chuckle when does asking for input up and down the chain of command as
discussed in episode 26 hinder the leaders ability to make timely decisions
especially when gaining the initiative is critical so yeah this is a question
that I asked and I got a answer for you TJ who asked the question when you are
we okay so the situation is a little bit different if you're in an administrative
situation or you're on a planning situation meaning neither one of those
are restricted by time then of course get the input and by getting the input
of course you're first of all your plan becomes better because you're getting
input from people you have more brains working on it you also when you get
input you're building a little bit of a relationship you're building
relationship their relationship what water relationships are based on trust
and so trust is a requirement inside of leadership so that's what you want to do
if you have the time in this administrative scenario or you got the
time to plan then just go ahead and take the time to plan take the time to get
the input now there are situations or you don't have time to discuss or debate
a decision and there's you know or times where maybe you have time but it's gonna
affect or impact the ability to make an immediate execution which is what often
times you're looking for you want to gain the initiative and sometimes
gaining the initiative takes precedence over gaining consensus from everybody
and and it takes precedence over coming up with the best possible plan cuz we
want to do the best possible plan but sometimes fast action is gonna take
precedence over that and and Patton said something along the lines of a good plan
executed now is better than a perfect plan executed sometime next week
so what happens is in those situations yeah you're gonna have to make the call
you're gonna have to be decisive you're gonna have to make the decision and
because you've built trust with your team then when you do need to make that
call it won't be that big of a deal and people will execute it now I've told
this I've said this before you know life and I were having a conversation with
some of our clients and and as they were kind of talking about the same thing
about you know giving people orders and they're not listing and what do you do
and and and I asked lay in the middle thing I said hey laughs how many times
did I tell you hey life this is a command I'm telling you to do it I'm
ordering you because you work for me do it now and life was like zero times now
that being said that being said although I never in an administrative warned a
planning situation ever said late you will do this now I'm ordering you
because I am the senior man in the situation in tactical situations where
we were in the field and we had to do things we had to make things happen
quickly I definitely said things to him and said hey go do this now like I would
have said you know take that building down over there or hey move the Humvees
over here or whatever and he would do it because he knew we didn't have time to
discuss it now what's interesting about that is it didn't just it wasn't just me
that was telling life sometimes life was saying to me Jaco get the Humvees moved
over here or Jocko you need to get the element up on that high ground over
there and you know what we had trust we had a relationship and I did it even
though I was senior to him we didn't care who was senior to who that wasn't
the important thing he saw something he was making a tactical decision I knew he
wouldn't be telling me to do something unless he needed to have it happen so if
he told me hey move the vehicles down the road I'd be like Roger moving hmm
and and that doesn't mean that we're if you take us to a situation where we have
the time to debate like he would call me say hey Jocko I think it might be a good
idea to push the vehicles down the road oh why what's going on well we're
starting to see some movement out in the hinterland over there okay got it
I'm gonna track it I'm gonna push two vehicles down there cool right that's a
normal conversation but if all sudden there was gun fired maybe was like push
the vehicles down the road to the north I'd say doing it you know you know what
I mean yeah so there are definitely times where you don't want to sit there
and sit around and debate and figure out what the best plan is that at the time
where the leader or the follower or the person has the most vision of the
situation needs to make a call and they can happen so again the better
relationship you have the easier this is gonna be cuz you're gonna have that
little mental unification of the commander's intent and of the task and
purpose and you're gonna you're gonna be able to be thinking along the same path
and when you're doing that everything gets a lot a hell of a lot easier so
when you got the time to take the input take the input have the debate have the
discussion that builds the relationship so that when it comes time to be
decisive and give a command you can give it and people react up and down the
chain of command without a bunch of hesitation and you can go back and later
and say hey here's what I was talking about here's why we needed to do this
that's it that trust is so critical yeah like so are you saying build that
relationship or whatever yeah even at the time where it seems valuable sure
trust but it's times like this where that trust is gonna shine even more you
know when you can just say to do it you don't even have to say why to do it cuz
you just know you know it's a good read yeah you know you know while we're on
this subject I will tell you this as well because well the more time you
spent if you if I was always giving orders to everyone and not actually
discussing I was just ordering everyone to do they everything all the time
you're you're burning up your leadership capital yeah like when I know when we're
out in the field and when I was out in the field with the platoons I seldom
gave an order over the radio because I wanted my guys to lead when I did say
something now guys would just do it because it was me and they knew that if
I was saying it was something had so if I said hey everyone get in
building 434 now that's be okay we're gonna fill that everyone would get that
whereas if I was trying to give orders the whole time on every operation on
every little thing and every little detail eventually you're just the what
is it the boy that cried wolf yeah and you want to give every order and people
stopped listening to you even though we're in the military and even though
there's a chain of command and even though they're supposed to listen to me
you abuse that thing and people will stop listening to you molest you the the
more you talk the less people listen and the less you talk the more people listen
so I reserved my actual directives in the field to be the most important
things that I needed and if I didn't have to say it I wouldn't I would let my
troopers lead let my leadership my subordinate leadership lead I wanted him
to yeah quality not quantity affirmative