S5:59🎙️ Live with COL Steve “Doctrine Man” Leonard, USA (Ret.)

Hi, I'm John Maxwell. When the top companies in the world are looking for trainers, speakers, and coaches, coaches, there's one name that stands above the rest, and that's Maxwell Leadership. Our certified team members have gotten proven results for companies all over the globe, and our reputation, I'm proud to say, is second to none. Some of our members have risen to the top of their profession, including the one you're going to meet today. I proudly introduce you to my friend, Bob Fabien Zinga. Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ, where we help you lead with purpose and succeed with impact. If you're ready to grow into the kind of leader others want to follow, this podcast is for you. If you're determined to elevate your success and leave a lasting legacy, this podcast is for you. As my mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, reminds us, everything rises and falls on leadership.

Leadership.

Our goal is simple: to inspire you, challenge you, and equip you with insights that can transform the trajectory of your leadership journey. Welcome aboard to another episode of the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ. So, I know, laugh, right? This is about 1972 at Wallowa Lake, Oregon. In my hands, you can't really see it, is a copy of issue 114 of Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos. But this is where it all starts. So I was absolutely hooked. That was the first comic book I ever owned in my life. And it led to reading comics and just absorbing comics to the point where my father probably about 2 years later, 3 years later, forbid me to ever buy comics again, so I had to buy them in secret and hide them. He thought comics were bad, which I think a lot of parents of that generation probably thought, but they were great ways to tell stories, and what's really interesting about that, and something that Joe understands, the people who wrote those stories, those old war comics, whether you're talking about Sergeant Rock, whether you're talking about Sergeant Fury, The Losers, they were all veterans. They were World War II veterans who came back after the war and use that medium of artwork to tell their stories. And so, if you get into the war comics of the '50s and early '60s, they are absolutely veterans letting out what's inside of them. And the stories are gritty and realistic and sometimes, you know, you can relate to them in a lot of ways. But it's important, and of course, this is, you know, 10-year-old Steve reading this not knowing and then absorbing it, and then, you know, it led to me starting to tell stories. Now, a little bit about me. That's my dad on the left, my Uncle Bill on the right. Those are my original storytellers in my life. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my uncle and my dad were probably the most, heck, is it okay to say it, the most full of shit people you will ever meet in your entire life. They made up stories just to tell stories. And you never knew. I was almost 20 years old before I knew that parsley wasn't poisonous. And because my dad had told me every time we went to a restaurant, "Don't eat the parsley on your plate. It's poison. It'll kill you." Never making the connection that if no one put poison on your dinner plate. And my uncle was the same way. But they had all kinds of stories. You put the two of them together, they told stories and they told stories and it was great family time. And of course, that influences the kid with the comic book, right? And they were both characters. Miss them both to this day. The next one, that guy is Ralph McAllister. Ralph McAllister was my fire chief when I was in college. Not a lot of people can say that they were firemen. I spent the longest 6.5 years of my life in college. As a firefighter. Most people graduate in 4, I stuck it out. I was on the slow plan, but I had fun. I was doing this every single day, but the chief was also a great storyteller.

All right everyone, welcome to another special edition of the Leadership and Success Podcast. We have a living legend waiting for us in the green room, but before we get started, let's do what we do as is our custom here and start with a moment of gratitude. This is where we take just a moment to be grateful every single time we meet, which is pretty much every day these days. So if you would maybe close your eyes and put yourself in your happy place, take a deep breath, maybe slow down your nervous system and think about one thing you are grateful for today. Almost every day I am really grateful, grateful to really stand on the shoulders of giants. It is really incredible. And lately I've been really super grateful about especially the young men and women in uniform who are willing to sacrifice their life for our freedom. So I want to again acknowledge it's now, I think it's been confirmed, 13 soldiers service member, U.S. Army and airmen who have now passed away with the conflict, the war in Iran. And I am so grateful for people like that who are willing to put their lives on the line for us because our freedom is not free. And we don't know the name of the 6 airmen who died. I believe it was on first, first day yet because the DOD has to take time to first announce the death to their parents and family members, but probably today or tomorrow we will know. But each person represents a life. They had hopes, they had dreams, they put on that uniform to protect us, and we are so grateful for that courage. So Godspeed and rest in peace. All right, so let me see if I can properly introduce our guest today. So today We are going to be speaking to the legendary Colonel Steve Doctrine Man Leonard, because if you've served in the military over the past 20 years or so, chances are you've heard of Doctrine Man. So Colonel Leonard is a retired US Army strategist, educator, author, and the creative force behind the legendary Doctrine Man leadership platform that sparked conversation across the profession of arms. I think At its height, it had more than 2 million people following. It's just incredible. During his distinguished Army career, Colonel Leonard served as a logistician, operational planner, and senior strategist, helping shape modern US Army doctrine, including work on the Army's Capstone Operations Manual and Stability Operations Doctrine. Today, he continues developing the next generation of leaders as a professor of practice at the University of Kansas School of Business, where he teaches strategy, and leadership. So Colonel Leonard is also the author or editor of multiple influential books on strategy and leadership, including his latest Professional Talk Logistics: Sustaining Strategy and Operations. So we are going to be talking about this book today, co-authored with John Klug. His work bridges strategy, leadership, logistics, and professional development, all essential skills for leaders navigating complex environments, especially and junior officer who want to follow this podcast, this podcast is for you. So without any further ado, please help me welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast the one and only, the legendary Colonel Steve "Duckman" Leonard.

Thanks for having me, BZ.

All right, good morning, sir. How are you doing today?

Great. It's good. It's a good Saturday.

Yes, it is a very, very good Saturday. And maybe to get started, sir, what is one thing you are grateful for today?

You know, you just reminded me of it when you played that video. And that's the people in my life who taught me to tell stories. I forget sometimes to reflect on them and the impact that they had, and how I carried that legacy forward. I hadn't thought about it. And then when you played that speech from the War College, I thought, yeah, I need to think about them a little bit more sometimes. Uh, but yeah, I'm very grateful for those experiences and, and what they gave me to carry forward.

Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about this right here, Sergeant Fury?

So yeah, sorry about that. So if you watch that video, um, there's the bespeckled skinny little kid, probably weighs 80 pounds soaking wet, uh, absolutely hooked on war comics, whether it was Sergeant Fury or GI Combat The Losers or Sergeant Rock. Yeah, I love those. And they inspired me in a certain way to pursue a career in the military. But what was fun about those was not realizing at the time, and I'm not realizing till much later that they were all written by veterans, which is something that I talked about at the War College. I had done a couple of book reviews for the Association of the United States Army. And they were compendiums of old war comics. And as I was reading through and reminiscing on those things, I, I realized, hey, wait a minute, let's do some background on these folks. And they were all veterans, they're all World War II veterans, comics to tell their war stories. And you think about how many times do we tell war stories, um, the com— comics are a great way to do it, which, yes, for me it was the connection because I told— I, for years I told my stories and our stories through stick figures and satire. And it was a way to tell stories. And that is really— I was also a Spectre with Sergeant Fury on a tree stump in 1972.

Wow, really, really powerful because those stories are so close to reality for those who have served. It's quite incredible. So that makes sense. Is there something about you, sir, that most people may not know when they first meet you?

Oh, you know, that's a good question. I'm pretty much an open book. I think I'm almost too much of an open book. People think that there's more behind the veil. There isn't. I just put myself out there. I was an authentic leader before I knew what it meant to be an authentic leader. I was myself, probably to a fault. I said what I thought, I did what I thought was right. I didn't necessarily filter things. So I just put myself out there. So there really isn't a whole lot. I tried to— I guess with my students, they, you know, they get that and they ask a lot of questions. We do every semester, we do an AMA where they can ask any question. And they realize that they've heard the stories all semester long, and they know them and they know who I am. And there's no, there's no hidden secrets.

It's just, I'm just That's really powerful. Maybe if we can start at the beginning. Why did you join the US Army? What was the story?

Oh, yeah, that's a great story. Because I think like a lot of people, I was raised knowing I was gonna go to college, my dad set that expectation all along. And then somewhere later on in high school, he poses the question, how you gonna pay for it? Oh, Well, I hadn't really thought about that. And he's like, yeah, I'm not paying for it, but you're going to college. And so what I did was I got an ROTC scholarship to the University of Idaho, a whole 30 miles away from my hometown. And I went there and that led to an Army career, which I never thought it would. I, by the time I was in college, I wasn't sure that was what I wanted to do. That picture you showed just a minute ago is the one that really is a life changer because By the time Desert Storm rolled around, or Desert Shield, in 1990, I had already committed to getting out of the Army. I'd done a couple of years. It wasn't for me. I was done. And, you know, it was standing in the desert and seeing— well, I would tell people, when you see, you know, multi-core formation spread across the desert and battleships shooting Volkswagens across the sky, it is so awe-inspiring. And I left and said, that's what this is I want to do. I have found my calling. This is what I'm going to do, and, and I will stay with it.

Um, amazing.

That was it.

I mean, that—

I'm— next thing you know, you're in for 20 years. Where did that happen? How did that— where did that time go? And then it goes until one day you say, well, I gotta go do something else now before I die, so let's go do something else. Uh, so I mean, it's not a spectacular story. It is literally standing in the Iraqi desert in the midst of Operation Desert Storm thinking, this is pretty cool. I want to do this. I want to keep doing this. I like this.

Amazing.

I'm inspired by it. And then I just stayed with it for the next, I don't know, 24, 25 years. Wow.

Being a colonel in the most powerful army in the world, that's a very big deal. And for those who are not in the military, That's only one pay grade below general, right? So for those who meet you for the first time, Colonel, what early experiences kind of shaped the leader you became long before you were of the rank of colonel?

Oh, so that's a—

this also is a good question because I must tell you, you're going to be saying it's a good question over and over again. So let's just—

That's okay. This is— I tell people that I'm a casual observer of the human race.. And so at every level I watched, I listened, I learned, and I, I wouldn't say I take notes, but I logged everything. And so my first senior NCO that I worked with, he and I used to spend countless hours together and he would just share things with me. And, and I grew from that. Warrant officers, uh, senior technicians, same thing. I learned from them. I learned from my early commanders. And then at every level, I found that person or people who had the most to draw from. And then I pulled in those lessons. I still stay in touch with the man who was my executive officer when I was a lieutenant. Wow. Because he and I spent countless hours together. And we still talk about that. And, and just throughout, throughout my entire career, I pulled all that in. And then all got, you know, it all gets filtered and distilled into what my own leadership philosophy is, which is just an amalgamation of experiences with other people and drawing lessons learned, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't work. But all those leaders shaped me. And, you know, I usually can name names. I'm not going to do it today, but there's so many names out there that you can say, well, I learned this from BZ, or I learned this from Admiral McRaven, or I, I pulled this from Sergeant Dennison or Chief Hundley or whatever. You pull all that stuff together. And the funny thing is I actually listened to people's words. So years later, I can remember exactly what you said in a certain situation and it's still spinning in there. And that's really fun to go back and write about that because I think people like to know that they have, we all have outsized influence if we stop to think about what we're doing. And how positive you want that influence to be is absolutely something you control. And, you know, that's a tremendous responsibility. But you carry that as a leader at any level, like, how are you influencing people? And so that means drawing the best from around you to being the best leader that you can be, because really, it's about taking care of other people and being the leader that you would have wanted for them.

Powerful, powerful. And for Most people who are watching in the military space, you know, I'm talking about officers, I guess this is about what, only 4% of officers end up being senior officer of O-5 and above. But generally speaking, I think it's true for most people. You start as a tactician and when you become a mid-grade officer, probably an operator. And then when you are a senior officer, more than likely a strategist. So in your career, though, you kind of began your Army career as a logistician. Before becoming a world-class strategist. How did that operational background kind of influence the way you think about leadership and strategy today?

It's interesting, because part of what the impetus was behind our book, and it was, you know, as a junior leader, I was fortunate to be a logistician. But it was at the same time I was a lieutenant, I was getting a master's degree in what we would call data analytics today. And the logistics field is all about data.

Yes.

And, and to be an effective logistician, you have to be a master of data. You've got to understand data, you got to be able to pull the narrative out of the data. What's it telling you? Because your job is really to extend the operational reach of whatever force you're supporting and hopefully prevent culmination, unexpected culmination But that, that mindset of tracking all those different factors and seeing the long view, that translates really well to strategy. If you're, you know, if you're really in deep and you're not reacting— because a good logistician is a proactive— I look at you, I know what you need a week from now, I'm going to make sure that you have everything you need, as opposed to reacting every time you ask. Um, Yes, really good logisticians. And I had this conversation with somebody yesterday about the best logisticians that I ever knew that transitioned to strategy, the strategy level, that were successful at the War College, learned, really learned how to do that, how to capture everything that happens in the operational environment and then think forward. And a shameless plug for that book, my chapter, which was supposed to be about the principles of logistics and was ended up being a chapter about how the great captains of battle were great logisticians. They figured out how to sustain long campaigns, which is not an easy thing to do, but that ability made them great battle captains. Uh, Alexander the Great, um, is a good example. Uh, Rome, just across generations, Rome was terrific at raising leaders that knew how to how to sustain long campaigns. They became an empire for that reason. Wow. Because if you can't sustain the fight, doesn't matter how well you are at the tactic, how good you are at the tactical level, you won't get there if you can't sustain it. And that makes a difference. And I think that for me, that was a big, a big part of my ability to transition towards strategy was my mind already thought that way. There's still a lot to learn, obviously. But it's easier because you already start to think that way early on. And this all comes up as a result of the— I think there was an announcement made yesterday that they're going to relook how education is conducted at the War College. One too many people said we should teach war at the War College. Well, we do. The difference is we teach the strategic level of war, which a lot of people aren't comfortable with. Yes, because strategy is messy, it's uncertain, it's complex, it's unpredictable, and, um, far more so than the tactical level. And a lot of people aren't comfortable. They spend 20-some years mastering the tactics, and then you say, well, now we're going to teach you how to work with the State Department, Commerce, uh, other— the UN, other government agencies, non-governmental organizations. And people was like, no, I won't go back to where I was comfortable because I could control everything there. Well, no, you got to learn this because this is where we fight the big fights, right? That is so true.

So how would you define strategy, sir? What are kind of the core elements of strategy? Some experts, maybe I put myself into that, we feel like, for example, the latest National Defense Strategy maybe is lacking a little, maybe. But anyway, I don't want to specifically focus on that, but just generally speaking, sir, What should strategy look like?

So I— it's funny because I actually, when I teach strategy, when I teach business strategy, I teach competitive strategy that looks a lot like what we do in the military. And, um, I literally do the old ends, ways, means thing, you know.

Yes.

Here you are today, here's where you want to get, here's the pathway you want to take, which are the means or the ways. And then the means, all the resources, all the things that you need, time, money, people, equipment, facilities, everything that you need to allow you to get there. And then you have to account for risks, obstacles along the way. It's not really complex on the surface. It's very linear. In practice, it's a hell of a lot harder. It's a lot harder. So it's true. But I get them used to it. And then we go through an exercise where I say, okay, we're gonna start. You're gonna set a personal goal. And it's going to be a quantifiable goal that you want to achieve, and you're going to show me how you measure it, what are the milestones to get there. And they go through that and they think, oh, this is pretty easy. And then I say, okay, now do that 5 times with 5 different goals, and then try to figure out how to balance your resources across those goals. And, and they realize, they go back to, I want to stop biting my fingernails. Uh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do the Atomic Habits thing. We're actually going to think, okay, I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 30. I want to own real estate of this size. I want to do this. I want to do that. How do you get to all those things from today? That strategy. And oh, by the way, that's— there's pushback all along the way. And, and so when I teach the competitive side, um, I use a guy named Michael Porter, who is probably the godfather of competitive business strategy.

Yeah.

But I use him because I said, he's the one person that writes strategy as a knife fight. You're not gonna get what you want, because somebody's gonna fight you for it, who wants it just as bad as you do. And you better be prepared for that competition. The whole enemy gets a vote thing, right? Well, in business, your rivals, they get a vote too. And they're not just going to simply roll over and let you do what you want.

I am so glad you said that. So yeah, that is quite Powerful.

Yeah, go ahead.

Because when we talk about strategy, sometimes we don't think about the second, third, and fourth order effect. No, I think it was philosopher Mike Tyson who said, right, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Recently, even with this war in Iran, it's like we didn't think that they would actually punch back. It's like, okay, so what, what does it mean when you are a strategist to think about not just, you know, what's— it's almost like playing chess, I guess, uh, in three dimensions. What should a good strategist do before you go ahead and expand all of your resources to go after something, but to really think about some consequences?

So what I tell people, and what I've always said, is, you know it's going to be complex. But the people that have to execute whatever brilliant plan you come up with, they don't need complex. So you have to figure out a way to make it flexible and adaptable. And relatively easy to understand and execute. And the flexibility and adaptability are really important because nothing ever turns out the way that you hope it does. So when we talk about having contingency plans, branch plans, things like that, you want to build those things in. So okay, I got here, this doesn't work, or that decision isn't going to be the right decision. So they don't have to stop and lose momentum that the planning is flexible enough that allows them to— I understand what the intent is, I understand what the outcome I'm trying to achieve is, so I can make my own decisions. I have the autonomy to do so. And they can, and they can do that. That's, that's the hardest part of being a strategist. And I think something that a lot of strategists struggle with is, it's not reductionism or breaking it down Barney style. Although I use that term a lot. It's figuring out a way to hand off something that somebody else can execute and not wonder what it is that you actually want them to do because they don't understand it.

Wow, that is really something. So, sir, you have served in Iraq and worked at the strategic level shaping doctrine. What is one leadership lesson from combat that every young officer listening right now or leader should really understand early in their career?

I think for me, my personal experience was pay attention and learn. Because war is a crucible. And you're going to get taught some hard lessons. So the more you pay attention to that, the more you capture— people who journal do themselves a favor. Because you learn those things, you capture those things, you record those things, When we went— when I went my second time in Iraq, during OIF, I told all our subordinate officers, you need to capture this, you need to write lessons learned articles.

Why?

Because you're going to learn some stuff here. And it's really important that you pass those lessons on, you capture those lessons, you record those lessons, because that's where people start to you know, they don't have to make the same mistakes we made. There may be better ways to do things that we found that they don't know about that aren't in doctrine or aren't captured anywhere else. It's incumbent upon you to be able to do that. So whether you're a junior officer or senior officer, it's the same thing. Pay attention, take notes, reflect on what's happening around you.

Yeah.

Because you might not get another chance to get it right. So Do what you can and learn from it.

That is really quite powerful what you just said. I mean, so many, I guess I call them golden nuggets, just now. We've only been talking for about 20 minutes, but it is really impactful, I think, because this really affects the people right now, doesn't it? Because I think for some people, like you kind of alluded earlier, they think strategy is so far out of reach and make it so difficult. When in reality, even in real life, everyday life, everybody kind of have to come up with a strategy in order to be able to accomplish their goals daily, don't they?

Absolutely. I think you nailed that perfectly right there. That's very well said.

Yeah. So I guess the other question I have for you, sir, just based on your very interesting and outstanding background, because in your career you've worked with senior leaders in the Pentagon, which makes sense, but also Congress and operational command as well. What separates good leaders from truly strategic leaders, you think?

So having a vision and being able to articulate it, that's really important, because you look for strategic leaders just for that. It's like, they have to be able to, to provide that, that motivational spark that moves an entire team And for them, that's the ability to see over the horizon and define that in terms that you can understand so people can then move that direction. That's a tough skill. And you see that a lot of people that we have around us today struggle with that. And when we ask, what is it that we're trying to do here or here? And it's not articulated. That's something that always bothers me. Because If you're in a position where you are a strategic leader or a senior leader, you have to be able to, to, to not just see the future or see a future, but articulate it to the people who work for you, that you can craft a narrative that people understand. And that allows an entire organization to move in that direction. Because if you can't do that, the organization flounders, it runs aground, and then it just, it just stops growing.

Well, I guess a good follow-on question then would be, in many organizations, they kind of struggle with bureaucracy and risk aversion, especially the more mature they become. I live in San Francisco, lots and lots of startups, but by the time they become big Fortune 100 companies, things change quite a bit. So how can leaders kind of maintain initiative while operating inside large institutions?

So I'm glad you you asked that question because, um, I wrote something once. I actually slipped something into the Army's Capstone Operations Manual, you know, 17 years ago, and it says— it's one phrase— it says, risk is a potent catalyst that fuels opportunity. The whole idea is that if you're in charge, if you're going to sit in that chair, you've got to be— you've got to have a comfortable relationship with risk. Yeah, you have to understand risk and be willing to accept risk and then make decisions in the face of risk and be comfortable making those decisions, not knowing everything that you need to know, but being comfortable enough in your own leadership ability that, yes, you can make a decision. And if it's not the right decision in the moment, you can make it the right decision. You can change circumstances and conditions and push where you need to go. But what you said, there's a lot of people who aren't comfortable with that and they don't like to make decisions or they want to have perfect information. When we talk about it, when we say, hey, you got to be comfortable with the 80% solution. I only know 80% of what I need to know to make an informed decision. But by God, I'm going to trust my instincts. I'm going to trust that I've read enough, that I've studied enough, that I've reflected enough, that I'm comfortable taking that risk because I feel like my own experience can close that 20%. And then we can, we can do what's right. Wow, that's a tough place to be. And I've worked for people who couldn't do that, who people who just froze in the moment because they were so concerned with that 20%, or so concerned with being held accountable for a poor decision, that they wouldn't make a decision. And that means an entire organization stops.

Yeah, that is really, really sad. Because in the green room, we talked about the unflinching principle. One of my primary mentors, General Colin Paul. And one, he was saying, right, 45 to 75%, that's where you absolutely have to make a decision. Because if you wait until you get 100%, it's going to be way, way too late. But yeah, I guess some people call it paralysis by analysis. Why do leaders need to really— I guess you— I don't know, it might explain, maybe it's based on your past experiences, but your instinct as well. But why is it so critical for a leader to really make a decision when they don't have 100% of the information to make that decision?

You think you already said it, BZ, and it's momentum, it's initiative. It's how do you keep the organization moving forward? Because as you hit a decision point, you can't just stop and say, well, we're going to wait until we have more information to move forward because operational inertia is a real thing. And if you don't maintain that momentum, that initiative, then your rival, your opponent, your enemy is going to take it.

Hmm.

And once you've lost it, you may not regain it. So you have to keep that in mind that the, the, the situation doesn't allow you the luxury of waiting for perfect information. And if you've done the thing, so what I talk about, and I learned this, I learned this in an Army school, The idea of mental models. So all the experiences, all the study that you do, that you build the mental models that help you make decisions. Then you take those mental models, you stack them up against your biases to make sure that your biases don't get in the way of making the right decision. And then you keep filling that well full of information. So when the situation comes up, you be pretty— you can be comfortable with Colin Powell's, like, I just got to get in this zone and then I can make it the right decision. If it's not the right decision in the moment, then I'm comfortable doing so. And you'll build trust, you'll build loyalty, and your people will be happier because they'll know, hey, we're not going to stop, we're just going to keep moving forward, we're going to maintain that initiative, we're going to push, push that spirit of the offense forward. Constantly. And we trust that, you know, Coach BZ is going to get us there. And that's, that's what we want as leaders.

Well, I guess one thing I have learned is making a decision is better than making no decision at all. But even if you make the wrong call, you need to be humble enough as a leader to kind of watch over it and then make changes. Whenever needed, right? So it's, it's, I mean, I guess it's not really that complicated, but I guess in, in, in practice I can see how some people may just not feel comfortable, uh, doing that. But then again, one of my mentors told me that's why as a leader you get paid the big bucks, so you have to make these decisions.

Yeah, if you're gonna sit in the chair, yeah.

So you have helped write portions of the Army Operational Doctrine. I think we mentioned it 2 or 3 times Already, but for, for leaders outside of the military, what exactly is doctrine? And why does it matter in any organization?

That's a, that's a good question, because a lot of people don't understand. And the simplest way to, to express this is doctrine is fundamental principles for how we operate, whether it's how you do intelligence, how you do operations, how you do logistics. Fundamental principles, which really shouldn't change that much. So if you pick up a piece of doctrine, and you say, well, it's focused on the last war, it shouldn't be. And when I talk fundamental principles, I'm like, I use, I use the metaphor of shooting a free throw. Like, you shoot a free throw, you build fundamentals on, you know, how you bend your knees, how you follow through, where the, you know, where the ball spins, how it goes off your fingertips. You do it so many times, you nail those down. So if you take that and you say, okay, now I'm going to apply those fun— that, that spirit of fundamentals to warfighting, it's the same thing. The basic fundamentals shouldn't change that much. Uh, and the Marines are really good at this. The Marine Corps, if you pick up a Marine Corps manual, those things don't really change that much. They change a word here or there. Yes, but the Marine Corps Warfighting Manual is pretty much the same today as it was 30, 40 years ago. There's some changes, but minor. The Marine Corps Planning Manual, same thing. That is an exemplar for everybody to follow. And oh, by the way, the Marines can stick all their books in one box, right? Walk around with that little box of books, which the Army tried to do but didn't really get to the same thing.

Yeah.

You get the average Marine officer, he can walk around with all the important Marine doctrine under his arm in one box or under her arm in one box. Boom, that's it. We've never got there.

That is quite— let's talk about Doctrine Man for just a second because this was quite a phenomenon. Again, like I said, anyone who's served in the military the last 15, 20 years, they absolutely heard about it. I guess the question I have for you, sir, how did a few cartoons turn into one of the most influential military leadership platforms online?

You know, I really don't know. I mean, that's, that's the best answer I have. I can tell you how it got started and then how it morphed over time. I literally created these cartoons, uh, after I came back from, uh, Iraq in 2004. I started to create these things, draw stick figures, fiddle around, and I was literally just trying to tell funny little stories. And I had landed on Fort Leavenworth where I was— spent 4 years, uh, in the Doctrine Directorate there. We were rewriting the Army's Capstone Operations Manual. Um, we're kind of a big deal. And, uh, well, writing, writing, writing goes really slow for me. I go— I'm a pretty fast writer. And so I had way too much time on my hands. So I used a lot of that time to do other things like write that Stability Operations Manual or write articles, whatever. But you give me a lot of time to exercise the demons of the war and, and kind of get things out. Well, you think about it, we're in the middle of two wars at that time.

Yes.

And I would like, every, every couple, three days I'd do a cartoon and I'd send it out to people I worked with, right? No big deal. And then they'd come back and they said, hey, can you add BZ to the, to the distribution? He'd like to see this. Okay, sure, I'll add BZ. And then one day I sent the cartoon out and it came back rejected by Microsoft Outlook. This is now a spam message because there's 300 people on it. I thought, well, hell, what are you supposed to do? So I decided to open up a Facebook page and I did it all on Facebook and stuck it out there every day. And it, and then I did the same thing with Twitter, um, had a YouTube channel, still have a YouTube channel. I just don't put anything on it anymore. Um, wow. But then I started to generate content and put it out there, and it was cartoons, but then I would add articles. Hey, look, I read this, this is pretty interesting, what do you think? Um, so it takes on a community forum kind of feel, and I didn't really give it a lot of thought until I was— oh God, it was probably 2008 or 2009, and I, I'd watch to see You could see the stats going up. My boss, my 3-star boss had come back from a trip to DC and he says, you know, I knew you did this cartoon, but he said, every office I went into had these cartoons up on the wall. They're everywhere. He said, even the chief, even the chief had the cartoons up. You know, it's like, they're everywhere. I'm like, wow, I didn't know that. You know, it just continued to grow. And then about, I'd say, probably, I don't know, 3 years ago, maybe 4 years ago, I stood down the Facebook page because maintaining that was just— I don't know about you, but I can live without talking to a million people a day.

Um, actually, it was more like 2 million.

So yes, I didn't kill the cartoon. I literally let it sit for about a year, um, and then, um, decided to start doing it once a week again. And honestly, the cartoons now, they just write themselves. I just have to read the news for a week and go, okay, that's funny, I'm gonna pull that in. Um, like the one you popped up about the whole War College initiative, looking at the War College. Somebody going to the War College are actually going to go to the South Houston Institute of Technology. Um, there's an old joke from one of my high school teachers. Um, but you know, you pay your tuition in Bitcoin now. Weird little things like that that kind of play on what we experience, but still fun.

But I think the genius of it— Go ahead. Yeah, I just thought the genius of it, I think, is really comedy and satire, right? Humor can really be a powerful, powerful leadership tool. And why do you think satire sometimes communicates truth even more effectively than official messaging does?

It's our humor. Think about that. You spend enough time in uniform, you know, we have a dark sense of humor, right? This, you know, we can, we can literally stand over something that's awful that would horrify anybody else. And we can drink a near beer and talk and laugh and tell jokes. And that's just who we are. And so satire communicates better. So you got, you've had like Bob on the FOB, or Terminal Max. Great mediums for just being satirical but telling messages, you know, getting a message out there. So there's a thread to every comic, right? There's a reason why those comics exist. And I don't know if you ever read much Bob on the FOB, but Bob on the FOB was literally people you ran into on the FOB, right? The guy who has to wear all the combat gear, you know, the gear, though, the The Storyteller, who every time you tell a story, he's going to tell one better than you. And, and so, and then of course you get the whole thing with, uh, Terminal Max, which just— what a great, you know, great narrative over time. It was funny, but it was, hey, this is Marine Corps life, right?

Yes.

Um, we just do better— we, I think we do better making people laugh because we need that. I think inside we all need that. We all need that humor.

Yes, especially in the military, unlike most organizations, sometimes it's, you know, most of the time it's high pressure, high tempo, and also sometimes no matters of life and death. And if you couldn't find comedic humor, it would almost be unbearable at times, uh, the life we live.

And, uh, no, no, no wonder, uh, I mean, so I got a story for you. Yes, and you thought you made me think about it because The second picture of the— he's the people who told me stories. Second one was my fire chief. And I don't know if, if I told this story when I, when I talked about Ralph McAllister, but I had been on my very first ambulance call as a firefighter, brand new. Went out on a firefighter— we're not on a call with the ambulance, and somebody had died on— in a, uh, in a, in an accident. And, um, This guy was taking his first vacation in 20 years. His family was up waiting for him, and we knew that the sheriff's office had to go do the death notification. It's a very somber moment, and we had to transport the body from the scene, uh, to the coroner's office in town, uh, where they could declare death. And that was my first time with a dead body, and I was reeked out, right? I, you know, it was a scramble, who gets to drive and who gets to ride passenger, because there was 3 of us and somebody had to ride in the back with a dead body. And it was me. And I, we got back to the station. And the next day, I was talking to the chief. And I said, I don't know how you get used to that. What, you know, it's, it's just so difficult. And he said, look, he goes, one day, you're going to be eating a sandwich and leaning on a body. And telling a dirty joke. And that's the moment that you realize you have come to terms with the gravity of what we deal with. And it just took a while to get there. But eventually, you know, you build up that, that skin, that, that armor to be able to deal with the trauma that surrounds you. And really what happens is, at the same time, you build that dark sense of humor. And I brought that into the military when I came in, I already had that.. And I was thankful because when we, when we dealt with situations that were like incredibly grave, I was already comfortable with those by virtue of past experience. So you say, who shaped my life? Well, that fire chief shaped my life. That experience allowed me to deal with death in a much different way. It doesn't mean I don't have feelings. It just means I deal with my feelings differently. Yes. And I also think that helps because, you know, when it comes to things like post-traumatic stress, if you've already built up that armor, you can cope a little bit better. You've built up those coping mechanisms and you deal with things better. And you know how to, how to— I don't want to say vent the stress that builds up inside, but you prevent it from coming back again and again and again. I have different ones, like my time as a firefighter, I have lots of horrible memories that come up at night. But none in the military. I was totally comfortable by then. But that was, you know, there you go. Our sense of humor traces back for me to a fire chief who, you know, yes, you deal with death, son.

Really quite insightful. I guess that would definitely apply to first responders. As well, and the police too, right? Law enforcement, they deal with a lot of crazies that the average American doesn't have to. So before we end this segment on Dr. Mann, I want to make sure people know exactly where they can still get it. I know it's no longer available on Facebook. At one point it was Twitter and YouTube, but it looks like LinkedIn is going to be the new way you reconstruct that. Can you tell us about that, sir?

Yep. So all you have to do, honestly, if you go on— if you go out and ask, uh, ChatGPT to chase it down, #DoctrineMan, you'll find probably everything. Uh, but you can also go on LinkedIn, do the same thing, trace the hashtag. There's also 4 or 5 different books out on Amazon that have the earlier cartoons. So the new ones are not published in a compendium, but The old ones all are, so you can go out and find all the old ones. They're out there. You know, $10, $15 will buy you a paperback copy that has, you know, 300, 400, 500 cartoons in it. And it just traces over the years. So, so they're all still out there. You just got to look for them.

So over the years, then, what leadership lesson or cultural insight from Doctrine Man resonated most with the military community, you think?

Ah, God, you know, I think the one thing that stood out to me the most, and you kind of hinted at it already, it was people needed that. People needed to be able to laugh at what they were doing and relate to what they were doing. And building up a following was never the intent. It had nothing to do with it. So many people just wanted that because it made them laugh and made them think about themselves. Yes, they could relate to it. And it could be something as serious, as silly as somebody gets, you know, gets locked themselves in a porta-potty in Baghdad. You know, all the little things that we deal with or we see. Yes, it could relate. You know, Air Force guys in their big watches, uh, Navy guys in their whites. You know, you know, every Navy guy in my cartoon always wears whites. Uh, it's just, you know, all the little things that people relate to.

Yeah, that's really powerful. I know one of my best keepers, they used to have a plan of the month, a plan of the day. Every commander has those, that they would always have a Doctrine Man cartoon, which again, it makes you laugh, it makes you think, but it's, it's really a great way to reach out to your sailor, to your unit, and, and really build that culture. So thanks a million, sir. The work you have done has, has really been impactful beyond beyond measure. Now we are already running out of time. I could be speaking for you for hours and hours, but I do want to spend just a little bit of time on this, your latest book. Again, you've written more than 6, 7, or edited, but this one, this is the latest one, Professional Talk Logistics: Sustaining Strategy and Operation. And I guess the first question I want to ask, sir, why did this book have to be written?

So we, uh, it actually grew out of John Klug's dissertation. He wrote a dissertation about naval logistics leading up to World War II, and he said, you know, I'm gonna write a book. And then one day he's like, I'm not going to write a book, we're going to write a book. Like, I don't want to get sucked into your delusions of naval logistics, but, uh, well, we kind of did. But it was important important because, um, you know, we kind of touched on this earlier, is the challenges of elevating from the tactical to the strategic level. Uh, logistics takes on a completely different, uh, level of importance.

Yeah.

So at the operational strategic level, warfighting is about logistics. If you can't sustain the fights, then you can't win them at that level. Tactical, you know, it's, it's, you know, the We sustain those tactical fights and they work, but the higher you go, it's, it's how do you, how do you maintain that supply chain? How do you maintain that flow of, of resources to enable the long fight? Um, that's difficult. And so we all tease it out in different ways, talked about different experiences, whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq or antiquity or World War II. Um, And there's really not a lot of books that talk about that, right? People— we say professionals talk logistics, but not very many professionals talk logistics. Most of them avoid the subject because it's uncomfortable. It's like strategy, it's uncomfortable, you know. Um, I'm far more comfortable driving a 3-truck convoy from point A to point B to drop off meals and fuel and water than I am trying to figure out how to sustain 500,000 people on the other side of the world.

Yes. Wow.

Right. That's a, that's a world difference. And every, you know, we deal with that. So it helps to have something. Yeah, we thought it would be a good resource. I don't know how many people buy that. I have many copies somewhere around here. Yeah. And we're already working on a new book with the same publisher. That is going to take great battles through history, and then recast them as leadership case studies. So you get a case study, you get a synopsis of the battle, and then a facilitated, basically a teaching note, then like, here's the questions you ask after people read this, here's the maps, here's this, let's talk about it. So it's kind of based on the idea of doing a staff ride. Yes, but case study driven. We'll probably have 12 cases that trace from Medigo in antiquity to— we did have the Battle of Kiev on there, but I don't think we still do. I wrote mine on the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam.

That's outstanding.

We still are— we're still recruiting our writers, so we haven't really got started yet. We signed contracts last week. And got that one moving.

Wow.

And oh, by the way, there's going to be a sequel to To Boldly Go. I still have to get the proposal finished and back to the publisher. But I think we're going to take that book, which was using science fiction as a metaphor for leadership, strategy, ethics, we're going to refocus solely on the Star Trek universe.

Wow.

Like there's enough there to do that just by itself. Which was the idea behind Strategy Strikes Back, which just stuck with Star Wars, go back to just Star Trek and take that on. So it's still a lot of writing going on. So that's why we wrote Professionals Talk Logistics, and there's already two more in the queue now.

So that is really, really, really awesome. Whenever that book comes out, so you need to come back on the podcast, and we need to talk about it.

Absolutely.

The sequel to Board Ligo is coming. That is so exciting. Wow, incredible. Well, let me ask you this. Again, we are talking about the instant bestselling book, Professionals Talk Logistics. So I guess another question I have for you, sir, there's a famous phrase often attributed to General Omar Bradley, right? Which says, amateurs talk strategy, but professionals talk logistics. What does that phrase really mean to you?

Well, that's an acknowledgment. And I think we captured that really well in the foreword is that's the acknowledgment that strategy is about logistics. You can have the vision, you can think you're going to get from point A to point B. The real hard part is how you balance and focus resources and time and space. Because you never have all the people, all the money, all the things that you need So you have to figure out how to focus them on, on this area, on this milestone, on this milestone, you have to figure out how to do that over time. Which means you have to have a really deep understanding of time and space in terms of achieving a vision, and know when and where to focus your resources, how to focus those resources, conserve the resources, don't blow them all. So it's not just having the strategy, strategy is a lot easier than balancing those resources and time. Time and space. So when I go back to teaching business strategy, like, okay, I get it, you want to do this, you don't have all the resources to do it. How are you going to do this? How does that affect your timeline? How does that affect your appetite to, you know, to achieve those things? It's a wake-up call. Well, when people start to realize that, okay, you know, you know, BZ, you want to, you want to have $10 million in the bank by the time you're 60. All right, what are you not gonna do?

Yes.

Are you gonna pay your house off early? Are you gonna invest? Are you gonna drive a Yugo with no doors on it? Uh, you know, what are you not gonna do to, to build that wealth? Um, it's tough, and it's not just a matter of saying I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get $10 million because neither one of us are going to be, you know, NFL draft picks this year. So how do we get there? Wow.

That's really fascinating how it can be so pragmatic, just the way we think about it. Another core idea in the book is that logistics doesn't just support strategy, but it actually shapes strategy. Can you explain that relationship for leaders who might not have logistics?

That's the whole idea of understanding time and space. That you'll have a vision. I want to be here by this point in time and have these conditions shaped, but your resources determine how that works. And, um, so you may find out that, say, let's say, you know, we want to clear the Strait of Hormuz, right? So I want to have it cleared within a week, but we find out that, well, maybe we can't clear it in a week. So, so our strategy that's not a strategy, but on a small scale, clearing that is going to take more time and require us to marshal more resources, uh, more capability, uh, be more deliberate about how we deal with our opponents in the region and our allies in the region. Um, it's not just saying I want to do it, it's how you're going to do it. And the logistics are what determines how you're going to do it, how long it's going to take, the degree to which you're successful. You know, that's— it takes on a completely different degree of complexity when you start to add in the logistics piece, which is critical.

True. And really, from everything we've talked about, sometimes logistics is overlooked, but it looks like it is so, so, so crucial. Right. For example, many military histories, they do focus on great generals, decisive battles, but logistics often gets less attention. Why do you think logistics is one of the most important and most misunderstood elements of warfare and leadership?

Oh, it's funny because I think I even quote this in the book, that it's just not sexy.

Yeah.

I'm like, okay, You know, you're the refuel guy, whoop-de-doo, right? But you're not the guy that people are gonna write books about. And that's, that's one of the points that the book made is, and I wrote my chapter, I actually quoted somebody that there's a lot of people who are more interested— historians tend to focus more on the great leaders, the great battle captains, and neglect that part because it's just not that interesting. Nobody really— oh yeah, I don't really care how you got the gas up there, or, or that you had to figure out 10 different ways to move food, or you had to buy food off the local economy, or figure this out, or whatever. But what's interesting is then you, you compare that with Alexander the Great, and in his campaigns he would go to great depths to like, okay, at this point we're going to shift from oxen to, to water buffalo, or this or that. These animals drink less water crossing the desert. So these are the draft animals we need here. So we're going to hit this point, so we're going to move resupply in off the shore. And he would go to great detail to get all those things right, which then enabled those great campaigns to become great campaigns.

Uh, wow, that is really—

in the book, he's a data whisperer, right? And we need more leaders who are data whisperers, because those data whisperers are the ones who achieve great things because they know what it takes to achieve them. And it's not just the big idea, it's how you make the big idea realistic, how you realize the big idea.

Well, it looks like technically we've already run out of time, but if I can ask about the book— this is so fascinating, I guess, lesson from history, or I should say current news, because your book kind of goes— no, you look at logistics from antiquity through modern warfare. Which is historical, or what is the one example that best illustrates the decisive power of logistics in war, from Alexander the Great to World War II, or even the Ukrainian war right now? Maybe I should even add the Iranian war, because there's definitely a lot of lessons learned with just with what's happening today, right now. Anyway, your choice, sir.

Yeah, I mean, there's Every chapter in that book kind of gets to this at some, at some level, but let's make it relevant. I mean, well, so let's put it in the context of what we're doing right now. So I read an article this morning that laid out, um, the strategy for victory in Iran, and I thought, well, that's interesting because I've never seen these things written anywhere, uh, and I've heard a lot of contrasting views, statements made, one thing here, there So I'm not sure there's a clear strategy, but if we can all agree that we want to end this thing decisively, whatever it is, define that, end it decisively, then backtrack to what it's going to take. So it's not just a lot of air power, because history shows that air power alone can't win. Yes, but air power in conjunction with maritime power, and you know, the thing that nobody wants to introduce, land power, uh, You've got to have all those things working in conjunction, which then makes it a massive logistics problem, right, to solve. But if you want a decisive outcome within a reasonable amount of time, and I would argue that that's why Afghanistan was such a, such a tough thing to write about in the book, I think Francis Park wrote about this, was because you had really great goals, but nobody wanted to be honest about how long or how much it was going to cost to achieve those goals. And, and really, if you're talking about the basic goal of you want a self-sustaining, free Afghanistan, that's about 100 years, right? Yeah, more than 50 to 100 years. Well, if you walk into Congress and say, well, we need to be able to be funded for 100 years, they're just going to laugh you out of the building, right?

Yeah.

So we didn't, but that was the reality.. And we don't like to talk about that in the, in the moment, because, yes, that's the logistics of it. And nobody wants to ask, hey, what's it going to take to do this? Well, you know, it took us a long time. And, you know, we're a good example. So if we're really good, 50, 75 years, how about that? No. And trillions of dollars? No, we're not spending that. We could have avoided 20 years in Afghanistan by just being honest up front. Yes. Wow. Go ahead.

That is really quite insightful. Maybe the other thing, just thinking through it. So it's true, many times our leaders don't really want to make the decision they absolutely need to make in order for us to actually win or do what it takes because it might be political suicide, I guess. But I want to take it one extract it from one level even higher to that before we even make such a decision. For example, in my lifetime, the war I fought, part of the reason why I decided to join the Navy was after 9/11. I am not a lawyer or anything, but in my humble opinion, I felt like the Iraq War was really immoral. That's my opinion. And maybe it was legal because Congress did give the power to the president to go ahead and go with that. But, um, I, I guess the question I have, I have for, for you, sir, is what about the ethics, the morality, and the legality of a decision like that, especially when you're going to put, um, the lives of, uh, American young men and women at risk?

That's a complex question, um, and it's a tough question right now because What we've seen is we've seen a lot of those guardrails being taken down. So the lawyers, the senior lawyers that were in place, um, when the administration came in, they got rid of them all, you know, um, stood down the civilian casualty office for all intents and purposes, basically starved it out. Um, that doesn't mean that we're not going to make mistakes and that's going to happen, but you want to minimize that. And you need the JAGs, you need the IGs, you need the Civilian Casualty Office, you need the ethics classes, you need those touchpoints. Because, and I think somebody told me this once, that when you're in the military and you swear an oath to the Constitution, you are entrusted to be a state-sponsored arbiter of violence. And it's incumbent upon the state to make sure that what you do falls within the values and morals of the state, which for us would be the Constitution and our own national morals. It's really important to remind people of those and not to say, hey, stupid rules of engagement. I get it, but it's dangerous to say because those things exist for a reason. They exist to prevent us from making a big mistake and then trying to sweep it under the rug. There's a book called Black Hearts. My copy is downstairs. But it deals with my former brigade in Iraq and what amounts to a horrible war crime. And, and, and how the the, the environment allowed for that. And that's not— that's just not the only one, because I don't— I would hate to think that the war itself was immoral. I don't, I don't like to believe that. But there were definitely things that happened during the prosecution of the war that shouldn't have happened. And as a result, we strengthened within the institution those parts that would and should keep us from making those same mistakes. But we took those guardrails down. So if something happens now, we're back and maybe worse off than we were before. We have to figure out how you give the people who are at the tip of the spear the latitude they need to do their jobs without, without putting them or us as a nation in a position where we're doing something that absolutely violates our morals. Um, and I think those institutions need to be in place. Those agencies need to be in place to prevent that. Uh, I have a picture of the march to Baghdad, but we're going through, uh, Momadayah. And Momadayah was one of the three points of the triangle of death later on. When we drove through Momadayah on the way to Baghdad, we were greeted with cheering crowds. No more than 3 days later, we went back to Momadayah and we were giving out food, and one of our trucks got burned to the ground, and we were lucky to get out alive. And it was an interesting point, and it— because what we learned from that is the whole idea of the golden hour. The ability to— okay, we're here. We have, we have a very limited time to make a positive difference on these people, or we lose the momentum. And we lost that momentum really quickly. You know, warfighting-wise, we were okay. But it was what comes next. And there's a lot written about that. There's a great book by a friend of mine, Kevin Benson, the name of it escapes me right now. Uh, but he was a planner involved in the post-war phase planning of Iraq, the plan that was thrown out at the 11th hour when the CPA was brought in to run things. And you had a really well-developed plan that had a lot of cultural knowledge built into it, um, yes, being led by somebody who had spent a decade in that country and, and understood the people and the challenges. And then you brought in somebody who'd never been there before, gave him like, what, $9 billion or something like that, and said, save the country. And then you end up disbanding the army. God, all the decisions that follow— there's 3 key decisions there that follow. But you have somebody come in who essentially sets the stage for, for sectarian divide and conflict. And yes, Expectation of Valor. Yeah, yes, yeah, good, great book. I actually had Kevin come and talk to our school, uh, when this book first came out. Uh, I mean, some of it's lost on 21-year-old kids that were born after 9/11, but it's the idea that if you want, um, if you want to, if you want to fight a moral war, it's hard to say a moral war, but If you want to fight a moral war, there's certain things you have to do, you have to think it through. You can't keep people from dying necessarily, but you can minimize the horrors that are inflicted upon the civilian population.

Well, thank you so much for sharing, sir. I know it is, it is not easy. These are tough questions. I think that's why we need to have more leaders who really think through all of these things before they make decisions that will impact the economy, the people, and everything else. But it's not easy to be editor. Let's just put it that way, because some decisions you're going to have to make, nobody is going to agree with you 100% of the time, for sure. All right, I've already taken too much of your time, so if I might, maybe 5, 10 minutes to take this Plan down. Let's, let's switch over. The, the last segment of the show is where I try to get into your mindset, so I kind of see which, uh, leadership principle you have used that have helped you be as successful as you are today. So one of the first questions I like to ask is, what do you think is one of the greatest lessons you have ever learned in life, in leadership in general?

Oh yeah, so the greatest lesson I ever learned is one that I start off most discussions with, and that's that it's not about you, it's about them. And that was something my first platoon sergeant, who was an E-7, taught me early on, was that if you want to be successful, that's the first thing you have to learn is it's about them. So you focus your efforts on taking care of your people and making sure they have what they need to be successful, and they'll take care of you. But it's not about you, it's about them. That whole idea of servant leadership wasn't a term back in the '80s. But that's what it was, right? And so that's, that's, that's the most important lesson I ever learned. And one that I share with everybody is whatever job you do, just remember, you're the one looking out for them. You have to take care of those people.

Wow. And what do you believe, sir, is the secret of your success? From the Army, retiring as a colonel, of course, Doctored Man, and I think at least 7 books, probably more, and, and just everything you have done and accomplished being again, a professor. Why, why are you so successful, sir?

So my kids would tell you, I'm a workaholic. But I think it's different. No matter what I've done, or where I've gone, I've always tried to make a positive contribution. And I mean, it doesn't mean I always am. But I always do, but I try. And that idea of service to others and service to the organization, service comes first. Approach it with humility. The institution, there's something bigger than you out there. That helps tremendously. And, you know, I can also say my path through the military was not always the easiest. But you figure it out, you work your way through things, you learn a lot along the way. As long as you do that first thing, take care of everybody else, they'll eventually take care of you. They'll come back and they're there for you. And no matter what happens, if you try to take every day and make it the best day possible, not just for you, but for everybody else, at least if nothing works out, you go home knowing that you made a difference and you feel good about your efforts.

Powerful.

Don't worry about awards, you know, those kinds of things. Just, just do the best you can do.

Yes, the awards will take care of themselves. It's incredible. So what are you learning now, sir?

Oh my God, what am I learning now? I never stopped learning. So that's a funny thing is, is you never stop being hungry. You never stop learning. There's literally something I learned probably every day, whether it's a tiny thing or a big thing. I tell you what I'm learning, I'm getting really good at using artificial intelligence. So I, I'm like deeply competitive by nature. And I have like, typically I go into the spring break, which we're on spring break this week, or summer break. And I overhaul my classes, I'd like fix little things. Well, I realized that I can take an exercise or something that we do in class. And I can completely overhaul the thing in an hour, something that might have taken me a week before. I can overhaul it, edit it, get it back up and running, really turn it into something special. And, and it just comes down to good prompt engineering and, and knowing what you want and being willing to iterate and help the model get you there.

Yeah.

It's funny, because if you'd asked me 6 months ago, I didn't do a lot with, with AI. Now I just came off a panel discussion last week where I'm like, okay, here's how this works. And here's how I use it. And here's the output. Output. I literally took— I had an ethics-based survival game where you, you're in a ship, you hit an iceberg, you only have enough space on the rescue boat for 6 people, but you have 12. Who goes? Good exercise. Students had fun with it. I gamified that thing through Quad, and I turned it into a Starfleet exercise. Wow. Gravimetric mine and goes down. You have 4 rounds. Every round, uh, the group leader gets personnel files that nobody else sees that changes the dynamics. And then you get a message from Starfleet that also fiddles with the dynamics, but everybody sees. And as a leader, you have to influence the rest of the team based on what you know without telling them what you know. Yes, um, to influence decision-making. And then it goes through, you get like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes.

Wow.

Super gamified, but it was something that I would not have necessarily come up with on my own. I had an idea, uh, but when I talked about it and got to iterating with Claude, like, oh, we can do this, I got some ideas.

Wow.

And it probably took an afternoon of editing because I had to rewrite the scenario and do different things.

Yes.

But what the output was was fantastic. And then I realized, hell, I can do this with everything I do. Um, ask me again a year from now and I'll probably be Max Headroom, if you remember Max Headroom. Um, I will have changed myself by then. But yeah, that's what I'm learning now.

Well, let me ask you this. I guess this semester I am now officially an adjunct professor at California Science and Technology University. Now, one question every professor is asking themselves: do you allow your students to use GenAI for their homework?

Absolutely.

You do? Okay, fantastic.

Yeah.

Okay, what are the guardrails?

We have— we have— I tell them like, okay, here's how we're going to do this. Here are the guardrails. Like, you own whatever you put out. So if you put out something and the sources are not accurate, yeah, I'm gonna find out because I check sources.

Hallucination.

Yeah. If you list things that then are revealed to have been pulled— the AI pulled it from some source and didn't cite it, You failed inside of source. And so, yeah, and don't— and by God, don't let it do your thinking for you. Trust yourself. I always have like one or two students who wait until the 11th hour, and I can always tell because I can see the time they turn stuff in. Like, okay, you waited till 11:59 to turn in an assignment that was due at midnight. I can look closely because now I know what you did. Yes, I let them And we're doing an exercise right now where they're doing strategic analysis, internal and external analysis on a company. And I told them to use AI, use AI, write your prompt, show me what your prompts are. But rather than spend 2 weeks digging up data, let the AI generate the data for you, validate that data, and then do your analysis. And but I expect a lot more. Yes, the expectations go up and it was fun. And, you know, because we deal with this whole thing where people say you shouldn't let them use AI in class. And I come from the generation where we were told we couldn't use computers to write our papers because using a computer was cheating. You had to either write it by hand or type it.

Yeah, even, even a calculator too at one point. But yeah, we still have people who won't let people use calculators.

Why? In the workplace, you're going to have a calculator, you're going to have Excel, you're going to have these tools. Better to teach them how to use them correctly than to forbid them.

Well, I'm so glad we are aligned on that, because pretty much I had two guardrails. One is definitely human oversight, but then you also have to give attribution. Fantastic. Okay. How has failure shaped your life, sir? We mostly talked about your successes. What about failure?

Oh, you know, I mean, I think we all fail. And I— what I've tried to do is not fail catastrophically. We all have little failures, things don't work out. I don't get hung up on failure. If something doesn't work, okay, well, it didn't work. It happens. And it's just part of life. It's kind of like the Mike Tyson quote, right?

Mm-hmm.

You know, everything's great till you get punched in the face. That's failure, right? You get up, dust yourself off, you get back into it.

That—

and that's, that's That's how I deal with failure. I've never had any career-ending failures. And that's— but that's, I think that's just judgment, right?

Yes.

You look at a situation, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to go down that road. That's a bad road to go down. And, you know, I've never gotten myself in a situation ethically where, you know, I couldn't I had that. I had a big problem. Wow. Just, you know, you just, you don't make those big mistakes that are unrecoverable. Yeah, I make lots of little mistakes. I make little mistakes all the time. Yes, they're all recoverable. There's always a plan B. And I just keep—

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. If you could choose 3 people to have dinner with, who would you choose and why? They could be alive, dead, or even fictitious character.

Well, one of them I already saw, which is John Maxwell. I had John— I had, I had actually lunch with John Maxwell in 2008 at an event. Absolutely wonderful. Somewhere I have a picture with John Maxwell. Colin Powell. But he'd be a hard one. I'd be afraid to have lunch with him right now. When he was alive, absolutely, because that guy is absolutely one of my heroes.

Yeah, I got to meet him once, but once you get in the room, it's almost like the molecular composition of the room changes. It's just the charisma. Every word out of his mouth has power. It has substance. It's just incredible to see.

Anyway, the other one, and I've had lunch with him before, was Gerald Mattis. General Mattis was the same kind of thing. General Mattis, everything that came out, you would, you would write down. And I had had lunch with him in 2012. And I was working in the Baghdad Embassy. And I had this, this unenviable job of— I was running basically a professional development program to build professionalism and the ethics back within the Iraqi military. And it was a profession of arms program, had all this stuff built into it, working professional, professional military education. 6 days a week, I'm on the road meeting with people. It's— I knew my boss appreciated it. But everybody else was working for military sales. And we're sitting there briefing General Mattis on what we do. And everybody's going around, I sell F-16s, I sell tanks, I sell He's like, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm responsible for professional military education and the professional ethic. And he said, that's the most important thing anybody's doing here. Absolutely. That's more important. He said, if you get that right, everything else will follow. Wow. That's the foundation of the future of the country. I felt really good about it, you know, for my peers started to give me crap. But it was, it was He was absolutely right. You know, he's the warrior monk. He understands that, that, you know, it's how you grow leaders is more important than so much else. If you get that part right, that's the fundamental principle, you know, get those things right with people. That's the future that sets, that sets the future on a positive path.

Yeah, that is so right. By the way, he doesn't seem to be using social media at all. I'm trying to get him on this podcast really, really, really bad. But if anybody listening out there has a number or something, General Mattis would really be welcome here. It's incredible. Okay. I know you read a whole bunch of books. I think what I need to do, sir, is get a short suggestion of books from you, recommendation. I'm going to create a digital library of books that you recommend. But I know going through your LinkedIn page, Already today, we did talk about Michael E. Porter, I guess the godfather of strategy and competitive advantage. I think On Strategy by the Harvard Business Review is the one article that pretty much changed the business world. Now, you've also mentioned just today Black Art by Jim Frederick. Why should my listener read this book?

It's a really dark book, but I think it's an important book for understanding some of the challenges that we had. And this, honestly, the events that they talk about are part of the impetus behind standing up an office to try to reduce civilian casualties. It's just a very dark story, though. This is a great one. I love this one, because, you know, it's one of the common myths of the Iraq War is that there was no plan for, uh, post-invasion. There absolutely was. It's just the Secretary of Defense at the time threw it out and went a different direction, which was ill-advised. But, you know, if people are in charge, people are in charge. They do what they do.

But that's true.

Kevin was on that planning team. Uh, General Beagle's book, great book. But he's also, you know, he is one of the most genuinely human people.

Yes.

Out there today. And he has a great social media presence. Yeah, love that. That was a great book.

I have a running joke with the General. He needs to send me a check because I keep recommending him to everybody. So General, I know you must be listening out there. Add more money to the check, please. And what about this one?

Patriot of the Press. That's not a new book. That book's a little over a decade old, but I saw I thought it was relevant to what's going on now. And a lot of people don't realize how much history we have wrapped up in Iran. And, you know, Mohammad Mosaddegh was a democratically elected prime minister who nationalized the Iranian oil industry. So, you know, before he was elected, the money that came from oil, the oil itself was taken from them and exported, uh, without their control. You know, he, he had a vision, but there were challenges even then. I don't think he wasn't suitable for the West. I don't think the British particularly liked him. Um, he was not deeply loved by the theocracy that ended up being in charge by 1979. So we overthrew— the CIA overthrew, and MI6 overthrew his government, um, in 1953 and installed the Shah. And the Shah was not, you know, not exactly what they needed either. They needed something that, you know, they lost their freedom, they lost a lot of that. And that in turn leads to the 1979 revolution and what they became, you know. And you think about it, going through history, we had a lot to do with who they became and who we're dealing with now, we shaped that. There were a lot of inconsistent foreign policy. Uh, we own part of that mess, a good part of that mess. And but, you know, what would it— what would have happened had he not been overthrown? And also, that could not take place. It's just a good what-if book. Um, how could things have been different? Would they have been different? How long would he have lasted? Would Iran today be different than it is if we had not overthrown his government.

I don't know. Also, speaking at the strategic level, sir, with the conflict that's going on right now, it looks like we strategically got rid of a lot of people in our government who actually knew the Iranian culture, the people, their history, the language, and so forth. I guess trying to save money somehow, but it would have definitely made a big, big difference in the way we conduct the conflict. But anyway, what about this one? Enlightened Soldier.

Oh, The Enlightened Soldier really deals with professional military education and how you got to be a strategist or a planner to appreciate this one, because it really deals with what it takes to develop the mindset that can do that kind of thing. And, and Crusade, Rick Atkinson, love this book. I love this book because I fought this war. But it's either that sitting right down there. I can see it from here. Yeah, there's a couple of them like this that I really like. You get a much broader perspective of the Gulf War. The Gulf War was a, you know, that was my formative experience as a lieutenant, right?

Yes. Now, you have so many books. I'm gonna end with this one. Because like I said, we are out of time. We need to have a separate podcast. So just you and I going through all of the books you recommend. This is just a lot of wisdom. Let's do this one, last one. Uh, General—

so I like this book because, um, I— this is my old boss. I worked for General Chasen probably for a total of almost 4 years.

Wow.

Um, really love the guy.

So for people who like to listen to the podcast and not watch, that's The Impossible Mission.

Yeah, so The Impossible Mission deals with what our mission was, uh, post-2011 Iraq. So if you, if you dial the clock back to 2011, the idea was to leave a 10,000-man or 10,000-person stay-behind force that could do training and advising of the Iraqi military and the government to help them stand up. Um, we failed to gain a status of forces agreement with, uh, the Maliki government. Yes. And so instead of 10,000 people, we had 157, and we had the same strategic goals as that 10,000-person force. We had some contractors, not anywhere near to make up for that. It becomes the impossible mission, because you are trying to do so much with just not having the people to do it. And at the same time, we were starting to see the initial signs of ISIS emerging. And I think I talked about that in the review, was that we were looking at the data, the, the violence data in Iraq in general, Baghdad, the cities, and we were seeing a spike in violence and we knew something was happening and we were trying to get the word out. Something is happening. And it was weird because I look back today and one of the things I used to do every day was go to where the Iraqi Iraqi War College was. The Iraqi War College, their Foreign Service Institute, and their joint PME was all in one compound, surrounded by apartment buildings that flew these really weird black flags. Hmm, those weird black flags were ISIS flags, right? We didn't know. And you would go— I'd go on this compound, and there'd be people just watching us. And ISIS was soon to spin out of control. But what made this first of all, we didn't have enough people to do what we wanted to do what we needed to do. But also nobody would listen when the boss tried to say, hey, we need to get a cable back. We need people to be aware something's happening. No, that's what runs counter to the administration's narrative on what's happening. This is a successful mission. Yeah, but something's happening. It's not good.

Wow.

That is a great book. And, you know, That's— he is a great example of someone who, through sheer will, will see through a mission no matter how hard it is. He will not give in.

Wow.

You have very many people as stubborn and as capable as him. And I enjoy— I love working for the guy just for that.

So many, many great books to recommend. Let me ask you this. So is there maybe like a song, a book, or a movie that would be your life's theme or anthem?

Oh my God.

Based on your LinkedIn, I would suggest maybe this one.

Yeah, I mean, for a movie, I love Rocky. But I pack in pop culture everywhere. I don't know if you get the t-shirt. Beverly Hills Cop, right? So I got my Eddie Murphy t-shirt on today. I surround myself with that stuff. Rocky is a great one. For a song, though. So it was the song my driver played on the way into Baghdad in 2003. It was Welcome to the Jungle. He had decked out our Humvee with speakers, had a really interesting little sound system. And that was the song, right? We're hitting Baghdad, Welcome to the Jungle, and nothing I don't think could describe that better than that. That song still rings in my head.

That's Guns N' Roses, right? Yeah, Guns N' Roses. Yes.

Wow, Axl Rose looks like an 80-year-old woman now. So I mean, how time has changed.

All right, so we are getting towards the very end of the podcast, but, um, if you had one day to live, sir, what would you have liked your final contribution to be?

If I only had one day left to live, I would probably just spend that with my family.

Yes.

Because I can, you know, you can never get enough time with the people that you love. There we go. That's the family right there. Yes. Spending time with them makes everything worthwhile.

Absolutely.

You never get enough.

And if you did have a magic wand, you could solve any problem in the world. What is that one problem you'd like to solve first thing tomorrow morning?

Oh, God. You know, Which problem, right? I mean, there's so many. I would like to see us like take a break from conflict. How about that? And that's not just one problem. It's multiple problems. I would like to see about a 3 or 4 year break from conflict. Everybody catch their breath. And maybe focus on things that matter inside the country. Yes, you know, I'm a little more than outside the country. That would be nice.

Yeah, because myself as an information warfare commander, of course I am a military man, but I really believe we need to have a very strong military, not to use it, but truly as a point of last, last resort. Now use diplomacy, use absolutely everything we can, and when we don't have any other choice, in my mind it's moral, it's ethical, it's legal, then let's go do it, let's take care of business. But otherwise, yes, peace on Earth, good will toward men. That's one of my favorite verses in the Bible, but it's something I'm really, really longing for. And it looks like all we do as humans is just find ways to be in conflict and destroy and kill one another. Yeah, it's really sad.

Yeah.

So if you had the ear of every junior officer across America right now for the next 60 seconds, what would you tell every junior officer to do first thing tomorrow morning?

So, same thing. I think you had a question here on it. And that was to write, write, because writing is a lot of times your ability to write is the only opportunity that you're going to have to communicate with your senior leaders. You might not get a chance to bump into them in the motor pool, or, you know, out in the field. If you write, and write well, and write about things that you know about, then you have an opportunity to not just influence them, and catch their attention, but to make a difference in your own career. And writing did that for me. Writing was that one constant that, you know, I got a lot of jobs over the years because somebody would say, I want you to come work for me because you write, and I need somebody to help me do this. Yes, even though I didn't have any other skills for the job, you can write.

So in less than one minute, why should my audience purchase this book, Why We Write?

So this is— this was a good book. Randy Brown and I pulled this together, uh, God, 2017. Uh, but you have a lot of different people who write, and what this book does is it talks about different people's motivations behind it. Um, I talk about why I started, and that's the why we write thing. But it's, um, it's important to understand how people are motivated and what drives them to communicate like this. It's less about how you write, less about what you write. You can write poetry, you can write comics, you can do whatever. It's that you communicate and you continue to practice that communication. It's cathartic. It releases a lot of what's inside you. So you can hold all that in and suffer, or you can write about it.

Another huge achievement, sir. I believe you are one of the co-founders, right, of the Military Writers Guild?

Yeah.

Yeah. Fantastic, man. Do you have any time, sir? To sleep.

People always ask me that. I made time for you, brother.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. So, so, so grateful for your time today. Is there a question I should have asked you, sir, that I didn't get a chance to ask?

I don't think so. We've been on here for a while, so I think you've done coverage about everything.

All right, what can we do to add value back to you? So, so grateful for your time and wisdom and insight.

Nothing. I just really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to engage, have this conversation. There was a time when we couldn't have done something like this, and to be able to spend some time with you on a Saturday morning and just chat about what matters and what's important, that's really valuable for me.

Well, everybody, you need to follow the Colonel on LinkedIn, that's Stephen Leonard One. And of course, today we talked about this book, Get a copy of all of his books if you can, but especially this one, Professional Talk Logistics, and I think Why We Write as well could literally change your life. Okay. This is pretty much it. So we are at the end. Other question I ask, but I know I've already abused your time so much, but I do wanna end on a positive note though, because sometimes we talk about some leadership subjects that are pretty heavy. So I wanna end with something positive? What is something you are feeling optimistic about in 2026?

Oh, you know, I feel optimistic about the, the youth that I see around me. And that was one of your questions. When I talk about Gen Z, that they're not that much different than we are. They might do things a little differently, they might have some different tools. But they are just as hungry for leadership and mentorship as we ever were. And, and they, and they're constantly seeking it. So if you can be that, that guiding force, if you can be that example for them, they will absolutely get behind you. And I get it, I get a chuckle out of this whole thing, because I go into class, and I have a really close relationship with my students. And I think about it, I'm old enough to be their grandpa. I'm 3 times their age at this point. And And yet we still have this great back and forth. And it's very positive. And that makes my— I told my wife, if all I had to do was go spend my days with Gen Z, I would be happy for the rest of my life.

Yes, they really inspire me. Part of the reason why I'm an adjunct professor, and I do this podcast, because we do need to have strong leaders for America tomorrow. Wow. Okay, so this is it for today, sir. Very last question is one word that represents our shared experience on this podcast today. And again, sorry, we went over 30 minutes, but I feel like you have so much to teach us, so much wisdom. You do need to come back, especially when you publish your next book. One word.

Fun.

Fun. Okay. I am so grateful.

I had fun. And so the time goes really quick when I have fun.

Grateful for your time. Grateful for your contribution. Thank you, sir, for serving your country in and out of uniform and shaping the mind of the next generation of leaders in America. I think that is so, so critical. Thank you, sir.

I appreciate you, Bizzy.

All right, everybody. Thank you so much for hanging with us. This was quite a fascinating podcast. Like I said, we don't always talk about easy stuff because I think as leaders, you do need to make the hard decision sometimes and really think things through, especially when the lives of people are going to be in play. All right, so follow Colonel, like I say, and get a couple of his books. I definitely recommend Why We Write and the one we talked about today, Professional Talk and Logistics. And you can follow him on social media. And I especially like the Doctrine Man cartoons. They are so fascinating. You get humor, but you actually get to learn leadership person as well. All right, so this is going to be it for today. At some point, I'm gonna get back to studying the Book of Proverbs. I think we've done chapter 18 last, so chapter 19 is going to be next. This is not a religious podcast. It's going to be about ancient wisdom and leadership lessons from the Book of Proverbs, things that you can actually put into practice today from a book written more than 2,000 years ago. It's just amazing. And as you guys know, we also, um, I've continued to celebrate Black History Month. Now we call it Black History Year for every day until the end of 2026. I think it is that important. So I kind of have two vignettes. One is kind of about what happened today, right? Today is March 14th, and I went back into history. And for those who follow me on LinkedIn, you will see that, but If you go back to March 14th, let me see which year did I choose. The thing is the Black history, which is American history, is so rich and there is so much to learn at times, but the one story I chose for today, okay, I am saying it, year was Oh my goodness, I write too much on LinkedIn, it seems like. Here we go. So it was March 14th, 1835. So I went all the way back to 1835. That's when free Black people were forced to apply for a license to remain in Missouri. So you can read the post on my site. And then the other vignette is when I talk about African American first, either in technology or in the military, right? The two worlds I know pretty well. So I talked about the very first Black female tactical jet pilot in the U.S. Navy, and she's still serving today, and her name is Lieutenant Madeline Swegle. And I think I had the picture of her. Let me see. Here she is, uh, Lieutenant, uh, Madeline Swegle. Hopefully I'm gonna be able to get her on this podcast as well. But I think it is important for us to know our history, right? And to end the podcast today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play a short clip about Lieutenant Swigert, and that's going to be it. So hopefully I see you guys tomorrow. All right, bye for now.

The Navy's first black female tactical jet fighter pilot— the Navy's first black female tactical jet fighter pilot receives her wings of gold this week. Yeah, it's a landmark feat that she hopes will inspire others. CBS's Danya Bakos spoke with another pioneer whose achievement 40 years earlier helped pave the way. Lieutenant Junior Grade Madeline Swegle is making history. As the Navy's first Black female tactical jet pilot. Thank you. I am really honored that I get to wear the wings and get to fly planes and call myself a pilot. Hip hip! The Virginia native graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2017. Before flight school, she had never even been in an airplane.

I was really excited on takeoff, like feeling the exhilaration and getting thrown back in the seat a little bit. That was awesome.

It's fun because it is difficult. Currently, only 15 Black female aviators serve in the Navy. Swegle hopes those numbers change.

I think that representation is important because we are a very diverse nation.

I'm excited. I just think that this is wonderful. Swegle follows in the footsteps of the Navy's first Black female aviator, Brenda E. Robinson, who earned her wings of gold 4 40 years earlier in 1980. Recruiters told her she would be a pioneer. You could check off two boxes because they hadn't let Black people in, they hadn't let women in. All of a sudden, this is all new stuff. Robinson says representation is crucial. She runs aviation camps to show kids what is possible. I believe now, after even all these years, you can't just have a desire for something. You have to actually see it. Swegle is set to receive her wings of gold at a ceremony on Friday. After that, the sky's the limit. Donya Backus, CBS News. Now, in June, the Navy announced the formation of a special task force to address issues of racism and sexism. That panel will make recommendations for reform in a number of areas ranging from recruitment to career advancement. Thank you for tuning in to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If today's episode added value to your leadership journey, be sure to subscribe, share, and join us again for more wisdom nuggets on how to lead better and achieve greater success. Remember, leadership is the most critical skill of our time. The world will always need leaders to to inspire others, drive innovation, and execute meaningful strategy. So why not count yourself among the bold leaders shaping the 21st century? Until next time, stay inspired, stay committed, and keep leading with excellence.