Jaakko may I ask your advice for addressing a cowboy quote-unquote
mentality among teams working in dangerous environments
how would you shift a culture to kill complacency to aggressively identify and
mitigate risk as a point of professional pride okay
this is something that we'll definitely saw in the SEAL Teams see it all the
time in the civilian sector you know construction companies power
companies companies where people are doing dangerous work right
policing firefighting anything anything that has any element of danger you
definitely see this and like I said certainly saw on the SEAL Teams too and
the answer to this is a common answer for many leadership situations is you
have to explain why so let me put it in a little context what you have to do is
you have to say hey let me explain to you what happens when someone gets hurt
or injured on this job okay first of all we get the loss of that person on the
job the the job that we're working on the project that we're working on it
falls back there's paperwork that has to be filed which by the way the paperwork
hurts the progress of our project as well our budgets impacted because now we
got to bring someone else on board we gotta train them we we take a
reputational hit as a company right what what kind of what kind of a company
can't do a job without getting someone hurt right I mean this isn't a high bar
it's not a very high bar to say hey can you complete this task without getting
someone injured yeah and all of a sudden we got a G we gonna hey you know what
our company we don't we had a lot of people hurt well what does that tell you
about the company it's a reputational hit who are you
gonna hire you're not gonna hire the one that's got people getting hurt all the
time mm-hmm so there's that the and what does that do what does that do to your
reputation in terms of everything else because if you're get a bunch of people
hurt how can I expect you to keep your timelines how can I expect you to stay
on budget so it's those things it's those that kind of reputation that you
get if you are getting people hurt and then also what does it do what does it
say about your team if you've got people getting hurt
this is what I'm talking is a conversation that you're having with the
group with the team you're saying look what kind of a team are we if we got
people getting hurt what does that say about us it says we're Lac laksa
basically it says we're complacent it says we don't pay attention what does it
say about our leadership if we got a guy's getting heard what does that say
about our leadership says we don't care about our people which by the way says
we don't care about our people it means it says we don't care about our job it
says we don't care about our reputation says we just don't damn care mmm and
what does it say about you the individual well you know what it says
about you an individual if you get hurt you know what it says about you you're a
knucklehead and you got hurt you couldn't follow the procedures you
didn't follow the procedures you thought you were smart and you got complacent
now you got hurt so these are the things when I talk about explaining why those
are where I'm gonna start and now I'm going to explain and connect the dots so
that the purse the individual see that someone getting hurt is actually the
least professional thing that you can do from a leadership perspective if I let
one of my guys get hurt um that's just that's just Lilly's professional thing I
can do from an individual contributor perspective if I'm getting hurt guess
what I I didn't follow procedures okay look other accidents that happened yes
there are but what I'm saying is if you get a an accident that could have been
prevented that should have been prevented and I as an individual let it
happen that is absolutely my fault it's like when you got a guy getting ready
for an MMA fight and they get caught hmm they weren't wearing headgear and it's
like look I get it but that was dumb and I've had that happen I mean I've had it
happen with my fighters I've seen it happen all cuz it happens in the UFC all
the time right you got a fight coming up you're gonna fight for the title for the
UFC title you're gonna make possibly millions of dollars you're gonna be the
champion of the world Oh two weeks out got a cut got a cut on my head yeah babe
you know blew out my ACL doing takedown defense right look I get it accidents
happened but what was really happening right at that moment was it a random
accident or we were doing something that we shouldn't have been doing so
if we start to lean towards look having accidents is actually a an
unprofessional thing to do it's a weak thing to do it's a bad thing to do when
we let it happen it hurts everyone not just the individual involved that's the
attitude that we we kind of come with you had the in the in the Navy you have
like alcohol programs so hey this is our program for you know alcohol here's how
we're trying to combat having that people have alcohol-related incident and
when I was at raid at they had someone come in to like give us a talk about
alcohol and then and then when they got done the the guy says okay you know sir
I was the guy in charge he goes what's your alcohol policy and I didn't
have one and I didn't have one and I was like okay hey cool
I'll come up with one here's the alcohol policy if you get hurt
or sorry if you get drunk and you can't if you get drunk and you get in trouble
or you get in a fight or you get arrested or you get a DUI and you take
time away from being deployable you are doing al Qaeda's job for them there's
the alcohol policy so now all of a sudden it's not like hey cool we're
we're like rah rah no offices hey man do we want to help the enemy by taking
ourselves off the battlefield there's nothing more that al Qaeda wants then
for this seal to be arrested for DUI and non-deployable yeah you just did Al
Qaeda's job for you yeah so that's the kind of thing that I'm gonna build the
culture around yeah and that's the same thing you can do with people that are
have that cowboy mentality you shift it so that that cowboy mentality becomes
the thing that hurts our reputation that hurts our that hurts the company
reputation and it hurts our individual personal reputation yeah as a man I
couldn't even prevent my my shift from getting and from having him someone get
injured yeah so that's what I do you did like it
feeds into their professional pride especially when you use the word
unprofessional oh yeah and then on the flipside if you say consummate
professional right oh that's a good one if yeah if you're man you could do it
doesn't even matter the job you can do you can have your own lawn mowing
business when you're 13 years old mmm if you're someone says hey that guy that
kids a consummate professional you're like hell yeah hell yeah I'm gonna have
to push back a little bit I don't know if there's too many I don't know if
there's too many situations where you would say a 13-year old lawn mower now
we know that mark the way the warrior kid is heavily involved in lawn mowing
with marks meticulous mowing yes yes sir he is but even I don't even know if I'd
call him a consummate professional I wouldn't either but if you if you were
just working towards it if you were to do so mark would feel really good if you
said it's what I'm saying is you can't be just throwing words around yeah
that's okay so you can't just throw around consummate professional about
moans yeah now let's say the guy was a greenskeeper laying on a golf course now
that person could be a consummate professional it's he's got to dial stuff
in and then maybe I guess you get to a certain level of just straight
landscaping where oh you know what there was a water there was of the pipe
exploded Oh Jaco came in he had that whole thing re
sodded receded took him four hours that guy is a
consummate professional so I guess I'll take it back well I'm just saying
reserve it really don't play with it okay don't play with that flying that
thing on yeah yeah make sense well the man that that was very clever on your
part when you said you're doing al Qaeda's job for you because think about
it I mean you know there's nothing worse for a guy in the military front is you
are actually helping the enemy right now yeah and then how you say it like you
name names you know it's not like you said the enemy which I get that's good
too but it's way better to be like you're doing and you name the the
because JP you will say that too right where he'll be like um there was a sign
or something a sign or maybe he'll just say it'll be
like you're your enemy thanks you for not giving a hundred percent today Yeah
right remember that one and it's good that's a good one and it sounds cool too
I get it but it is real general so you hear that ten times or every day or
whatever you like okay cool it sounds cool but it won't really affect your
professional pride all the time something too doesn't it
but if you name the enemy you know like if you have some adversary you know and
they thank you that person whatever John Smith you know
for now given hundred you know it might feed into you so you saying al Qaeda
thanks you you know for getting arrested so I'm like yeah man think about it from
the flip side right what if you think of like an al Qaeda fighting team right and
one of them gets cut like one of their effective fighters gets caught I don't
know doing something that they don't like gambling but in a strip club I
don't know whatever and they say hey you're not allowed to fight anymore for
us so he gets like exiled or whatever whole that's sweet yeah we want them to
do that we want to send them some strip club recommendation you see the same so
it's liturgies you're literally doing that yeah literally yeah that's good