thing
so let's be honest yeah it missed my
generation my my dad was not big on
video games in the house
yeah we didn't have it that's why when i
would go to my friend's house i would
stay up till four while they were
sleeping playing the video games
nintendo uh mike tyson's uh punch-out
but what did the guys usually do when we
got back from operations oh bro i
i mean my first deployment to iraq they
had halo set up between tents and then
they had
this so seals i was already like like
you guys are playing video games
wait what is this what are you guys
doing pac-man i mean i don't know
i'm so out of it i'm from you know back
in the day i don't appreciate it
so i'm thinking what is it so i like i
went in there looked and so you see
whatever
the guys were playing halo and and
i just didn't really get it and i
thought it was this weird couple you
know
five or six seals that were all into it
but then they had a siege
soda tournament of halo
did you hear what i just said we're in
iraq we're on deployment we're fighting
the enemy
and they have a at the command
of joint special operations task force
for iraq they have a halo tournament
so that's a little bit embarrassing so
it's embarrassing that i got seals doing
it
it's even more embarrassing that they
have a siege sort of tournament
and the height of embarrassment was when
my
two players went up there for the
tournament
not only did they win they utterly
destroyed everyone
and i guess in that game you you in the
game halo the version that they were
playing you have to get to 50 kills
and in the finals these two guys in the
finals
they killed the opponent 50 times and
they got killed
once and they came back and they were
super stoked and i just was
uh i was like gentlemen i'm very
disappointed
what's really crazy is uh just i mean
great guys and one of them was a total
freaking physical stud the other one was
one of my bad ass you know pipe hitting
seals so they were awesome guys
so i don't know maybe i'm misjudging who
did it does make me nervous though
because people get addicted to those
video games
yeah it's kind of for the same reason
they get addicted to other stuff too
though a lot of the time because they
don't have like other stuff going on
necessarily yeah
but i don't know it's been kind of
proven to that vid
video games are like a good method of
problem solving like in your brain
so people it's surely it's true
they can be conducive in certain
circumstances why don't you take jujitsu
and do some problem solving
there is that too but you get guys who
play video games and jiu jitsu you see
what i'm saying
i'm saying it can be it can have a
little role in there it should have a
little role
have you been have you been good at any
video game ever in your whole life no
you mike shirley i i tried playing with
these guys i would take two steps and
die yeah and i eventually
yeah you're talking about halo that
one's like okay that's that one's kind
of
advanced like you mentioned mike tyson
punch out yeah i never
i never made it to that who mentioned
mike tyson did you mention that yeah no
it's too bad i beat mike tyson buncho i
beat mike tyson punch out and
regular punch out you know what the what
the difference is no
nothing really except one is the last
guy's mike tyson
you know brown guy and then on regular
punch out the last guy is mr dream
same exact pixel formation of the guy
except he's a little lighter because
that's when i think mike tyson ran into
some problems
publicly i think with the law and
whatnot and what not
you know but i think they just had a
documentary come out on
the evolution of video games for for
netflix
yeah you should check that out thank you
for standing up for this generation yes
sir appreciate that yes sir
yeah all right moving back to the
subject at hand
it's i think these lessons
creating the hiring team creating the
hiring team is one of the most important
decisions
to make in the talent war but we see
companies make the same four mistakes
again and again
here they are b players or c players
being put in charge of hiring you
already kind of mentioned that
that's not a universal statement but it
does happen
the hiring team is homogeneous
homogeneous homogeneous homogeneous
there we go
thank you actual trolls tightening up
the english major over there i'm trying
the hiring team is homogeneous which
means what we've got a team here and
they're all
they're all all the same people they're
all engineers they're all sales people
one thing or to put it in the context of
special operations if you just selected
breachers
to be the team of people selecting not
not not the point man
not the navigator yeah your breachers
are going to look for
future breachers number three there's no
training
what's the training that you're talking
about you know how to
dig in and first of all and you know
i've got to say this is that every time
you hire there are legal ramifications
i could tell you horror stories about
asking the wrong questions um
no it was great actually i had i
literally had a senior hiring manager go
in and there was a lady that came in and
one of his questions was is when are you
due
and i'm like really and yeah she wasn't
pregnant
so that made that just she got an offer
on the spot for me we saved the company
a couple million dollars in a lawsuit
but the training you have to teach
people to make sure that you're asking
questions that are simply job related
and performance related number one
but number two how do you dig in and
examine those questions how do you
put that person under pressure how do
you pressure test them and
train your hiring managers otherwise you
get
five guys on the engineering team into
my example five breachers
who are all asking questions about
breaching you're asking engineers and
they're all asking
different well how did you do this at
this company they go to the next person
you you get candidates that come out go
well i answered the same question seven
times and
hopefully i got it right six out of
seven times but you need to
train your interviewing team as to what
your success profile is
and you know there are nine attributes
but those
you're not looking for all nine maybe
it's three maybe it's four maybe it's
two for this specific role
how are you going to dig in on those and
elicit responses that tell you
are they a person of high drive are they
a person of high resiliency
are they adaptable do they have team
ability how are you digging
in and which characteristics you're
looking for depend on what the success
profile of that particular role is and
you have to train people to do that
interviewing is not a skill that people
just out of thin air can do very very
well
it takes time to train and the more you
train those people
the you know the more clear they become
on selecting
the best candidate that's in front of
them for that role
so training them to that process what is
the process that works for you
for this organization your your hiring
team of a players needs to understand
the process
and then they under they need to
understand as george is talking about is
what are you looking for
during that process so brian decker with
sfas they would continually go through
training as they came up with obstacles
and identifying that hey the reason
we're putting them through this specific
obstacle is we're looking for these two
attributes and this is how you
judge based off the scorecard where they
they they score on that attribute so
that's the the training we're talking
about let me say this one thing
we say a players because a true a
player has humility
the ability to look at a bunch of young
seal candidates or a bunch of future
employees and say
that that girl right there she has the
potential to be a lot better than i am
and she's going to make me she's going
to raise my performance as well she's
going to raise the bar and she's going
to challenge me
a players can do that because they want
competition they want healthy
competition they want to be surrounded
by other a players
you put b players or c players what
we're saying there is again it goes back
to
you know fear-based hiring is i don't
want to be outshined
that that johnny kim right there i i
will be
a non-player in the organization if he's
there we're not taking him
that that's what that's what's what
happens and so when you have ego
and you have people that are mediocre
performers in charge of your hiring
guess what you're gonna get
mediocre talent uh the last mistake that
people make
is hiring as a secondary function
so we're not going to take jacqueline
willink as a troop commander
tasking commander and say hey you got to
train to go to war oh hey by the way
you've got to
cut over to buds every day at 3 pm to
assist with the assessment selection
you you can't do the phrase in the
military to think shitty one thing well
yeah
we take in this this is hard to take one
priority
we take a players off the battlefield
guys who want to continue going to war
and we say hey
for the next two years actually you're
gonna have a greater impact on the
community
your sole job your one thing it's not a
secondary function this is your primary
function for the next two years
or six months is focusing on
filling the talent funnel and assessing
and selecting people into this
organization that's what it means by a
secondary function and then you could
score it and then you can do a feedback
loop if you've got the same people in
eight
i mean you'll have multiple teams across
multiple departments
but once you've seen how they interview
if if each one of those talented
candidates is going through the same
group of people and getting the same
structure you can go back and evaluate
the results you can get that feedback
loop okay we hired this person
how did they do or we hired this person
and they didn't do well
what did we miss in the process and
you're going back to the same group of
people as how to iterate a little bit
better
and you get a little bit better each
time but if you keep changing that team
out
you're effectively you have no standard
or you get the standard of the day with
the team that you put together
but if you get those a players you make
hiring
the priority for what they do you train
them properly
you can look at how we're doing and how
do we exponentially increase what
they're doing
that's hard for a business leader to
sometimes very hard
very very hard so what you're telling me
to do is take my best salesman
or saleswoman take them off the line for
six months
and have them focus on hiring the next
generation of sales leaders
and our answer is yes in the short term
a tactical mindset that may hurt
if you have a strategic mindset for the
long term
for the long run if he hires
three or four solid sales leaders
that's going to have a much more
exponential effect and impact
on the organization again that's hard to
do it was hard for the seal community to
take guys like
you off the battlefield and say hey we
need you to run training now we know
where you wanted to be
and so again a lot of this is getting
that we say talent mindset getting
business leaders just to make that
mental paradigm shift
of out of that tactical mindset and into
a strategic
mindset to play the long game and that's
what the top war is
it's the long game it's just that
important
it you know everything in your
environment your your product your
service
the economy the market the global
conditions are gonna change and they're
gonna change
rapidly but those nine attributes
don't change and they allow you to
confront
any circumstance as a business
with confidence and to win
those things just won't change
everything around you will change but
those leadership principles
those nine character attributes those
are the foundations
and they will let you attack and win in
any given situation
when you don't pay attention to them
you're firefighting
covid comes along oh my god what do we
do everybody's you know chicken littles
and
and it becomes a very difficult problem
to solve versus okay got it roger that's
today's situation
let's go
next section here is characters revealed
at one's
limits and there's a subsection called
mike feels the pressure
this is it mike thought staring up the
rope i'm going to fail out of buds
because of a freaking rope
two weeks prior mike had completed hell
week the instructors had even pulled him
aside and said you're one of the
standout leaders in the class
we know what you can do as a leader so
we need you to step aside so we can test
and evaluate
other officers yet now mike was
struggling to climb
a basic rope like he had been climbing
since day one of the marine corps
he had been climbing ropes for years and
he was good at it he never failed to get
up one
until now for the first time in training
mike was displaying serious signs of
fatigue
it was an ideal moment to test him so
the instructors dug in
shouting up at him the other students
who had already completed the exercise
watched from their nearby formation mike
started up the rope again
he could sense all eyes on him he could
feel the pressure
he made it 10 feet and dropped the
instructors kept yelling and mike
started up the rope again
and again and again mike was frustrated
he felt like a dirt bag for not being
able to get up the rope but there was no
way he was going to quit he started up
the rope again
and fell again he got to his feet and
prepared to start up the rope again
but the instructors stopped them and
pulled him aside out of view from the
other students
it's okay we all have these days one of
the instructors said
we wanted to apply some pressure to you
to see how you would react
and whether you would quit the
instructors didn't really care
whether mike made it to the top of the
rope or not
good little test see where it's at
that that day and again i'd been in the
marine corps for
what five years at this point climbed
plenty of ropes was good at
climbing ropes i remember that day just
something with the body was off i had
zero energy
and you talk about
feeling like the eyes were on me
yeah like i i was almost near tears not
not not from the pressure but i would
just spent
all that together i i was i was done
and i mean it just reinforces the point
that
you know you say character cannot be
created where none exists
and you truly don't know people until
you push them
to the limits that's not just physical
limits that's also
mental limits and that's the point of
the special operations
assessment and selection it's not
because we're sadistic
maybe maybe we are a little but it's not
to put these
these young men and women through uh you
know pain
for our benefit there's a purpose behind
it much like an interview process
is we know that once we can push them to
the threshold that's our moment okay
now we're going to see if this
individual has what it takes if they
have the right attributes
one of the things and you go back to the
attributes one of one of our colleagues
uh
jason tushin uh you know he talked about
resiliency the whole point of
a lot of you know the special operations
assessment selection is to see how
resilient people are
he talked about in bud's attracts much
like the other special operations some
pretty phenomenal human beings like ncaa
athletes and olympic athletes
and when he ran first phase
he saw a lot of these you know what
people consider exceptional athletes
quit and he said they were low on
resiliency
because this was the first time they had
failed
in their life and that's a point in the
training as he says just to keep
knocking people down to see how they
react
and when you have a high achiever who's
never really experienced failure
and they repeatedly fail in buds or
these other assessment programs
sometimes they quit
and that's what you're looking for but
somebody who's
experienced nothing but obstacles in
their life
is well is more prepared for what they
face in special operations and more
equipped to deal with crisis than than
some of these
exceptional athletes who've just never
really faced challenge
yeah you're going to fail some stuff
they're going to make sure you fail some
stuff
100 like you're not going to pass
everything i don't care who you are
they're going to make you sure you fail
some stuff to make sure that when you do
fail something you don't lose the bubble
you talked a little bit about the
interview process and you go into the
interview process here
and uh here's a strategy on
on you you go on a bunch of stuff i'm
gonna skip to one part
uh for guidance on strategy look to
special operations murder
boards murder boards are not quite as
terrifying as they sound they are full
of pressure but professionally run
an operator sits on one side of the
table and on the other side
is a psychologist and five to eight
senior enlisted
and officers representing the entire
community the psychologist has
previously assessed the operator to
identify potential red flags
the senior panel then digs in raising
the pressure by probing the red flags
and presenting complex scenarios
they ask difficult questions and push
against sore spots
to see how the operator reacts if you
approach your interviews a little more
like a soft
murder board you can reveal valuable
information
to that end we have five tips number one
know what you're looking for with each
question number two
create a core set of questions to be
used with each candidate
number three ask scenario based and
behavioral questions
number four add challenges number five
push
candidates outside their comfort zone
you gotta be careful on the legal side
of this huh george
you did you do um and and that's where
you know that training comes in that we
talked about earlier you
people have to understand you know um
hiring decisions there's a lot of law
around it and so you want to train those
people effectively but you can create an
enormous amount of pressure
on somebody by asking them difficult
questions and you know it's funny when
we're
when when we're teaching veteran
candidates do you the number one
candidate
or the number one question that stumps
people executives and military people
alike
i'll just ask them a simple question
tell me about your leadership style
and people think from muscle memory they
have muscle memory that oh i should be
able to answer this and they go on and
on and on and on i get that with execs i
get that with veterans
but push people to to describe
themselves put them in uncomfortable
situations talk about failures
tell me about a time that you failed and
and there are several executives that if
you can't talk about how you failed
and failed miserably and got back up and
what you learned
from it that's a person you need to
avoid but yeah there's
there's a lot of law around it but if
you know what you're looking for with
each question
you plan your questions you plan your
inter you know your interviewing panel
your murder board
you can create a lot of pressure but
mind you there's a balance too
because you you don't want to make it
like the military version of it because
canada's going
okay i'm not working there but there's
you can carve a simple balance where
they know
they're going to be tested in your
environment and those people that know
they're going to be tested in your
environment
the right people are going to be drawn
to your environment because of that test
any any person who's of talent that's
worth their salt that comes through an
easy interview process and rocks it
in the back of their head when they walk
out there they're going okay that was a
little bit easy
and so now they're starting to think
about well okay that's that was a little
too easy
but a person with true talent that wants
to be challenged that wants to be valued
and
you know work in an environment where
there's the grind and the drive
that tough process they're gonna go okay
i'm ready for this bring it
let's go let's do this and you find out
a lot by putting people under pressure
in that scenario
and let's dispel the notion that you
know we call it a murder board and
you've you've been on them
people aren't yelling at you yeah no
just out asking and
they're looking if you give an answer
they whether they like it or not they're
gonna dig a little
in a very professional manner and and
some murder boards go quickly because
they identify that this person's humble
and they're admitting you know past
mistakes and that they learn from it and
that they're
they're still a work in progress and
improving and those murder boards go
quickly
it's the others where somebody comes in
they're overly confident and they're
arrogant and so
that's where people that are trained to
assess those behaviors and this is one
big
behavioral interview this is the
military's version of a behavioral
interview
uh those go very long and uh it almost
becomes like a confessional
uh they just they just keep digging
themselves now another tactic
to that is after you put the person
through a murderboard just like one
person goes out and say hey
how did you feel about that process what
do you think you could have done better
what areas didn't you expand upon to see
now if they can do a
what do we call a brutally honest
self-assessment like hey you know what
man i wish i could do that again
um i missed this this i didn't reinforce
this point and so if that person's
trained they come back in say hey
real real self-reflective
after action that they just gave and one
of the reasons that we put this specific
technique in there
is because most interviews and companies
are done on a one-to-one basis
and jocko echo i bet i you could i could
put you in one of these murder boards
and you could watch three other people
ask questions
and they'll have their opinions but just
in the observation mode
that is of tremendous value just to
watch people how they answer how they
act how they think
how they reason through a particular
scenario how they
explain their problem-solving
methodology so
so many interviews due to the
firefighting and the time and you know
that this is reactionary they don't put
the time into it they don't put people
in a room and go
okay this was my impression of the
answer to the question
this is how i think they'll work or
succeed or fail or struggle in this
particular environment
you can get actually a lot out of
observation which is why we put this in
the book
i mean to give an example of what are on
those murder boards and
you probably remember this one is
they're going to ask you an ethical
question you're dealing with a boss
who does something highly unethical um
you know what actions do you take uh
and the response is gonna tell you a lot
about the person
yeah yeah you guys do a great job of
kind of
laying all the stuff out from how to
observe them to do role plays with them
case case studies and scenarios um
you've
got all that stuff in here observation
what to look for how to look for it
different situations you can look for it
and i mean it's just it's just a very
thorough
chapter and then you get into assessment
tests
and you talk about you know the the iq
test that the army used and
uh just the the different assessment
tests that get
used now so
that's all good one of those tasks you
comment on here one company we work with
at ef overwatch using
aptitude motivation and personality
assessment to weed out candidates our
veterans despite being high performers
were all scoring very low on the test
and thus being eliminated from the
hiring process curious
mike took the test for himself his score
just 57
a failing grade so what was up with that
test
so your assessment tests naturally have
bias
built in by whoever designed that test
and there was a bias
against you know i'm not saying in a
negative light
veterans are very different from the
demographic that
test was based around the bottom line
we're trying to say here is assessments
are good it's another layer to the
process that you use to select people
especially if you have talent profiles
and when you do these talent profiles to
identify your high performers
you also want to do that against your
low performers to see if the
assessment test is actually accurate
because if your high performers and low
performers in the same role
are generally getting the same results
that that assessment test is
most likely not relevant or added value
to that process
yeah is it measuring what you want it to
measure right
is it determining the success factors
and one of the challenges with companies
is that and this is just
you know kind of that that inside the
talent acquisition function and talent
management function people will
buy an enterprise-wide solution and
apply that test across the board
and just say okay this test applies to
everybody and in mike's particular case
it's screening out veterans
and and we're able to look at that and
go something every
yeah something's wrong um but it's hard
to persuade people
that you know something they've invested
a good amount of money in is
not showing them what it should show
them i mean they're very
wedded to their solution they're they're
bought in
and it's hard to move them off the mark
but mike was an exceptional example of
where
people are using something that's not
showing success factors
that you want it to be showing you
it's another data point yeah so we do
see companies that
use these personality assessments as a
either no go or go criteria
and i would caution people not to do
that
you talked about not being a rules
follower
funny enough we had a company that
recently assessed one of our
people and you know i won't say what
specific organization this person works
for
um but he's with a very unique
organization
and he's been in that seat for five
years which is an indicator that this
guy is a high performing individual
ethical absolutely and when he took this
test the company came back and said this
guy's not you know
it shows that he doesn't follow rules
and we sort of had to explain the
context of the role he was in and say
he finds a way to win and that may be
why
he's not testing well on that one
criteria on that assessment
so you've got to be cautious even like
josh cotton dr cotton that does this for
a living
will will caution you uh with regards to
results on assessments he said yeah you
got to take it with a grain of salt
and some people to use a phrase that
that you know i remember
hearing it muster actually assessment
tests are not inoculations
they don't insulate you from making a
bad hire
they don't inoculate you from you know
all the risk in the world you need to
use them as mike says they're just one
more data point
but they it all begins and ends with
knowing what success looks like for a
particular role
and that requires thought it requires
you know planning
and and mapping that out how you're
going to go do it
like i said you got that chapter locked
in the next chapter
goes into the fact that you can't hire
or fire your way to success
talent acquisition is only one part of a
two variable equation for success
talent plus leadership equals victory
and then there's a story in here
about mike and a little task unit that
you were in called task unit charlie
and what's interesting about tasking to
charlie so tasking a bruiser and tasking
to charlie
and tasking to alpha were all at seal
team three and
every one of those task units had some
great guys in them
and you know if you put the bell curve
on all of them they'd all be relatively
the same group of
you know seals you know a couple low
guys couple high guys bunch of guys in
the middle i mean just
just kind of typical not nothing good or
bad just typical
but it didn't really work out that way
from a leadership perspective
no it did not so pulled from the same
talent pool like like you said the
the talent profile for both the the task
units was the exact same
and this is where you know we caution
people on the
you know this is why we end the book
with this chapter
is you had two groups where the
resources the talent everything was
predominantly the same same budgets same
weapon systems
same people really and one rised
raised to the occasion and one fell
below
the standard in the seal teams and was
toxic
and the final determination was
leadership
so bad leadership can poison any
talent pool of exceptional people it it
just can
in that i i'm so
fortunate i got to observe that at a
young tenure
in my career and what i benefit too is
you know i got plucked out of that task
unit and put in your task unit and it
talks about how
i i wasn't the root of the problem but
the person that was the root of the
problem i basically threatened
because i have an allergic reaction to
people that are just
selfish and all about themselves and
this individual wasn't he
he wasn't to solely blame but he was the
impetus of the the problem
and so i came i guess with warnings when
they sent me over to you
and then all of a sudden i start to
prosper and
i become your operations officer i was
your assistant operations officer you
put me in charge of the operations
officer
uh you that was the remote day and then
you promoted me
two months later to uh delta platoon
aoyc
you know the funny thing is a lot of the
guys the deployment after that where
seth stone
took basically tasking a bruiser back to
iraq and we ended up in the battle of
sauder city a majority
of the guys in that troupe were from
task unit charlie
so again you put them under a great
leader and they did exceptional things
so that's why we say you can no longer
you know you can't fire or hire
fire your way to success ultimately you
have to lead and you have to develop
your people
and that's what this chapter is about
yeah we we kind of brought it around to
you know as we mentioned earlier in the
book you have to treat your human
capital
as importantly or as important as your
financial capital
and this was a way to kind of close that
out to say
the journey doesn't end when you hire a
players you get this whole process right
that's not the end of it you're not done
and we did this little video clip
and we call it the talent war the
interesting thing about this title is
and we went into this in the video is
that war doesn't end it's continuous
you're going to win some battles but
there's no point in this even if you
read this book if you do everything in
this book
and mike and i are working with you and
everything goes perfectly
you don't get to declare victory people
grow people change
products change the environment changes
people move on
you have to keep after this this is a
discipline
that you need to bring to your company
and when you do
you will have a competitive advantage
it's the path
it's part of the path back to the book
far too often a company will hire
talented candidate a talented
candidate whose performance ends up
being lackluster the company chalks it
up to a bad hire fires the person and
starts all over again
a costly assumption there are many
reasons someone might not be performing
as you expect
and only one of them is a bad hire
chances are if a talented individual is
not performing to standard
it's not their fault it's yours
a little a little extreme ownership
coming at you live from the talent award
talent development you guys talk about
training mentoring
and coaching um good quote in here from
jonah pinto from
7-eleven ceo most important thing in any
organization is leadership
it's always leadership first because
leaders find a way to get things done
once again i'm summing up a a great
attitude and
and for the listeners joe dipinto is
actually a west point
military academy graduate he served as a
army officer before he entered the
the corporate world leadership is the
most
critical determinant of achieving
victory for business leaders are the
ones who drive change makes things
happen
so when working to transform high
potential high potentials into high
performers
it's critical to identify and develop
future leaders that's just the way it's
got to be
and then um
wrapping this up a little bit here
actually this i'll wrap this up right
here with this with this like
it's not quite the closer but it's close
a true talent mindset
like i said this is kind of the
underlying thread of the book remember
the most critical step in winning the
war on talent is developing a talent
mindset
the deep belief that human capital is
the single most important competitive
advantage your company can have
if you truly believe human capital is
your greatest competitive advantage you
won't stop with the hiring process
you will continue to invest in and
develop your people creating an
unbroken chain of excellence that's what
good leaders do
that's how great organizations are
formed the training and leadership
development opportunities you provide
your employees reveal the truth
of your talent mindset you might be able
to attract
candidates with the talk of a talent
mindset but if you want them to stay
you need to show your employees that you
truly
value talent by helping them to grow
into their potential
it starts with you if you demonstrate
exemplary leadership
others will follow practice a talent
mindset
mentor and coach your key leaders put in
the time and effort to develop your
people into something great
and a great organization will emerge
so that's i mean that you you go on you
have a
good closing but um you know
that's it it's recruiting selecting
training mentorship
putting the right people in the right
places
think about that's why putting the right
people in the right places
all those things are really one thing
and that is leadership
and this is how you build a team and
leaders have to understand the
importance of that
they have to understand the importance
of building
the correct team so
one thing that we're doing you know is
obviously helping people
build these teams with ef overwatch
tell me a little bit about the process
ef overwatch to take and find the right
people
bring them in and get them assigned to
the right companies out there
these and you know a lot of people say
hey you guys are a veteran recruiting
firm
i sort of actually pushed back i said no
we are a leadership
time acquisition firm we only deal with
military leaders
and people naturally put a rank on that
oh senior enlisted or
or officers no it's all levels in the
military as long as they have the
attributes we're looking for especially
humility
so the military leaders come coming out
of the military have
already been highly vetted and guess
what they have
reputations and it's very easy for us to
reach back into those communities
and reach into the seals and say hey
does anyone know this choco willing guy
yep i went through buzz with them solid
another guy says i did two platoons with
them
you could not find a more reliable
team-oriented individual and that's what
we need to hear
we are also putting them through
multiple assessments josh's
epi we're going to start utilizing that
as a basis for us plus we want to
collect
data to see if we can start identifying
the difference between high performers
middle performers and low performers and
he's already started that uh that
process
um and then really with with the
candidate side
it's so simple it's very easy to
identify
the ones that are just you've got it and
we're really looking for the top 10 20
of every community in the military and
those that that don't fall into that
realm
we still want to help them with training
we're dedicated to our brothers and
sisters in arms to make sure that
they're
they're successful we can't place every
candidate
you know we just don't have enough job
opportunities one day we will
but if one thing for the military
leaders that come to us
they go through some of the best
training but they go through the extreme
ownership and what what
we talked about this last night the
reason i love extreme ownership is i've
never seen
two people you and life create a
leadership system that is so simple
because if you go ask the air force the
army the navy the marine corps they're
all
they're all going to give you different
answers on what attributes are
uh important and what are the the
primary principles of leadership they're
all saying the same thing but it's not
codified
so what extreme ownership and even for
the candidates reading the book is what
we tell them is hey
in the interview process you have to
tell a story why we love extreme
ownership so much is
not only is it going to help you
contextualize your leadership experience
and that's what they need help with some
of these leaders coming out special
operations leaders
who have been serving for 20 years
leading his muscle memory to them now
and that's why if you ask them the
question tell us about your leadership
style some struggle through it
but when we teach them the context of
extreme ownership they start to to get
their story
and the way you guys wrote the book
combat story principal
business contacts helps them to
translate we all know the number one
challenge for veterans
trying to get jobs is translating their
experience extreme ownership sets them
on the path to doing that in a good
manner
then i handle that first part they get
george
and carly walden uh and
they put them through search training
they prepare them for the interview
process
the feedback we're getting from senior
special operations leaders to other
military leaders is
this is the best advice i've ever gotten
from taps and all these other programs
that we go through we don't
sugarcoat anything we give them the
reality of the situation and we're very
straightforward that it's on you we
can't step into the interview with you
it is on you to convey your value to the
organization
and get them to say yes they want to say
yes
that's the military leader side and talk
about rewarding work
not only do we do we we make a you know
a good paycheck from from this line of
work it's also
the emotional return on investment from
seeing our former brothers and sisters
step into senior management positions
and then crush it best feedback we get
from business leaders
best hire i've i've ever made on the the
client side
we screen our clients as diligently as
we screen our candidates and this has
been a learning process
we've got to learn this through scars
and it comes down to i need
the clients to commit and i need to hear
that they have a foundational belief
that
leadership is wildly and infinitely
more important than industry experience
if we hear that from the clients we
believe they
truly understand that then that's a
client we're most likely going to work
with
but if we get a client we've had this
like hey listen
i need a leader right now to step into
this role i don't want to have to train
them i don't want to have to build a
relationship with them
literally said this i just need them to
do their job and it was a lucrative role
we said hey we're not the best fit
because we know that that relationship
is just going to end up poorly
so also if clients come to us and they
say hey we need to fill in 20 days
they've already compromised the process
and we're not going to do that so we're
very prideful
on the white glove service that we
provide and
if and we don't have many misses at all
but if we find out a candidate didn't
work it is like a
gut punch it is like our reputation has
been
marred and that we take it very
seriously
um and i think that's what uh you know
sort of differentiates us from from a
lot of the
executive search firms out there is i
know
we together and george we're going to
build this into the number one
leadership talent acquisition from
in the nation i have no doubt that when
people look for directors of leadership
and training
as well as chief leadership officers
they're going to say go to ef overwatch
because the men and women we're placing
know how to train people
they know how to create uh the
foundation for strong cultures
and that's really where we're making the
name right now we'll still place people
in the ceo roles
general management roles but one of my
passions for if overwatch is that
that director of leadership in training
or the clo position
yeah you know just to be
completely transparent to be in talent
acquisition you have to have a pretty
strong masochistic gene about you
because it's a brutal
a brutal job function but i've been
helping veterans for
over 20 years and where it started was i
want to be able to give to
our brothers and sisters in arms and
things that i didn't have when i
transitioned out in the 90s and what
they didn't have was actionable
information and we deal once we go
through selection kind of an assessment
and finding
that right candidate with all those
attributes there's still this bridge
between the ideal opportunity for that
veteran leader for that senior leader
and that position
it's called the interview and that is
very very difficult for veterans to
cross that divide to be able to
articulate
clearly and in a crisp professional
impactful manner in the interview
that you're going to be able to over
deliver in that particular role
so it isn't just you know we're doing
all facets of it and i i think that's
what makes the dynamic between me and
mike
and our team so well so good so solid
and so
different is that you have 20 years of
selection and assessment we've both been
in leadership roles i've been in the
executive roles
and we're bringing actionable
information to top military
leaders so that they are ready for that
transition into corporate america
and when you put that person in that
position
it begets more veteran hiring and so we
have to get it right with the company
we have to get it right with the veteran
and and there's some veterans that we
we're not going to place
but we're absolutely agnostic if they
come to us
we're going to help but crossing that
bridge
screening our candidates screening our
clients
we are very meticulous about how we go
about doing that
yeah i think uh talking to some of the
clients of
people that we've placed and it's just
awesome to hear
everything that you guys are talking
about it's it's like
it's like with extreme ownership when we
go and work with a company and we check
back in with them three months later and
they're like oh yeah this is working
this is working this is awesome
and it's the same thing we're getting
back you know when i hear from clients
you know this is the best hire we've had
oh yeah we we were worried
and now we're promoting i mean it's just
like a totally
it as as we often say it works
this stuff works and you take these
individuals
and i i know mike you and i have been
talking about this and i know it's a
little bit hard to do
but where some of the guys some of the
guys that we've placed we're going to
get them on the podcast so they can talk
about
not just their military experience but
then what it was like going through ef
overwatch and now what it's like
entering the civilian world
you know we're letting them get settled
in a little bit before we
yank them back to fly out to california
and do this but
i think it'll be awesome for people to
start to hear those stories and get that
feedback
um when people want to engage
ef overwatch what's the process so they
can go to the website efoverwatch.com
another thing we we do with companies is
we are here as a talent advisory we can
come in
and basically set the foundation based
off the playbook we've provided
so you have a a hiring process from
which to grow
and that's probably the greatest service
we can provide beyond
just finding the right leaders for your
organization that's critical
there's a lot of times that george will
actually have to ask the client
do you have interview questions what's
your process can i send you something to
help you make the selection of the
leaders we present
and that's more often than uh than not
that talent advisory piece is key
but but if i'm just a company out there
that wants to hire
so i go to i go to efoverwatch.com
i fill out the various information and
then
we're going to set up a call and you're
going to talk with mike you'll talk to
myself you may talk with one other
person
and we're gonna really kind of dig in
with you as to
okay let's talk about your company what
is your position in the market what are
you trying to accomplish where are you
trying to grow what are your leadership
gaps what are your individual
contributor gaps
you know we want to know both of those
things you know what are those things
that are keeping you
up at night and then let's talk about
how talent and leadership solves those
problems
and are you committed to leadership is
the most important thing in your
business
and you know we'll also walk through to
find out the maturity of their hiring
process and
and how they've done it because you know
we we want to make sure that
they know how to do it because there are
mechanics behind us as well we've helped
with offer letters i've helped with
compensation
you know structuring complex offers
which which is not easy for small and
medium business to do a lot of times
they just don't have that expertise
so we will sit down and spend a good
hour hour and a half with them
uh you know diagnosing you know why did
they come to us what is it that they
need
what can we solve for them and should we
be working together
and i'm sorry misunderstood the the
question jacob absolutely
it's going to be a series of phone calls
we want to know everything about your
business about your industry
um and a lot of times the reason we do
these phone calls because
what business leaders think they want is
not necessarily what they need
and our our job as well doing that is to
advise them
based off what we're hearing what we
think you really need is x y and z not
abc
and our clients have followed our advice
and it's worked out beautifully
we're you know we're in that advice is
coming from nothing but scars
and failures especially with 20 years of
talent acquisition between him and uh
carly so we we want a very
very strong relationship with our
clients if they sign the contract beyond
that
then it gets into the talent sync what a
talent sync is for us is we're going to
spec
out what that position is and what are
the attributes they're truly looking for
from there we tell them hey we're going
to need usually
two to three weeks to start screening
and assessing potential leaders
the the the people the right leaders for
this position
it could be through our organic talent
pool we're also going to run an external
search for people we haven't touched yet
that may be
out there that may be a good fit for
that uh that role
and that takes time and our clients
again we're preaching patients
um we have a pretty darn good
uh fill speed the rate to fill
um and if people allow us to go through
our process it usually
very statistically works out in a very
good uh pairing
yeah well it's like what we do
methodical and
you know we say all the time at epsilon
front what we do is we solve problems
through leadership
and what better way to solve a problem
through leadership
than to actually give a person give a
give a company a leader
that understands these principles that
knows how to lead that knows how to step
in
and make things happen so that's been
awesome ef overwatch.com
uh i can't we look we've been going for
almost three and a half hours
but real quick ef battlefield we just
kind of ran our first pilot program
and uh tell us about that a little bit
so
this besides let me interject that it
was freaking awesome
you weren't a believer at first is that
accurate or that's completely inaccurate
i don't know where you where why do you
think that we life and i thought were
like oh
jocker's not necessarily a believer he
he has to see the concept personally i
100 i'm a believer um that was a
thousand percent i mean
you know if you think about what i do in
this podcast
i take i take battlefield strolls
through
books so for me to go out and walk
battlefields
is to to me i would do nothing but that
that would be my whole life
in fact i was telling you i got offered
a show in europe
to like go and walk battlefields and
talk the stories and i just couldn't do
it it was multiple
months of filming and i just it's not
happening you know i just can't do it
but at some point in my life i wouldn't
be surprised
so yeah i don't know i don't know where
that that idea came from that is a bad
assumption a lack of relationship with
knowing our boss yeah and i'm not going
to take ownership
it's actually kind of crazy to think
that me
that me even with my whole life would
not want to go out
and walk on that sacred hallowed
battlefields
and talk about leadership that's yeah so
i'm 100 on board
and i always have been from day one so
so
where this came from is uh in 2012
no yeah 2012 with one of my seal
squadrons
the commanding officer especially the
timing was not good we were one month
away from going to afghanistan
and and i'm an operations officer and of
course you know the the
the task list of what you need to get
done before you deploy is
pretty deep as an operations officer and
i i sort of tried to reason with him
like hey timing's not good
and he heard me out and he said mike
guess what i said what we're going out
there
leadership development is not optional
it's mandatory and so we went out to
gettysburg
and of course i'm pouty you know i'm
doing my quiet sort of podium i'm there
um and as we started to walk the
different stands the two-day uh
walk of gettysburg you started to
realize that
the commanders of both confederate and
union forces face the same dilemmas
same human dilemmas and human problems
that we face in afghanistan iraq and
other regions of the world
what makes them we call this in the
military we call these staff rights it
is a technique we utilize
to develop our people again looking at
past examples of commanders
humans that made both great decisions
and bad decisions
and learning from their mistakes and
their successes to make you a
better leader when you walk and people
may see
say well you know the civil war is
drastically different than iraq or
afghanistan technology no
the problems they face transcend
geography
they transcend technology they transcend
time
and this is why a lot of businesses do
these staff rides we call it ef
battlefield
but what i think we do better than any
just sort of historian that takes people
out there
is we tie extreme ownership into it and
on this first one the pilot we brought
20 of our clients out and i don't know
about you i mean they probably don't
call you because they don't have your
phone number
but i've been getting text messages from
ce the ceos that were out there
that this was one of the most valuable
leadership development trips they've
ever taken oh you could see it on their
faces
in the first hour you can see it on
their faces they're looking they're
taking notes they're talking to each
other
uh yeah it was just extremely impactful
and you know it was a pilot and we're
gonna start
spinning those things up um yeah if you
will
we'll keep you posted we'll keep you
posted and i mean there's going to be
limited seats i mean that's just the way
it is
it's going to be small groups but
who knows it's freaking it's just an
unbelievable way to learn
and an unbelievable way to develop in an
unbelievable way to
increase your understanding not just of
history
not just of leadership but of human
nature to go out there
and see what has happened in our past so
it's freaking awesome um a lot of stuff
going on man
we do so the book comes out when
november 10th so it's it's up on amazon
right now the talent war
um it's right now we just have the
uh ebook the kindle version the
paperback will be up
momentarily uh it's in amazon right now
then the hardback will follow that in
audiobook
ultimately though the book launches
november 10th which if i need to
educate you you know what november 10th
is you don't need to educate me bro
the marine corps birthday no coincidence
uh george any any uh closing comments
here
you know this is uh it's been an
interesting journey to
write this book and it's it's it's very
serendipitous
to find somebody who has the same
passion for talent
that i have and and so i you know i hope
that mike and i got the best out of each
other in this book
pushed each other and uh really proud of
what we've delivered here because
ultimately it it's about helping
companies just get better
and win and and i'd like to think we did
a pretty good job of giving them a good
road map
the talent is the most critical thing
that you can focus on
any closing thoughts mike none check
we're trying to get better we're trying
to build a better team
echo charles yes any recommendations on
how we can
get better interesting thing about
what we've been talking about is it's
like yeah you guys talk about um
you know these are things to to look for
you know and as far as hiring and stuff
but on the other side of the coin like
if you're looking to get higher
hired it's like a good in from
informational resource to be like okay
that's what i'm going to strive for
you know very interesting anyway
as far as striving for stuff let's talk
about jackal fuel
as far as striving to transition
so okay these uh okay so jackal fuel uh
uh
how should i say assortment
supplementation items
the ones that stay on my mind which i
noticed
like i don't so much think that much
about milk
really yeah that's interesting you must
be
nuts not wanting to bit be stronger
well here's the things not that i don't
take mulk all the time
i don't think about it all the time but
i do think about joint warfare krill oil
and vitamin d for some reason i don't
know why i feel like because it's like
an everyday maintenance thing
and when i stop taking it that's when i
pay the price harsh
here's my question to you yes do you
know what that price is
like have you felt it like because you
don't really go off after it
i don't i don't go off it yeah so i
don't know the price
yeah i do yeah so basically like you
know how like okay
all right let me turn my attention over
here so you know like sometimes like you
okay maybe you're feeling weak
or whatever right but as far as your
joints go you can feel strong but your
joints are like
jammed up that's almost in a way worse
than being weak
because if you're weak you're like oh
maybe i didn't eat good maybe whatever
but if you're joint it's like
it's a it's a different issue see i'm
saying here's the good news
get back on the joint warfare get back
on the krill oil you just feel all that
stuff just
flying back into your joints then you're
back in the game then we start feeling
good about it
real good by the way um so
and i know this too because i have gone
off it and gotten on few times
and yeah so i know the price and i know
the benefits do you are you able to make
these assessments
because you're a doctor no okay
well my my explanation of the joint
warfare and krill oil flying back into
your joints was
we'll say a little bit short of a
medical explanation
as far as how it works i'm not a doctor
either yes i know that
but i've done also a
very intense medical assessment
of yeah of vitamin d3 and cold war
and here's the assessment i've traveled
all over the place i've shaken hands
with a bunch of people
i have not had this disease called covid
for some reason could that reason be
right okay could that reason be because
i'm on
the d3 and the cold war look i'm not
saying it is
yeah because i'm not a doctor no but but
you know
you know there's there is such thing as
coincidence then there's such thing as
correlation and then there's such thing
as causation
you see i'm saying the three levels
right hey
that's it we'll leave it at that how
about that cool safe right
yeah just saying we're talking earlier
about uh you can only ask certain
questions in the interview or not so
much you can only ask
you can't ask certain questions that's
very correct actually
um to deviate from the the jackal fuel
thing just for a second
isn't it a lot of the times the case
where the interviewer
is kind of in a way like wanting to bond
with the person
just on a maybe on just a small level
like hey oh when's the baby do
you know and it's like oh i jam that up
like i
didn't realize you know it's like it's
not like they're trying to like
enforce power or something like this no
i mean the best interviewers are always
trying to build a relationship right
because one of the critical things you
want to get out of people is
authenticity
yeah that's one of the biggest things
and the best way you do that is by
building a relationship
and to your point that person may come
in they may not come into your company
so
yeah they do and most of those things
aren't done with malice they happen
accidentally
but you know in today's litigious
society
even accidentally scary that will get
you yeah and see that's why it's so
like yeah like scary for real scary
because it's like man
it's one thing to be like hey that was a
dick move
for me to do that so i'm not going to do
that anymore you know
well how about i just not be a dick in
the interview problem solved right
here's the thing problem's not solved
because you're getting sued yeah cause i
can be
well in that case yes but as far as from
a learning perspective or from just a
general functioning perspective
and be like how about this i'm going to
be real nice how about that i'm going to
bond with this guy meanwhile you're like
in a line
what do you call minefield landmine one
of those you're walking on eggshells and
whatnot
yeah which kind of isn't a very good
bonding uh
approach working on an eggshell yeah
then you you kind of get
you know you're seem impersonal you're
risk-averse
you know so you know as as we teach
veterans
any good interview is simply a
conversation
that's ultimately what it comes down to
and you know when we work with veterans
it's just
hey man be yourself be authentic you
know but put it in the vernacular of
extreme ownership and talk about how
great of a leader you are just have a
conversation
and that's it's simple not easy
and i love that phrase labor to laws are
not always uh
a good thing not all of them are great
and uh that's a profession
in itself standing on top of uh yeah
yeah it's just part of my profession is
you know that training you know
ultimately training keeps people safe
right
that's what it does yeah and that's one
of those situations where you can be mad
about it
you might not like a particular law but
it's the law and you gotta you gotta
just deal with it that's just the way it
is
yeah so you never know people could be
making claims like medical
claims about things about supplements
and you could run into all kinds of
legal problems
see what you just did there but hey if
you're waging
war on colds various sickness illnesses
viruses
etc you know not to name any
is there a medical is that a medical
claim really is it
i don't know maybe maybe not nonetheless
these are the things that you do want to
follow so if you want
to call the what's that called like a
caveat or no it's not a caveat is it a
caveat
yeah like a distance like uh yeah just
here's my disclaimer
i'm not a doctor
so don't listen to me yes yeah well or
just listen
you know yeah how about this listen to
jacques how about that
okay we'll go with it we'll stick with
that now keep in mind that i'm not a
doctor
yeah johnny kim doctor no doctor
all these things in mind yes vitamin
vitamin d daily
daily man these are things that you know
again to stay on your mind
i'm not saying don't keep mulk on your
mind i'm not saying that
i'm saying me personally in my
experience d3 joint warfare
krill oil on my mind every day unless
molk
if it is on your mind or not whatever
these are the things that okay we have
these
two pronged effect let me move my
attention over here to my
pros so you have long term you have
short term right every once in a while
you'll get a golden nugget that's both
that's what milk is see i'm saying a lot
of these health foods they don't have
the
immediate gratification as heavy as a
lot of these unhealthy fruits you see
what i'm saying
it's true milk is one of those rare
golden nuggets the other one is sushi
my opinion but back to milk it's dessert
in the form of health food or protein
health food in the form of a dessert
boom either way you're good there you go
either way it's true also discipline
multiple forms multiple forms there's
your intrinsic discipline that you go
through life with that comes from within
you know we're not talking about that
one right now we're talking about the
supplementation
um so yes okay what is it what is the
three forms we got the powder that's a
good one
there's a good pre-workout one i like
this first pre-workout like i dig
i like it for pre-life yeah and by the
way it was so hot this weekend out here
with bob you're in texas so i know it
was hot there but i mixed up
the jocko palmer in the big iced tea
like pitcher with ice in it
that was your jam
also the uh the cans okay here's the
here's what the cans are really
really it's a
health brain health
drink right so it doesn't sound
glamorous right
think of it it's a brain and body health
drink
okay in the form of a
of a delicious refreshing
beverage beverage but you want to say a
different time i was gonna say energy
drink but then then you got all the what
do you call this
what do you call it when you have a
reputation a word has a reputation
a freaking uh stigma has a stigma
you see insane anyway that's what it is
that's what the can is also this wingo
okay look
we don't want to drink the can we don't
want to mix up powders okay i get it pop
a pill
that even has a stigma nonetheless this
one's a good way of popping
good pills capsules technically um you
know all these forms
depending on your lifestyle depending on
what you're doing that day they can you
know at least one's gonna work for you i
think
in my experience that's how it is also
we got warrior kid milk we got chocolate
white tea
and all the stuff is available at the
vitamin shop we also got
if you're gonna get into jiu jitsu which
you might you probably should
go to origin maine.com get yourself a
geek get yourself a rash guard
get yourself things that you you can
wear when you're not
on the jiu jitsu mats of justice because
despite our best efforts we're not
always training jiu jitsu sometimes you
have to have
other parts of your life that's why we
make jeans that's why we make boots
that's why we make t-shirts whatever a
bunch of different clothing
items all that stuff and the supplements
available
at origin maine dot com yes sir
also we have a store jocko has a store
it's called
jocko store anyway some good
developments and improvements on there
for those of us that browse jackal store
for those of us that are seeking praise
for our efforts
i'm not even saying i'm doing it i'm
just saying the store is
becoming more and more developed in one
person's opinion and
i think it's an uh what do you call it
an objective
all right we'll go anyway
jocklestore.com go there if
you appreciate the developments
if you appreciate beautiful web design
yeah
exactly yeah did you go check out web
design
yeah well actually technically i didn't
really design it you know
i got a finger in the pot nonetheless as
far as design goes nonetheless
we supply provide really
clothing items that you can wear to
represent while you're on this path that
we're on this path
that's not easy by the way i don't know
if you guys know this or not
mike and george it's hard it's full of
pitfalls temptations and traps
wise men once told me that nonetheless
when you're on the path you want to
represent jocklestore.com i got hoodies
shirts
hats beanies shorts board shorts
at some point shirts are sweet they're
here's the thing they're not up okay
but they're real improvements it's a
process it's a process
you know what what'd mike say mike said
something
it's a methodology it's a process we're
gonna follow the process trust the
patience
is one of our things yeah you see what
i'm saying anyway
incorporate that quote incorporate that
into the whole deal and boom
you got it anyway yes chocolate store
that's free if you want something i'll
get something
also got a podcast record uh subscribe
to this podcast
because echo thinks that you're not
going to
we also have jocko unraveling which has
been on this feed
it's going to soon be on its own feed
jocko unraveling podcasts to myself and
daryl cooper that was the thread
we had to change the name because i was
getting sued again
which is always fun so that's why it's
called jocko unraveling because
i own my own name jocko so i can pretty
much put that on anything and no one can
bother me about it
grounded podcast which we haven't done
in a while maybe record one more this
week
we have an opportunity warrior kid
podcast as well for those
little kids out there and if you got
little kids or even if you're a grown
human
and you need some soap go to
irishoaksranch.com where young aiden the
warrior kid is making
soap there's a new one now what were the
warrior kids
already made warrior kids so like actual
so
not just you as an adult but also your
children
can stay clean youtube
yep we have a youtube channel where echo
makes videos
and if it's a four-minute video he puts
a bunch of explosions in it and if it's
a four-hour video then it's just nothing
yeah because that's the way he operates
different purposes
yeah it's cool all right okay
we're we're talking about effective
hiring processes
leadership right mike shelly george
should we put explosions smoke and fire
in this video occasionally in this in
this
in this video that we do that we're
doing right now
at some point when you're talking about
something it would
not be a good thing to have maybe
a blackhawk helicopter fly overhead or
uh a minigun open up or an explosion
happen in the background
echo i'm gonna back you up on this uh
you know you ask anyone on the if
overwatch team i say hey
what don't i do they say we don't do
cute
so i'm not talking cute bro i'm talking
a minigun
i think you'd be over the top i i think
you're heading down the right path i
think you're right but
here's the thing and this is for real
if i'm like hey if i get moved inspired
and i got my notes here
i don't have my notes here oh so you're
you're you're starting to take it under
consideration
no okay i'm saying i'm explaining i have
my notes here maybe i was moved by
something george or mike said
right i have my notes i'll be like okay
look if i could isolate what they said
and try my best to capture the feeling
that i got when he said it
maybe boom i can cut that up into a
little video
that might involve explosions the
effects would be too much like a certain
financial
uh tv host
right mad money oh yeah
do explosions happen did you either like
sound effective sound
yeah see yes yeah good good comparison
i think i think it's my opinion anyway
yes
some videos have explosions the shorter
ones whatever and
the video version of this podcast boom
we're keeping it raw we're keeping it
real i don't even add color and you want
me to add
a minigun opening up i don't know
probably not i don't know though i could
be wrong anyway
also psychological warfare if you don't
know what that is that's an
album that jocko recorded with tracks
each track has a purpose and it gets you
past these moments of weakness on this
path that we're on
in the event of you being on the path
which of course we all are nonetheless
100 effective unknown by the way
so yeah you can get that amazon or like
a google play anywhere where you can buy
mp3s
if you want a visual version of the path
go to flipsidecanvas.com
owned by my brother dakota meyer
where he's putting this cool stuff on to
things that you can hang on your wall
flipsidecanvas.com also we got some
books we got some books
first book talent war by mike cirelli
and george randall
step up get that we got the code we got
leadership strategy in tactics field
manual way of the warrior kid one two
and three mike in the dragons this blink
was freedom field manual
and extreme ownership and the dichotomy
of leadership if you like what we're
talking about here check out some of
those books
books we got echelon from leadership
consultancy and what we do is solve
problems
through leadership go to
echelonfront.com
if you need help inside your
organization aligning your leadership
getting everyone
on the same plan and rowing the boat in
the same direction
so that you can win echelon
echelonfront.com
and we also have an online version of
leadership training look you don't learn
leadership in one day
in one hour in one week in one month
it's something you constantly have to
check yourself on
go to efonline.com we totally revamped
it we're doing live stuff all the time
if you want to ask me a question
if you want to ask me a question you can
go to efonline.com and i will be there
at certain times and you can sit there
and ask me a question get feedback have
a conversation with me
with the rest of the asshole on front
team that's what we're doing
so come and check that out and
we got the muster the phoenix muster has
been cancelled
the orlando muster was cancelled the
next muster is dallas texas
december 3rd and 4th go to extreme
ownership.com for details and listen
we're probably going to have to do some
kind of social distancing
so that means less seats we've got
people that were scheduled for orlando
and were scheduled for phoenix who have
now opted to come to dallas
i don't think we're sold out yet but
it's going to sell out quick just
because of those factors so if you want
to come
go extremeownership.com register and
we've been talking about ef overwatch
all day today all this past
almost four hours this is what we do
efoverwatch.com if you're a company out
there and you need leaders which by the
way let me tell you something
you do need leaders get experienced
leaders from the military that
understand the principles that we talk
about
and you can plug them in to your
organization so that your organ
organization can go to the next level
what did i miss fellas
that's it spot on i mean it's a game
changer
talent plus leadership equals victory
get on board the train america's
mightywarriors.org
that's mama lee mark lee's mom she has
dedicated her life after losing mark to
helping service members their families
gold star families around the world
if you want to donate or you want to get
involved go to america's
mightywarriors.org and if you have
too much time on your hand and you just
want to hear a few more of my monotonous
monologues or maybe you think you need
just a little bit more of echo's
exasperated explanations then you can
find us
on the interwebs on twitter instagram
facebook echo is at echo charles i am at
jocko willink
mike zorelli is mj cirelli
on twitter and mr.cirelli on instagram
and facebook michael cirelli george
what's your social media g
randall g dot randall g dot randall is
instagram
that's the gram echo calls it the gram
the gram
and for all things echelon front on
social media it's at echelon front and
then for ef overwatch
at ef overwatch and on the interwebs
we can be found at echelonfront.com but
also efoverwatch.com
and thanks again guys for coming on been
awesome
thanks for your service to the country
thank you
and um you know
when you're you know we always feel like
when our service is over in the military
we want to serve more and what you guys
are doing right now
to help veterans transition out of the
military get in the civilian sector
and get on their next mission you've
heard me say it a thousand times
veterans need a new mission when they
leave that mission that they've
dedicated their life to
they get out they need a new mission
they're looking for a new mission
you guys are doing a great job providing
that mission for them so thank you
for that and to all the veterans and all
the active duty troops that are out
there on the front lines
now or have held the line in the past
thank you for protecting our ability to
pursue life
liberty and the pursuit of happiness and
to police and law enforcement and
firefighters and paramedics and emts
and dispatchers and correctional
officers and border patrol and secret
service and all the other
first responders thank you for
protecting us when
evil closes in
and everyone else out there making
things happen
is hard accomplishing your mission is
hard
life is hard but you don't have to do it
alone
build yourself a team surround yourself
with talent
and then go out there and get after it
and until next time this is mike and
george and echo and jocko
out
