can you expand on how to appropriately effectively and tactfully
lead up the chain of command in a profession that's considered to be very
paramilitary
my line of work sometimes works against us limiting limiting ideas and ways of
doing things yeah and they're talking about the
tradition in their line of work uh okay so what do you do you got a
organization you're working in and you've how do you lead up
the chain of command
well even in a para military organization which you know
infers that this is a very hierarchical structure
and it's chain of command driven and how do you
possibly get your boss to do what you want them to do
well it's actually fairly simple fairly simple not easy but simple it is
it is hard to do it does take a lot more it does take a lot of tack takes a lot
of patience so number one you got to build trust
you got to build trust with your the people that are above you in the chain
of command you got to build a relationship you got
to be proactive you got to stay ahead you know when i joined the military
i one you know one day just told my dad hey by the way i joined i enlisted in
the navy i'll be i'll be gone in three weeks or
whatever my dad just looked at me and shook his head and he says
you're gonna hate the military because you hate authority you don't listen to
anybody and i was kind of a young stupid kid and
i'm like whatever i'm going in the seal teams it's a team we don't have to
listen to anybody of course i was completely wrong and
you do listen to people and you do have a chain of command
but he was right in the fact that i didn't like
to listen to people and i didn't like authority so how did i get ahead of that
it was pretty easy what i did to get ahead of that was i
got ahead of it and that's what you need to do here you have to start that
start that attitude of where you're doing what needs to be done before you
get told to do it so you start to appear to have
more knowledge and good foresight of what's going to happen
now you got to be careful that you're not showing up the boss
you can't be thwanting in their face and i already did that you know because i'm
so much better than you that's not the goal here
the goal is to build confidence not to build animosity
you don't want to build animosity you want to build trust you want to build
confidence you want to make that person start to
realize how good you are again be careful not to
throw it in their face now the tradition piece
and and sometimes people do cling on to the traditions
and they use the traditions to shut down evolution and that's bad because what
they're really doing is they're protecting
their world they're protecting their existence and so that's a that's a big
wall that's a big hard wall to get through
now most people do have traditions and
traditions what are traditions built on do we build
traditions are there traditions of failure and
we're proud of that right are there traditions of losing or
no no the traditions are proud traditions they're traditions of winning
their traditions of excellence and in some way
traditions of excellence and traditions of winning and traditions of domination
have to be tied in some way
to evolving and to adapting and to getting
better because that's how we win that's how we dominate
so you have to find that hole in the tradition
that part of the tradition that implies that what we do in our tradition
is we get better yeah that's all it is you just gotta
find that thing that says we get better we win and you take that and you carry
that that lead that little crack in the armor
of tradition and you turn that into you know yeah we have a proud tradition
because we're the best and if you're going to be the best does
the best stagnate no the best evolves and again you got to be careful you
can't throw this in their face you got to say hey you know what our
tradition is that we're the best we make things happen and we get things done
and we always do it better than everyone else
so you know what here's one way we could do it better yeah
if we did this you got to look for those little cracks
in the tradition to bring forward change now again the most important this
thing though is you got to continue to build that relationship with your
superiors you're constantly trying to build that
i've said this before and i'll say it again no matter who i ever worked for
i had the same relationship with the crazy boss with the knucklehead boss
with the loser with a great guy had the same relationship all the time and that
was they trusted me didn't matter who i worked for so you
gotta build that relationship of trust
you've also got to be careful that as you're trying to be proactive and as
you're trying to get things done that you're not looking to do it for
your own ego to get credit because that disturbs the people at the
top and it makes them say oh he's just trying to shine he's just trying to look
good screw him throw his ideas out that's
what you got to watch out for so that's your ego don't
make your ego fight their ego because they've got an ego too
you want to let your ego go build that relationship
make the change slow it's going to be slow steady and it's going to take
persistence in the long war don't you got to have
patience tradition doesn't break down overnight tradition takes
time to morph so you got to be ready for that long war and don't get frustrated
you're part of a winning team you're part of a team that has a proud
tradition you just got to add to that tradition
and that's going to take time
that's how you do it