when dealing with new groups of folks when do you
do decentralized command right away or gradually
as in slowly give them trust or slowly take it away as needed
again this is a good solid question this is something that people ask on a fairly
regular basis and it's a pretty straightforward answer
um okay you can't obviously just right away just
just give people full autonomy because you have to build it
up somewhat incrementally give them the opportunity to be on their
own now and what what you're really building what
you're really building with decentralized command
is you're building trust and that that's what you're trying
to do and as i've said before the best way to build trust is to
give trust but before you give trust you've got to
set expectations you've got to set standards you've got
guidelines because this person that you're just is a new person you they
they might be a they might be a crazy they might be
incompetent they might have a totally different vision of what's
okay then you might they might be unethical there's all kinds of things
that they might be that you cannot allow for
so what you have to do is set those standards set those guidelines and put
those put those guard rails in place
so that you make sure that this person is ethical make sure that they do
are professional make sure that they do have the same standards
make sure that they understand the expectations you set for them and that's
that's when you can start to hand out more slack and more ownership because we
don't micromanage when i talk about parameters i'm not talking about telling
people exactly how to do it but let's say you and i started working
together and you were my subordinate if we fast forward two years from now
i'd be like hey echo this is what we're trying to get done make it happen
i'll you know check back with me when it's done
right that's how much leeway i'm giving you i don't even care but when we first
started working together i mean hey echo here's what we want to get done
can you come up with a plan and then and then let me know let me take a look at
what you're going to do boom now i'm still letting you fully own
the plan but i'm going to do a little check i'm
going to make sure that it's the right gym and make sure it's a good plan to
make sure it's a smart plan i'm going to make sure it
handles our our resources correctly so all those things i'm just going to and
then the more we work together the more we build the trust the more you
understand the expectations the less guidance i'm going to give you
the less oversight i'm going to give you yeah
because i'm get built up because you've built up trust with me
and i've built up trust with you so that's important i also want you to be
able to make your own decisions because i don't want to be making
decisions all the time you know so even when even in the first scenario
when i've been working with you for a long time
you know i say hey echo go figure this out you go you go handle it you get it
done when we first start working together you might come to me and say
hey jocko i hit this wall what do you want me to
do here what do you think i'm going to say
figure it out i'm going to say figure it out i'm going to say hey man
i i don't know what's your what's your best guess or how would you do
it or you know if we knew each other a little bit better i'd say hey man don't
come asking me those questions go figure that out i don't care how you do it just
get around that wall boom and we're done and
now the other one other key part of this is
often times if you take over a new team you may want to
you may want to start off by setting the example
by running the perfect operation by going from end to end with some project
that you set the standard on how you want things
to be so everybody looks and goes okay that's how okay i see how he did
that whoa he wants that done he oh he holds the
line on that so that way everybody knows what the
standard is so there's in and i would always you know i mean i
would always when i start off when i take over a
platoon take over a squad like okay we're doing this operation cool here's
how i would run it very distinctly very clearly be the guy
and then as time goes on and trust develops i'm gonna become less and less
the guy and more and more the
the decentralized leader that's stepping back and letting the front line troopers
lead that's what i'm gonna try and make happen
um as always when you do start with a new group it's
real easy be humble listen take advice ask
ask questions ask questions good ask good questions about things
if there's something you don't understand ask the question no big deal
make the slow incremental changes like hackworth talks
about and steal my soldiers are you it's gonna change two things a day not
gonna change the whole world overnight you can't do it so he's gonna change two
things a day that being said he also did some major
remember if you remember this hackworth he gets
in there and the guys have radios and they got guitars and they got all this
stuff and he goes yeah put all that stuff in the middle of the compound
it's out of here tomorrow right that was a major change
so he went and kind of shook him up a little bit but then he goes okay now i
gotta go the long war i'm gonna change two little things a day
and that's what he did so sometimes it's a combination of those two
sometimes you gotta give send a little shock value like hey
new sheriff in town that's what i used to say in the seal team so a new
commanding officer would come over if he would do a lot of times they'd do
something to assert their presence okay i'm here now
no more parking in the back lot you know what i mean or hey news new
seal i just took over no more wearing this uniform to this
place okay so everyone go okay new sheriff in
town mm-hmm let's let him get this out of his system
oh so do they do they typically react in that way where they're like
like that's why i see what you're doing there fighting it's cool
pretty much in the seal teams it would be like okay yeah and hey new sheriff in
town hey we he just came up with a new rule for us to fall
so we know he's here cool right that was like well it's not like uh he's
it's not like some resentment or nothing maybe the guys that are
less mature i need to use that word but maybe guys that weren't quite as in the
game like man what's he doing this for yeah
hey bro don't worry about its new sheriff yeah
he's got it he's letting us know where he's here yeah yeah he's got it
yeah we got it so we're all good yeah yeah that's cool
but occasionally see occasionally you get somebody that that comes in
you notice the things that i just said were were fairly irrelevant
like hey don't wear this uniform there or hey don't park in this park whatever
those are fairly inconsequential things and those
things are okay actually but occasionally you'd see somebody come
in and try and do it you know execute some kind of a
fundamental change and that's where you go wait a second man you've been
here for a day and a half and you want to execute a fundamental change on what
we're doing here there's we have a problem with that we
as we as the troops have a problem with that
because you don't know how do you know yeah we've been doing i've been doing
this for i was at seal team one for eight years
you know you're gonna show up i've been here for five years you're gonna tell me
how it's better to do this and that might not be the right attitude
for a young guy like myself to have but that's the attitude that you're going to
generate if you come in and try and make fundamental changes without
assessing yeah so show some tactical patience
when you come in and say okay let me check this out again just to refer back
to the hack the hackword story hackworth was going to take over a battalion that
was all jacked up they were called the hopeless right and
he wanted to turn him into the hardcore so he his shocking thing that he did was
meant to shock and it was also meant to square
them away it was also the right thing to do and they also had a bad reputation
if he went in and took over a really good battalion he wouldn't go in there
with the same shock and awe type treatment because
they don't need it so you gotta you gotta think about what
you're doing but i mean most cases unless you're taking
over some kind of a problem situation there you might have to use a
little shock and all if you're taking over a normal
situation all the boss got promoted you're gonna go in to get going this
role hey no problem come in there be humble listen then as
you see fit make some small incremental changes
yeah like the shock and awe thing will probably work against you
in a in a in a normal situation oh yeah it'll definitely work against you it'll
definitely work against you now you now because now you're
think about now you're imposing a plan on people yeah
people don't like to have plans imposed upon them they don't like it
yeah they don't like it even even the big
controlled military where everyone's in our chain of command no no one in the
military likes to have big new ideas imposed upon them
without thought and without assessment and without explanation about telling
people why no you don't do that yeah and that what you want and
what you want to do is by doing all those things by building that trust by
setting the standards by setting the guidelines by putting the guardrails in
place by listening by respecting by being humble
what you will do is you will lead people to lead
themselves and that's what you want yeah man yeah explaining why i feel like
that's maybe an underappreciated thing i'll tell you
what it's not underappreciated in my book
that's the absolute that is the that's a critical piece
well yeah even explaining people why they're doing what they're doing you
could go in and i mean really when you think about you
could go in and change some fundamental thing
if you explain why and everyone's like oh yeah that makes sense but just like
are you saying if you if you roll in and you're just you make a fundamental
change everyone's like bro we were doing it
that way for a reason and you just came and changed but you
explain why and they understand it makes more sense and you get feedback because
maybe what you said is the wrong decision
right you might be saying something that's like well you know what you
didn't think that through really all that well yeah and you need to
discuss this with the with the troops and figure out what their assessment of
of your call is yeah yeah it's again one of those things where when we
talk about it like this is like yeah yep that makes perfect sense but it's i
don't know you know what's funny is on the podcast just as an example
we talked fairly shortly about going to the podcast
once every two weeks right i didn't really give a good explanation of why
and you know what feedback i got
it was like hey you got to be kidding me this thing comes out on wednesday
yeah yeah jocko i don't know what your problem is the podcast comes out on
wednesday and i got that feedback from numerous
people um not only on social media but also in
face to face you know people that texted me and called me and said
bro you can't go to once a week there was people that say hey
first of all you if you're gonna do that you need to set some kind of warning you
need to let people know we need some time so it was funny but
the the essential thing that i did not do is say hey guys here's what's going
on here's why i would want to do this in a
different way and i didn't really explain that you
know we just kind of because it wasn't an actual decision
that was getting made it was a consideration the consideration has been
revoked by the way we're holding the line we're holding the
line and when we do have to do that which may or may not
happen but i will explain why in great detail so everyone
understands where i'm coming from because i don't want to leave anybody
hanging yeah they're going to heat up you know they're going to be like hey
jocko i feel like you don't really understand
what's going on here you know on the front lines
yeah you know on the front lines we're waiting for that podcast
we'll