Jocko Podcast 244: Don't Do it Alone. How to Build a Winning Team w Mike Sarraille and George Randle

2020-08-28T06:26:11Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @efoverwatch @TheWarOfTalentOfficial 0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:33 - The Talent War.  How to build a winning team. 3:21:22 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:27:49 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO STORE Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com/collections/men Jocko Fuel: https://www.jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ 3:47:06 - Closing gratitude.

AI summary of episode

and so that's why when someone comes without 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 military it's a new stuff all the time going here section called the cost of talent when companies lack a talent mindset it's a common refrain cost creating a robust talent acquisition and 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 tuition 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 and 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 is that you're doing it's a pretty good little break out there of how similar these things really are going in another section here may 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's 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 DePento told us and that's the CEO of 711 I've always had my CHRO linked at the hip and will continue to as Joe is 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 succession planning and gap analysis to assess select and develop talent in a strategic way you know we we found this you know I kind of knew it intuitively and I suspected it but but if I'm just company out there that wants to hire so 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 he'll talk to myself you may talk with one other person and we're going to 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 how they've done it because you know we we want to make sure that they know how to do because they're mechanics behind this 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 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 oh you know what hey 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 gonna bring us into 21 what's gonna bring us into 22 you and like Don Roberts and said in our book you have to be higher for the skills and needs of the future where your company is gonna go and I think we even brought it up it's like the term is fighting in the last war you know you're not thinking ahead is to what you're gonna 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 to echelon front sometimes be working with a company and and you know they're whatever company 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 do they got all the things going on 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 have rich talent on the other end we've seen countless people turn down higher pay to stay with the 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 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 yeah uh a beast now I tell people I worked with Johnny Kim you know I start with Johnny Kim that's awesome the origins of the soft talent minds at 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 in delivering strict strategic impacts through skull 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 criteria 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 they're 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 that seal come from he comes from a high school you know this is the story you know we're working with business leaders and they think they need to experience it so important 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 industry specific experience but he was one of those people who perform time and time again whatever you put in front of him you'd find a way through it over it or around it he was relentless and adaptable so you go on they they have 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 click that click time and time again it and here's the funny thing is you remember tray holder who helped us out during the infancy of if ever watched we had this call and it was either we can have to two weeks after they made that selection and this leader within the company who we had a personal relationship said hey this guy is an arrogant you know what he's like we've got a problem and you know we're not going to say hey we told you so the guy he's trying to run a major distribution center 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 and said we asked what what are you going to do about it he said nothing and I just asked him was said if you have some of the that you feel is going to poison the culture why aren't you going to do anything and it was if I get let him go two weeks into the job my senior leaders are going to look at me like what are you doing down there and so that individual was going to let it ride I haven't talked to him I'm sorry so the the question jocca absolutely it's going to be a series of phone calls we want to know everything about your business about your industry and a lot of times the reason we do these phone calls because what business the leaders think they want is not necessarily what they need and our our job as well during that is to advise them based off what we're hearing what we think you really need is x, y, z, not a, b, c and our clients have followed our advice and it's worked out beautifully what 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 currently 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 sink for what what what a talent sink 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 we tell him hey we're going to need usually two to three weeks to start screaming and assessing potential leaders the the people the the right leaders for this position it could be through our organic town pool we're also going to run an external search for people we haven't touched yet that maybe out there that may be a good fit for that role and that takes time and our clients again we're preaching patience we have a pretty darn good fill speed rate to fill and if people allow us to go through our process John strike reminder was talking about that and how there was like people in the special forces community that were saying all this is garbage you're gonna get these guys that don't know what they're doing but like so many of those sag operators went right from boot camp to you know to a it and then on the special force and then they went right over to Vietnam and freaking just got after he he like was laughing about it because those guys were just freaking legit what with general boikom was telling the story you know you had senior leaders when he was the commander of use to sock 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 know we can take people off the street and turn them into great special forces soldiers and of course what there is a command soldier major use to sock sitting back the senior and listed visor wall both camps fought and finally he said when he piped in he said hey I was an OJT soldier in Vietnam 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 will 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 their foundation of their assessment and selection process in contrast many companies instead of hiring the candidates with the most potential higher 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 higher the familiar and safe people are more afraid of a bad higher than they are excited by a good higher 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 ex years of industry experience does this person have wide degree these criteria don't matter nearly as much as you might think the ten-conylbrient decor former commander of army special forces assessment selection told us when I arrived in 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 you're 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 but you guys have pointed out earlier the US military is in 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 skip and 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's looking to hire candidates for sales leadership position and he used two search firms EF Overwatch which is what which is excellent front and a competitor and Jeremy so this is 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 on college recently separated army infantry officer who held several different functional billets in the army has all the attributes are 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 in scale 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 using the army but but they're good people right and that those people will come back to you by the way I mean eventually they're gonna come back because you know somebody is over the reason they're leaving us because if you're treating people well the reason people are leaving us because someone is lying to them you know they're lying they're giving them some lying that they're not gonna be able to uphold so when people are leaving it's it's your alumni you got a treat them like you're alumni and say hey good luck let me know if you never need anything you know even though you're working for a competitor it's all right we came up with it good ago you say about nothing worth accomplishing it can be done alone there are no rampos in the military that might look cool in the movies but individual is die pretty quickly on the battlefield or worst get others hurt they're great success requires that we work together curiosity exploring the unknown and questioning the status quo and pursue to better more effective solutions is the key to innovation without curious individuals nothing would ever change or improve emotional strength in the US 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 films I mean you got really cool examples in here to back these things up but that's where people buy the books 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 and 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 be gets more negativity an individual the negative attitude can still produce results but is often at the expense of company culture typically that one person who's also not worth the resulting damage to the team you have highlighted this section emotional strength is the ability to regulate ones emotions to remain logical under stress situations marsawk 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 in 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 these were this chapter which 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's physical organization this person works for but he's with a very unique or organization and he's been in that seat for five years which is an indicator that this guy is 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 in 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 what will caution you with regards to results on assessments he said 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 my says they're just one more data point 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 will 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 hiding 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 gonna run the playbook and you're thinking no way I do that do want that no you don't and this was the same thing is happen to the micro managers coming through my train when I was running training you get someone that's thinking hey look I've been I'm 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 will be good to go and what is that turned into it's micro management that you can't tell everyone what to do there's no way you can be everywhere or once and everything falls apart you need thinking shooters is what we used to call it 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 who's performance ends up being lackluster the company chalks up to a bad hire fires the person 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 extreme ownership coming at you live public talent work talent development you guys talk about training mentoring and coaching good quote and hear from Jonah Pinto from 711 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 something up a great attitude and and for the listeners to open to is actually a west point the 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 wrapping this up a little bit here actually this I'll wrap this up right here with this like it's not quite the closer you know we were talking about to bring this over to the business world you know 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 in the story it's the effective 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 can 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 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% 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 interplayed information they're two or three years lied on the experience you were asking for I promise you this 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 but fear-based hiring problem leaders shouldn't be outshined by the followers average or underperforming managers often fear hiring someone who outshined 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 better better than you I want to work myself out of a job I want to have and we go in a little bit later about succession planning I need to have as many people who can take my place and corporate mercados and do that you know the succession planning we do in the military to muscle memory uh and then let us know uh next one special operations for since our 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 overaligning 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 biz world in the business world the 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 often and even encourage mediocre employees because it raises their own value in comparison a team mentality greatly reduces the power of ego 're they're scared to death they want it it just turns into this machine how fast how fast can you hire how fast can you get that butt in the seat I'll take that step further at the risk of being a little bit of a stereo typing people but who's hungrier the person that you know has two years experience going into a role that needs five years experience or wait 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 going to be in Georgia to hear hungry individual that wants to prove themselves and and and I've seen this time and again is you know the recruiters that I've brought up to town acquisition specialist I call them talent consultants because they're really embedded in the business they'll go have talked with this guy and and then you pointed out to me that whatever a year ago so come 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 nineties or mid nineties ex games was really coming to to 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 video games e-sports teams they're putting e-sports teams together now if you asked our generation when they said hey we're going to go recruit out of the e-sports or video game town pools we'd probably say no way yeah that future seals and future marsawk you know Raiders and special forces are not going to come out of this communities that's wrong that's that's where the new talent lays not all that they're still town out there playing sports you know on teams wrestling and I think that's what you know sort of differentiates us from from a lot of the executive search firms out there is I know we together in George we're going to build this into the number one leadership town acquisition firm in the nation I have no doubt then when people look for directors of leadership in training as well as chief leadership officers they're going to say go to you if overwatch because the men and women were placing know how to train people they know how to create the foundation for strong cultures and that's really where we're making the name right now we'll still place people in the COO roles general management roles but one of my passions for you if overwatch is that that director of leadership in training or the COO position

Most common words

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number 244 with echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening,
[00:00:06] echo. Good evening. And also joining me tonight is Mike Sarelli and George Randall.
[00:00:11] And if you haven't listened to, when Mike came on the podcast for the first time, go listen to that.
[00:00:18] It was number 134. Mike was in task in the bruiser in the battle of the body. And after that,
[00:00:27] he did another nine combat deployments. And he is part of our leadership consultancy,
[00:00:34] echelon front, where he also heads up our talent acquisition firm, which is called EF overwatch.
[00:00:42] Mike, welcome back. And also George Randall, is an army vet, came up through the ranks from
[00:00:50] enlisted to officer, which I guess we all have that in common. And then left the army for the
[00:00:56] corporate world, where eventually we became a talent acquisition executive. That sounds impressive.
[00:01:05] Always keeping a focus on recruiting veterans and coaching them through the transition
[00:01:10] to civilian life. Now there's all kinds of things we could talk about. But today we're going
[00:01:15] to focus on, well, it's been one of the focuses that we've had for several years at echelon front.
[00:01:21] And it's a focus that you guys have taken and absolutely run with. And that is talent.
[00:01:28] It is finding, recruiting, acquiring and retaining the best people.
[00:01:36] Obviously, all those things are a subset of leadership. But it's a subset that both of you have
[00:01:42] been focused on. And it's a subset that gets left out a lot in people ignore it. And
[00:01:50] Mike, you, you, you started GFO Overwatch. And you guys got so possessed by this that you guys have
[00:01:58] just written a book. And the book is called The Talent War. And you've done a great job of
[00:02:09] covering, you know, this topic in the book. And I want to jump into it. And I'm going to do something
[00:02:12] right now that might be considered lame. I don't know. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm going to start
[00:02:18] with a quote from the book. But the quote that I'm going to start with from the book is a quote from me,
[00:02:26] because I wrote the forward. So maybe that's lame. But here it is. Leadership is the most important
[00:02:31] thing on the battlefield. And the most important thing in business and in life. It is leadership that
[00:02:37] sets the example. It is leadership that makes decisions. It is leadership that unifies a team around
[00:02:43] a common goal. And it is leadership that takes care of the team and gets the mission done. But
[00:02:48] one of the most important roles of the leader is often overlooked. The responsibility of building
[00:02:56] the team in the first place. The leader is responsible for training, equipping, and directing a team.
[00:03:04] But before any of that is possible, the leader must recruit, screen, and acquire the right people
[00:03:11] for the team. And that's a little bit from the forward. And then it jumps into this book that you
[00:03:20] guys wrote. Before we jump into it, at what point did you start thinking that that we needed
[00:03:28] right about this, that we needed to do something about this? Were you thinking about this as you
[00:03:32] stood up, EFO Overwatch? As you guys started banging your heads together and moving forward with this,
[00:03:37] Mike, at what point did you start looking at, hey, we need to start telling people about talent
[00:03:43] and how they need to handle it as leaders? You know, I love how you just said it's a subset of
[00:03:48] leadership. But absolutely, as you just said, it's one of the most overlooked parts is before you even
[00:03:53] step out on an adventure. You got to formulate the team. And that's hard. And really,
[00:04:01] Georgia and I nerd out on this, where other people are talking about, you know, just you too.
[00:04:05] We're talking about talent acquisition. And if anyone calls me and nerd, I'll gladly provide
[00:04:11] my address. You can come out of a conversation with me. No, I'm joking. So the amount of companies
[00:04:17] we run into that reach out to us and say, hey, we need help. And, you know, we're very genuine.
[00:04:22] We want to see our clients succeed. That's our primary goal. We also want to see our candidates
[00:04:27] you know, prosper in those positions that we place them in. But they are at a loss
[00:04:36] for what the correct steps are. And as we looked at it, it sort of out of frustration of wanting
[00:04:42] to help them and them not always following our guidance, we during our conversations, we talked about
[00:04:48] a lot about the special operations community and how it's taking them decades to create a world
[00:04:54] class talent acquisition process. Do they call it something different? It's not hiring. We call
[00:05:00] assessment and insolention. And so one day, I, you know, usually how I carry out my ideas. I was
[00:05:07] probably watching TV and something came in my head. I picked up the phone called Jordan said, hey,
[00:05:11] we should write a book on this. And he said, okay. And then we started researching it. You know,
[00:05:15] we didn't think all the way through it. You know, most of my ideas are half baked. And, you know,
[00:05:21] voila, we found somebody to assist us through the process because neither of us had written a book.
[00:05:28] I knew two guys at Roto Book, I didn't reach out to him, which was probably the biggest mistake.
[00:05:32] And we're learning a lot of that. The hard way, but this journey has been awesome. And it's
[00:05:40] actually solidified and changed some of the views we have on talent going through this process and
[00:05:45] all the interviews. So George, how did you two link up? Well, it was funny. I was actually listening
[00:05:51] to podcast 134. And so I'm listening to this. And then you all mentioned, you have overwatch
[00:05:58] in Austin. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. So I reached out to Mike Unlinkedin and I said, hey,
[00:06:04] you know what? We need some world class leaders where I work. You know, and he wrote back
[00:06:09] within minutes. And the next thing, you know, where it breakfast at Kirby Lane in Austin. And,
[00:06:14] you know, it was like, wow, I found my counterpart. I got somebody who thinks about talent like I do.
[00:06:22] And it rapidly took off from there. You know, ultimately leading to the wedding, which at some point
[00:06:29] we might talk about. I didn't marry George. Let's just, there was no wedding. I'll let him continue.
[00:06:34] He asked I was already spoken for. So, but yeah, and we just really started to think, okay,
[00:06:41] how do we pair up my 20 years in talent acquisition in his 20 years in special operations? And
[00:06:47] there was just so much synergy there in an instant. And we were fortunate to see it and take off with it.
[00:06:54] Yeah, you know, from when Mike originally started talking to me and and late about, you know,
[00:06:59] doing something with talent acquisition for people, it was such a no-brainer because all of these
[00:07:04] companies we work with. We got to work with the company. We spent two days with them. And at the end,
[00:07:08] you know what they say? They say, we would really love to have a couple people with your backgrounds.
[00:07:13] Or, you know, do you know what we can find people? We were getting, we heard that for years and years
[00:07:17] and years. Where can we get people that have this mindset, this leadership skill set? Where do we find them?
[00:07:22] And you know, Nathan, I would kind of struggle as well. You can try and hire vets or whatever.
[00:07:26] And then when Mike got on board and, you know, he just said, hey, we can actually do this because
[00:07:31] your background with vetted. And it was, it was just such an obvious answer to help the clients that we
[00:07:38] have at Escalafron be able to get good people. And on top of that, take veterans that are coming
[00:07:45] out that have been institutionalized because I don't know if a better way to describe it because
[00:07:49] I know I was damn sure institutionalized. You know, I spent my entire adult life in the
[00:07:52] sealed teams had no idea. I'll tell people people would be like, you know, when you started
[00:07:57] teaching leadership, like, how did you know it was going to work in the civilian world? I didn't,
[00:08:02] I didn't. The first time I sat down with the CEO and I was talking to them, I had no idea
[00:08:05] that almost never mind, almost that that line for line, the leadership that we talked to seals
[00:08:14] was the exact same leadership that was needed in a company or in a team. And as soon as I realized
[00:08:20] that, I said, we've got something very special here because we had distilled it down and it
[00:08:24] made so much sense and he had been tested. As soon as got out in the civilian sector, same thing.
[00:08:29] So when Mike started saying, hey, we could actually help the military folks and help the civilian
[00:08:37] companies. I mean, this is just a win, win across the board. You know, you've got both sides
[00:08:43] of the equation that absolutely benefit from doing this math and it doesn't get any better than that.
[00:08:50] So to actually now jump into the book a little bit, kicks this off in chapter one,
[00:08:58] you can't see talent. A Navy seal instructor told Dr. Josh Cotton. Tell me about Josh Cotton
[00:09:04] before I think in here. So Josh is our counterpart, help with right the book. Josh and I connected
[00:09:10] through multiple, multiple contacts of Josh's story is interesting. You know, you think Werner
[00:09:16] Josh is the ultimate nerd and I give him a crap for that. He loves data. He's an industrial
[00:09:21] organization on psychologist. Well, when he was finishing his doctorate, he worked with the Navy
[00:09:27] out of Millington and eventually a contract came along where which was offered to him to work with
[00:09:32] the Navy seals to assess how they assess and select talent into their community. So he also worked
[00:09:40] with a little bit with the Mars community, the Arnold Army Special Operations Special Forces Community
[00:09:46] and he gained experience that most doctors, I know, had a close psychologist, don't receive.
[00:09:52] And then he took what he found based off assessing high performers, which arguably,
[00:09:56] to special operations community is a bunch of high performers and how do you apply that to a business
[00:10:02] setting? And it resonated extremely well. So as he stepped out of that contract, he stepped into the
[00:10:07] Fortune 500 right now. You know, he's the director of talent assessments for a major Fortune
[00:10:13] 500 company throughout the organization. And so he's, you know, he's looking at all this data
[00:10:21] at performers at different levels of the organization. And that's where he came into the book.
[00:10:25] You know what that reminds me of. So at some point, I was talking to one of the guys that worked
[00:10:33] at Buds as a civilian contractor, as what's the real word for an athletic trainer? Is it just
[00:10:38] called an athletic trainer? Is that what it is? Is that the job, especially someone that
[00:10:41] looks at your spring, Dankel or whatever? Is that what it is? Echo Charles? Trainer? Yeah.
[00:10:45] Trainer? So I was talking to one of those guys and he was talking about
[00:10:51] Patella for moral syndrome. So Patella for moral syndrome is this thing that you can get. And it's
[00:10:57] where you're, you're, you're Patella, somehow, rubs against your, your femur or you're a
[00:11:05] Patella tendon, rubs against your femur and it gets sore and swollen, right? And he said, you know,
[00:11:11] in the civilian world at a football team, at a baseball team, at a college football team, whatever,
[00:11:15] he says, you might see a case of Patella for moral syndrome. You might see three in a season.
[00:11:24] He said, I see seven cases of Patella for moral syndrome, a date at Buds. So what I'm saying is,
[00:11:33] you take this doctor that's used to looking at whatever, the assessment of some
[00:11:37] civilian organization, we're going to assess some candidates and, you know, see what,
[00:11:41] see where they're at and see where that mentally and see where that psychologically and
[00:11:44] you have to wait for months and months to see how they actually perform when do they get put
[00:11:48] under pressure at Buds? It's like, oh, here you go, here's a, here's a 180 people that are
[00:11:55] about to get the biggest mental stress of their life in the next four weeks and you get to look at.
[00:12:01] That's, that's, that's an amazing way to get to get experience. And that's what happened with these
[00:12:05] guys that would, would athletic trainers. And it was a couple different approaches that guys would
[00:12:09] have. Some guys would, they would leave like a pro sports team and and come to Buds and they
[00:12:15] would never want to leave because they were so, so much help or they'd come and get all that
[00:12:20] experience and then they'd go to a team because, you know, after you've seen hundreds of cases of
[00:12:26] Patella for moral syndrome and ITB issues and whatever, all those little injuries that they deal
[00:12:32] with all the time, they show up at a baseball team, they can identify things so much easier than
[00:12:36] anybody else could. And so that's what it sounds like. This, this doctor cotton is. And to take
[00:12:41] it one step further following that experience, he created something completely based off special
[00:12:46] operations and how we classify, you know, high performers, it's called the elite performance
[00:12:51] indicator of the EPI and he developed that personal assessment tool, which is now used by business
[00:12:58] is and what we're going to be using sort of is our indexes, just one of many assessments of our
[00:13:04] candidates for the EFO watch candidates that come to us from the military.
[00:13:08] Bud, yeah. All right. So now that we've got Dr. Josh cotton, we know about him and so I'll
[00:13:13] take it from the top. You can't see talent. A Navy SEAL instructor told Dr. Josh cotton,
[00:13:18] it's not the biggest guy or the strongest or the fastest. You have to trust the process.
[00:13:23] The process will reveal who has the potential to become a SEAL. Dr. Cotton was working with
[00:13:28] the Navy SEAL community to improve their assessment and selection process. To that end,
[00:13:32] he'd been asking all the instructors what do you look for in recruits. He had received a lot of
[00:13:37] insightful answers. People who don't quit, team players who step up and lead, resiliency, people who
[00:13:42] are calm under pressure, problem solvers. This was the first instructor who had taken their question
[00:13:47] literally, but it was a good answer because you can't inherently see talent, not in somebody's physical
[00:13:53] appearance and especially not on their resume. Now we go into this little case study, which is
[00:14:00] interesting about this is people ask me, you know, like who's going to meet you? You think that
[00:14:04] guy is going to make it? I've said, I have no idea because you can't tell. In fact, there was a guy
[00:14:12] who was a captain and a great guy and he had never signed anyone off and said, this guy is going to
[00:14:20] make it and he eventually got this candidate through whatever relationships he had, this candidate
[00:14:27] came out, this guy was like a multi-language really diverse background, seemed like he had a bunch of
[00:14:33] bunch of experience highly educated and he signed off on the guy and this is the one guy he signed off
[00:14:40] of to be an officer in the sealed teams and the guy quit and he said, I'll never sign off and he
[00:14:45] interviewed him. The whole line you had to go to the captain in the sealed teams. Signed off
[00:14:49] on the guy, he quit, he said, I'll never sign off on anyone again. Now let's be honest, just
[00:14:54] and start that way. When it was 25 year old, Jocca, you were like hey, that guy, as you watch all
[00:14:58] of it, but I can't at lines up y'all. He played football in a D1 school, he's going to make it,
[00:15:04] or any of that kid that did speech into debate, he's going to be gone within the first two weeks,
[00:15:08] dude, in fact you say life humbles you, you still be learning, you don't know, you don't even
[00:15:13] have to go to 25 year old, you're Jocca, you can go to 19 years old, as I'm watching guys that were
[00:15:19] infinitely better qualified and you know, athletically more talented than me and I'm watching them
[00:15:25] quit and I was like okay, I guess there's no telling who's going to get through this program
[00:15:30] and speaking of which is the way you get to. Going back to the book, Mike embarrassly learned
[00:15:36] this lesson firsthand when he was a student at going through Naval Special Warfare under water
[00:15:40] demolition seal training, but Mike was a prior-listed recon Marine and by the way I'm talking
[00:15:47] about Mike, Mike's really sitting right here. Mike was a prior-listed recon Marine, one of the
[00:15:51] Marine Corps Special Operation capable forces which later became an official part of the Special
[00:15:54] Operations Community in 2006 and Scouts Kniver in May of 2003, he was discharged as a sergeant
[00:15:59] and commissioned as a Naval Officer and issued immediate orders to buds the Marines at taught him how
[00:16:04] to lead a team and he foolishly and arrogantly believed that his natural, that this naturally led
[00:16:09] to the ability to determine which candidates would make great seals and which candidates didn't
[00:16:13] deserve to be there. His six months in buds would be a brutal lesson in humility on how wrong he
[00:16:19] was and his ideas about evaluating candidates. How could he be in a position to determine who would
[00:16:24] make great special operations soldier when he was competing for the very honor the other students
[00:16:29] we're striving for. In this class Mike made the same class mistake that every business leader or
[00:16:34] HR manager makes when they toss a resume into the trash because the candidate doesn't have the
[00:16:38] exact education or industry experience required. Like most hiring managers today he judged a book
[00:16:45] by its cover that book was Ryan Job. Ryan didn't look like a seal. He was on the heavier side
[00:16:52] for a seal at least and nobody knew how he'd make it through the initial how he'd made it through
[00:16:56] the initial physical standards to even get into buts. Mike looked at Ryan and he made a snap
[00:17:01] judgment. This guy's not going to make it he thought. Mike wasn't the only one who thought so.
[00:17:06] The rest of the class and the seal instructors all thought Ryan didn't fit the mold of the seal.
[00:17:11] Since everybody expected Ryan to quit the instructors decided to speed the process along.
[00:17:17] They threw everything they could at Ryan with within ethical and legal means of course
[00:17:23] interesting note you made there. Of course interesting of course it was within ethical and legal
[00:17:27] means buts is already among the most intensive physical and mental training a person can endure
[00:17:32] and it was even harder for Ryan. The instructors made him run extra miles and do more pushups.
[00:17:36] They forced him to be called let in Sandy longer than the rest of the students. By the end of
[00:17:39] hell week approximately two months in retraining the class had gone from 250 students down to 35.
[00:17:44] Recruit after recruit rang the bell three times signifying a DOR drop on request or
[00:17:49] laments term they quit. Only 35 guys were left and Mike was one of them. He felt he was truly
[00:17:55] part of an elite organization a brotherhood as he looked down the line of the physical
[00:18:00] beast standing alongside him. He was astonished. A few candidates to his left stood none other than
[00:18:06] Ryan Job who was smiling. Mike and Ryan both reported to seal team three they eventually
[00:18:14] deployed to Ramadi. I rack where they fought in the battle of Ramadi in 2006 one of the fiercest
[00:18:18] battles in the global war on terror. Ryan performed as an automatic weapons machine gunner during
[00:18:22] the days in Ramadi. After months of fierce fighting Ryan was critically wounded during a major
[00:18:27] operation in South Central Ramadi contested area held by alkai to forces. You shot in the face
[00:18:33] by a sniper while laying down machine gun fire to cover a squad of seals closing on the enemy.
[00:18:39] Days after Ryan was wounded doctors declared he would never recover his sight.
[00:18:44] In salt to injury he also lost his sense of smell and taste but it didn't slow him down.
[00:18:49] After his injury Ryan displayed the same drive and resiliency he demonstrated during his days at
[00:18:54] buds. He refused to quit or feel sorry for himself. Despite all the setbacks he finished his
[00:18:59] bachelor's in business with a 4.0 GPA he ascended the 14,411 feet of Mount Ranier and even shot
[00:19:07] a and killed a trophy bull elk. All this without his sight, smell or taste.
[00:19:14] Ryan underwent countless surgeries and rehabilitation in years after Ramadi. In 2009 only a few
[00:19:20] weeks after he found out he and his wife his high school sweetheart would be having a baby. He
[00:19:25] aspirated and died during his 22nd surgery for his injuries. He became what seals call the last
[00:19:33] fatality of the battle of Ramadi. He was the third seal from his task unit to die.
[00:19:40] Fellow seal Mark Lee was the first and the second Michael Montsourer who was awarded the
[00:19:45] Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save two seals, one of which was Mike Surelli.
[00:19:53] It's hard for Mike to believe now that he ever doubted Ryan. He was always waiting for a time to
[00:19:59] apologize and he found that time while they were in Ramadi. While they were in Ramadi.
[00:20:04] After Mike apologized Ryan said it's okay everyone's been misreading me all my life.
[00:20:21] So I don't know if there's a better example of why we can't judge a book by its cover than Ryan.
[00:20:30] He ended up rolling into Charlie Patoon and tasked him to bruise her and he got some personal
[00:20:42] love and encouragement from his Patumates to make sure that he was going to be an awesome seal.
[00:20:50] But this is a metaphor for what you guys see in the civilian sector with people looking at
[00:20:59] resumes and judging books by its cover. Same thing.
[00:21:05] Every day, thousands upon thousands of resumes coming in, managers like,
[00:21:11] this guy's been in our competitor, this person's done ABC, they have all these experience.
[00:21:16] Yeah, got to hire him right away. No process. I just know it. Got call.
[00:21:23] When everyone's talking to companies and I'll, a common question is what, what question should
[00:21:30] you ask during an interview? It's a pretty common question or what assessment or what should we do?
[00:21:35] How should we screen and I'm always saying, hey look, try and put the person in a position
[00:21:42] or a situation that's as similar as they're going to be working in because that's the best way to
[00:21:46] assess if they're going to be able to do it or not. It's a similar thing that they're doing now.
[00:21:50] You know, for years, they're trying to figure out who is going to make it through seal training.
[00:21:55] And now what they do is they send them to what is I think it's Chicago. They send them
[00:21:59] Chicago and they go through a pre-training situation where what they do is basically freaking train
[00:22:07] really, really hard and a bunch of people don't make it through that but then they find that, oh yeah,
[00:22:12] more people that made it through that are going to make it through actual buds. Well, it's like,
[00:22:17] does that not true? I've got to look at the numbers. I don't think it was a substantial increase
[00:22:22] in the number that actually made it through buds. But again, we've got to go back and look at the
[00:22:26] data. But it's the same thing with Dr. Cotton. And we see this with people who build assessments.
[00:22:31] We've even, it's funny you brought up trainers for the screening for Jay Sock. There were physical
[00:22:36] trainers that believed they could give you an 80% sort of answer on whether somebody was going to
[00:22:44] make it through the training or not. Everyone claims, oh well, my personal assessment test will
[00:22:47] give you 80% probability of whether a person will make it through the training. And it's all wrong.
[00:22:53] That's what's the perfect question we need to answer in the interview. We hear that all the time.
[00:22:58] There is no one perfect. There's no one perfect personal assessment. Some people like the
[00:23:03] Hogan, other people like the disc. And what you're not going to find in this book is it's not
[00:23:08] prescriptive. So I can be like, okay, step one. This is what you do. Step two, these are the questions
[00:23:13] that you need to ask. These are the personal assessments that you use. It's different for every company.
[00:23:18] What it is, you've got to identify your process. What's the process that works for you that
[00:23:24] results in statistically the most quality hiders? And that is a, as you know, that is a decade long
[00:23:33] pursuit and it's taking special operations. There's still redo. There's still constantly evolving
[00:23:38] the process. 50 decades and they're still evolving that process. So yeah, you know, we hear it all
[00:23:44] the time and somebody says this is the number one question I asked that determines whether somebody's
[00:23:48] going to work at the company or not. And if that works, we're not here to judge that's great.
[00:23:53] You know, we get people coming to us all the time saying, what are those questions? And I kind of
[00:23:58] kind of off. Like, do you know what success looks like in your company? Yeah. They're already starting
[00:24:04] down the interview path before they've determined what success looks like. What they're even looking
[00:24:08] for. Exactly. What gaps do we have? What are we trying to do here? You know, and you know,
[00:24:13] when I was coaching veterans and you know, Mike and I do this webinar. And I said, can any of you
[00:24:18] tell me a time where you've left the wire and didn't clearly know what success looked like?
[00:24:24] But do you watch people walk into the hiring process all the time? And they're like, okay,
[00:24:29] here's a list of objective requirements. I want them to come from these companies. Okay, let's
[00:24:33] figure out the interview questions. Yeah. Like you have a literally backwards. Yeah. So I guess this
[00:24:39] is going back to what I was originally starting to say that I got sidetracked on. So when I asked
[00:24:43] companies or people asked me, what's the question you ask? I always asked the group a question.
[00:24:48] I'll say, who here has ever hired someone that did the best interview. It was outstanding. You
[00:24:54] thought this guy was a rock star. You bring along board and they're told to disaster. And
[00:25:00] 100% of time every single person will raise their hand because everyone has done that. We, this guy
[00:25:04] interviewed great, super-carol. She was terrific in the interview. All charismatic. They do a great job
[00:25:09] in the interview and they're duds when they show up to work. And then I asked the opposing question,
[00:25:14] which is, who here has looked, you needed to fill a sea, you took a risk on somebody. You
[00:25:19] weren't really sure it would work out. They got in there and they crushed it. And the same thing,
[00:25:24] everyone raises their hand. So it's a common problem and it's a common problem that we all have
[00:25:32] where we think we know better than life. Yeah. And I got to tell you, you know, I've been doing
[00:25:39] this 20 plus years and, you know, I worked for Fortune 50 Company one year. My team hired the team
[00:25:45] that I led hired 23,000 people in one year. So I can say from a scale perspective that I probably
[00:25:52] hired the more people than most on the planet. And I promise you, I've got to trust the process.
[00:25:59] There's no part of me that goes, oh yeah, I got that down. I know that person, yeah, they're going to
[00:26:03] rock it. No, no, that process. If you don't have a process and if you haven't defined success,
[00:26:08] hiring will humble you. You know, and you've got to approach it. And you know, one of the things
[00:26:13] that Mike and I went to great lengths about in this book was no process is perfect. And it's,
[00:26:20] you know, and one of the big things where you're talking with Josh was, you know, how do you know
[00:26:26] when you're doing it wrong? How do you get a feedback loop? And people just do hiring is something
[00:26:31] mechanical. And they don't think about this. Oh, we got to go do this. So it's outsourced and
[00:26:35] your HR is just okay, they're turning the cranks. And they're bringing people in the door. They're
[00:26:39] funneling through resumes. Yeah. But even with my years of experience, you know, you know, I'm always
[00:26:45] questioning myself. What am I missing? What have I missing? Did I get this right? Did I evaluate all the
[00:26:49] right traits for success in this role? And you know, I'm still going to miss. And I'll get humbled by it
[00:26:55] real quick. Every time I think I'm confident, Murphy's Law comes around and then humbles me click.
[00:27:00] It's an art. It's an art. There's a science behind it, but ultimately much like you can study war
[00:27:08] in the United States and train for a decade. But until you step into the arena of war,
[00:27:14] you really don't hone that art. And so you're going to make mistakes. If you have a process
[00:27:20] when we see the bad hires happen is when people deviate from that process and they put a time
[00:27:26] women on it. And we're not taking it. We're not telling anyone that you're going to take six months to
[00:27:30] interview somebody to hire for the job. No, we understand that it has to be within reasonable time
[00:27:34] on it. But you know, I know we're probably going to get to this. You can have the greatest,
[00:27:41] world's best talent acquisition process. You can have a great process. But if you don't have
[00:27:49] your leadership foundation, if it's not solid within the organization, you're going to become
[00:27:53] a revolving door for talent. You're going to get great people into the company and once they recognize
[00:27:58] that there's bad leadership, they're going to leave. So funny enough, this book, and you know,
[00:28:02] it's a subset. It's an important part of leadership. You actually have to start with your leadership
[00:28:06] foundation before you even start to build a good hiring process. And that's where a lot of people
[00:28:11] get it wrong. What we're lacking talent, let's just get good talent and good talent will come in.
[00:28:15] And again, if you're working for a bad later, that person's going to leave. What do we always say?
[00:28:19] You select a boss. Not a job. You select a great boss. Yeah. You say something in here too.
[00:28:26] It's the same thing that you're saying. It will get to it later. But if you're hiring good people,
[00:28:31] they don't put up with knuckleheads. They don't want to work for a knucklehead. So if you go on
[00:28:36] you hire someone that's awesome and you're a knucklehead or your leadership is a bunch of knuckleheads,
[00:28:40] they're not going to stay there. That's just the way it works. And the other thing is, you know,
[00:28:44] there's, you're not just like combat, you're not going to eliminate all risk when you make a
[00:28:49] hire. I mean, there's always going to be some level of risk there. But what you can do, if you
[00:28:54] set up the right process is mitigate that risk as much as humanly possible. And then you end up
[00:29:00] in a much better situation. Getting back to the book because damn, apparently we can all get sidetracked
[00:29:06] pretty quick. I guess I can nerd out on talent too, huh? A little bit. You go into this section of
[00:29:11] what is talent. At the most basic level talent equals high potential candidates. The people most
[00:29:16] likely to become high performers. Talent is people like Ryan Job. It is the individual who never
[00:29:21] gives up who performs in high pressure situations and who will win when others say it's impossible.
[00:29:27] Talent drives the team forward and talent wins. And I'm skipping forward, which, by the way,
[00:29:36] if this book, when I read it seems a little bit fragmented, just because I'm not reading the whole
[00:29:40] thing, you have to buy the book to get all the information. But I'm going to skip ahead here.
[00:29:45] Based on our research and interviews, we have identified nine core characteristics that
[00:29:49] mark an individual as having high potential. Drive. The unrelenting need for achievement and
[00:29:55] constant self improvement. Resiliency. The ability to persevere in the face of challenge and
[00:30:00] bounce back from setbacks. Adaptability. The ability to adjust according to the situation,
[00:30:05] learn new things, innovate and try new methods, humility. Self confidence in one's ability while
[00:30:11] understanding that there's always room for improvement and that others experiences and knowledge
[00:30:16] are valuable. Integrity and adherence to not only what is legal, but also what is right.
[00:30:24] Effective intelligence, the ability to apply one's knowledge to real world scenarios,
[00:30:29] team ability. The ability to function as part of a team placing the success of the whole above
[00:30:36] the needs of the self. Curiosity, a desire to explore the unknown and question the status quo
[00:30:43] in pursuit of better, more effective solutions. And the last one is emotional strength, a positive
[00:30:49] attitude, high empathy, and control over one's own emotions, especially in chaotic,
[00:30:54] stressful situations. These traits are heavily emphasized in special operations and explain
[00:31:01] why many veterans go on to accomplish incredible things in the business world after their military
[00:31:06] service. For instance, many companies including Johnson and Johnson with Alex Gorski FedEx,
[00:31:12] with Fred Smith, Bridgewater, David McCormick, and 711 Joe Depinto to name a few are run by veterans.
[00:31:17] These nine attributes are foundational to success no matter the industry. So when you say based on
[00:31:25] our research and interviews, is this stuff that Dr. Cotton kind of put forward or where do you
[00:31:31] guys come up with this? So it's combination of what Dr. Cotton sort of his discovery and then we
[00:31:36] also went and we interviewed people that ran the assessment selection for these different communities.
[00:31:41] Mar Sock, the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets. We worked with an amazing individual. His name is Brian Decker.
[00:31:47] He was a lieutenant colonel. He was in charge of the special forces assessment and selection
[00:31:53] process and actually sort of revolutionized it really around the concept of the whole man concept.
[00:31:58] And so each of these communities have a set of core attributes they're looking for. And it
[00:32:04] goes back really quickly. You did make a point about, you know, you hire somebody who interviews
[00:32:08] extremely well and they end up not working out. And that's what we call personality versus
[00:32:13] character. What you did was you hired based off personality and like ability and what is personality.
[00:32:18] That's really your external sort of show to the world where characters the inner
[00:32:25] attributes that drive your behaviors. And we say all fall in for that. It's like your customer facing
[00:32:31] self versus your internal facing self. Exactly. And you know one of the things we we talk about in the
[00:32:37] book is like the last thing you want to hire for. And then people get this, you know, this
[00:32:41] culture fit. Are they a culture fit? And it sort of becomes this just ad hoc term they throw out
[00:32:46] but they don't really understand. And when people say culture fit, a lot of times what they mean is
[00:32:52] do I like this person. And what we talk about in the book is that some of the the most high
[00:32:57] performing seals that I served with and you served with. I didn't like weird professionals and
[00:33:02] worked well together. But when the job was done he went and hung out with his inner circle and I
[00:33:06] went and hung with mine. But like ability for professionals is not a requirement. Now if you
[00:33:12] guys just conflict and it creates a toxic culture that's a different thing but the least important
[00:33:16] thing to me was like ability. If the individual performs and he can actually put his self needs
[00:33:22] a side or her self needs a side for the common good of the team that's somebody that can be part of
[00:33:27] the culture. As long as their values align with our culture. They're ethical. Yeah, I mean I think
[00:33:35] here's the deal on that from my perspective. If there's someone that works hard and is there to
[00:33:42] support the team, I like them. You know they like I don't know anyone that has here's the
[00:33:51] interesting. I know people that have good personalities and bad character they exist but I don't
[00:33:58] know of anyone. And so I might not like someone that has a good personality but you know and you
[00:34:02] can think when I think of these people I just think of famous people. There's all these famous people
[00:34:07] that they have these personalities and then they then all of a sudden the story breaks that they're
[00:34:11] told their backs. And whatever they've got to most heinous things going on in their personal lives.
[00:34:17] So you've got that where someone has a good personality they're they're forward facing
[00:34:22] personalities who are positive but then behind closed doors they're scumbags.
[00:34:26] And but if you flip that over I can't think of anybody that has a good character that they're
[00:34:33] a good character but they're a bad but they have a bad personality. I don't it's hard for me to think
[00:34:40] about. Now is there someone that maybe has a has a good character and there there maybe
[00:34:46] two director or maybe they're maybe they don't talk a lot or you know whatever but but normally
[00:34:51] if they've got a if they're he goes and check and they're they're gonna support the team.
[00:34:54] I mean I can't. Yeah it's pretty rare. Yeah but a better way but is there were people that were
[00:35:03] high performers that were just sort of socially awkward. So maybe they were just like they were too
[00:35:09] direct. Right. It burned sometimes bridges you understood their personality but other people didn't.
[00:35:15] Back to the attributes so Brian Decker is now the director of player development for the
[00:35:20] Indianapolis cults and so took what he learned in special forces assessment selection he's now
[00:35:25] applying it he's been in the NFL he's worked for for two teams for about six years.
[00:35:30] When they revolutionized and you know it pains me to say this but I can put my ego aside.
[00:35:36] The special forces army special forces community was much further ahead in terms of creating a
[00:35:43] structured and professionalized assessment of how they select special forces soldiers into the
[00:35:49] community. Seals it was just sort of this oral history passed down and when I went over there
[00:35:55] as a guest instructor at their phase two which is their small unit training that's when I was
[00:35:59] really exposed to their whole process and this thing called the whole man concept and the fact
[00:36:04] that they were looking for specific attributes. So when they redesigned their their assessment
[00:36:09] selection they created tasks much like an interview process where they're trying to elicit
[00:36:16] certain behaviors whether good or bad and that's what they're looking for. And so that translates
[00:36:21] to companies it doesn't matter you know what your interview process is or if you have written
[00:36:26] tests what you're trying to elicit with every every question should have meaning behind it
[00:36:32] in an interview process and ultimately that question has to drive at behaviors that's
[00:36:38] and people call this you know in the civilian world behavioral interviews. They're one of the best
[00:36:42] techniques if you do it well. Yeah the the German Army. Yeah as they were trying to get their
[00:36:51] their officers to step up and implement decentralized command and be able to make moves.
[00:36:58] One of the things that I've read about they would do is they would give them here's the rules
[00:37:02] that you have to follow for this training operation and the only way that they could actually
[00:37:07] successfully complete the mission would be to break the rules. And so it was a test to see if they
[00:37:13] would break the rules in order to accomplish the mission. And then there was and look even if
[00:37:18] if you didn't break the rules it didn't necessarily mean that you were a bad person. It just
[00:37:23] would now we know more about you right now I know more about you and we got into some of this on
[00:37:29] when it up at Gettysburg for you have battlefield. You know the fact that Lee didn't know his
[00:37:36] his two subordinates as well as he had before Jackson died. So he's talking to you all and he's
[00:37:43] telling you all that he wants to do something but he's not knowing well he doesn't know his personality
[00:37:47] well enough. So when he tells you hey take that thing if you can't take that hill if you can and
[00:37:52] you'll go to the other and says well I can't. He code of it just wouldn't have been a gut check.
[00:37:56] And if you would have told Jackson to take that hill Jackson would have taken that hill. So these
[00:38:02] are this idea behind setting up questions or situations or problems that you have to solve that
[00:38:09] reveal some part of your character is a very cool thing. You know when you mentioned earlier about
[00:38:16] when people come to you and ask what's the best interview question the question back to them is
[00:38:21] how are you screening for character. And it's one of the things we go into this book is that
[00:38:25] most of those questions are about experience. Do you have this objective experience? They're not
[00:38:33] screening for character. And so you know with the research that we did with Dr. Justin Cotton brought
[00:38:38] to us and when we figured these out you know our point is is that you know once you meet that simple
[00:38:45] experiential gate when you've got the basics you need to start screening for character and you go
[00:38:50] company by company by company and and I and I hate in some ways to say this because I see it all the time
[00:38:57] which is executives are almost the worst of this picking other executives and they don't screen
[00:39:03] for character they're looking for it. Did you work at the competition? How did you move the revenue?
[00:39:08] How did you improve customer success? How did you move a product along? They don't go down into
[00:39:13] character and I sat in the interview after interview after interview and it and it's all objective
[00:39:18] traits or you know basic subjective traits that don't go deep into character and that's what's missing.
[00:39:28] People will default to objective things because they're measurable. They're easy. It's the easy
[00:39:35] button. The subjective is what's hard. He talked about defining success. You know one of the
[00:39:41] mistakes we see with company students they just have one interview process across the organization.
[00:39:45] You actually have to create talent profiles for each of the roles and functions in levels of
[00:39:52] and that's why it takes a lot of time. So what's going to make a great engineer in a company
[00:39:58] is vastly different from what makes a great salesperson. So a lot of the times
[00:40:02] why companies don't define success and they're not good at the interview process is they haven't
[00:40:06] take the time to create talent profiles for the different levels and the different functions
[00:40:11] within the community. It's much like a seal. The attributes that make a great seal are vastly different
[00:40:17] than the attributes for special operations direct support in Intel officer or someone handling the logistics.
[00:40:24] And we've gotten smarter about that over the years as well. And what a lot of people don't understand
[00:40:28] is we're not only screening the green berets and the Navy seals or also screening the people
[00:40:33] that provide the support to those organizations that ultimately come under our umbrella. They're
[00:40:37] being screened for specific attributes as well. Think about the attributes of a good point man versus
[00:40:42] a good breacher. Right? This is like two guys in the same food but you know that breacher attitude
[00:40:48] versus a point man attitude. That's even those guys are a little bit different and they kind of
[00:40:53] get picked when you show up at the team. You know some little guy that's sneaky point man.
[00:40:58] Some big freaking bruiser walking around breacher. So let me throw this out. You often see that
[00:41:05] bachelor's degree is a requirement and a lot of companies can articulate that. Yeah why?
[00:41:12] Why is that even a requirement? In a not saying it you know it does show somebody took the
[00:41:18] the initiative to go complete their bachelor's degree or a master's and I understand that but
[00:41:23] he's got a great story about when C++ programming came along and I'll let him tell it
[00:41:29] but yeah just embarrassing for the people that were requesting a coder. Yeah I had it. It was
[00:41:36] actually Python was the language that they were coding in and I had a senior engineer come to
[00:41:41] me and say hey George you gotta go find me somebody with five years of Python experience.
[00:41:47] I'm like whoa we can't do that. He's like well why not?
[00:41:51] He said it's only been around three years and you might have not knocked that requirement back
[00:41:56] down to three but it's scary that he was so wired to getting an objective level of experience that
[00:42:04] he didn't relate to the job and was completely arbitrary and wasn't timed any measure of success.
[00:42:11] So I mean we calibrated him really quickly we got somebody that had spent most of their you know
[00:42:16] the last few years doing Python you know coding but you know working with that language but it
[00:42:23] was shocking that it came from an engineer. Yeah you gotta watch out for that one.
[00:42:31] Going back to the book the importance of a talent mindset and this is this is sort of a thread
[00:42:36] that goes throughout the book. A talent mindset is the deep belief that human capital is the single
[00:42:41] most important competitive advantage your company can have. When a company has talent mindset
[00:42:46] assessing, selecting and developing the best talent is a top priority. A talent mindset not only
[00:42:54] accounts for hiring talented people but also includes the continual development and investment
[00:43:00] in that talent through their tenure in the organization. So beyond just bringing people on board it's
[00:43:09] continuing to grow them and make them better. So we call the high potential. When you're going through
[00:43:15] the interview process to select new seals in when they graduate buds are they had performers?
[00:43:21] They're not yet. They haven't been proven. They they passed the first gate. That gate is closed.
[00:43:26] They are high potentials. So even if you're looking for a frontline trooper frontline employee or a
[00:43:31] brand new CEO when you bring them into the organization. If you made that decision that they're going
[00:43:35] to be part of the team even if that he's been a prior CEO in another company he's a high potential
[00:43:40] within that new organization. He's not proven yet. So in order to turn that person from a high
[00:43:44] potential I mean this this is what we do for a living in national unfrient. Now you have to
[00:43:47] develop them and that takes a lot of time and effort and it never stops. And if you want to turn
[00:43:52] that high potential into a high performer it's again it's you have to pour in and invest in those
[00:43:57] people and that's why special operations was sort of the the foundational organization we focused
[00:44:03] on in this book because they do it so well. At the core of what you know makes special operations
[00:44:08] so special it's their fundamental belief that people are everything and of course when we say
[00:44:13] people you're also talking about leadership. And then you know you look it's one of the things we
[00:44:17] drive through in the book that Talon mindset is that everything changes so rapidly today. Technology
[00:44:23] the economy markets companies you're only true competitive advantage is talent and that's what we're
[00:44:30] trying to convey is that it isn't the hardware in special operations it's the people and and that's
[00:44:37] how it's got to be in corporate America and it's got to be where you treat your human capital with
[00:44:43] the same rigor and the same focus that you treat your financial capital. And time and again Mike
[00:44:49] and I see that you know of course revenue, here's all people are focused on revenue they're not
[00:44:54] focused on the human capital which is driving everything. You get into this section chapter two what's
[00:45:03] so wrong with traditional hiring practices. George Feld has if you'd want a lottery for a career
[00:45:10] through a highly selective veteran hiring group you just been offered a position at one of the
[00:45:14] world's largest big box retailers according to the company representative they were looking for
[00:45:20] driven leaders who know new how to mentor lead and provide vision for people. Sounded like the
[00:45:25] perfect fit for George plus the job included good salary stock options and growth opportunity.
[00:45:30] It was George's first civilian job after nearly a decade of active duty service and we'd
[00:45:35] set him up to be able to go anywhere and do anything. George accepted the job his very first day of
[00:45:40] orientation training and onboarding was like a punch in the gut. Nothing was about talent or
[00:45:46] leadership. The position was none of the things they'd advertised or told him they didn't want
[00:45:50] a leader they wanted someone who'd fill vacant positions as quickly as possible with people who
[00:45:54] did hear strictly to the rules they were looking for cogs and a machine not talent. Accordingly
[00:45:59] their recruiting teams were evaluated based on efficiency their speed of filling vacant roles and
[00:46:03] cost per hire. To say it was a bad fit was a gross understatement nevertheless George soon proved
[00:46:08] himself to be a high performer and was promoted. His new role still wasn't a good fit fit so we applied
[00:46:14] for another position within the company he felt he would be more suitable. Despite exceeding all
[00:46:19] this key performance indicators and being ranked in the top 5% of his divisional employees the company
[00:46:24] refused to move him. He was succeeding in a leadership role that others struggled with so the
[00:46:29] company wanted to keep him there. George made it 20 months before he quit. He wasn't the only one who
[00:46:35] had to leave quickly. Several peers who shared his talent mindset let also left within two years.
[00:46:40] George and his peers had been able to transform and improve their small assigned corners of the
[00:46:45] company but as soon as they left everything reverted back to the status quo. A tradition went up
[00:46:50] and all the KPIs went unmet. George learned a lot of valuable lessons from that big box retailer
[00:46:55] primarily in what not to do which can be as important to knowing what to do. There was a first hand
[00:46:59] look at how broken traditional talent acquisition is. The mistakes this organization made are the
[00:47:05] same ones we see companies make again and again. And here they are lacking a talent mindset not
[00:47:10] understanding how HR should be structured to drive impact, having a butts and seats mentality,
[00:47:15] participating in fear-based hiring and settling for mediocrity. Anyone of these mistakes
[00:47:21] and spelled disaster foreign organization but the most destructive mistake is missing the talent mindset.
[00:47:28] Rough first tour out of the military huh? It was. It was and you know I've got a four-year
[00:47:33] old my wife's pregnant when I'm thinking okay I've had a great career. The things that made me
[00:47:38] successful in the military they're going to make me successful in the corporate world and I'm just
[00:47:42] fired up. You know young don't know what I don't know and use one of those veteran firms and
[00:47:48] oh I landed job. You know what I think is interesting about that is I bet that many people here
[00:47:58] oh you've got a guy that's been in the military for 10 years. What he wants and what he expects
[00:48:05] this is someone that doesn't it hasn't been in the military what he wants and what he expects is
[00:48:10] to be told what to do and then follow the protocol as has been as you're told and staying your box
[00:48:16] and anyone that's in the bend in the military knows that that's not how the military operates
[00:48:21] at least that's not how it should operate. So you go into that position they think oh cool we've got a
[00:48:25] cog here that we can just count on to you know run the numbers whatever follow the daily program
[00:48:33] when in reality what does a military individual want to do wants to improve things wants to make
[00:48:38] things better wants to grow wants to get more efficient wants to want to push and improve that's what we
[00:48:42] want to do and all of a sudden you're trapped in a situation where no don't do that. Oh yeah I was
[00:48:48] sitting there and you walk in the first day and I'm like what happened what did I miss how did I
[00:48:56] miss this you the other thing they wanted rule followers you know this is a big box retail or
[00:49:01] we won't we go to great likes we do not name any of these companies but I walk in the door
[00:49:05] everybody would know this one and they're expecting me to execute very specific rules I mean
[00:49:10] it they had a more manuals for the same task than the United States Army does it was it was
[00:49:16] phenomenal and that's impressive that's very impressive how you pull that off you want to know how to
[00:49:21] do something there's a there's a binder up there and you know this is this is before everything
[00:49:26] you know on on your iPads and on your computer and they wanted rule followers and immediately
[00:49:32] I knew that was wrong because to your point the one thing that I would add is you know military
[00:49:36] people come out want to win they want to make a difference they want to make an impact and so when
[00:49:43] you're looking at a company and you know you see this this big name and I got to be honest another
[00:49:49] way I got humbled was those stock options looked really really good when I came out I'm like
[00:49:54] who I've got equity I got something I would never get otherwise but they want to rule followers and
[00:50:00] and so there was no there were no latitude you know when I work my commanders you know everybody
[00:50:05] I work with they give me my left and right limits but they also entrust me to make good solid
[00:50:11] decisions that take care by people if I need to exceed that left and right limit and I communicate
[00:50:16] those things but I got here and it's literally you're in a really really small box and you you go
[00:50:22] from thinking that you're going to be wildly successful and to be honest with you I was because I don't
[00:50:28] care what you're going to throw at me I'm going to figure it out and and and I did but it was just
[00:50:33] missing so many things and veterans crave being able to make you were just making a difference
[00:50:37] of the service now you want to make a difference in the corporate world and you know I was kind
[00:50:42] of almost ashamed to come back tell my wife honey I think I made a mistake you know when she's
[00:50:47] even it's pregnant that was not coming out of my mouth you know I was just like okay I got to
[00:50:52] figure this stuff out but yeah bad fit yeah and just to make sure I clarify this point
[00:50:56] to say that military people we're not saying that military people are not rule followers
[00:51:04] correct and look in the military you follow all kinds of rules from the way you cut your hair
[00:51:09] to the way you've freaking wear your clothing like you follow rules but there's there's another
[00:51:15] level of this and as a leader the last thing I look I as a leader I wanted people that followed
[00:51:20] rules and here's the key point as long as the rules made sense and the rules didn't make sense
[00:51:26] I wanted my guys to come to me and say hey you know what jockel this thing that we're supposed to be
[00:51:30] doing it doesn't make any sense and here's why I don't want people that blindly follow rules that
[00:51:34] don't make sense if there's rules in place there's a good reason for them absolutely military guys are
[00:51:38] great military guys and men and women are great at taking a protocol and exercising that
[00:51:45] protocol and we have the discipline to and the mindset to get that done but what's even more important
[00:51:51] than that is having the mind to look at a problem look at a situation look at a protocol and say
[00:51:57] wait a second we can make this better we can do this more efficiently that's what that's not only
[00:52:03] what we do but it's what we want to do do what drives us because like you said we want to win
[00:52:09] yeah and you want to and you know and and and Mike and I try to do this with each other and you
[00:52:15] want to empower the people that work for you that you're leading to do the very same thing
[00:52:20] to say hey you've got a good idea and I brought a phrase from the two of you the best idea
[00:52:24] wins you come up with an idea it makes sense you know it's not illegal it's not a moral it's not
[00:52:29] an ethical and it's going to drive revenue or improve something hey let's get after let's go do it
[00:52:34] I came up with an idea that I figured out in one year would do two million dollars in operating
[00:52:40] cost reduction and the answer was is it in the book like well no and neither is the two million
[00:52:49] dollars by the way and it was still no and and you know that's kind of the environment where
[00:52:55] military leader goes okay I'm not going to reach my potential here I'm not going to be able to do
[00:52:59] all the things that I want to do and and you know it was challenged because you know I don't want to
[00:53:04] quit anything but you sometimes have to make those hard decisions in your career to say yeah
[00:53:09] I could impact better somewhere else and I did this supports something that I tell people all the time
[00:53:16] that the most important compensation you can give a human being is freedom and autonomy and
[00:53:24] and what that means is ownership ownership over your own destiny and if people like that's a
[00:53:28] classic example here you were you're getting good money you had good stock options you're crushing
[00:53:33] the job which means it's not like it's a tax on your mental power but none of that was compare another
[00:53:42] that none of that was had enough value to make you stay there exactly whereas if you were to had
[00:53:46] autonomy and freedom and the ability to control your own fate and destiny you'd still be there
[00:53:52] right now we wouldn't be having this conversation you'd be running the company yeah exactly
[00:53:56] and you know it's spot on and I came into a company two years ago and then I concertally
[00:54:03] named the company force point which is a room by Raytheon but a cybersecurity company and
[00:54:10] that's what the CEO and the CHRO gave me at that company and what's interesting is we put an
[00:54:17] ethos a marker in the ground for the entire team it was teamwork ownership humility
[00:54:23] turned around the entire I mean we walked into a dumpster fire frankly so when we walked into
[00:54:27] and we were able to do great things but that that value in that ownership that they gave me
[00:54:32] that I was able to give everybody on my team it's everything and so when you come into this
[00:54:37] moment's reconciliation becomes an issue that value that empowerment that ownership you give
[00:54:43] people they stick and in two years we had zero percent attrition wow is that you know what's
[00:54:51] amazing though is that that's a surprise to people and you know I'm kind of sitting back going how can
[00:54:57] that be so so much of a surprise that giving somebody ownership and trust and value is everything
[00:55:06] the most important thing the best form of compensation and the reason I've been able to tell
[00:55:11] that to clients at Ashland front is I say look I had people that you knew in the Sealteams
[00:55:16] in the military in the Navy if you're doing the best job you know three times better than anyone
[00:55:22] else in your opportunity I can't give you a raise okay like I can give you a good evaluation and then
[00:55:29] in two years you'll be eligible for promotion and then you'll get an extra $270 a month no one's
[00:55:37] doing three acts to work because of that but what can you give someone freedom and if you worked
[00:55:43] for me and you were square away you pretty much did whatever you wanted to do and then and I would just
[00:55:48] do nothing but provide cover fire for you if you weren't square away is a totally different
[00:55:52] ballgame you're going to put in a box and you weren't going to be able to maneuver at all because
[00:55:55] you're doing things wrong so the best way to retain your talent is great leadership and it goes
[00:56:03] back to bufre we just did he have battlefield the guysburg you know he operated within the spirit
[00:56:08] of the commanders intent and actually deviated from what was the plan because he saw an opportunity
[00:56:13] I think what the Marine Corps calls it took authority on demand and made calls that ultimately made the
[00:56:18] union army you know victorious over the the Confederates you know you did say something about
[00:56:25] and we deal with this with you have a watch is for some companies it's a mental leap
[00:56:32] to hire a military leader into a senior management role when they're coming fresh out of the military
[00:56:38] and it's usually because of those perceptions are shaped by what the movies
[00:56:44] 100% the water you guys I mean you follow orders that it's 100% the cogs in the wheel
[00:56:50] is shaped by movies and we literally have that conversation you know especially during COVID
[00:56:58] we've seen that a lot of organizations did not select the right leaders coming in the
[00:57:03] organization that were not able to innovate in the depth that were not able to handle the chaos
[00:57:08] could not remain calm and we're unable or ill-equipped for crisis and what we have to educate
[00:57:15] them about these men and women coming out is you know one they are generalists but generalists are
[00:57:23] much more powerful than specialists in fact one of the quotes from Brian Decker in this is that
[00:57:31] we've over specialized some of the roles in the private sector it's no longer good enough that
[00:57:36] you're an ear doctor you now have to be a left ear doctor and you know while I understand that
[00:57:43] that is requirement for certain roles if it's a very technical position yes technical skills are
[00:57:47] required but in general management roles which are usually your top leadership roles in a company
[00:57:53] generalists are more equipped to lead and this is why because they they draw from a broader base
[00:58:01] of experiences I mean you've been all run around the world in the military you've dealt with
[00:58:05] different cultures you've dealt with different problems such you have this vast array of experiences
[00:58:10] where a lot of the the business leaders that have never left the United States do not
[00:58:15] and we're finding that that that that experience has not only prepared them but it's the
[00:58:22] fact that there are a lot of these military that are stepping into the roles the ones we place
[00:58:26] are being highly successful they're performing when they step in of course there's a learning curve
[00:58:30] but the learning agility for the the men and women that we place is extremely high that's one of the
[00:58:36] things we're screening for Eddie if I've watched is that yeah into intellectual horsepower matters
[00:58:42] it does but once that gates closed these people are placed and it's it's been phenomenal I mean
[00:58:49] you met something the the clients at the eF battlefield they're like the best higher ever
[00:58:53] yeah the the train ability you know if you've been in the military you know how to learn
[00:58:58] you start learning stuff out of the gate and you learn how to learn very well and so that's why
[00:59:03] when someone comes without the skill set in the civilian sector they can learn that skill set very
[00:59:07] quickly because they've been learning all these different skill sets for eight years 12 years 20
[00:59:13] years 25 years that's what we do in the military it's a new stuff all the time going here section
[00:59:19] called the cost of talent when companies lack a talent mindset it's a common refrain cost creating
[00:59:25] a robust talent acquisition and management process is simply too costly they say what most
[00:59:30] companies don't understand is the major cost is not money but time and devotion to creating a
[00:59:36] world class talent acquisition pipeline in the process you will actually save money in the long run
[00:59:42] as your tuition lowers and you consistently make better hires the special operations community
[00:59:47] has long understood that people are everything special operations soldiers go through three main stages
[00:59:53] assessment and selection training and combat and war and then you guys break this out so in special
[00:59:59] operations it's called assessment and selection in business it's called talent acquisition
[01:00:04] or the hiring process and special operations it's called training in business it's called talent
[01:00:09] management and leadership development and then in special operations called combat and war
[01:00:14] and in business it's called business sales marketing production whatever is that you're doing it's a
[01:00:19] pretty good little break out there of how similar these things really are going in another section
[01:00:27] here may companies have a fundamental misalignment between upper leadership and HR where leadership says
[01:00:33] they want talent but HR is not set up to actually hire for talent in fact HR often doesn't even
[01:00:40] know what talent looks like in the company there's no gold standard of talent instead hiring
[01:00:45] is mechanical order taking process based on objective requirements leadership gives HR a laundry list of
[01:00:50] what they want years of experience required skill set compensation range and HR goes out and fills the
[01:00:56] order to have effective talent acquisition your business leaders and HR department must be strategic
[01:01:03] partners the talent acquisition team must be students of the business understanding the organizations
[01:01:09] underlying goals and talent needed to achieve them since day one in my career Joe DePento told us
[01:01:16] and that's the CEO of 711 I've always had my CHRO linked at the hip and will continue to
[01:01:24] as Joe is discovered to function strategically your HR department must be a part of the planning
[01:01:30] process for both talent acquisition and management HR should be involved in succession planning
[01:01:36] and gap analysis to assess select and develop talent in a strategic way you know we
[01:01:44] we found this you know I kind of knew it intuitively and I suspected it but when we did the research
[01:01:53] chief human resource officers are often paid one third of their C-suite counterparts that's where it
[01:02:02] starts could you imagine for a second that your your mechanics and your medics were paid a third
[01:02:10] of what you make because they're not frontline could you imagine what that would look like in
[01:02:14] special operations in any military unit and that's where it starts and and HR is not a strategic
[01:02:23] function and you know I had the benefit of coming up with this mentor and somebody who really
[01:02:28] empowered me in her name is Tracy Kio and she is the CHRO of Heal of Packard and she's just absolutely
[01:02:36] amazing you know we put this quote in the book because to this day it's still it's one of the reasons
[01:02:40] that I've stated my function for so long and she went to an executive meeting one day and they're like
[01:02:47] hey you know Tracy it's good to have HR at the table she kind of sneaker'd look back to them and
[01:02:52] she's she is a very strong leader and she says we are the table and I was like you know what that's
[01:02:59] that's right and that's the theme throughout this book is the people or everything so when you
[01:03:03] start out deprioratizing your chief human resources officer and you make this an administrative
[01:03:09] function or an operational function you know how do you ever expect to get the best talent and talents
[01:03:16] which are having your product talents what's driving your service talents in front of your
[01:03:19] customers talent is driving your revenue that's everything and then you sit there and you look at
[01:03:24] your revenue and your revenues declining your traditions high your products not on time and you're
[01:03:29] going to go on gee I wonder what's going on and it it it it takes Mike and I about all of two seconds
[01:03:35] to to see that and it's unfortunate and one of the things that we really wanted to get across is
[01:03:42] you can really leverage HR in a strategic function and it makes all the difference to every single
[01:03:47] part of your business and the more of a talent mindset you have and the more that you empower
[01:03:52] human resources to be your strategic talent partner that revenue will come that product will be
[01:03:58] on time that service will be good it's it's not rocket science but in some places it's a brand
[01:04:05] in concept let's go back to that cost so there's there's an old attitude you can't outspend
[01:04:11] a good hiring process yeah because the consequences of having a poor hiring process can sink
[01:04:19] a company one of the statistics we found is that for senior level executive positions
[01:04:24] the cost of a bad senior leader can be 213% of that individual's annual salary so giving
[01:04:33] example if there you have a 300 thousand dollar salary CEO or executive that could cost the company is
[01:04:40] highest 639 thousand that's let's say that's a direct cost so what a lot of companies can't
[01:04:47] track from a tuition is really the the indirect cost and that's about two thirds of the cost of
[01:04:54] a tuition you can't put a number on the damage to a culture that a senior leader can cost
[01:05:01] maybe for two years that impacts sales and that's what's very hard for a lot of companies because
[01:05:06] they can't see it on their bottom line directly good CEOs can come hang out to national
[01:05:11] on front and go work with some clients and you you'll get to see that all the time
[01:05:16] toxic leader a bad leader a leader with a negative attitude everyone below them either doesn't
[01:05:22] perform well or leaves if they're good and you know it is the good people as we said earlier the
[01:05:27] good people leave the bad people stay there and don't perform well that's what happens
[01:05:31] on their bad leader it's total nightmare what would see a little I think Henry Ford is
[01:05:36] credited with this quote they're at a board meeting and they were talking about leadership
[01:05:40] development and somebody said hey well what if we develop our people in they leave and Henry
[01:05:45] Ford looked at all them said what if we don't and they stay this is why leadership development
[01:05:50] matters so as you're reading that that section right there you saw George and I getting like
[01:05:56] agitated we get we I mean this is how passionate we are this subject so through echelon front
[01:06:02] I spoke with a HR group there was like 500 HR leaders from an area we did it it was supposed to
[01:06:09] be in person conference code and so it was on mine but I had like 100 HR leaders reach out they
[01:06:16] were just fired up because I talked about the book like you guys are the key to the success
[01:06:21] of every organization don't let your leaders tell you otherwise so you know Tracey Kio and
[01:06:28] Paddy McCor you know Paddy McCor was the CHRO for Netflix built a strong organization both
[01:06:36] these wait what's Netflix yeah both these ladies should be CEOs of any Fortune 500 company
[01:06:46] they just have a passion for talent acquisition in talent management or leadership development and
[01:06:52] I mean you look at Tracey Kio Harvard educated cutter teeth and sales and marketing and was
[01:06:58] asked at one point during the career hey we've got a problem with you know HR can you go fix it
[01:07:04] of course answer was no they said good you got it and she developed a passion your HR leader
[01:07:10] has to be a business leader they have to and HR even though I love HR sometimes has become a
[01:07:18] dumping ground for average or mediocre performers and most often those HR leaders are just
[01:07:26] compliance leaders they're not a strategic function so if your HR reports into legal it's a compliance
[01:07:36] function if they report into finance it's an overhead function but as Tracey Kio will tell you
[01:07:44] if they report into the CEO and have a direct line and they're involved in the talent strategy
[01:07:50] then there's a chance in hell there's strategic function that is going to help build the organization
[01:07:54] into a world class organization and so that's where that misalignment between senior leaders in HR
[01:08:01] is killing a lot of organizations because back to the talent mindset yeah that's a big that's a big
[01:08:07] change actually it's not even that big of a change it's a little change that will have a huge impact
[01:08:11] you start getting people to really start to grow the or grow an organization properly with the
[01:08:17] right people that's exactly what you're talking about you go into this section here I'm skipping
[01:08:23] ahead this section here that I liked it's it's entitled fear based hiring special operations
[01:08:29] community has become world class model for potential based hiring which is their foundation of
[01:08:34] their assessment and selection process in contrast many companies instead of hiring the candidates
[01:08:39] with the most potential higher those candidates that inspire the least amount of fear
[01:08:46] this kind of fear based hiring usually comes down to one of three fallacies number one red flags
[01:08:53] are more important than green flags number two leaders shouldn't be outshined by their followers
[01:09:00] and number three somebody's better than nobody you go on in traditional corporate hiring practices
[01:09:08] the objective has seemingly shift from higher the best to higher the familiar and safe people are
[01:09:16] more afraid of a bad higher than they are excited by a good higher you go on here fear based hiring
[01:09:25] is dogmatic about objective requirements you guys already talked about this black and white
[01:09:29] criteria make it easy to say yes or no does this person have ex years of industry experience does
[01:09:34] this person have wide degree these criteria don't matter nearly as much as you might think
[01:09:40] the ten-conylbrient decor former commander of army special forces assessment selection told us
[01:09:46] when I arrived in my command anything easily measured was heavily weighted in the selection process
[01:09:52] the problem was it didn't have a lot of predictive value the same is true in business
[01:09:57] just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's important and just because you can't
[01:10:01] measure something doesn't mean it's not important the only question that truly matters is does
[01:10:07] this person have the potential to be a top performer don't disregard red flags entirely but don't
[01:10:13] obsess over them either in combat you don't want to get shot but at the same time if you're
[01:10:18] primary concern is not getting shot then you don't go into battle if you make your hiring
[01:10:24] decision based on avoiding your worst case scenario you'll never achieve your best case scenario
[01:10:29] it's far more effective to look for green flags than for red flags oh people are scared
[01:10:35] you know and and and and and I don't want to get too far down into the minutia but if you're
[01:10:41] a manager and you've got an empty seat so many people that I've seen over 20 years are like
[01:10:46] I'm going to lose that seat if I don't get it filled with somebody I'm going to get somebody in there
[01:10:50] so anybody is better than somebody then they go down the objective requirements like well they
[01:10:56] don't have this they don't have this and so they're checking off red flags of objective requirements
[01:11:00] to put somebody roll and never asking the question is this the person with the character
[01:11:04] attributes that can do the job they're not looking they're they're literally scared well
[01:11:09] if I hire this person and oh they don't have five years how am I going to be looked at what
[01:11:16] if they don't do as well as I think and they don't they don't think that their leadership can
[01:11:22] take somebody with the right characteristics two or three years less experience than they
[01:11:27] mark and put them in the role and and and coach him to succeed they're they're scared to death
[01:11:32] they want it it just turns into this machine how fast how fast can you hire how fast can you get
[01:11:38] that butt in the seat I'll take that step further at the risk of being a little bit of a
[01:11:44] stereo typing people but who's hungrier the person that you know has two years experience going
[01:11:52] into a role that needs five years experience or wait will you know or the person that has seven
[01:11:57] years experience going into a role with five years experience required who's who's hungrier
[01:12:01] who's trying to prove themselves a little bit more I don't know man I'm going to be in
[01:12:05] Georgia to hear hungry individual that wants to prove themselves and and and I've seen this time
[01:12:11] and again is you know the recruiters that I've brought up to town acquisition specialist I call
[01:12:16] them talent consultants because they're really embedded in the business they'll go
[01:12:19] have talked with this guy yeah they're two or three years lied on the experience you were asking
[01:12:23] for I promise you this hungry they're hungry they want it they want to get after it
[01:12:28] and the manager says well they don't have the seven years of experience and it goes back to
[01:12:32] what Brian Decker said you know they picked seven years almost out of the year that seven years
[01:12:38] is not predictive of success working for a competitor is not predictive of success
[01:12:45] character attributes are predictive and you need to be watching for those check
[01:12:52] another fear but fear-based hiring problem leaders shouldn't be outshined by the followers
[01:12:59] average or underperforming managers often fear hiring someone who outshined them because they
[01:13:04] don't want to hire themselves out of a job there should never be a maximum standard for talent
[01:13:09] only a minimum if you're not hiring people better than your current employees you'll never
[01:13:13] raise the bar for talent within your organization that's just the classic surround yourself with
[01:13:19] people better better than you I want to work myself out of a job I want to have and we go in
[01:13:24] a little bit later about succession planning I need to have as many people who can take my
[01:13:28] place and corporate mercados and do that you know the succession planning we do in the military
[01:13:33] to muscle memory but I always want people who are going to push me to be a better leader they're
[01:13:38] going to push me to get better at my game to up the game I mean when you roll with people do you
[01:13:42] roll with people that are easy to beat sometimes
[01:13:46] something I can't I might want this this toxic environment right now it's here for an hour
[01:13:53] it's waiting for a moment that's the first moment for echo Charles to shine yeah sometimes I do
[01:13:59] roll with people that are easier a lot easier you do somebody's better than nobody and you you
[01:14:08] know you talked about that just feeling like we better get someone in the platoon and you know
[01:14:12] this happened in in Charlie Ptun life had a guy a good guy but he just wasn't really didn't
[01:14:19] really have the just couldn't get the job done and you know coach and we wrote about it in
[01:14:25] dichotomy and leadership but one of the things that I told Laef I said hey Laef if you get rid
[01:14:30] of this guy you're not getting another one I mean there's there's you know you're going to go
[01:14:34] on deployment you're just with missing a guy and because we're going to we're going to get rid of
[01:14:39] and you know Laef was like well and he thought about it he said you know what I think we're
[01:14:46] better off without him and you know that to me that was a little litness test for me because you know
[01:14:50] Laef might be thinking hey I'll just replace him with some other guy and we'll you know we'll
[01:14:53] step it up it was a litness test for me to see what Laef really was thinking and if you really
[01:14:58] would rather not take someone that means you don't feel comfortable with him at all so there's a quote
[01:15:06] from Charlie Beckwith for the listeners Charlie Beckwith is the founder of Delta Force you know
[01:15:12] surf time with the SAS which generated the idea for for a specialized force yet a quote that was
[01:15:18] I'd rather go down the river with seven studs than 100 shitheads and it goes to point that
[01:15:29] yeah I'd rather select highly talented people into the organization and have less people
[01:15:33] than you know falling quantity is not better than quality never has been and you know the the quote
[01:15:41] from her kill her your clippers the Greek philosopher 500 BC about the 100 soldiers on the
[01:15:50] on the battlefield 80 or sorry 80 or just targets tend to even deserve to be there and then there's
[01:15:59] 10 that are warriors but that one that one will always bring us home I mean these guys all talked about
[01:16:04] the the importance of talent and you'd rather bring talent people in individually
[01:16:10] then build a massive quick army that's when you deviate from the process it works out poorly for you
[01:16:15] yeah when you bring the wrong person in you're actually just creating more drain on your time
[01:16:20] just mayhem yeah mayhem and then it's a cancer and then your A players are looking at you going
[01:16:25] why do you bring a sea player in and now it reflects on you as the leader that your bar
[01:16:32] wasn't high enough the your standards weren't high enough that you were tolerating this sea player
[01:16:36] this be player and we all don't have that works out and never ever well
[01:16:46] next section what makes special operations so special and in here you you kind of profile
[01:16:54] one individual an individual by the name of Johnny Kim which podcast 2021 you can listen
[01:17:04] Johnny Kim's story it's it's just unbelievable what what made you want to profile Johnny in here
[01:17:12] so Johnny and I and Ryan were all in the same but class and what stuck out about Johnny now
[01:17:20] it goes back to why I was judging Ryan you got to understand my career prior to that I'd finished
[01:17:25] number one in pretty much every military school from boot camp in school of infantry
[01:17:29] finished third and recon school out of thirty behind two guys that went on to be Marzokde at one
[01:17:34] even you know graduate number one from Reno CS so when you're on a successful track what
[01:17:40] what happens you become a little bit arrogant you think you have things figured out and I thought
[01:17:43] I had things figured out naturally because I was still a sergeant in the Marine Corps the class
[01:17:49] sort of gravitated towards me because I had a rough neck style of leadership and they loved it and
[01:17:53] the instructors loved it as well but Johnny I just sort of always dismissed Johnny because small
[01:18:00] Asian kid Korean from LA just you know he's sort of I don't want to say devoid of emotion
[01:18:07] he's not he's not a showy guy and naturally because he didn't have a flame buoyant personality
[01:18:12] I figured out the sketches not performed it he's just another one of the the students that
[01:18:16] he was going to drop or go make it through and be a non-factor in the sealed teams
[01:18:21] in this book I think you're seeing that I show my ass a lot in these assumptions that I made about
[01:18:26] you know who's going to be a good seal and who wasn't and you know usually that was wrong
[01:18:31] but those are the scars as you get involved in town acquisition it is like you don't
[01:18:36] become better at this process of assessing and selecting the right people in your organization
[01:18:41] unless you screw up yeah I'd say your assessment was wrong
[01:18:45] on multiple levels because not only is Johnny Kim an awesome seal and ranks you know above
[01:18:53] among the highest of you know respect in the seal teams but then just as a human I mean then
[01:19:00] as a Harvard doctor and then as an astronaut and then just basically as an overall human being
[01:19:06] he's right up there with very rare fire there so I talked to Johnny what I you know I wanted to
[01:19:14] get approved through NASA that he was good he read you know I think the instructors looked
[01:19:18] Johnny and they just sort of you made a snap of judge judgment you know he's just quite
[01:19:24] little guy and watching him because again we both reported in the sealed team three my job
[01:19:29] just continued to drop because he was better than I was was day one out of Buds I mean he was just
[01:19:34] that smart where he picked up everything quickly you know 18 delta now he's a high speed medic
[01:19:39] quickly rushed to sniper school becomes a sniper you know you either be treating
[01:19:46] casualties on the battlefield or he'd be pulling the trigger eliminating Islamic
[01:19:49] extremists and the guy was amazing and humbled to to to have served with him and
[01:19:58] based off his podcast we had a very close conversation about one night in the soccer city
[01:20:02] which you know was a bad night for everyone but ultimately that was on stone or an eye
[01:20:08] that we even let the guys go out when we knew we weren't ready but yeah it's the the point with
[01:20:13] Johnny's a lot of people just would have looked past him quickly because you know he didn't have
[01:20:17] college degree from LA nothing stood out on paper because you you want you know peel that on you back
[01:20:27] yeah I think I think a good word to describe Johnny that you would pick up is just unassuming right
[01:20:33] he's just I think he just she's just unassuming and he that's what he is I mean it's it's
[01:20:40] less now because you kind of people know his background now so I'm sure that just comes across
[01:20:46] but it's super just a super humble on the unassuming guy and yeah uh a beast now I tell people
[01:20:55] I worked with Johnny Kim you know I start with Johnny Kim that's awesome
[01:21:00] the origins of the soft talent minds at the very core of soft is a talent mindset the idea
[01:21:10] that small group of talented individuals can be effective fighting force capable of defeating
[01:21:14] larger enemy forces in delivering strict strategic impacts through skull small scale operations
[01:21:20] three innate traits of lead spot special operations talent mindset and subsequent success one
[01:21:27] no one has prior special operations experience so raw talent must be the selection criteria
[01:21:35] the most effective selection is based on mindset and character that's a crazy thing to think about
[01:21:41] that when you go into special operations they're most of the time there's zero experience
[01:21:46] in special operations you know that's just that's like a crazy thing to think about
[01:21:52] where does that seal come from he comes from a high school you know this is the story you know
[01:21:58] we're working with business leaders and they think they need to experience it so important I
[01:22:01] say hey I don't go to a high school and say hey we're recruiting for Navy SEALS raise a hand if you
[01:22:06] have special operations experience don't it guys you did you know it was your bowl hate French foreign
[01:22:11] Legion the UK special forces go get some experience come back and uh and then let us know
[01:22:17] uh next one special operations for since our teams teams win not individuals number three special
[01:22:24] operations teams work in high stakes environments when the stakes are high mediocrity is unacceptable
[01:22:29] let's look more closely at these traits raw talent this is this is no emphasis on experience
[01:22:35] raw talent is difficult to identify industry experience on the other hand is far easier to identify
[01:22:39] and measure this is why business world often falls in the bad habit of overaligning on industry
[01:22:44] experience and as a hiring criterion special operations does not have that luxury because nobody has
[01:22:50] prior special operations experience if the soft community began selecting for industry experience
[01:22:55] the US would not have a special operations community out of necessity special operations had
[01:22:59] to develop a core competency in potential based hiring where raw talent is the primary consideration
[01:23:07] that's self-explanatory next one team mentality special operations forces are structured as teams they
[01:23:12] are incentivized as teams and they win or lose as teams not as individuals in contrast in the
[01:23:17] biz world in the business world the egos can often rule and the team can be less and emphasized
[01:23:23] people are rewarded for individual achievements so individuals are often concerned only about
[01:23:28] their incentives versus the overall health of the organization bad leaders who hire and manage
[01:23:33] others often accept and often and even encourage mediocre employees because it raises their own value
[01:23:39] in comparison a team mentality greatly reduces the power of ego yeah there's nothing worse than
[01:23:49] encouraging mediocre people to be in your organization so that you can look good
[01:23:58] does you have something on that Mike?
[01:24:00] I do let me hit back on the lack of industry experience to real vignette so again we quoted
[01:24:07] Charlie Beckwith if you didn't know it because we also interviewed what we didn't interview
[01:24:12] Charlie Beckwith because he's passed but we did interview throughout this book a guy named
[01:24:17] General Jerry Boykin amazing individual was a long time dealt a forced memory even the commander
[01:24:25] was involved in desert one operation the equal claw so you know we went into the history
[01:24:30] Charlie Beckwith was a strong believer that before you could even get into special operations
[01:24:35] and this was the old sort of mentality that that that existed within the military that you have to
[01:24:40] serve as a conventional soldier either an officer and listed before you could try out for special
[01:24:45] operations and he was very dogmatic about that and General Boykin talked about when the
[01:24:52] Army Special Forces community created the 18 X-ray program because of the needs of the war where they
[01:24:57] took people directly off the street that had the right attributes past the initial tests intelligence
[01:25:04] physical standards mental standards that they actually made as good of special forces soldiers
[01:25:12] if not better because they didn't have bad habits from the conventional forces that was one of you
[01:25:17] so let's put that into a private sector you know context the other vignette google did a
[01:25:23] study on what made their most successful managers so successful they they they they came up with
[01:25:31] ten criterion that made them so highly successful industry experience came in a number number nine
[01:25:37] it was one of the the least important things now if you look at extreme ownership pretty much all
[01:25:42] these principles of how we lead were much farther ahead than the importance of extreme I'm sorry
[01:25:47] the industry experience so that's why this potential based hiring is so much more powerful than
[01:25:53] objective trivial requirements like industry experience when when they started the 18 X when did they do that
[01:26:03] I want to say that was roughly around 2003 2004 that that program came to revolution
[01:26:10] I'd have to go back and find the exact year yeah John strike reminder was talking about that
[01:26:16] and how there was like people in the special forces community that were saying all this is
[01:26:21] garbage you're gonna get these guys that don't know what they're doing but like so many of those
[01:26:26] sag operators went right from boot camp to you know to a it and then on the special force
[01:26:33] and then they went right over to Vietnam and freaking just got after he he like was laughing about it
[01:26:38] because those guys were just freaking legit what with general boikom was telling the story you know
[01:26:44] you had senior leaders when he was the commander of use to sock which is he's the commander of
[01:26:49] all army special operations and they were arguing there's two camps of no we can't accept people
[01:26:54] without conventional infantry experience and the other camp was hey know we can take people off
[01:26:59] the street and turn them into great special forces soldiers and of course what there is a command
[01:27:04] soldier major use to sock sitting back the senior and listed visor wall both camps fought
[01:27:09] and finally he said when he piped in he said hey I was an OJT soldier in Vietnam I didn't go to
[01:27:16] the special forces qualification course they sent me right over to uh to to Vietnam and I learned
[01:27:21] the job well outside in the wire and they all shut up and you said okay there you go
[01:27:26] right uh last thing high stakes perhaps more than any other factor the high stakes under which
[01:27:33] the soft operators under which soft operates necessitate a talent mindset war and combat are among
[01:27:40] the most unforgiving environments in the world on the stake on the battlefield can mean the
[01:27:44] difference between life and death not only for oneself but for ones fellow soldiers a failed
[01:27:49] mission can mean the destruction of cities and the loss of civilian life excellence and execution
[01:27:53] is the standard because it has to be the stakes are that high it should be no difference in bit
[01:27:58] different in business in business the risk may not be life or death but the stakes are incredibly
[01:28:03] high don't fool yourself businesses war war by nonviolent means the result of a bad hire or
[01:28:09] several bad hires is the underperformance of the business if not a nose dive to bankruptcy it is
[01:28:16] not literal death but it is death in the marketplace that death spells disaster for you and your
[01:28:21] employees whose well-being depends on the health of your organization look at today covid hit us
[01:28:31] for those people that have these attributes as leaders they'll factor there's like okay hey that's
[01:28:37] part of the environment we got to operate in let's go do it all right hey let's you know let's
[01:28:41] prioritize what we got to pay attention to how do we pay attention to our people how do we pay
[01:28:45] attention to our product how do we continue to drive the revenue and take care of our people
[01:28:49] and it and it was it just didn't phase those people and I've been around quite a few of them
[01:28:54] were it was like okay yeah we got covid okay and what's your point but you can start to see
[01:29:00] those companies where that talent wasn't there where that talent mindset where that leadership
[01:29:05] wasn't there covid hits they lose their minds what did they do let's start cutting people let's
[01:29:11] cut this let's cut this immediately we'll we're going through today speaks exactly to
[01:29:19] why it's so critical to have a talent mindset and get people with those character attributes
[01:29:24] in the roles that make a difference and and and I love but you guys have pointed out earlier
[01:29:28] the US military is in the most powerful force in the world it's the US economy and that was one of
[01:29:32] the things we wanted to do with this book was to we want to continue to contribute to strengthen that
[01:29:41] you go into a skip and ahead a little bit you go into a scenario and it just it just spells out
[01:29:48] exactly what you're talking about you got a guy Daniel you go into this Daniel's looking to
[01:29:52] hire candidates for sales leadership position and he used two search firms EF Overwatch which is
[01:29:58] what which is excellent front and a competitor and Jeremy so this is here's the two people
[01:30:05] that got presented Jeremy presented by a competitive search firm 3.9 GPA from a prestigious
[01:30:11] university high intelligence four years of industry experience with two different companies
[01:30:15] driven highly competent borderline arrogant Chris presented by EF Overwatch 3.2 GPA from a
[01:30:25] public university above average intelligence faced significant adversity in life came from a
[01:30:30] lower middle class family and held a full-time job on college recently separated army infantry
[01:30:35] officer who held several different functional billets in the army has all the attributes
[01:30:40] are required to be a highly successful sales leader but lacks industry experience which of these
[01:30:46] candidates would you choose since this chapter is about hiring for character in scale you might know
[01:30:51] the answer is most likely Chris not Jeremy but be honest at your company which one of these
[01:30:56] candidates would most likely be hired that's a good question when you put be honest in front of it
[01:31:02] because right because it's a fear-based hire is to go you know what we don't know about this
[01:31:05] Chris guy he seems like a good guy using the army but man Jeremy he's got four years of experience
[01:31:12] you go on most companies would choose Jeremy without hesitation Chris's GPA was average
[01:31:16] compares to Jeremy's but he didn't have the industry specific experience but he was one of those
[01:31:22] people who perform time and time again whatever you put in front of him you'd find a way through it
[01:31:26] over it or around it he was relentless and adaptable so you go on they they have eventually chose
[01:31:34] Jeremy over Chris and two weeks later the guy calls up and says we made a huge mistake
[01:31:40] that's how it turns out that click that click time and time again it and here's the funny thing is
[01:31:51] you remember tray holder who helped us out during the infancy of if ever watched we had this call
[01:31:58] and it was either we can have to two weeks after they made that selection and this leader within
[01:32:06] the company who we had a personal relationship said hey this guy is an arrogant you know what he's
[01:32:12] like we've got a problem and you know we're not going to say hey we told you so the guy he's trying
[01:32:17] to run a major distribution center he made a call we're there to support him and our basic
[01:32:23] question was well do you want to talk to our candidate he said no and said we asked what what are you
[01:32:28] going to do about it he said nothing and I just asked him was said if you have some of the
[01:32:34] that you feel is going to poison the culture why aren't you going to do anything and it was if I
[01:32:39] get let him go two weeks into the job my senior leaders are going to look at me like what are you
[01:32:46] doing down there and so that individual was going to let it ride I haven't talked to him I don't
[01:32:50] know if that individual stayed and sometimes things changed within four you know a few weeks maybe
[01:32:55] that that individual who was arrogant came around but uh well you think the chances of that are
[01:33:01] very well it's but how often it and let's you know we talked a lot about special operations
[01:33:07] and how great of an organization is how great they are selecting high potentials but how often
[01:33:12] if we're being honest with ourselves did we let mediocracy rain within the seal teams yeah I
[01:33:19] mean you need you need people and what what was horrible you know I didn't mind that look you
[01:33:26] you got to have people that are going to do some of the jobs that are a little bit easier in the
[01:33:29] teams I mean it's just the reality the situation and you know when I was going through officer candidate
[01:33:33] school I had whatever 80 people in my class in my officer candidate class I was the class president
[01:33:40] and you got to write like suggestions to the drill instructor and or whatever so I guess a group of
[01:33:49] people like four or five people because I had a bunch of prior and listed guys in my class all great
[01:33:53] guys and and female as well there's guys and girls in there and somebody wrote to the the drill instructor
[01:34:00] and said we need to get rid of these four people they don't belong they don't belong as officers
[01:34:07] in the Navy and so my drill instructor whose name was gunnery sergeant seals oddly enough great guy
[01:34:15] you know as you know I mean any Marine Corps drill instructors just freaking out standing so he
[01:34:21] gets up and he says hey I'll tell you what let's say we get rid of the bottom 10% of this class
[01:34:30] and he says now what happens tomorrow we got a new bottom 10% what happens after that we got a new
[01:34:36] bottom 10% so eventually realize you can guess what there's going to be a bell curve in any
[01:34:41] organization where I have a problem with this so so that's my explanation like hey the seal teams
[01:34:46] look you're gonna have some guys that are not the not long ball hitters you know you're gonna have
[01:34:51] some guys that are not long ball hitters the problem I have and and had and still have
[01:34:57] is when you take those guys and you put them in the leadership positions that's where it's a problem
[01:35:02] that's where it's a real problem in my book and we still love that to happen yeah it happened we
[01:35:06] still love that to happen because hey they've put in their time they've earned that spot you that's
[01:35:09] not a good criteria first off I'm gonna say you guys have a suggestion box in Navy officer
[01:35:14] candid school yeah it wasn't really a suggestion box I don't I don't that's why I couldn't really
[01:35:19] name what it was but it was some way of communicating with the drone structure I don't I forget what
[01:35:25] it was because I didn't do it but because I'm just gonna say it Marine Corps officer candid school
[01:35:31] that was called the trash can and the drone structures did not care you was a suggestion to you
[01:35:36] I don't know I don't know where I don't know where this idea came from I'm thinking to must have
[01:35:40] been some kind of suggestion box or maybe they raised their hands and asked him I don't know
[01:35:44] but it was it was the reason I remember it it was somehow clandestine right they weren't they didn't
[01:35:50] say in the middle of a class like because we used to basically get briefed all the time saying
[01:35:54] in the hallways the barracks you know you'd all say it out front of your rooms you're all in big
[01:35:57] lines so no one had the courage to say hey officer candid Smith Jones and and brown need to be
[01:36:06] let go no one had the courage to that so they somehow through some mechanism and I get your humor
[01:36:11] through some mechanism they they got to the to the drone structure and yeah I don't know what
[01:36:18] that mechanism was but no the the navy officer candid school was pretty good to go I thought
[01:36:29] how did good time we we so we actually one of the candidates to came to you if ever watch
[01:36:32] fighter pilot actually was going through the training because we hold webinars every Friday
[01:36:36] both in leadership and then career search and struck a quarter of this guy he actually moved
[01:36:42] to Austin he's like hey just just so you know I went to officer candid school with with Chaka
[01:36:46] with willing yeah he's like that guy saw later so you bring up a point that again we nerd out on this
[01:36:54] yeah all talent follows a bell curve or normal distribution curve and you know that that is a
[01:37:01] fundamental truth however the performance within that talent distribution is more like a I'm sorry
[01:37:07] the the the performance is more along lines of a power distribution or some people call it the
[01:37:11] paradeo principle it's just 80% of the results driven within your organization come from 20% of the
[01:37:17] workforce that's that's it's just the realities as you say but ultimately what makes better
[01:37:23] organizations and as we did the research is that competing companies within the industry all have
[01:37:28] that bell curve it's you want the average performance of your entire workforce the statistical mean
[01:37:35] to be higher than your competitors yeah and that's what makes special operations
[01:37:41] so great is that not everyone's a a player they're not that's a small element the the long tail
[01:37:49] but the overall performance of the entire force is much higher yeah you know slide that
[01:37:54] thing to the right yeah that's the goal for sure so we're talking all about all this you know
[01:38:01] experience and and how that's not the most important thing but then you guys go on to say this
[01:38:06] which is also important we're not advocating that you disregard experience entirely you're not
[01:38:10] going to hire kids straight out of high school for a C-suite position experience and past performance
[01:38:14] matters for certain positions but you do need to be thoughtful about how you use experience
[01:38:19] in the selection process we see companies make three common mistakes when it comes to looking
[01:38:25] experience one they require experience that doesn't matter to job performance two they require
[01:38:31] very specific experience when general experience would be just as good and three they prioritize
[01:38:36] industry experience over character so you guys aren't saying to ignore experience you're saying
[01:38:42] hey pay attention to it exactly it's and ultimately it's not what counts and you know one of the other
[01:38:49] fallacies is you know if I have somebody with experience it was working at this competitor and I
[01:38:53] bring them in well they were successful there they'll be successful here that that's just I boggles my
[01:38:59] mind and I see it all the time but yeah these are the three the three mistakes and you know we talk
[01:39:04] about this in the book about gates once you set your requirements for this role and they meet those
[01:39:10] that gate then closes everything after that is this part of what determines success as far as the
[01:39:18] nine attributes and most people and you'll and on the ground level you'll watch a person come in you've
[01:39:23] got these objective requirements and you'll have five people in the hiring process all these five
[01:39:28] different members of the team and they will all ask different versions of the same questions about
[01:39:32] their experience nobody's digging in nobody's digging in it I you know it's patience is a
[01:39:41] virtue in my function I assure you and but they're listing out experience and hiring majors will
[01:39:47] dump all of this stuff in thinking if I get all of this this experience and one person my company will
[01:39:53] do better they're looking at the wrong things it's the character it's those attributes that make the
[01:39:58] difference when when a COVID comes up when when a when another company comes out with a product when
[01:40:04] you know we're behind or or we're short team members it's those character attributes that drive
[01:40:09] that team forward when things get tough when you're under stress that's when character reveals
[01:40:15] itself and in the business world that's when it counts the most so we over rotate on experience
[01:40:24] and you know you know Mike and I try to go to great lengths in this book look we understand
[01:40:29] your business leader you've got 50,000 things going on if you're a CEO you've got a million
[01:40:34] things going on in your head but this will help you be better this is the competitive advantage
[01:40:40] that you need and is prioritizing talent and these things that make the difference and yet these
[01:40:46] three common mistakes they happen time and time and time again they will happen 10 times a day in
[01:40:51] one company and that's a small company you get to a big company some of the fortune 50 that I've
[01:40:55] worked with you'll see this a thousand times in one day and it and it multiplies itself but you guys have
[01:41:02] both seen and I've seen it in my time you get a good leader you get talent on your team that's infectious
[01:41:08] the game comes up you get a good player you get a rock star you're all like okay I'm chasing that guy
[01:41:14] I'm coming up I gotta elevate my game because this is not looking good for me you know person
[01:41:19] I love person on my right they're out trying to me I gotta step it up so you know you've got to
[01:41:24] get the experience that's minimum for the job hey you gotta be able to do these things in the job
[01:41:29] it doesn't matter we're not saying disregard it don't make it so specific that is really now talent
[01:41:36] and that happens a lot and industry experience is not as important as you think and I mean google
[01:41:42] points it out I mean it you know statistically it's not important but it makes managers feel better
[01:41:47] oh I took somebody from my competitor they were doing really well they know our industry they're
[01:41:51] gonna do well here it's just a fallacy and and if we can get people focused on character if we get
[01:41:58] people focused on leadership that will power your company when the hard times come hey you're
[01:42:05] gonna rock it you're gonna survive you're gonna make the U.S. economy that much more powerful
[01:42:10] if you get the right mindset and you focus and you drive and get after it Brian Decker
[01:42:15] talked about this with special forces assessment selection so to get into any of these special
[01:42:20] operations community intellectual horsepowers requirement you have to have a minimum score we take
[01:42:25] as bad there's a score once person passes that intelligence requirement what George is talking
[01:42:31] about is that gate is closed it no longer comes back into the planning factor the hiring factor
[01:42:36] whatsoever and what they found is that level they put a lot of thought behind it and what they see
[01:42:42] is that if somebody hits what requirement dead on and somebody exceeds that requirement is that
[01:42:48] the person that exceeds that requirement it's not necessarily correlated to a higher level of
[01:42:52] performance so that's why you have to be very careful upfront about the gates you select
[01:42:58] you know Brian Decker also told a story about again you know industry experience versus none
[01:43:03] so when he was running SFAS you know sometimes we we bring civilians on and get in sort of the
[01:43:09] dog and pony they put two groups through some obstacles that special forces soldiers run through
[01:43:16] in groups and again these exercises are you know the cadre are watching to see what behaviors
[01:43:23] come out from that from the individuals so it's a group of MBAs who were off the charts intelligence
[01:43:29] had industry experience were were currently getting their MBAs and then a group of undergrads
[01:43:35] you're talking 18 19 20 year olds first group of 27 to 35 year olds and you know naturally Brian
[01:43:42] Decker and his cadre you know they were shown a good time but had an assumption that the
[01:43:47] MBAs were just going to outperform the undergrads like cans down how do you think that I know
[01:43:53] the undergrads absolutely decimated every obstacle much quicker than the MBA group
[01:44:00] and it goes to to show you that you know that even though they had prior experience more vast
[01:44:05] experience those undergrads actually because they lacked ego so it's yes they lacked the group
[01:44:11] dynamic it goes to so if you have a lot of talented individuals that are humble and
[01:44:15] lackey you go when they come together it's an exponential effect one plus one isn't too
[01:44:19] with a group that truly unifies behind a common good one plus one equals three that it's an
[01:44:26] exponential effect in task unit bruiser there was a point where we were I don't know how far
[01:44:33] we were from deploying but we knew we were deploying to Iraq and one of the senior officers at the
[01:44:39] command he came to me and said hey you know you're going to Iraq do you want to switch out
[01:44:48] one of your platoons with this other platoon commander with this with this other platoon
[01:44:53] who the platoon commander has a lot more experience than your two you know your two oh I see
[01:44:58] is which was Seth and Lave and it's kind of funny because remember how the ceilings were out
[01:45:05] because they were doing construction so Seth and Lave were in the task unit bruiser office and they
[01:45:09] here this individual basically asking me if I wanted to swap out either one of these two so
[01:45:18] Seth and Lave had very little experience they both on one deployment but they had just been
[01:45:20] in the teams for like two years and one of the platoon commanders in one of the other platoons
[01:45:25] had a lot more experience like he was a prior-in-listed guy and so the senior officer was saying hey
[01:45:31] you know you can take one you know you can take this guy and his platoon and he's got way more
[01:45:35] experience and might be a lot better for you and I was like I was like no and at this point I already knew
[01:45:41] Seth and Lave and I go um no I said these guys have exactly what I want them to have which is
[01:45:48] they're tough they're humble and they listen and that's all that's all I need that's like my
[01:45:52] most important characteristics and he was like are you sure and I was like 100% that was that.
[01:46:03] Next section the nine foundational character attributes of talent under pressure
[01:46:09] one's mental and physical limits hard skills rapidly degrade what remains is character
[01:46:15] skills are by design meant for unpredictable situations and environments says retired
[01:46:23] seal commander rich divinity if businesses are interested in forming organizations and teams that
[01:46:29] effectively deal with unpredictability and complexity they have to go deeper than the guy who has
[01:46:35] the best sales record or the Harvard grad who's at the top of the class they have to look at character
[01:46:41] characters key because it is an indicator of a person's capacity general William Boynkin points
[01:46:48] to capacity as more important than current ability quote what are you looking for hard skills
[01:46:56] or capacity ideally look for both but if you have to choose and you have a fair way of doing so
[01:47:03] assess their capacity what is their capacity to learn new skills what is their capacity to think
[01:47:07] for themselves what is their capacity to problem solve is it interesting you're here general Boynkin
[01:47:14] like one of the priorities that he puts in there is their capacity to think for themselves not to
[01:47:19] follow rules but to think for themselves back to the book according to general Boynkin it is the
[01:47:26] focus on capacity is made special operation so successful on the battlefield and beyond a person's
[01:47:31] character is the aggregate of their deeply ingrained attributes as we define it the nine foundational
[01:47:37] character attributes of high potential individuals are drive resiliency adaptability humility integrity
[01:47:44] effective intelligence team ability curiosity and emotional strength these traits are predictors
[01:47:50] of high performance these attributes cannot be taught so they should be the focus of your hiring
[01:47:58] check and then you're going to a little spot a little section about how
[01:48:03] different special operations group sort of way those things out a little bit differently but
[01:48:09] they all are looking for the same basic the same basic things kickcare doctor care all green
[01:48:17] air force kernel psychologist he was heavily involved in the Marsoch assessment selection
[01:48:24] he set a grid he's like they're all basically looking for ice cream just different like slightly
[01:48:29] different flavors but you know the special forces guys seals Marsoch you know the Afsoch
[01:48:36] guys of PJs and CCTs they're all interchangeable we have throw them in their group the attributes
[01:48:41] are are very close totally you go into resiliency here a little bit somebody with high resiliency
[01:48:47] bounces back from stress quickly is adaptable and is not easily discouraged and individual with
[01:48:52] high resiliency resist quitting and is focused on completing goals essentially resiliency is how
[01:48:58] people handle setbacks and persevere in the face of challenges they accept failures part of the process
[01:49:03] they don't accept it passively but utilize their lessons learned and mistakes as a basis to grow
[01:49:10] and then you go into a well it's a section about a person that could be considered possibly one of
[01:49:18] the most resilient human beings in the world which is Mike Day who is just on this podcast number
[01:49:23] 241 and you know shot 27 times and then killed the enemy that had shot him and just unbelievable
[01:49:33] story you put that in there you you've gone so yeah adaptability you talk about adaptability talk
[01:49:40] about humility and here we go people often asked us what is the most important trade of any leader
[01:49:45] without a doubt it's humility the US army a 244 year old institution credited with training
[01:49:53] some of our nation's most prominent leaders and practically writing the leadership manual for
[01:49:56] leaders in any field recently added humility as one of the key attributes of good leaders to the
[01:50:02] army doctrine publication six tack 22 saying a leader with the right level of humility is a
[01:50:08] willing learner maintains accurate self awareness and seeks out others input and feedback
[01:50:13] and this is something that one day on our echelon front ops call I said hey I've got something to
[01:50:22] tell everyone in this group we've been talking about humility as the most important characteristic
[01:50:26] for a leader for the past 13 years or whatever was 12 years at the time and the army just added
[01:50:32] this to their manual which is freaking awesome because those characters extend and changed for a
[01:50:36] long long time in the army but they realized if you're not humble you got problems I just want to say
[01:50:42] plagiarism is one of the high forms of flattery so if you bring your lawyers at me we will go
[01:50:47] to tell a lot of this is taken from my mentors I did not credit you in certain spots
[01:50:55] it goes back to Johnny and I think the military as a whole there was a point where we viewed
[01:51:01] humility as weakness and I think at a young age I miss took somebody like Johnny who's just one of
[01:51:09] the most humble dudes he still is as a slight form of weakness it's funny that the army I think
[01:51:18] sort of has morphed as well their their view on that the criticality of humility
[01:51:25] yeah no no doubt about it and you also realize after you know you've realized
[01:51:31] the thing that pointed this out to me strong did anything else was when we were fire a guy
[01:51:35] that was going through my training we would be firing that person if they want a leadership position
[01:51:40] if they want a leadership position they could get fired for safety or a number of anything
[01:51:44] any other things but if they were getting fired from a leadership position they were generally
[01:51:49] having safety problems they weren't having they knew how to shoot their gun they were in good
[01:51:53] physical condition they were getting fired because they lack humility which meant they weren't
[01:51:57] listening to anybody else they weren't listening to the critique from their own
[01:52:00] platoon they weren't listening to advice from their platoon chief or from their task in the
[01:52:03] corner anyone else I definitely not the freaking training contract so they're just a disaster
[01:52:09] and I have to bring up a comment a youtube comment okay so the Johnny Kim podcast
[01:52:17] on youtube and it says something like you know the title of the podcast is
[01:52:21] Johnny Kim you know seal sniper harver doctor astronaut and the first comment on youtube is
[01:52:34] dude can't hold a job which I thought was pretty funny
[01:52:43] integrity you guys talk about integrity I mean these you go through these characteristics kind of
[01:52:48] each one effective intelligence talks to me about effective intelligence what was effective
[01:52:53] intelligence compared to just plain old intelligence and I hope this has something to do with the fact
[01:52:59] that speaking of acquiring people there was a time in the late 90s where in the seal teams in the
[01:53:07] officer community I wasn't an officer yet but they were the seals were starting to get popular
[01:53:13] and they started getting really good candidates for the officer program and so they started recruiting
[01:53:20] and beyond just recruiting they started accepting all these just Ivy League Ivy League
[01:53:27] individuals you meet every every every new group of officers that we show up the seal team
[01:53:33] you know there'd be a bunch of enable academy guys because they get a bunch of the billets every year
[01:53:37] and then there'd be a bunch of guys from freaking harvered and and jail and these really smart guys and
[01:53:46] maybe they didn't have and I'm not saying this about every because some of them were great guys
[01:53:50] but not all of them have what I'm hoping is referred to in this book as effective intelligence
[01:53:55] is that someone accurate it is I'm gonna take one step back so integrity I know we sort of
[01:54:00] glossed over that Josh cotton doctor cotton is very passionate about this one he's done a lot of
[01:54:05] studies and look at the data organizations that are in you know high ethics or highly you know
[01:54:12] high in integrity the culture is much healthier than organizations that don't and I know that's
[01:54:19] sort of an obvious statement but you look at Enron yeah and I think also you you you say it seems like
[01:54:26] an obvious statement and yet there's so many organizations that let those things slide and here's
[01:54:31] the problem with letting things slide when it comes to integrity once this is you know this slippery
[01:54:37] slope sometimes they say a slippery slope fallacy because you know well just because I did this
[01:54:42] doesn't really mean I'm gonna do that the slippery slope when it comes to integrity is I think
[01:54:46] is almost unstoppable thing because you know if I let echo get away with something well now he's got
[01:54:53] something on me and now he lets me get away with something we go back and forth we go on this downward
[01:54:58] spiral and there's no one that can I once I once I give up my integrity I give up my ability to
[01:55:05] tighten anyone else's integrity up and you've also said a new standard you've put your personal
[01:55:11] stamp on approval the that behavior is now tolerated yep and you that's what makes it so hard you can't
[01:55:17] go backwards yeah you can't unring that bell it's really hard to do with all and if you have to go backwards
[01:55:22] because look you can put yourself in a situation what do you do you own it you stand up in front of
[01:55:27] the troops you say hey look I made a bad decision this is a bad personal decision I thought this
[01:55:31] was a good thing to do it didn't make sense it was the wrong thing I won't let it happen again
[01:55:36] that might be you know that's your that's your first step in trying to recover your integrity
[01:55:40] yeah but when you give it up that's why it's so you know the moral high ground the moral high ground
[01:55:47] and keeping the high ground it's talked about this the other day on EF online it's like
[01:55:52] once you give up the moral high ground it's just like being in combat you now you now are going
[01:55:59] to have to fight to get it back and it's a freaking uphill battle and there's a good chance
[01:56:04] you can't get up there anymore so you cannot give up that moral and ethical high ground it just
[01:56:11] it's it's one of the worst possible moves you can make on the battlefield and it's one of the
[01:56:15] worst possible moves you can make in life so I didn't mean to breeze over integrity like that
[01:56:20] but no doubt it's a it's a core component of what you got to be looking for in people
[01:56:26] and people don't scream for it that's the weirdest thing nobody ever asked the
[01:56:31] well I should say nobody I want to be careful on extremes there but I've watched you know
[01:56:36] the predominance of the hiring I do I manage a team but most of the hiring that I'm looking
[01:56:40] after is executive level and you know all of these offers come by and you're talking
[01:56:43] half million cash and more I mean they're their significant compensation and I don't
[01:56:49] hear anybody ask the question can you give me an example of when you had the hold the line on
[01:56:56] integrity and take the harder path even just that simple question you won't hear it in an
[01:57:03] interview process it would it would shock me if I heard it but it is so fundamental if you don't
[01:57:09] have this the rest doesn't matter if there's if the integrity's gone that's it you you cannot
[01:57:15] have a person without integrity in your organization full stop what was interesting is we were
[01:57:20] writing this book as so calm was dealing with a number of ethical issues and let's be asked a
[01:57:25] lot of them were coming from the CO community and you know we we sort of struggled hey do we have
[01:57:31] to change in the language in here but you know one individual doesn't speak for the organization
[01:57:37] but they do when they're on the front lines or front pages front page they speak for your
[01:57:42] organization and you know you mentioned Ivy League and and I feel bad sometimes because I overindex
[01:57:49] on Ivy League guys and sometimes I'm critical there there were some great CO officers that came out
[01:57:54] for certainly for sure some outstanding guys no doubt but they were more the exception than the
[01:58:00] the norm so as I'm talking to Johnny Kim Johnny was like speaking Harvard that was after he
[01:58:08] became a CEO so he gets a he gets a pass and and Johnny brought up a story in my life where I'm
[01:58:13] like Johnny that's that's not a good story so you know we're talking about buzz we're talking
[01:58:18] about Ryan and him and I or you know you could tell we're getting a little emotional on the phone
[01:58:21] he's like hey you remember that time we had a Harvard officer in our Buds class who actually
[01:58:28] worked for N-Ron but some officer you know I don't know what what what what the fascination was it like
[01:58:34] all this guy went to Harvard news with that run and you know in these in Buds and um this guy was
[01:58:41] arguably one of the smartest guys in the class now as part of Johnny um and he said that's nice
[01:58:48] this guy just alienated everyone he thought he was the smartest man in the room and he was
[01:58:57] egotistical he was an a-hole and Johnny's like so he's done the story about we're running to the
[01:59:03] chowhole and still there's like 250 to 125 people in the class in this guy knew I was a recon Marine
[01:59:11] and you know sometimes you'll run the formation there's one guy that runs to the right of the
[01:59:17] is it the left of the left left this is my yeah for marine that's pretty embarrassing so we're
[01:59:22] gonna do the left but his hands up the wall and makes an elder left one and he's singing cadence
[01:59:26] and he's just ripping on recon and Johnny's laughing on the phone because the whole class saw
[01:59:32] this guy just fall out of the main formation run out and I just took a hand you know sort of the
[01:59:37] night not the night hand but the hard hand was there over not to slap not to helmet right off his uh
[01:59:43] his head and he goes wrong across the street and he has to run over and I just took over the
[01:59:46] cadence and I'm like Johnny that was not my best man but this guy I kind of liked that moment this
[01:59:52] guy was uh he was gonna make it through a hurry he was gonna meet the physical requirements
[01:59:59] in the mental toughness requirements but the cotter a stepped in and dropped him and that's rare
[02:00:05] because he was just that toxic it that toxic and it's funny that the instructors could recognize
[02:00:13] that because usually instructors like hey he meets all these requirements we can breathe that out of them
[02:00:18] effective intelligence is the ability to use the intelligence you have in a real world setting
[02:00:25] to solve problems for which there is no playbook and that is the heart of special operations
[02:00:32] so there you know we found a study what would you guess it was the average GPA of most
[02:00:36] millionaires that went to college I have no idea 2.9 2.9 and that's my seven graces because I think
[02:00:44] I got a 2.9 on it so I'm like hey Abby so what we found in the people that are off the charts
[02:00:51] smart and what we saw in the seal teams is that they suffered a lot from the process through
[02:00:55] analysis or they made things so overly complex and when you work in high-staking environments
[02:01:02] time is usually a factor and it goes back to the second law of combat simple yeah that's that's
[02:01:10] all good stuff and again hey we're not bagging on the guys that came in and had awesome education
[02:01:17] and a lot of them were awesome and and here's another another reason that it hurt the community
[02:01:21] was because these guys would be coming in and they were had such high potential this is in the
[02:01:25] 90s there's no war going on they do four years they get they do their system of
[02:01:30] two commander they do their putton commander they look at what's ahead of them in the 90s and it was like oh
[02:01:34] you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna you know ride a desk for the next 18 or whatever the
[02:01:39] next 16 years before you can retire and guys would say you know I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna go
[02:01:43] do do something else so it hurt us from a just a personnel building standpoint as well
[02:01:49] but that's uh the other thing that I've seen is where you get
[02:01:54] and look some people pull this off and they do it great but there are some people that have a problem
[02:01:58] taking their highly intellectual view of something and translating it to the frontline troops
[02:02:06] where now the people the people that have to go and execute whatever did you want them to execute
[02:02:11] is doing it in a simple clear concise right that's why simple is one of the laws of combat
[02:02:16] but you know part of the law of combat is planning keep your your planning simple the other
[02:02:20] part of that law of combat is to communicate simply and there's a lot of people that have a hard time
[02:02:24] doing not a lot there are some people that have a hard time doing that so that's a
[02:02:30] that effective intelligence is uh is definitely an important thing and that is the one I mean
[02:02:35] one of the attributes specific to Marsauk is that they called it effective intelligence and that's you know
[02:02:40] again flint we we we took that one it was the way they described it in their assessment and
[02:02:46] selection manual that that's one of their primary requirements the way they described it was absolutely
[02:02:50] beautiful. Marsauk had the advantage of having joined so calm late you know I was a recon marine
[02:02:57] we were never part of so calm back then and eventually 2000 was at five six Marsauk that one
[02:03:03] led by Colonel Kaczynski two 2004 yeah because they were leave me and Baghdad that's right
[02:03:08] and everyone's like yeah this is a no-brainer but they could look when they were building the Marsauk
[02:03:14] assessment selection course they could look at what the sealer and the SF community and they were very
[02:03:19] deliberate and that's the Marsauk community stand by they're they're they're just going to be
[02:03:23] powerful they already are yeah you know we were talking about to bring this over to the business world
[02:03:29] you know we talk about effective intelligence and people over indexing on experience they're
[02:03:36] wanting people to come and take a playbook and run it over here and and assuming that the situations
[02:03:43] that you're going to find in this particular business are going to be exactly the same and so
[02:03:48] they're thinking well they've handled these situations over here they'll be able to handle them here
[02:03:53] will be successful in the story it's the effective intelligence that's not assuming any course of action
[02:04:01] for a business problem they're looking at it that that ability to take the intellectual horsepower
[02:04:07] and look at all of the data points all of the indicators all of the little pieces of intel
[02:04:12] collect them and put them into a cohesive picture that then you explain simply with the plan of attack
[02:04:21] and it's so different than experience and if we can get people to index on that versus the experience
[02:04:28] you see the difference immediately you know George we actually we talk about the 70%
[02:04:31] solution that's a great example what you're you're explaining in a business context is again
[02:04:36] the guys that are wildly intelligent when they only have 70% of the operational picture they can't
[02:04:41] make a decision but people high in high effective intelligence can draw threads parallels and make a
[02:04:50] very decisive decision with interplayed information and you know they we pulled a quote out
[02:04:54] because we're talking to Tracy Kio and so she was talking about the CEO of Microsoft
[02:04:59] said we don't want no adults we want learn adults if you can get that how far ahead of the game are you
[02:05:07] I'm gonna I'm gonna reach into some people's brains that are listening to this right now
[02:05:13] and I'm just gonna do a little a little tweak on their brains because I promise you I promise you
[02:05:18] that there's some people that when you said hey you're talking about someone that just takes a playbook
[02:05:25] and runs the playbook and that's it I promise you that there's some people that are thinking wait that's
[02:05:30] what I want that's what I want right there I want someone who's gonna take that playbook and they're
[02:05:33] gonna run that's what they're gonna do and and I'm gonna reach in there and just I have to stop you
[02:05:38] from thinking that because I know that's what you think you want that's what that's what leaders think
[02:05:43] they think hey look I've got this all figured out if everyone would just do what I tell them to do
[02:05:47] run the playbook just do what I say to do will be good to go here's the thing there's no static
[02:05:53] function in the world that what you want is non-thinking apparatus to run a playbook and if you do
[02:06:04] if you have something like that yes automate that get a robot to do that task and do them
[02:06:08] over and over again the same way when you're hiding a leader you want them to be able to adapt
[02:06:13] and change and make improvements and do whatever they have to do to win that's what you want so if you
[02:06:19] hear George say hey we don't want someone that's just gonna run the playbook and you're thinking
[02:06:26] no way I do that do want that no you don't and this was the same thing is happen to the
[02:06:31] micro managers coming through my train when I was running training you get someone that's thinking hey
[02:06:36] look I've been I'm either I'm experienced or I know I'm highly educated I know how to run these
[02:06:41] operations so everyone if everyone just get in line and just do what I tell them to do will be
[02:06:45] good to go and what is that turned into it's micro management that you can't tell everyone what to do
[02:06:49] there's no way you can be everywhere or once and everything falls apart you need thinking shooters
[02:06:53] is what we used to call it so what what we're offering at at EF Overwatch is thinking leaders that will
[02:07:01] actually solve problems yeah you're right and and you know we made a little vignette a little video about this
[02:07:08] but coming up through the army and you know joccal I was actually one of those people that
[02:07:13] started to get out in the 90s I was I'd gotten through you know I had two years of line command
[02:07:18] and I'm thinking I love this I got to go to field I love being with my soldiers and then you
[02:07:23] didn't you know your time for a command comes up in the army and you're looking ahead and you're going
[02:07:27] now I'm gonna say something and I don't want to hear crap about it later Mike but I'm thinking
[02:07:31] I got a life of Harvard graphics ahead of me which preceded powerpoint just to bring you along
[02:07:37] with the program here but and and so I got out but I have to tell you the US army and the US military
[02:07:48] is the world's greatest leadership incubator and I owe so much back to the military to my mentors
[02:07:55] to my coaches to the soldiers to the non-commissioned officers people I served with and it created
[02:08:00] and made that thinking leader do I have all the answers no no but that the US military when we
[02:08:08] talk about it yet folks we talk about placing leaders it's you're in a fishbowl 247 365 is a
[02:08:15] leader it is the biggest and best burden you can ever carry is to be a leader in the United States
[02:08:21] military it is just it's an honor a privilege it's scariest how it's rewarding is how it's everything
[02:08:26] but you're in an incubator to lead and and I am so so grateful for that and and so when we talk
[02:08:34] about the principles in these book and when we talk about that effective intelligence the army
[02:08:39] helped me in my case deliver that that that did I know everything about the enemy no I had to take all
[02:08:45] these cues and start putting pieces together what do I have to do what are my possible courses
[02:08:49] of action what's good what's bad what's high risk what's low risk and anyway it just it is it is
[02:08:56] astounded me how much I learned to think about the art of leadership coming through the US military
[02:09:02] I mean muskets were not as intuitive during his days as you know for us we have now but we had good
[02:09:08] horses like so you know I'm good with that this is what I have to put up with daily
[02:09:12] team ability did you guys make up that work that hyphenated work team ability we did not
[02:09:21] we I think we found that within our research we we we liked it so we we stuck with yeah kind of
[02:09:28] because we were talking with Brian Decker we were talking a lot of people
[02:09:31] that you everybody had different versions of that same word so we put that together yeah the
[02:09:36] team work and how different and do you have the ability to put yourself whatever level you're at
[02:09:43] as a team player and that there's a certain element of that to be a follower as well
[02:09:47] what do we put everything like that word yeah okay yeah we came up with it
[02:09:51] good ago you say about nothing worth accomplishing it can be done alone there are no
[02:09:57] rampos in the military that might look cool in the movies but individual is die pretty quickly on
[02:10:01] the battlefield or worst get others hurt they're great success requires that we work together
[02:10:07] curiosity exploring the unknown and questioning the status quo and pursue to better
[02:10:12] more effective solutions is the key to innovation without curious individuals nothing would ever
[02:10:17] change or improve emotional strength in the US military and I'm given like these highly abbreviated
[02:10:25] definitions and you guys go into it not not only do you go into better examples but then not only
[02:10:32] not only more detailed definitions but examples you know you're talking about the rescue
[02:10:37] cap and films I mean you got really cool examples in here to back these things up but that's
[02:10:42] where people buy the books so that they can read those curiosity already covered that emotional strength
[02:10:48] in the US military the whole man concept is the belief that the individuals need to be assessed
[02:10:54] based on the entirety of their person mental physical and emotional and emotionally strong individual
[02:11:00] has a positive attitude high empathy and emotional control in stressful situations many of the
[02:11:06] individuals we interviewed identified positive attitude as important to their hiring decisions
[02:11:12] attitude is contagious positivity breeds positivity while negativity
[02:11:18] be gets more negativity an individual the negative attitude can still produce results but is often at the expense
[02:11:24] of company culture typically that one person who's also not worth the resulting damage to the team
[02:11:33] you have highlighted this section emotional strength is the ability to regulate ones emotions
[02:11:38] to remain logical under stress situations marsawk calls this stress tolerance and defines it as
[02:11:44] the ability to deal with ambiguous dangerous high pressure or frustrating events while maintaining control
[02:11:50] of emotions actions composure and effectiveness it is a universal truth in life that humans don't
[02:11:56] make good decisions in emotional state people who are able to remain cool calm and collected in the
[02:12:01] face of challenges and the unknown are people you want in your organization this is the exact reason
[02:12:06] soft creates stressful environments to mimic the conditions of war during assessment and selection
[02:12:11] programs stress tolerance is so important that some soft organizations even use heart rate
[02:12:16] monitors to evaluate individuals psychological physiological responses to stress
[02:12:26] got to stay calm got to be able to detach these were this chapter I mean you get people that
[02:12:33] are very passionate Ryan Decker was heavily involved in this chapter rich divinity
[02:12:37] geverserved with rich I did not rich is a brother very very passionate about in fact he has a book
[02:12:44] called the attributes 25 hidden drivers of optimal performance it's about attributes some of his
[02:12:50] observations like empathy you know when you think about it in the way he described it he said
[02:12:55] special operations is very good about dialing up and dialing down empathy he said it's almost like
[02:13:01] a dimmer switch when you go out on an operation in your right in the home there's a likelihood
[02:13:06] that there are women and children in there and you know you've got a dial down or empathy to
[02:13:10] accomplish the mission not you know safeguard them while while still bringing the hurt to the
[02:13:15] the combatants you're known after um yet we're very good about down that empathy back up when we
[02:13:20] come back from from from uh operations so um very detailed conversations very passionate about these
[02:13:27] these subjects and um those two were instrumental in uh in the chapter yeah you guys dug into
[02:13:34] some like I said good stuff and obviously going with getting those dead information for good people
[02:13:42] creating a talent acquisition plan talk to me about that well you know one of the many
[02:13:52] mistakes that you know once you get past you know making sure that your chief human resources
[02:13:58] chief human resource officer is strategic and tied into your CEO you have to look
[02:14:04] ahead you know at that old adage if you if you fail to plan you're planning to fail people look
[02:14:13] at talent and recruiting and staffing is hey we've got these open positions let's crank it there's
[02:14:18] not often a plan behind it and that starts with looking at your company and it starts with going okay
[02:14:25] what is the strength of our company when it comes to talent what gaps do we have what gaps do we
[02:14:31] have in leadership what gaps do we have in technology what gaps do we have in sales in leaders
[02:14:35] in individual contributors do we have key points of failure do we have only one person that can do
[02:14:41] this job and if they go we've nobody to step up do we have number two do we have number three
[02:14:47] okay where are we gonna grow where are we gonna grow next year and you know this could go on and on
[02:14:52] and on but the basics are is you need to be sitting down and looking at each organization and what
[02:14:58] are you missing why are you winning in that department why are you winning in sales why are you winning
[02:15:03] in product why are you winning in service or whatever and find out what your gaps are and that's
[02:15:08] where you start with talent and get that down into a plan that says okay we're gonna go after this
[02:15:14] in a strategic way we are gonna go out into the market you know we're gonna look within our own
[02:15:19] organization first but then we're gonna go out to the market and we're gonna build an organization
[02:15:23] in talent acquisition HR that says these are the people that are the gatekeepers and they are
[02:15:29] going to find and they are gonna know what our success profiles look like and they are gonna
[02:15:34] bring us high caliber people with those character attributes to be considered for these positions
[02:15:40] but you plan it out first is going oh you know what hey we have an open position over here you
[02:15:46] know we've authorized 10 head count in this particular department you've got an empty seat what
[02:15:51] do you need that's not a plan that's just that's a button to see like we talked about
[02:15:56] you you have to take that time to say what does my organization look like as far as talent and people
[02:16:02] it's one of the many things that because everybody's focused on everything else they don't take the
[02:16:06] time to go what's gonna bring us into 21 what's gonna bring us into 22 you and like Don Roberts
[02:16:13] and said in our book you have to be higher for the skills and needs of the future where your company
[02:16:17] is gonna go and I think we even brought it up it's like the term is fighting in the last war
[02:16:23] you know you're not thinking ahead is to what you're gonna need and so there's no plan to go
[02:16:26] after that and build that for the future this is one of those things where you it happens to
[02:16:32] echelon front sometimes be working with a company and and you know they're whatever company is
[02:16:37] it happens all the time companies caught up in that firefight day to day they're trying to survive
[02:16:40] they're trying to make things happen they got projects do they got all the things going on and then
[02:16:44] you know you ask them about you know hey do you do you have anyone that's looking at you know
[02:16:50] six months down the line about where you're gonna be about what supplies you're gonna need or whatever
[02:16:54] just whatever those and and you can see their caught their caught like on their heels because they don't
[02:16:59] and if you if you think about what you're talking about here a talent acquisition plan how we're
[02:17:05] actually going to build a company and you think about how many companies are out there
[02:17:10] that the way they think about is just it's a fire fight right we need to fill this seat right now
[02:17:17] that's the plan the plan is hire someone to do that role next week we have a new plan the plan is
[02:17:22] hire someone to keep fill this other role yep there's no unified long-term strategic plan of what we're
[02:17:27] doing and what is the military do better than well there's many things they do better than most
[02:17:32] there's always a pipeline there's always a pipeline there's always a plan there's a succession plan
[02:17:38] there is a pipeline of high quality people coming into a pipeline so we can assess and select and put them into
[02:17:44] those things it's it's a forethought we have people that are out there doing that stuff but they're actually
[02:17:50] thinking what do we need for 21 22 23 24 25 won't even that goes all the way out the systems in equipment
[02:17:58] and but the military does it all whereas corporations will go to your point they're out there firefighting
[02:18:04] oh wow wow I've got an opening on team I got to bring somebody in but if you do have an opening on
[02:18:09] your team it should be hey we got a pipeline already talent that's banging out the door to get
[02:18:13] into this place because we have a talent mindset we have leadership we are focused we empower our
[02:18:18] people we lead our people we drive our people we win and people will want to be a part of that
[02:18:23] yeah you guys break it down and hear what you have to do what you have to do to create this
[02:18:28] talent acquisition plan defining greatness in your organization identify your high performance
[02:18:33] as a session talent objective assessments just you guys go line by line and explain all these things
[02:18:39] in great detail build your talent profiles mic you already mentioned that workforce plan I mean you
[02:18:44] just go through the detail so that people that don't have a plan can actually open up this book
[02:18:51] and put a plan together so that they're moving forward with a route right with a route instead
[02:18:57] of just moving forward in the blind which is crazy to think about and yet it happens all the time it's
[02:19:03] just start with the conversation the senior leaders and companies are not having this conversation
[02:19:10] and that's where it starts there's many ways to go about this you don't need to bring you know
[02:19:14] bring in a top five consulting firm yes you can bring in the info for watching that's my plug
[02:19:19] but you know this this isn't something where you're going to bring in you know industrial
[02:19:23] organizational psychologists and you're going to create assessments that are going to solve this for you
[02:19:27] this is this is this is basic leadership that you have to have the discipline to fall through on
[02:19:32] and you can create these processes from scratch special operations community how to start somewhere
[02:19:37] they basically started from scratch and you can build this it's going to take time
[02:19:41] but you have to have those conversations and you have to have those conversations all the time
[02:19:45] every every week every month are we selecting not only for what we need now but five years
[02:19:51] don't mind if you're creating a town profile how does that top profile change with the digital
[02:19:56] transformation five years from now what's going to be required in terms of attributes five years
[02:20:01] down the road or ten years down the road? Next section is about attracting top talent what talented
[02:20:12] people look for attracting talent requires knowing what talented people want many companies assume
[02:20:18] that the answer is money and perks they offer competitive salaries and wonderful
[02:20:21] creature comforts high end expression machines fully stocked kitchens pool tables and more
[02:20:27] and yet they still have rich talent on the other end we've seen countless people turn down
[02:20:32] higher pay to stay with the company where they feel challenged and love the people they work with
[02:20:37] if you want people to dedicate their talents to your company you must offer something equally
[02:20:43] valuable in return since talented people have high drive they are interested they're just as
[02:20:48] interested in achievement and challenge as money let's not fool ourselves if your compensation
[02:20:54] benefits are not competitive within your industry you'll lose out on talent but attracting top
[02:20:58] people goes beyond that beyond money talented people look for talented leaders and colleagues
[02:21:03] a sense of community a challenge opportunities for professional and personal growth and purpose
[02:21:09] talent attracts talent it's a magnet good leaders or you want to go even in my military career
[02:21:17] I know who those good leaders are and I'm like oh I got to get that organization because they're
[02:21:21] going to help me get to the next level they're going to pass on that experience that coaching the
[02:21:25] mentorship I did that in the military I do it here in the corporate world I've been doing it for
[02:21:29] 20 years you know one of the people in this book I actually followed to another organization he's like hey
[02:21:34] hey I'm like I'm there I'm there you know he goes do you want to talk about the
[02:21:39] compensation I said no let's just move let's go and the great part is is that you know there's
[02:21:47] a lot of bad habits that get you into a vicious cycle but attracting great talent gets you into a
[02:21:54] positive cycle of attracting better talent all the time you're alumni in the people currently
[02:22:02] in your organization are the best way to attract talent hands down I mean you're doing it right now
[02:22:09] you've probably caused a lot of young men and women to in list or seek missions in the military
[02:22:17] based off the lessons that are learning but yes that is a factual statement there we go there's a lot
[02:22:22] of a lot of people out there that are straight up in the military from listening to podcast
[02:22:28] because I hear from all the time it's awesome in fact we're having dinner last night Air Force
[02:22:32] individual came up and said hey I follow everything you do thank you for what you do and then he
[02:22:38] asks he handed me the phone said hey can you take a picture of Jack and I might say really he's like yeah
[02:22:44] okay so you tell the story and this is a hundred percent true I didn't come from the military
[02:22:51] lineage I didn't I'd seen the movies that they were pretty cool I thought the military was potentially a
[02:22:59] path for me there was multiple paths the backup dancer from Madonna was just not going to be a
[02:23:05] career that provided you know what I needed to live so I wouldn't know that it inside Joe it's
[02:23:11] it's also frightening mental image I assure you there's a sequence on somewhere in his house so
[02:23:23] 18 and living in Colorado I ran into I'm not gonna mention his name which is called staff sergeant Ben
[02:23:30] staff sergeant Ben was attending the University of Colorado on the meat set program which is the same
[02:23:36] program I eventually attended a tech say them the Marine and Listic Commission education program
[02:23:40] where they take the enlisted seven to get their degrees in the ultimately uh earn a commission
[02:23:46] so I met Ben and at the age of 18 here you have the staff sergeant from the force recon community
[02:23:53] and he was humbly confident he was articulate highly respectful to everyone what differentiated
[02:24:00] him from the other Marines was even though he was you know this dual cool you know highly
[02:24:05] decorated is he was actually nicer than the other Marines he had nothing to prove and physically
[02:24:11] the whole man concept he was there he had a stature about him and when I made team I'm like
[02:24:17] dude that guy's awesome that's who I want to be that's who I want to be and I mean to the point
[02:24:24] where I enlisted in the Marine court have come a recon ring because of the image because of the
[02:24:30] person the Marine court put forward in front of young men and women like me when you have strong
[02:24:36] leaders stepping up representing their communities it it sends a very strong message to people
[02:24:42] that I want to join that and it never changed when I went to infantry school you know seven
[02:24:47] recon ring stepped in front of us and said who wants to screen the front recon and like oh my god it's
[02:24:51] like seven staff sergeant Ben's and then when I finally met the seals you know walls in the
[02:24:57] Marine court I'm like oh my god that's my next challenge and your alumni and current employees
[02:25:04] or team members are your greatest recruiting to it always yeah I was I've had many conversations
[02:25:11] with businesses as you know they're losing somebody somebody decide to leave and they start thinking
[02:25:18] about we're gonna end them with the no compete we're gonna get them with this we're gonna get
[02:25:21] them with that and I say I got a better idea why don't you wish them luck and thank them for what they
[02:25:28] did while they were here and let them go about it away because if you send them out the door with a
[02:25:34] kick in the ass they're not coming back if you send them out the door and say good luck it's been
[02:25:39] great working with you first of all they're not gonna go out in the street and say you know oh
[02:25:43] joc was a jerk you don't want to work for him it's gonna go I left them but they're good people
[02:25:47] right and that those people will come back to you by the way I mean eventually they're gonna come back
[02:25:52] because you know somebody is over the reason they're leaving us because if you're treating people
[02:25:56] well the reason people are leaving us because someone is lying to them you know they're lying they're
[02:26:00] giving them some lying that they're not gonna be able to uphold so when people are leaving it's
[02:26:06] it's your alumni you got a treat them like you're alumni and say hey good luck let me know if you
[02:26:10] never need anything you know even though you're working for a competitor it's all right you know
[02:26:14] what are my friends yeah you know well we we took a one step further we have some of the uh
[02:26:19] the just great members of my team about 90 days down the road they'll call them up where they went
[02:26:26] hey how are things going for you hey was it everything that you expected I hope your
[02:26:32] experiencing great success and it's everything because there's people that move along because
[02:26:35] for whatever reason they're next challenge maybe somewhere else and you have to be accepting of that
[02:26:40] and you and you have to to your point encourage that too and if you have good number two you're
[02:26:45] falling you don't worry about it but reach out to somebody and say hey how are you doing you know what
[02:26:49] hey if things aren't going well there hey give me a call give me a call because we love to have
[02:26:53] it in your hair you wouldn't believe how many people are going you know what they don't have to admit
[02:26:58] that they made a mistake they're going you know what it wasn't as good it wasn't as good
[02:27:03] we we call we we call the ultimate litmus test it's if there's pride in the organization whether
[02:27:09] you're with the organization at that time or whatever look at the Marine Corps when somebody says hey
[02:27:14] you know what you do while I'm a former Marine they they're proclaimed proclaim that vice
[02:27:20] somebody say hey I'm a I'm a coder no if if they're pride prideful in the organization they say
[02:27:25] I'm a Googler and so when they identify with the organization it's one they're sort of identifying
[02:27:31] that there's a talent oriented culture and that there's strong leadership at that company to the
[02:27:36] point where they have a sense of pride and that becomes a talent magnet for other people at that
[02:27:41] cocktail party that you said it so very powerful we we can't sort of over index on that one enough
[02:27:50] no it it's just you know everybody in your company is a talent scout everybody in your company is an
[02:27:56] example of what you hold as important especially your leaders when they're out in the public
[02:28:03] and everybody should always be looking we talked about this like you know the term is
[02:28:09] opportunistic hiring most people are only hiring for an open position but if you've got talent
[02:28:14] scouts out there they're bringing talent to you and saying you know what dispersions a difference
[02:28:18] maker this isn't a player we have got to find a place in our organization so everybody when you have
[02:28:23] a talent mindset it's not just you know from the CEO down all the way through that you've got
[02:28:28] them mechanics and you're looking for top talent but it's all your employees once they're in the door
[02:28:34] they're branding going hey you want to come try out here this is a tough place to work and and that's
[02:28:39] exactly what happens in the special operations community there is no shortage of people signing up
[02:28:44] to get a beating no shortage whatsoever and in an ideal world if you have a company with that
[02:28:50] kind of mindset you'll have those people going you know what I got to work there because that that's
[02:28:54] going to make me better either jockey you brought a point about when somebody leaves your organization
[02:28:59] you show them respect and try to keep that relationship intact what we found great organizations
[02:29:05] do even in the hiring process if they don't hire somebody is they spill still spend time to say
[02:29:10] hey we love to debrief you on why we didn't select you for this position and they show them a
[02:29:14] great deal of respect the special operations community does this when somebody drops from the
[02:29:19] buds they do pull them aside and they have a conversation hey what do you want to do in the
[02:29:22] Navy what have you learned from this process and they speak highly of the seals or the special forces
[02:29:27] selection process when they leave we've seen organizations that are so highly respectful to people
[02:29:33] that they don't even hire that at the end of the debrief they say wow no other organization has
[02:29:39] done that for me they just simply do some don't even respond or some just say hey we didn't
[02:29:43] select you next and they said it's not uncommon organizations that sort of follow this this tactic
[02:29:49] it's part of their culture with the person looks at him and says do you have any other positions
[02:29:53] available in that in the organization and literally make hires based off that by showing them such
[02:29:59] a great experience during that hiring process it drives me nuts to have a bad process because
[02:30:05] effectively and especially in today's era of social digital media that experience is your brand
[02:30:12] going back out in the marketplace and you've created an impression you've created a customer
[02:30:17] consumer or you've pushed one away if you didn't select them so it you know how you treat people
[02:30:24] in the process it says everything about your company says everything about having a talent mindset
[02:30:29] yeah and the bottom line with all these things that we're talking about all these behaviors is
[02:30:33] you're you have a culture that people that are talented are gonna want to go to and that's what
[02:30:38] this you know this section's about a sense of community the challenge the growth opportunities
[02:30:44] having a purpose there salary and benefits given people ownership given people control over their
[02:30:49] own destiny and that all those things you kind of sum up here with brand yourself as a talent
[02:30:55] magnet the US military especially special operations has skillful marketing and branding which
[02:30:59] is very weird for me to say but I know it's very true they're branding I mean let's face it the
[02:31:04] Marine Corps is branding itself way before branding was a thing same with the army I mean I remember
[02:31:10] I was totally brainwashed when I was a kid to be all you can be or the few the proberines like
[02:31:16] that was just 100% just my whole branding in my mind is stuck to this day you know the few
[02:31:24] the proberines Rangers lead the way that others may live day of press or lever lever how do you
[02:31:31] say that can't we we can't say that they the press or lever is that right I think you got it right
[02:31:36] yes sorry Tim Kennedy bro I'm sorry Tim Kennedy day a presso lever there you go to free the
[02:31:43] oppressed the only easy day with yesterday and what you're doing with these things is is the other
[02:31:50] the other big part of this is employee value proposition what you as an employee as employer
[02:31:57] offer to your employees and you kind of you kind of lay out some you lay out one price waterhouse
[02:32:03] coovers from empowering mentorships to customize coaching PWC provide you with the support you need
[02:32:12] to help you develop your career you'll work with people from diverse backgrounds and industries
[02:32:17] to solve important problems are you ready to grow here's the here's the Ranger one recognizing
[02:32:22] that I volunteered as a Ranger fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession I will always
[02:32:27] endure to uphold the prestige honor and high a speed of core of the Rangers acknowledging the fact
[02:32:33] that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land sea or air
[02:32:39] I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further faster and fight harder
[02:32:44] than any other soldier Rangers lead the way branding I hate calling that stuff brand and because it's so
[02:32:52] badass using social media to reach top talent all right let's hear it guys you guys
[02:33:02] apparently you know you just talked about this what we talked about last night with so come
[02:33:06] doing oh yeah so come and starting a podcast who did they reach out to they reach out to me but
[02:33:13] yeah it's very cool what they're doing you know they've got a they they just wanted to you know get my kind
[02:33:16] 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
[02:33:21] and and then you pointed out to me that whatever a year ago so come started an Instagram account
[02:33:28] so we see our own special operations community building their social media presence so that they can
[02:33:36] communicate with the next generation of special operations humans the military has been
[02:33:42] pretty good about this so back in the late nineties or mid nineties ex games was
[02:33:49] really coming to to to to to fruition and the military started creating their own extreme sports teams
[02:33:56] because that's where they knew the new talent is that that's where that you know the demographic
[02:34:01] of the 18 or I'm sorry let's say 15 year olds to the 25 year olds was was pushing towards that
[02:34:07] time where do you think the military is going now for recruiting video games e-sports teams
[02:34:16] they're putting e-sports teams together now if you asked our generation when they said hey we're
[02:34:20] going to go recruit out of the e-sports or video game town pools we'd probably say
[02:34:24] no way yeah that future seals and future marsawk you know Raiders and special forces are not
[02:34:33] going to come out of this communities that's wrong that's that's where the new talent lays not all
[02:34:38] that they're still town out there playing sports you know on teams wrestling but you know
[02:34:44] that's just this new generation they play a lot of video games and that's where they're they're
[02:34:49] finding success with their recruiting yeah I'm curious about that video games make me nervous
[02:34:56] because people get addicted to them and yeah it's really it's a real thing it's a real thing
[02:35:02] so let's be honest yeah it missed my generation my my dad was not big on video games in the
[02:35:08] house we didn't have it that's why when I would go to my friends house I would stay up till four
[02:35:12] while they were sleeping playing the video games Nintendo my guidance on punch out but what did
[02:35:17] the guys usually do when we got back from operations oh bro I mean my first deployment to
[02:35:21] Iraq they had Halo set up between tents and then they had this so seals I was already like
[02:35:27] like you guys are playing video games what do you wait what is this what are you guys doing pack man
[02:35:31] I mean I don't know I'm so out of it I'm from you know back then you were really
[02:35:36] back so I'm thinking what is this so I like I went in there looked in so you see whatever
[02:35:40] the guys are playing Halo and and I just didn't really get it and I thought it was just weird
[02:35:46] couple you know five or six seals that were all into it but then they had a siege so different
[02:35:51] tournament of Halo did you hear what I just said we're in Iraq we're on deployment we're fighting
[02:35:57] the enemy and they have a at the command of joint special operations task force for Iraq
[02:36:05] they have a Halo tournament so that's a little bit embarrassing so it's embarrassing that I got
[02:36:10] seals doing it it's even more embarrassing that they have a siege so different and the height of
[02:36:15] embarrassment was when my two players went up there for the tournament not only did they win
[02:36:22] they utterly destroyed everyone and I guess in that game you you in the game Halo the version
[02:36:28] that they were playing you have to get to 50 kills and in the finals these two guys in the finals
[02:36:35] they killed the opponent 50 times and they got killed the ones and they came back and they were
[02:36:41] super stoked and I just was I was like gentlemen I'm very disappointed what's really crazy is
[02:36:48] just I mean great guys and one of them was a total freaking physical stuff the other one was
[02:36:53] when I bad asked you know pipeting seals so they were awesome guys so I don't know maybe I'm
[02:36:57] misjudged and it does make me nervous because people get addicted to those video games
[02:37:03] yeah kind of for the same reason they get addicted to other stuff too though a lot of the time
[02:37:08] because they don't have like other stuff going on necessarily but I don't know it's been kind of
[02:37:13] proven to that video games are like a good method of problem solving like in your brain so people
[02:37:20] it's true they can be conducive in certain circumstances why don't you say that you're
[02:37:25] gonna do some problems solving all very there's that too but you get guys to play video games
[02:37:30] and you just so you see what I'm saying I'm saying it can be it can have a little roll in there
[02:37:35] I just have a little roll has you said have you been good at any video game ever in your whole life
[02:37:39] you like Charlie I tried playing with these guys I would take two steps and die yeah you're talking
[02:37:45] my halo that ones like okay that's that ones kind of advanced like you mentioned Mike Tyson punch show
[02:37:51] yeah I never never admitted to that who meant Mike doesn't did you mention that yeah
[02:37:54] well it's too bad a beat like Tyson punch show I beat Mike Tyson punch out and regular punch out you know
[02:38:00] what the what the differences nothing really except one is the last guys Mike Tyson you know
[02:38:07] brown guy and then on regular punch out the last guy's Mr. Dream same exact pixel formation of the guy
[02:38:14] except he's a little lighter because that's when I think Mike Tyson ran into some problem
[02:38:19] publicly I think with the law and whatnot you know but yeah I think they just had a
[02:38:25] documentary come out on the evolution of video games for the reflex yeah
[02:38:31] shit check but thank you for staying up for this generation yes sir yeah
[02:38:36] all right moving back to the subject at hand it's I did this I have it not there everywhere
[02:38:42] creating the hiring team creating the hiring team is one of the most important decisions
[02:38:47] to make in the talent war but we see companies make the same form of stakes again and again
[02:38:51] here they are B players or C players being put in charge of hiring you already kind of mentioned that
[02:38:59] that's not a universal statement but it does happen the hiring team is homogeneous
[02:39:09] homogeneous homogeneous homogeneous there we go thank you actual Charles tighten up
[02:39:15] the English major over there the hiring team is homogeneous which means what we've got
[02:39:21] a team here and they're all they're all all engineers the same people all engineers the all sales
[02:39:26] people wanted to one together look or to put it in the context of special operations if you just
[02:39:30] selected breachers to be the team of people selecting not not not not the point man
[02:39:35] not the navigator yeah your breachers are going to look for future breachers number three there's
[02:39:42] no training what's the training that you're talking about you know how to dig in and first of all
[02:39:50] and you know i've got to say this is that every time you hire there are legal ramifications
[02:39:56] i could tell you horror stories about asking the wrong questions
[02:40:03] no it's great actually i had i literally had a senior hiring manager go in and there was a
[02:40:08] lady they came in and one of his questions was is winner you do and i'm like really and yeah she
[02:40:14] wasn't pregnant so that made that just she got an offer on the spot for me we saved the company a
[02:40:19] couple million dollars and a lawsuit but the training you have to teach people to make sure that
[02:40:23] you're asking questions that are simply job related and performance related number one but number two
[02:40:28] how do you dig in and examine those questions how do you put that person under pressure how do you
[02:40:34] pressure test them and train your hiring managers otherwise you get five guys on the engineering team
[02:40:40] and to my example five breachers who are all asking questions about breaching you're asking engineers
[02:40:45] and they're all asking sit different well how did you do this at this company they go to the next
[02:40:50] person you get candidates to come out go well i answered same questions seven times and hopefully
[02:40:55] i got a right six out of seven times but you need to train your interviewing team as to what
[02:41:01] your success profile is and you know there are nine attributes but those you're not looking for
[02:41:07] all nine maybe it's three maybe it's four maybe it's two for this specific role how are you going to
[02:41:13] dig in on those and illicit responses that tell you are they a person of high drive are they a
[02:41:18] person of high resiliency are they adaptable do they have team ability how are you digging in
[02:41:25] and which characteristics you're looking for depend on what the success profile of that particular
[02:41:29] role is and you have to train people to do that interviewing is not a skill that people just
[02:41:34] out of thin air can do very very well it takes time to train and the more you train those people
[02:41:40] the you know the more clear they become on selecting the best candidate that's in front of them
[02:41:46] for that role so training them to that process what is the process that works for you
[02:41:51] for this organization you're you're you're hiring team of a players needs to understand the process
[02:41:56] and then they under they need to understand as it's just talking about is what are you looking
[02:42:01] for during that process so Brian Decker with the SFAS they would continually go through training as they
[02:42:06] came up with obstacles and identifying that hey the reason we're putting them through this specific
[02:42:11] obstacle is we're looking for these two attributes and this is how you judge based off the score
[02:42:17] card where they they they score on that attribute so that's the the training we're talking about
[02:42:23] let let me say this one thing we say a players because a true a player has humility
[02:42:30] the ability to look at a bunch of young seal candidates or a bunch of future employees and say
[02:42:37] that macro right there she has the potential to be a lot better than I am and she's going to
[02:42:42] make me she's going to raise my performance as well she's going to raise the bar and she's going to
[02:42:46] challenge me a players can do that because they want competition they want healthy competition they
[02:42:51] want to be surrounded by other a players you put B players your C players what we're saying there
[02:42:56] is again because back to you know fear based hiring is I don't want to be outshined that that
[02:43:00] Johnny Kim right there I will be a non-player in the organization if he's there we're not taking
[02:43:06] them that's what that's what that's what what happens and so when you have ego and you have people
[02:43:11] that are mediocre performers in charge of your hiring guess what you're going to get mediocre tell
[02:43:18] the last mistake that people make is hiring as a secondary function
[02:43:23] so we're not going to take jocca willing as a troop commander the task commander say hey
[02:43:30] you got to train to go to war oh hey by the way you've got to cut over the buds every day at
[02:43:34] three p.m. to assist with the assessment selection you can't do the phrase in the military two
[02:43:41] things you need one thing well yeah we take in this this is hard to take one of our
[02:43:46] times we take a players off the battlefield guys who want to continue going to war and we say hey
[02:43:51] for the next two years actually you're going to have a greater impact on the community your soul job
[02:43:56] your one thing it's an out of secondary function this is your primary function for the next two years
[02:44:00] or six months is focusing on filling the talent and assessing the selected people in the
[02:44:07] organization that's what it means by a secondary function and then you can score it and then you can
[02:44:11] do a feedback loop if you've got the same people and I mean you'll have multiple teams across
[02:44:16] multiple departments but once you've seen how they interview if if each one of those talented
[02:44:22] candidates is going through the same group of people and getting the same structure you can go back
[02:44:27] and evaluate the results you can get that feedback loop okay we hired this person how did they do
[02:44:34] or we hired this person and they didn't do well what did we miss in the process and you're going
[02:44:38] back to the same group of people is how to iterate a little bit better and you get a little bit
[02:44:43] better each time but if you keep changing that team out you're effectively you have no standard
[02:44:50] or you get the standard of the day with the team that you put together but if you get those a
[02:44:55] players you make hiring the priority for what they do you train them properly you can look at how
[02:45:02] we're doing and how do we exponentially increase what they're doing that's hard for a business
[02:45:07] leader to sometimes very hard very very hard so what you tell me to do is take my best salesman
[02:45:13] or saleswoman take them off the line for six months and have them focus on hiring the next
[02:45:19] generation of sales leaders and our answer is yes in the short term a tactical mindset that may hurt
[02:45:28] if you have a strategic mindset for the long term for the long run if he hires
[02:45:33] three or four solid sales leaders that's going to have a much more exponential effect
[02:45:40] and impact on the organization again that's hard to do it was hard for the sealed community
[02:45:45] to take guys like you off the battlefield and say hey we need you to run training now
[02:45:48] we know where you wanted to be and so again a lot of this is getting
[02:45:54] that we say talent mindset getting business leaders just to make that mental paradigm shift
[02:45:58] of how do that tactical mindset into a strategic mindset to play the long game and that's what
[02:46:04] the talent war is it's the long game it's just that important it you know everything in your
[02:46:10] environment your your product your service the economy the market the global conditions are
[02:46:15] going to change and they're going to change rapidly but those nine attributes don't change
[02:46:21] and they allow you to confront any circumstance as a business with confidence and a win
[02:46:30] those things just won't change everything around you will change but those leadership principles
[02:46:35] those nine character attributes those are the foundations and they will let you attack and win
[02:46:40] in any given situation when you don't pay attention to them you're firefighting
[02:46:45] covid comes along oh my god what do we do everybody's you know chicken little's and and it
[02:46:50] becomes a very difficult problem to solve versus okay got it Roger that's today's situation
[02:46:55] let's go next section here's characters revealed at one's limits and there's a subsection
[02:47:04] called mic feels the pressure this is it Mike thought staring up the rope i'm going to fail out of
[02:47:10] buds because of a freaking rope two weeks prior mic it completed hell week the instructors had
[02:47:16] even pulled them aside and said you're one of the standout leaders in the class we know what
[02:47:19] you can do as a leader so we need you to step aside so that we can test and evaluate other officers
[02:47:24] yet now mic was struggling to climb a basic rope like he had been climbing since day one of the
[02:47:29] Marine Corps he had been climbing ropes for years and he was good at it he'd never failed to get
[02:47:34] up one until now for the first time in training mic was displaying serious signs of fatigue it was
[02:47:40] an ideal moment to test him so the instructors dug in shouting up at him the other students who had
[02:47:47] already completed the exercise watched from their nearby formation mic started up the rope again
[02:47:52] he could sense all eyes on him he could feel the pressure he made it ten feet and dropped
[02:47:58] the instructors kept yelling and mic started up the rope again and again and again mic was frustrated
[02:48:06] he felt like a dirt bag for not being able to get up the rope but there was no way he was going to
[02:48:10] quit he started up the rope again and fell again he got to his feet and prepared to start
[02:48:16] up the rope again but the instructors stopped him and pulled him aside out of view from the other students
[02:48:22] it's okay we all have these days one of the instructors said we wanted to apply some pressure to you
[02:48:28] to see how you would react and whether you would quit the instructors didn't really care whether mic
[02:48:35] made it to the top of the rope or not good little test see where it's at that that day and again
[02:48:44] I'd been in the Marine Corps for what five years at this point climb plenty of ropes was going to
[02:48:49] climb the ropes I remember that day just something with the body was off I had zero energy and
[02:48:56] you talk about feeling like the eyes were on me it was almost near tears not not from the pressure
[02:49:05] but I would just spent all that together I was I was done and I mean it just reinforces the point
[02:49:13] that you know you say character cannot be created where none exists and you truly don't know people
[02:49:20] until you push them to the limits that's not just physical limits that's also mental limits
[02:49:25] and that's the point of the special operations assessment and selection it's not because we're
[02:49:30] sadistic maybe we are a little but it's not to put these young men and women through
[02:49:36] you know paying for our benefit there's a purpose behind it much like an interview process
[02:49:42] is we know that once we can push them to the threshold that's our moment okay now we're going to see
[02:49:48] if this individual has what it takes if they have the right attributes one of the things in
[02:49:52] you go back to the attributes one of one of our colleagues Jason Tuchen you know you talked about
[02:49:57] resiliency the whole point of a lot of you know the special operations assessment selection is to see
[02:50:02] how resilient people are he talked about in buds attracts much like the other special operations
[02:50:07] some pretty phenomenal human beings like NCAA athletes and Olympic athletes and when he ran
[02:50:14] first phase he saw a lot of these you know what people consider exceptional athletes quit
[02:50:21] and he said they were low on resiliency because this was the first time they had failed
[02:50:26] in their life and that's a point in the training as he says just to keep knocking people down
[02:50:30] to see how they react and when you have a high achiever who's never really experienced failure
[02:50:36] and they repeatedly fail in buds or these other assessment programs sometimes they quit
[02:50:43] and that's what you're looking for but somebody who's experienced nothing but obstacles in their
[02:50:50] life is well is more prepared for what they face in special operations and more equipped to deal
[02:50:55] with crisis than some of these exceptional athletes who just never really face challenge.
[02:51:02] Yeah you're gonna fail some stuff they're gonna make sure you fail some stuff 100% like you're not
[02:51:08] going to pass everything not care who you are they're going to make you sure you fail some stuff
[02:51:12] to make sure that when you do fail something you don't lose the bubble you talk a little bit about
[02:51:18] the interview process and you go into the interview process here and here's a strategy on
[02:51:25] on you go a bunch of stuff I'm gonna skip to one part for guidance on strategy look to special
[02:51:30] operations murder boards murder boards are not quite as terrifying as they sound they are full
[02:51:36] of pressure but professionally run and operators sits on one side of the table and on the other side
[02:51:42] is a psychologist and five to eight senior enlisted and officers representing the entire community
[02:51:49] the psychologist has previously assessed the operator to identify potential red flags
[02:51:54] the senior panel then digs in raising the pressure by probing the red flags and presenting
[02:51:59] complex scenarios they ask difficult questions and push against sore spots to see how the
[02:52:04] operator reacts if you approach your interviews a little more like a soft murder board you can
[02:52:10] reveal valuable information to that end we have five tips number one know what you're looking for
[02:52:17] with each question number two create a core set of questions to be used with each candidate number three
[02:52:24] ask scenario based and behavioral questions number four add challenges number five push candidates
[02:52:31] outside their comfort zone gotta be careful on the legal side of this huh George you did you do
[02:52:41] and and that's where you know that training comes in that we talked about earlier you people
[02:52:45] have to understand you know hiring decisions there's a lot of law around it and so you want to
[02:52:52] train those people effectively but you can create an enormous amount of pressure on somebody by
[02:52:56] asking them difficult questions and you know it's funny when we're when when we're teaching
[02:53:01] veteran candidates do you the number one candidate or the number one question that stumps people
[02:53:07] executives and military people alike I'll just ask a simple question tell me about your leadership
[02:53:12] style and people think from muscle memory they have muscle memory they oh I should be able to answer
[02:53:17] this and they go on and on and on and on and on I get that with the exact I get that with veterans
[02:53:21] but push people to to describe themselves put them in uncomfortable situations talk about failures
[02:53:27] tell me about a time that you failed and there's several executives that if you can't talk about
[02:53:33] how you failed and failed miserably and got back up and what you learned from it that's a person
[02:53:39] you need to avoid but yeah there's there's a lot of law around it but if you know what you're looking
[02:53:44] for with each question you plan your questions you plan your inner you know your interviewing
[02:53:48] panel your murder board you can create a lot of pressure but mind you there's a balance too
[02:53:53] because you you don't want to make it like the military version of it because candidates go okay
[02:53:58] I'm not working there but there's you can carve a simple balance where they know they're
[02:54:02] going to be tested in your environment and those people that know they're going to be tested in
[02:54:07] your environment the right people are going to be drawn to your environment because of that test
[02:54:12] any any person who's of talent that's worth their salt that comes to an easy interview process
[02:54:17] and rocks it in the back of their head when they walk out the doors are going okay that was a little
[02:54:21] bit easy and so now they're starting to think about okay that's that was a little too easy
[02:54:26] but a person with true talent that wants to be challenged it wants to be valued and you know
[02:54:31] working in an environment where there's the grind in the drive that tough process they're going to
[02:54:36] go okay I'm ready for this bring it let's go let's do this and you find out a lot by putting
[02:54:42] people under pressure in that scenario and let's dispel the notion that you know we call it a murder
[02:54:47] board and you've you've been on them people aren't y'all in edge yeah and I'm just out of that
[02:54:51] and and they're looking if you've given the answer they whether they like it or not they're
[02:54:56] they're going to dig a little in a very professional manner and and some murder boards go
[02:55:00] quickly because they identify that this person's humble and they're admitting you know past mistakes
[02:55:05] and that they learn from it and that they're they're still working progress and improving
[02:55:09] and there's murder boards go quickly it's the others where somebody comes in they're overly confident
[02:55:13] they're arrogant and so that's where people that are trained to assess those behaviors and this
[02:55:18] is one big behavioral interview this is the military's version of a behavioral interview those go
[02:55:24] very long and it it almost becomes like a confessional they just they just keep digging themselves
[02:55:31] now another tactic to that is after you put the person through a murder board it's like one
[02:55:36] person goes out and say hey what how'd you feel about that process what what do you think you
[02:55:40] can do better what areas didn't you expand upon to see now if they can do a what do we call
[02:55:45] a brutally honest self assessment like hey you know what man I wish I could do that again
[02:55:50] I missed this this I didn't reinforce this point and so if that person's training they come back in
[02:55:54] and say hey real real self reflective after action that they just gave and one of the reasons
[02:56:01] that we put this specific technique in there is because most interviews and companies are done
[02:56:06] on a one-to-one basis and Jocco echo I bet I you could I could put you in one of these murder
[02:56:13] boards and you could watch three other people ask questions and they'll have their opinions
[02:56:18] but just in the observation mode that is of tremendous value just to watch people how they answer
[02:56:27] how they act how they think how they reasoned through a particular scenario how they explain
[02:56:33] their problem solving methodology so so many interviews due to the firefighting and the time and you
[02:56:39] know that this is reactionary they don't put the time into it they don't put people in a room and go
[02:56:43] okay this was my impression of the answer to the question this is how I think they'll work or
[02:56:49] succeed or fail or struggle in this particular environment you can get actually a lot out of
[02:56:55] observation which is why we put this in the book to give an example of what are on those murder
[02:57:00] boards and you probably remember this one is they're they're gonna ask you an ethical question
[02:57:04] you're dealing with a boss who does something highly unethical you know what actions do you take
[02:57:11] and the response is going to tell you a lot about the person yeah yeah and you guys do a great
[02:57:18] job of kind of laying all the stuff out from how to observe them to do a role plays with them
[02:57:23] sent case case studies and scenarios you've got all that stuff in here observation what to look for
[02:57:30] how to look for it different situations you can look for it and I mean it's just it's just a very
[02:57:35] thorough chapter and then you get into assessment tests and you talk about you know the IQ test
[02:57:42] at the army used and just the different assessment tests that get used now so that's all good
[02:57:54] and one of those tests you comment on here one company we work with that yeah
[02:57:57] if Overwatch using aptitude motivation and personality assessment to weed out candidates are
[02:58:02] veterans despite being high performers we're all scoring very low on the test and thus being
[02:58:06] eliminated from the hiring process curious might took the test for himself his score just 57% of
[02:58:13] failing grade so what was up with that test so your assessment test naturally had bias
[02:58:23] built in by whoever designed that test and there was a bias against you know I'm not saying in the
[02:58:28] native light veterans are very different from the demographic that test was based around
[02:58:35] the bottom line we're trying to say here's the assessments are good it's another layer to the
[02:58:39] process that you use to select people especially if you have talent profiles and when you do these
[02:58:43] talent profiles to identify your high performers you also want to do that against your low performers
[02:58:48] to see if the assessment test is actually accurate because if your high performers know performers
[02:58:53] in the same role or generally getting the same results that got a assessment test is most likely
[02:59:00] not relevant or added value to that process is it yeah is it measuring what you want it to measure
[02:59:07] right is it determining the success factors and one of the challenges with companies is that and
[02:59:14] this is just you know kind of that that inside the talent acquisition function and talent management
[02:59:20] function people will buy and enterprise wide solution and apply that test across the board
[02:59:26] and just say okay this test applies to everybody and in my particular case it's screening
[02:59:30] out veterans and we're able to look at that and go every yes something's wrong but it's hard to
[02:59:37] persuade people that you know something they've invested a good amount of money in is not showing
[02:59:43] them what it should show them I mean they're very wedded to their solution they're they're bought
[02:59:48] in and it's hard to move them off the mark but Mike was an exceptional example of where people are
[02:59:54] using something that's not showing success factors that you want it to be showing you it's another
[03:00:01] data point yeah which so we do see companies that use these personality assessments as a
[03:00:07] either no go or go criteria and I would caution people not to do that you talked about not being
[03:00:15] a rules follower funny enough we had a company that recently assessed one of our people and you know
[03:00:21] I won't say what's physical organization this person works for but he's with a very unique
[03:00:27] or organization and he's been in that seat for five years which is an indicator that this guy is
[03:00:32] is a high performing individual ethical absolutely and when he took this test the company came back
[03:00:37] and said this guy's not you know it shows that he doesn't follow rules and we sort of had to
[03:00:42] explain the context of the role he was in and say he finds a way to win and that may be why
[03:00:48] he's not testing well in that one criteria on that assessment so you've got to be cautious even
[03:00:52] like Josh cotton Dr. Cotton that does this for a living what will caution you
[03:00:58] with regards to results on assessments he said you got to take it with a grain of salt
[03:01:02] and some people to use a phrase that that you know I remember hearing it muster actually
[03:01:08] assessment tests are not inoculations they don't insulate you from making a bad hire they don't
[03:01:14] inoculate you from you know all the risk in the world you need to use them as my says they're
[03:01:20] just one more data point but they it all begins and ends with knowing what success looks like
[03:01:26] for a particular role and that requires thought it requires you know planning and and mapping that
[03:01:32] out how you're going to go do it like I said you got that chapter locked in the next chapter
[03:01:40] goes into the fact that you can't hire or fire your way to success talent acquisition is only
[03:01:47] one part of a two variable equation for success talent plus leadership equals victory
[03:01:53] and then there's a story in here about Mike and a little task unit that you were in called task unit
[03:02:00] Charlie and what's interesting about task unit Charlie so task unit bruiser and task unit Charlie
[03:02:06] and task unit alpha we're all at seal team three and every one of those task units had
[03:02:13] some great guys and you know if you put the bell curve on all of them they'd all be
[03:02:18] relatively the same group of you know seals you know couple low guys couple high guys
[03:02:23] bunch of guys in the middle just just kind of typical nothing good or bad just typical
[03:02:28] but it didn't really work out that way from a leadership perspective no it did not so pulled
[03:02:34] from the same talent pull away like you said the talent profile for both the task units was the
[03:02:38] exact same and this is where you know we caution people in the you know this is why we end
[03:02:45] the book with this chapter is you had two groups where the resources the talent everything was
[03:02:51] predominantly the same same budgets same weapon systems same people really and one rise raised to
[03:03:00] the occasion and one fell below the standard in the seal teams and was toxic and the final determination
[03:03:08] was leadership so bad leadership can poison any talent pull of exceptional people it just can't
[03:03:17] and in that I'm so fortunate I got to observe that at a young tenure in my career and what I
[03:03:28] benefited to is you know I got plucked out of that task unit but you're task unit and it talks
[03:03:34] about how I wasn't the root of the problem but the person that was the root of the problem
[03:03:38] I basically threatened because I have an allergic reaction to people that are just selfish
[03:03:44] and all about themselves and this individual wasn't he he wasn't to solely blame but he was the
[03:03:49] impetus of the the problem and so I came I guess with warnings when they sent me over to you and
[03:03:56] then all the sudden I started prosper and I've become your operations officer I was your assistant
[03:04:00] operations officer you put me in charge of operations officer you that was a motive and then you promoted
[03:04:06] me two months later to Delta between a.o.i.c. you know the funny thing is a lot of the guys the
[03:04:11] deployment after that were sestone took basically task unit bruiser back to Iraq we ended up in the
[03:04:18] battle of southern city a majority of the guys in that troop were from task unit Charlie so again
[03:04:25] you put them under a great litter and they did exceptional things so that's why we say you can no longer
[03:04:30] well you know you can't fire or hire fire your way to success ultimately you have to lead and you
[03:04:34] have to develop your people and that's what this chapter is about yeah we we kind of brought it around
[03:04:39] to you know as we mentioned earlier in the book you have to treat your human capital as importantly
[03:04:45] or as important as your financial capital and this was a way to kind of close that out to say
[03:04:52] the journey doesn't end when you hire a players you get this whole process right that's not the
[03:04:57] end of it you're not done and we did this ill video clip and we call it the talent war
[03:05:02] the interesting thing about this title is and and we went into this in the video is that war doesn't end
[03:05:10] it's continuous you're gonna win some battles but there's no point in this even if you read this
[03:05:14] book if you do everything in this book and Mike and I are working with you and everything goes perfectly
[03:05:19] you don't get to declare victory people grow people change products change the environment changes
[03:05:26] people move on you have to keep after this this is a discipline that you need to bring to your company
[03:05:34] and when you do you will have a competitive advantage it's the path it's part of the path
[03:05:41] back to the book far too often a company will hire talented candidate a talented candidate who's
[03:05:46] performance ends up being lackluster the company chalks up to a bad hire fires the person
[03:05:50] starts all over again a costly assumption there are many reasons someone might not be performing as you expect
[03:05:57] and only one of them is a bad hire chances are if a talented individual is not performing to standard
[03:06:02] it's not their fault it's yours a little extreme ownership coming at you live
[03:06:13] public talent work talent development you guys talk about training mentoring and coaching
[03:06:22] good quote and hear from Jonah Pinto from 711 CEO most important thing in any organization is leadership
[03:06:29] it's always leadership first because leaders find a way to get things done
[03:06:34] once again something up a great attitude and and for the listeners to open to is actually a
[03:06:41] west point the military academy graduate he served as a army officer before he entered the
[03:06:46] the corporate world leadership is the most critical determinant of achieving victory for business
[03:06:52] leaders are the ones who drive change makes things happen so when working to transform high
[03:06:56] potential high potentials into high performers it's critical to identify and develop future
[03:07:02] leaders that's just the way it's got to be and then wrapping this up a little bit here
[03:07:13] actually this I'll wrap this up right here with this like it's not quite the closer but it's close
[03:07:19] a true talent mindset like I said this is kind of the underlying thread of the book
[03:07:23] remember the most critical step in winning the war on talent is developing the talent mindset
[03:07:27] the deep belief that human capital is the single most important competitive advantage your company
[03:07:32] can have if you truly believe human capital is your greatest competitive advantage you won't
[03:07:37] stop with a hiring process you will continue to invest in and develop your people creating an
[03:07:42] unbroken chain of excellence that's what good leaders do that's how great organizations are formed
[03:07:49] the training and leadership development opportunities you provide your employees reveal the
[03:07:53] truth of your talent mindset you might be able to attract candidates with a talk of a talent mindset
[03:08:00] but if you want them to stay you need to show your employees that you truly value talent
[03:08:06] by helping them to grow into their potential starts with you if you demonstrate exemplary leadership
[03:08:13] others will follow practice a talent mindset mentoring coach your key leaders put in the time and
[03:08:20] effort to develop your people into something great and a great organization will emerge
[03:08:29] so that's I mean then you you go on you have a good closing but you know that's it it's
[03:08:38] recruiting selecting training mentorship putting the right people in the right places
[03:08:42] think about that's what putting the right people in the right places all those things
[03:08:50] are really one thing and that is leadership and this is how you build a team and leaders have
[03:08:56] to understand the importance of that they have to understand the importance of building the correct team
[03:09:04] so one thing that we're doing you know is obviously helping people build these teams with EFO
[03:09:10] overwatch tell me a little bit about the process at EFO for watch to take and find the right people
[03:09:19] bring them in and get them assigned to the right companies out there these and you know a lot of
[03:09:27] people say hey you guys are veteran recruiting for I sort of actually push back I say no we are
[03:09:31] our leadership talent acquisition firm we we only deal with military leaders and people naturally
[03:09:37] put a rank on that oh senior enlisted or or officers you know it's all levels in the military
[03:09:42] as long as they have the attributes we're looking for especially humility so the military leaders
[03:09:49] come coming out of the military you have already been highly vetted and guess what they have
[03:09:54] rep mutations and it's very easy for us to reach back into those communities and reach into the
[03:10:00] seals and say hey does anyone know this chakra willing guy yeah I want your buds with them
[03:10:05] solid another guy says I did two platoons with them you can not find a more reliable team or
[03:10:10] any any individual and that's what we need to hear we are also putting them through multiple assessments
[03:10:16] Josh's EPI we're going to start utilizing that as a basis for us plus we want to collect data
[03:10:21] to see if we can start identifying the difference between high performers middle performers in
[03:10:27] low performers and he's already started that that process and then really with with the candidate side
[03:10:34] it's so simple it's very easy to identify the ones that are just you've got it and we're really
[03:10:40] looking for the top 10 20% of every community in the military and those that don't fall into that
[03:10:46] realm we still want to help them with training we're dedicated to our brothers and sisters in
[03:10:51] our arms to make sure that they're they're successful we can't place every candidate you know
[03:10:56] we just don't have enough job opportunities one day we will but if one thing for the military
[03:11:00] leaders that come to us they go through some of the best training but they go through the extreme
[03:11:05] ownership and what what we and we talked about this last night the reason I love extreme ownership
[03:11:09] is I've never seen two people you in life create a leadership system that is so simple because
[03:11:15] if you go ask the Air Force army the Navy the Marine Corps they're all they're all going to give
[03:11:19] you different answers on what attributes are important and what are the the primary principles
[03:11:26] of leadership they're all saying the same thing but it's not codified so what extreme ownership and
[03:11:31] even for the candidates reading the book is what we tell them is hey in the interview process you
[03:11:35] have to tell story why we love extreme ownership so much is not only is it going to help you
[03:11:40] contextualize your leadership experience and that's what they need help with some of these leaders
[03:11:45] coming out special operations leaders who have been serving for 20 years leading is muscle memory
[03:11:50] to them now and that's why if you ask them the question tells about your leadership style some
[03:11:54] struggle through it but when we teach them the context of extreme ownership they start to
[03:11:59] get their story and the way you guys wrote the book combat story principle business context
[03:12:05] helps them to translate we all know the number one challenge for veterans trying to get jobs is
[03:12:10] translating their experience extreme ownership sets them on the path to doing that in a good
[03:12:14] manner then I handle that first part of them they get George and Carly Walden and
[03:12:20] they put them through search training they prepare them for the interview process the feedback
[03:12:26] we're getting from senior special operations leaders to other military leaders is this is the
[03:12:31] best advice I've ever gotten from taps and all these other programs that we go through we don't
[03:12:38] sugarcoat anything we give them the reality of the situation and we're very straightforward that
[03:12:44] it's on you we can't step into the interview with you it is on you to convey your value to the
[03:12:49] organization and get them to say yes they want to say yes that's the military leader side
[03:12:56] and talk about rewarding work not only do we do we we we make a you know a good paycheck from from
[03:13:04] this mine of work it's also the emotional return on investment from senior in our former
[03:13:08] brothers and sisters step into senior management positions and then crush it that's feedback we get
[03:13:13] from business leaders best higher I've I've ever made on the the client side we screen our clients
[03:13:22] is diligently as we screen our candidates and this has been a learning process we've had to learn
[03:13:27] this through scars and it comes down to I need the clients to commit and I need to hear that they
[03:13:32] have a foundation of belief that leadership is wildly and infinitely more important than in
[03:13:38] street experience if we hear that from the clients we believe they truly understand that then that's a
[03:13:43] client we're most likely going to work with but if we get a client we've had this like hey listen
[03:13:48] I need a leader right now to step into this role I don't want to have to train them I don't want
[03:13:52] to have to build a relationship with them literally said this I just need them to do their job
[03:13:56] and it was a lucrative role we said hey we're not the best fit because we know that that
[03:14:00] relationship is just going to end poorly so also clients come to us and they say we need to
[03:14:04] fill in 20 days they've already compromised the process and we're not going to do that so we're very
[03:14:09] prideful on the white love service that we provide and if we don't have many misses at all but if we
[03:14:17] find out a candidate it didn't work it is like a get punch it is like our reputation has been
[03:14:24] marked and that we take it very seriously and I think that's what you know sort of
[03:14:29] differentiates us from from a lot of the executive search firms out there is I know we together
[03:14:36] in George we're going to build this into the number one leadership town acquisition firm in the
[03:14:40] nation I have no doubt then when people look for directors of leadership in training as well as
[03:14:45] chief leadership officers they're going to say go to you if overwatch because the men and women
[03:14:49] were placing know how to train people they know how to create the foundation for strong
[03:14:54] cultures and that's really where we're making the name right now we'll still place people in the
[03:14:58] COO roles general management roles but one of my passions for you if overwatch is that that
[03:15:03] director of leadership in training or the COO position yeah you know just to be completely
[03:15:12] transparent to be in talent acquisition you have to have a pretty strong mass acoustic gene
[03:15:16] about you because it's a brutal a brutal job function but I've been helping veterans for over 20
[03:15:23] years and where it started was I want to be able to give to our brothers and sisters and arms of
[03:15:29] things that I didn't have when I transitioned out in the 90s and what they didn't have was
[03:15:33] actionable information and we deal once we go through selection kind of assessment and finding
[03:15:39] that right candidate with all those attributes they're still this bridge between the ideal
[03:15:44] opportunity for that veteran leader for that senior leader and that position it's called the
[03:15:49] interview and that is very very difficult for veterans to cross that divide to be able to articulate
[03:15:55] clearly and then a crisp professional impactful manner in the interview that you're going to be able
[03:16:01] to over deliver in that particular role so it isn't just you know we're doing all facets of it and
[03:16:08] I think that's what makes the dynamic between me and Mike and our team so well so good so solid and so
[03:16:14] different is that you have 20 years of selection and assessment we both been in leadership roles I've
[03:16:20] been in the executive roles and we're bringing actionable information to top military leaders
[03:16:26] so that they are ready for that transition into corporate America and when you put that person
[03:16:32] in that position it gets more veteran hiring and so we have to get it right with the company
[03:16:38] we have to get it right with the veteran and and there's some veterans that we we're not going
[03:16:42] to place but we're absolutely agnostic if they come to us we're going to help but crossing that bridge
[03:16:50] screening our our candidates screening our clients we are very meticulous about how we go about
[03:16:55] doing that yeah I think talking to some of the clients of people that we've placed and just
[03:17:03] awesome to hear everything that you guys are talking about it's like it's like with extreme
[03:17:08] ownership we go and work with the company and we check back in with them three months later and
[03:17:11] they're like oh yeah this is working this is awesome and it's the same thing we're getting back
[03:17:15] you know when I hear from clients you know this is the best hire we've had oh yeah we we were worried
[03:17:21] and now we're promoting I think it's just like a totally it as we often say it works this stuff works
[03:17:29] and you take these individuals and I know Mike you and I've been talking about this and I know it's a
[03:17:34] little bit hard to do but we're some of the guys that we've placed we're going to get them on the podcast
[03:17:39] so they can talk about not just their military experience but then what it was like going through
[03:17:44] we if Overwatch and now what it's like entering this civilian world you know we're letting them get
[03:17:47] settled in a little bit before we get them back to fly out to California and do this but I think
[03:17:53] it'll be awesome for people to start to hear those stories and get that feedback
[03:18:00] when people want to engage you if Overwatch towards the process so they can go to the website
[03:18:06] efoverwatch.com another thing we we do with companies is we are here as a talent advisory
[03:18:11] we can come in and basically set the foundation based off the playbook we've provided so you have
[03:18:18] a hiring process from which to grow and that's probably the greatest service we can provide
[03:18:24] beyond just finding the right leaders for your organization that's critical there's a lot of
[03:18:29] times a George will actually have to ask the client do you have interview questions what
[03:18:33] your process can I send you something to help you make the selection of the leaders we present
[03:18:38] and that's more often than that that talent advisory piece is is key but but if I'm just
[03:18:47] company out there that wants to hire so I go to efoverwatch.com I fill out the various information
[03:18:55] and then we're going to set up a call and you're going to talk with Mike he'll talk to
[03:18:59] myself you may talk with one other person and we're going to really kind of dig in with you as to
[03:19:06] okay let's talk about your company what is your position in the market what are you trying to
[03:19:10] accomplish where are you trying to grow what are your leadership gaps what are your individual
[03:19:14] contributor gaps you know we want to know both of those things you know what are those things that
[03:19:19] are keeping you up at night and then let's talk about how talent and leadership solves those problems
[03:19:25] and are you committed to leadership is the most important thing in your business and you know we'll
[03:19:30] also walk through to find out the maturity of their hiring process and how they've done it because
[03:19:35] you know we we want to make sure that they know how to do because they're mechanics behind this
[03:19:39] as well we've helped with offer letters I've helped with compensation you know structuring complex
[03:19:44] offers which which is not easy for small and medium business to do a lot of times they just don't
[03:19:48] have that expertise so we will sit down and spend a good hour hour and a half with them you know
[03:19:54] diagnosing you know why did they come to us what is it that they need what can we solve for them
[03:20:00] and should we be working together and I'm sorry miss I'm sorry so the the question jocca
[03:20:04] absolutely it's going to be a series of phone calls we want to know everything about your business
[03:20:08] about your industry and a lot of times the reason we do these phone calls because what business
[03:20:12] the leaders think they want is not necessarily what they need and our our job as well during
[03:20:17] that is to advise them based off what we're hearing what we think you really need is x, y, z,
[03:20:22] not a, b, c and our clients have followed our advice and it's worked out beautifully
[03:20:27] what you know we're in that advice is coming from nothing but scars and failures especially
[03:20:31] with 20 years of talent acquisition between him and uh currently so we we want a very very strong
[03:20:38] relationship with our clients if they sign the contract beyond that then it gets into the talent
[03:20:43] sink for what what what a talent sink is for us is we're going to spec out what that position is
[03:20:49] and what are the attributes they're truly looking for from there we we tell him hey we're going to
[03:20:55] need usually two to three weeks to start screaming and assessing potential leaders the the people
[03:21:01] the the right leaders for this position it could be through our organic town pool we're also
[03:21:06] going to run an external search for people we haven't touched yet that maybe out there that may be a
[03:21:11] good fit for that role and that takes time and our clients again we're preaching patience
[03:21:17] we have a pretty darn good fill speed rate to fill and if people allow us to go through our process
[03:21:27] it usually very statistically it works out and they're very good pairing yeah well it's
[03:21:32] like what we do methodical and you know we saw say all the time at S. L. Front what we do is we
[03:21:37] solve problems through leadership and what better way to solve a problem through leadership than to
[03:21:43] actually give a person give a give a company a leader that understands these principles that knows
[03:21:48] how to lead that knows how to step in and make things happen so that's been awesome you have
[03:21:53] over watch dot com I can't we've been going for almost three and a half hours but I real quick
[03:22:00] you have battlefield we just kind of ran our first pilot program and to tell us about that a little bit
[03:22:06] so this besides let me interject that was freaking awesome you weren't a believer first is that
[03:22:13] accurate or that's completely inaccurate I don't know where where why do you think that we
[03:22:18] late when I thought we're like oh juckers not necessarily believe we're he has to see the concept
[03:22:21] personally I 100% of a believer that was a thousand percent I mean you know if you think about what
[03:22:28] I do in this podcast I take I take battlefield strolls through books so for me to go out and walk
[03:22:35] battlefields is to me I would do nothing but that that would be my whole life if I was telling
[03:22:41] you I I got offered a show in Europe to like go and walk battlefields and talk the stories and I just
[03:22:48] 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
[03:22:55] but at some point in my life I wouldn't be surprised so yeah I don't know where that idea came from
[03:23:02] that is a data-centric lack of relationship with no-one or boss yeah it's actually kind of crazy to think that
[03:23:08] me that me even with my whole life would not want to go out and walk on bat sacred hollowed
[03:23:17] battlefields and talk about leadership that's yeah so I'm 100% on board and I always have been from
[03:23:23] day one so so where this came from is in 2012 no yeah 2012 with one of my seal squadrons
[03:23:31] the commanding officer especially the timing was not good we were one month away from going to
[03:23:35] Afghanistan and and I'm the operations officer and of course you know the task list of what you
[03:23:41] need to get done before you deploy is pretty deep as an operations officer and I I sort of tried
[03:23:46] to reason with him I hate timing is not good any heard me out and he said my guess what what we're
[03:23:51] going out there leadership development is not optional it's mandatory and so we went out to
[03:23:56] get his bird and of course I'm pouty you know I'm doing my quiet sort of pouty I'm there and as we
[03:24:02] started to walk the different stands the two day walk of get his bird you started to realize that
[03:24:08] the commanders both Confederate Union forces faced the same dilemmas same human dilemmas and
[03:24:14] human problems that we faced in Afghanistan I rack another regions of the world what makes and we
[03:24:19] call this in the military we call these staff rights it is a technique we utilize to develop our
[03:24:24] people again looking at past examples of commanders humans that made both great decisions and bad
[03:24:31] decisions in learning from their mistakes and their successes to make you a better leader
[03:24:37] when you walk and people may say well you know the civil wars drastically different than I
[03:24:41] rack or Afghanistan technology no the problems they face transcend geography they transcend technology
[03:24:50] they transcend time and this is why a lot of businesses do these staff rights we call it you
[03:24:55] have battlefield but what I think we do better than any just sort of history and that takes people out there
[03:25:01] is we tie extreme ownership into it and on this first one the pilot we brought 20 of our clients out
[03:25:06] and I don't know about you I mean they probably don't call you because they don't have your phone number
[03:25:10] but I've been getting text messages from CE the CEOs that route there that this was one of the
[03:25:15] most valuable leadership development trips they've ever taken or you could see it on their face
[03:25:20] this is in the first hour you could see it on their faces they're looking they're taking notes they're
[03:25:24] talking to each other yeah it was just extremely impactful and you know it was a pilot and we're
[03:25:32] going to start spinning those things up yeah if you will keep you posted we'll keep you posted
[03:25:38] and I mean there's going to be limited seats I mean that's just the way it is it's going to be
[03:25:42] small groups but who knows it's freaking it's just an unbelievable way to learn and an unbelievable
[03:25:49] way to develop and an unbelievable way to increase your understanding not just of history not just
[03:25:57] of leadership but of human nature to go out there and see what has happened in our past so it's
[03:26:04] freaking awesome a lot of stuff going on man we do so the book comes out when November 10th so it's
[03:26:13] up on Amazon right now the town or it's right now we just have the ebook the Kindle version the
[03:26:20] paperback will be up momentarily it's in the Amazon right now then the hardback will follow that
[03:26:26] naughty a book ultimately though the book launches November 10th which if I need to educate you
[03:26:31] you know November 10th is you don't need that to give me a bro the Marine Corp birthday no coincidence
[03:26:37] George any any closing comments here you know this is it's been an interesting journey to
[03:26:45] write this book and it's it's it's very serendipitous to find somebody who has the same passion
[03:26:51] for talent that I have and and so you know I hope that Mike and I got the best out of each other in this
[03:26:58] book push each other and really proud of what we've delivered here because ultimately it's about
[03:27:07] helping companies just get better and win and and and I'd like to think we did a pretty good job of
[03:27:13] of giving them a good roadmap the talent is the most critical thing that you can focus on
[03:27:21] any closing thoughts Mike no check we're trying to get better we're trying to build a better team
[03:27:29] echo Charles this any recommendations on how we can get better interesting thing about
[03:27:35] what we've been talking about is like yeah you guys talk about you know these are things
[03:27:43] to to look for you know and as far as hiring and stuff but on the other side of the coin like if
[03:27:48] you're looking at get hired hired it's like a good information resource to be like okay that's
[03:27:54] what I'm gonna strive for you know very interesting anyway it's for striving for stuff
[03:28:01] stop about Jaco feel for striving really transition well yeah so Jaco feel how should I say
[03:28:12] assortment supplementation items the ones that stay on my mind which I noticed like I don't
[03:28:20] so much think that much about milk really yeah that's interesting you must be not not wanting to
[03:28:27] bit be stronger well here's the things not that I don't take milk all the time I don't think about
[03:28:33] it all the time but I do think about joint warfare krill oil and vitamin D for some reason I
[03:28:39] don't know why I feel like because it's like an everyday maintenance thing and when I stop
[03:28:44] taking it that's when I pay the price harsh here's my question to you yes do you know what that
[03:28:50] price is like have you felt it because you don't really go after it or I don't I don't go off
[03:28:56] it yeah so I don't know the price yeah I do yeah so basically like you know like okay all right
[03:29:04] let me turn my attention over here so you know like sometimes like you okay maybe you're feeling
[03:29:08] weak or whatever right but as far as your joint skill you can feel strong but your joints are like
[03:29:15] jammed up that's almost in a way worse than being weak because if you're weak you're like oh
[03:29:20] maybe any eat good maybe whatever but if you're joint it's like it's a it's a different issue
[03:29:24] seems saying is a good news get back on the joint warfare get back on the krill oil you just
[03:29:31] feel all that stuff just flying back into your joints then you're back in the game then we start
[03:29:36] feeling good about it real good by the way so and I know this too because I have gone off it
[03:29:42] and gotten on few times and yeah so I know the price and I know the benefit do you are you able
[03:29:48] to make these assessments because you're a doctor no okay well my my explanation of the joint
[03:29:57] warfare in krill oil flying back into your joints was we'll say a little bit short of a medical
[03:30:03] explanation as far as how I'm not a doctor either yes I know that but I've done also of a very
[03:30:11] intense medical assessment of of vitamin B3 and cold war and here's the assessment
[03:30:20] I've traveled all over the place I've shaken hands with a bunch of people I have not had this
[03:30:26] disease called COVID for some reason could that reason be right okay that reason be
[03:30:34] because I'm on the D3 and the cold war no I'm not saying it is because I'm not a doctor
[03:30:40] no but you know you know there's there is such thing as coincidence then there's such thing as
[03:30:46] correlation and then there's such thing as causation you seem saying the three levels
[03:30:52] hey that's it we'll leave it at that how about that cool safe right yeah just saying we're talking
[03:30:58] earlier about you can only ask certain questions in the interview or not so much you can only ask
[03:31:03] you can't ask certain questions that's very correct actually to deviate from the the
[03:31:09] Jockel field thing for a second isn't it a lot of the times the case where the interviewer
[03:31:15] is kind of in a way like wanting to bond with a person just on a maybe on just a small level like
[03:31:21] hey oh wins the baby do yeah and it's like oh I jam that up like I really like you know it's like it's
[03:31:27] not like they're trying to like enforce powers something like this no I mean the best
[03:31:32] interviewers are always trying to build a relationship because one of the critical things you
[03:31:36] want to get out of people is authenticity yeah that's one of the biggest things and the best
[03:31:39] way you do that is by building a relationship and to your point that person may come in they may
[03:31:44] not come into your company so yeah they do and most of those things are done with malice they
[03:31:50] have an accidentally but you know in today's litigious society even accidental scary that will get
[03:31:57] yeah and see that's why it's so like yeah like scary for real scary because it's like man
[03:32:02] 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
[03:32:08] anymore you know well how about I just not be a dick in the interview oh problem solved right
[03:32:12] here's the thing problem's not solved because you're getting sued yeah because I can be well in that
[03:32:17] case yes but as far as from a learning perspective or from just a general functioning perspective
[03:32:22] now I'm be like how about that so I'm gonna be real nice how about that I'm gonna bond with this guy
[03:32:25] mean what you're like you know lying what you call minefield landline field one of those
[03:32:29] you're walking on eggshells and whatnot yeah which kind of isn't a very good bonding approach yeah
[03:32:34] you're walking on eggshells yeah then you you kind of get you know your seaming personal your
[03:32:39] risk of vests you know so you know as we teach veterans any good interview is simply a
[03:32:46] conversation it's ultimately what it comes down to and you know when we work with veterans it's just
[03:32:52] hey man be yourself be authentic you know but put it in a vernacular of extreme ownership and talk
[03:32:58] about how great of a leader you are just have a conversation and that's it's simple not easy
[03:33:04] and I love that phrase late later to laws are not always a good thing not all of them are great
[03:33:10] and that's a profession in itself yeah yeah it's just part of my profession is you know that
[03:33:16] training you know ultimately training keeps people safe right that's what it does yeah that's one of
[03:33:21] those situations where you can be mad about it you might not like a particular law but it's
[03:33:24] the law and you got to you got to just deal with it that's just the way it is so you never know
[03:33:30] people could be made it can claims like medical claims about things about supplements and you could
[03:33:35] run into all kinds of legal problems you which he just did there but hey if you're waging war on
[03:33:41] colds various sickness illnesses viruses etc you don't know to name any is there a metal
[03:33:49] quote is that a medical claim real easy maybe not unless these are the things that you do want
[03:33:55] to follow so what's that called like a caveat or no it's not a caveat is it caveat yeah like
[03:34:01] a dislike yeah just here's my disclaimer I'm not a doctor yeah so don't listen to me yes
[03:34:12] well or just listen you know yeah how about this listen to joc what about that okay we'll go with it
[03:34:18] we'll stick with that the mind that I'm not a doctor yeah Johnny Kim doctor
[03:34:23] joc go on no doctor keep these all these things in mind no last yeah vitamin vitamin D daily
[03:34:30] daily man these are things that you know again to stay on your mind I'm not saying don't keep
[03:34:35] milk on your mind I'm not saying that I'm saying me personally in my experience D3 joint warfare
[03:34:44] or not whatever these are the things that okay we have these two-pronged effect let me move my
[03:34:51] attention over here to my pros so you have long term you have short term right and every once
[03:34:55] a while you'll get a golden nugget that's both that's what milk is seem saying a lot of these
[03:35:00] health foods they don't have the immediate gratification as heavy as a lot of these unhealthy
[03:35:06] things I see them saying I do sure milk is one of those rare golden nuggets the other one is
[03:35:11] sushi my opinion but back to milk it's dessert in the form of health food or protein health food
[03:35:19] in the form of a dessert boom either way you're good there you go either way it's true also discipline
[03:35:25] multiple forms multiple forms there's your intrinsic discipline that you go through life with that
[03:35:31] comes from within you know they're not talking about that one right I'm talking about this
[03:35:35] implementation so yes okay what is it what is the three forms you got the powder that's a good one
[03:35:42] that's a good pre workout one I like this first pre workout like I dig a like a pre life
[03:35:48] yeah by the way it was so hot this weekend out here with you have your intensive soap I know
[03:35:52] it's hot there but I mixed up the jockel pomer in the big iced tea like pitcher with ice in it
[03:36:01] cooked those are you out yeah you go feel
[03:36:10] also the the cans okay here's what the cans are really really
[03:36:15] it's a health brain health drink right so it doesn't sound glamorous right think of it it's a
[03:36:26] brain and body health drink okay in the form of a delicious refreshing beverage
[03:36:36] beverage you want to say different times I was gonna say energy drink but then then you got all the
[03:36:40] what you call the what you call it when you have a reputation a word has a reputation
[03:36:43] a freaking stigma has a stigma you seem saying anyway that's what it is so the can is also
[03:36:50] this window okay look we don't want to drink the can we don't want to mix up powders okay I get it
[03:36:54] pop up pill that even has a stigma nonetheless this one's a good way of popping good pills capsules
[03:37:01] technically you know all these forms depending on your lifestyle depending on what you're doing
[03:37:06] that day they can you know at least one's gonna work for you I think my experience that's how it is
[03:37:11] also we got work your kid milk we got chocolate tea and all the stuff is available at the
[03:37:15] vitamin shop we also got if you're gonna get into jjitsu which you might you probably should
[03:37:21] good origin main dot com get yourself a geek get yourself a rash card get yourself things that you
[03:37:29] you can wear when you're not on the jjitsu math's of justice because despite our best efforts
[03:37:34] we're not always training jjitsu sometimes you have to have other parts of your life that's why
[03:37:38] we make jeans that's why we make boots that's why we make t-shirts whatever a bunch of different
[03:37:43] clothing items all that stuff and the supplements available at origin main dot com also we have a
[03:37:51] store jjocco has a store it's called jocco store anyway some good developments and improvements on
[03:37:59] there for those of us that browse jocco store for those of us that are seeking praise for our efforts
[03:38:05] I'm not even saying I'm doing it I'm just saying the store is that becoming more and more developed
[03:38:11] in one person's opinion and I think it's an what he call it an objective
[03:38:17] all right we'll go anyway jocco store dot com go there if you appreciate the developments
[03:38:24] if you appreciate beautiful web design yeah exactly yeah if you go check out web design
[03:38:30] web design yeah well actually technically I didn't really design it you know I got a finger in the pot
[03:38:35] nonetheless as far as these angles nonetheless we supply provide really clothing item that you can
[03:38:44] 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
[03:38:50] know if you guys know this or not my can George it's hard it's full of pitfalls temptation traps
[03:38:58] wise men once told me that unless when you're on the path you want to represent jocco store dot
[03:39:02] com and that hoodies shirts hats beanie's shorts board shorts
[03:39:10] at some point the shirts are these week the here's the thing they're not up okay
[03:39:15] but they will prove that they're quite hard and they're not the best it's a process you know
[03:39:19] well what it would it would it would it would make say Mike said something the methodology it's a process
[03:39:24] of all the process trust the process is one of our things anyway quite that okay
[03:39:31] quick to create that into the whole deal and boom you got it anyway yes joccal store the three
[03:39:36] if you want something also we got a podcast record subscribe to this podcast because
[03:39:43] echo thinks that you're not going to we also have joccal unraveling which has been on this
[03:39:49] feed it's going to soon be on its own feed joccal unraveling podcasts it's myself a darelecoop
[03:39:54] but that was the thread we had to change the name because I was getting sued again which is always
[03:40:00] fun so that's why it's called joccal unraveling because I own my own name jocco so I can pretty
[03:40:05] much put that on anything and no one can bother me about it grounded podcast we haven't done
[03:40:10] the while maybe record one more this week we have an opportunity warrior kid podcasts as well
[03:40:14] for those little kids out there and if you got little kids or even if you're a grown human
[03:40:18] and I need some soap go to irishokranch.com where young aiden the warrior kid is making soap
[03:40:25] there's a no one out one or the warrior kids still you made warrior kid so like actual
[03:40:31] so not just you as an adult but also your children you too we have a youtube channel
[03:40:41] where echo makes videos and if it's a form in a video he puts a bunch of explosions in it
[03:40:47] and if it's a for our video then it's just nothing because that's the way he operates
[03:40:51] different purposes videos yeah it's cool all right okay we're we're talking about
[03:40:58] effective hiring processes leadership right Mike Shirley George should we put explosions
[03:41:08] smoke and fire in this video occasionally in this in this video that we do that we're doing
[03:41:15] right so it's making at some point when you're talking about something it would it not be
[03:41:21] a good thing to have maybe a black off helicopter fly overhead or a minigun open up
[03:41:29] or an explosion happened in the background echo I'm gonna back you up on this you know you
[03:41:34] ask anyone on the ear for watch team and say what don't I do they say we don't do cute so
[03:41:40] I'm not talking cute bro I'm talking minigun I'd be over the top I think you're hitting
[03:41:45] down the right I think you're right but here's the thing and this is for real if I'm like hey
[03:41:51] if I get moved inspired and I got my notes here I don't have my note here also you're you're
[03:41:58] starting to take it under consideration no I'm saying I'm explaining I have my notes here
[03:42:03] and maybe I was moved by something George or Mike said right I have my note to be like okay look
[03:42:08] if I could isolate what they said and try my best to capture the feeling that I got when you said
[03:42:13] it maybe put my can cut that up into a little video that might involve explosions the
[03:42:19] effects me too much like a certain financial uh tv host mad money oh yeah this is get
[03:42:28] a lot of the money yeah yeah yeah good good comparison I think it's my opinion anyway yes
[03:42:39] some videos have explosions a shorter ones whatever and the video version of this podcast
[03:42:44] but we're keeping it wrong I don't even add color and you want me to add a mini gun opening
[03:42:50] up I don't know probably not I don't know though I could be wrong anyway also psychological
[03:42:56] warfare if you didn't know what that is that's an album that joker recorded with tracks each track
[03:43:02] has a purpose and it gets you past these moments a weakness on this path that we're on in the
[03:43:09] event of you being on the path which of course we all are in the last hundred percent effective
[03:43:13] on the one by the way so yeah you can get that amazon or like a google play anywhere where you can
[03:43:18] buy mp3 if you want a visual version of the path go to flipside canvas dot com owned by my brother
[03:43:24] decoda mire we he's putting this cool stuff on two things that you can hang on your wall
[03:43:34] flipside canvas dot com also we got some books we got some books first book talent war
[03:43:40] by my x-ray on George Randall step up get that we got the code we got leadership strategy
[03:43:46] in tackies field manual way the warrior kid one two and three mic in the dragon says
[03:43:49] this link was freedom field manual and extreme ownership and the economy of leadership if you like
[03:43:54] what we're talking about here check out some of those books books we got us on front leadership
[03:43:58] consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership go to ashlan front dot com
[03:44:04] if you need help inside your organization aligning your leadership getting everyone on the same
[03:44:09] plan and rolling the boat in the same direction so that you can win ashlan front dot com we also have
[03:44:16] an online version of leadership training look you don't learn leadership in one day in one hour
[03:44:24] in one week in one month it's something you constantly have to check yourself on go to
[03:44:28] efo line dot com we totally revamped it we're doing live stuff all the time if you want to ask
[03:44:33] me a question if you want to ask me a question you can go to efo line dot com and i will be there
[03:44:41] at certain times and you can sit there and ask me a question get feedback havoc conversation
[03:44:45] with me with the rest of the ashlan front team that's what we're doing so come and check that out
[03:44:51] and we got the muster the phoenix muster has been canceled the Orlando muster was canceled
[03:44:59] the next muster is Dallas Texas December 3rd and 4th go to extremownership dot com for details
[03:45:04] and listen we're probably going to have to do some kind of social distancing so that means less
[03:45:10] seats we've got people that were scheduled for Orlando and were scheduled for phoenix who have now
[03:45:15] opted to come to Dallas I don't think we're sold out yet but it's gonna sell out quick just because
[03:45:20] of those factors so if you want to come extremownership dot com going register and we've been talking
[03:45:28] about efo Overwatch all day today all all this past almost four hours this is what we do
[03:45:36] efo Overwatch dot com if you're a company out there and you need leaders which by the way let me tell
[03:45:42] you something you do need leaders get experienced leaders from the military that understand the principles
[03:45:48] that we talk about and you can plug them into your organization so that your organization can go to
[03:45:55] the next level what did I miss fellas that's it spot on i mean it's a game changer
[03:46:01] talent plus leadership equals victory get on board the train america's mighty warriors dot org
[03:46:11] that's momma lee marklies mom she has dedicated her life after losing mark two helping
[03:46:19] service members their families gold star families around the world if you want to donate or you
[03:46:25] want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org and if you have too much time on your
[03:46:31] hand and you just want to hear a few more of my monotonous monowogs or maybe you think you need just a
[03:46:36] little bit more of echoes exasperated explanations then you can find us on the interwebs on twitter
[03:46:43] instagram facebook echo is adacotrails i am at jocca winlink mike's arelly is mj sereli on twitter
[03:46:51] and mr dot sereli on instagram and facebook michael sereli jorts what's your social media g random
[03:46:58] g dot randle is at instagram that's the gram echo calls at the gram the gram and for all things
[03:47:08] echelon front on social media it's at echelon front and then for ef overwatch at ef overwatch
[03:47:14] and on the interwebs we can be found at echelon front dot com but also ef overwatch dot com
[03:47:21] and thanks again guys for coming on been awesome thanks for your service to the country
[03:47:27] thank you and you know when you're you know we always feel like when our service is over in the
[03:47:34] military we want to serve more and what you guys are doing right now to help veterans transition
[03:47:41] out of the military getting the civilian sector and get on their next mission you've heard
[03:47:45] me say to thousand times veterans need a new mission when they leave that mission that they've
[03:47:50] dedicated their life to they get out they need a new mission they're looking for a new mission
[03:47:54] you guys are doing a great job providing that mission form so thank you for that and to all
[03:48:00] the veterans and all the active duty troops that are out there on the front lines now or of held
[03:48:05] the line in the past thank you for protecting all ability to pursue life liberty and the pursuit
[03:48:12] of happiness and to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers
[03:48:18] and correctional officers and board of patrol and secret service and all the other first responders
[03:48:22] thank you for protecting us when evil closes in and everyone else out there making things happen
[03:48:32] is hard accomplishing your mission is hard life is hard but you don't have to do it alone
[03:48:41] build yourself a team surround yourself with talent and then go out there and get after it
[03:48:48] and until next time this is Mike and George and Echo and Jocco out