125. Hasard Lee | The Art of Clear Thinking

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better.

In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Hazard Lee, author of The Art of Clear Thinking. Hazard is a US Air Force fighter pilot who led his pilots into combat during the war in Afghanistan. There, he flew over 80 combat missions and became the only fighter pilot to ever fly 2 different types of jets into combat on the same day while supporting troops under fire. Needless to say, Hazard is an absolute boss and a hero. Hazard was then handpicked to fly the F-35, one of the most advanced and expensive weapons systems in history, which was still in development at the time. During his last role on active duty, Hazard became the chief of training systems for the largest training base in the world, leading the development of new technology and teaching methods to train future fighter pilots. Hazard now speaks and consults for organizations, and his social media accounts reach over 290 million people annually. In this episode, you'll learn about some of Hazard's background, how to make better decisions in your daily life, and you'll get a glimpse into how you can start thinking clearly today. Just one more thing. We had a few spots that were interrupted by a bad connection, but Hazard's message still comes through clearly. This episode is certainly a life-changing one that you won't want to miss. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Hazard Lee.

Hazard Lee, welcome to the pod. We're so excited to have you on today. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Good. Great to hear. Well, uh, for those in our audience who may not know anything about you, could you give just a short introduction to who you are and why you're on the pod today?

Yeah, short introduction. I'm a US Air Force fighter pilot. So I grew up flying the F-16, uh, Fighting Falcon, although fighter pilots refer to it as the Viper. So I flew that for 6 years. Deployed to Afghanistan with that, and then in 2017 switched over to the F-35. So it's the newest supersonic stealth fighter. Incredible plane, a lot of fun to fly. And in 2020 switched over to being a writer. So I still fly part time, but my primary job is as a writer. So I wrote *The Art of Clear Thinking*. Just came out last week, and it's a made number two on the Wall Street Journal bestseller. So. Pretty pumped with how well it's doing.

Well, that's exciting. Number one, thank you so much for your service. We appreciate it, all of us civilians over here. It's amazing to be talking to somebody like you who has experienced some, I'm sure, some crazy adventures in your lifetime. So we thank you so much for your service. And what caused you to switch from pilot to writer?

Well, I think we had a lot of institutionalized knowledge as fighter pilots. So we have been on kind of the leading edge of decision-making theory since the 1950s when a man named John Boyd helped develop the F-16, but he also came up with something called the OODA loop. I think a lot of organizations and people are familiar with that, observe, orient, decide, act. And so as fighter pilots, that's our primary job is to make decisions, often thousands of decisions each flight, often with incomplete So if you boil my job down, it's to make decisions. And we had a lot of good tools and techniques to do that, but it was kind of just stuck in our organization, not because it's classified or anything, just because we're so busy with the mission trying to get better and prepare for the next war. So I wanted to step back from flying full-time so that I could help pass that information off to other people.

I love that. Most of the time we're talking to entrepreneurs who run big businesses and then they'll kind of step away and say, hey, Why isn't some of this information more readily available to the general public or small business owners? So they'll write a book about a specific leadership style or something related to business. And then every once in a while on our podcast, we'll talk to somebody, you know, like people like Chris Voss who wrote books on negotiation. They work within the FBI, kind of a closed circle, and then they'll come out and they'll talk about these things more publicly. So it's fun that you are talking to us about The Art of Clear Thinking. In the intro, you say flying an F-16 right out of maintenance, engine swap, and you're going over 1,000 miles an hour. I mean, that kind of puts things into perspective for listeners or viewers today who think, okay, what kind of decision-making is he talking about? Not only is this— there, this very complex piece of machinery, but you're also operating it at 1,000 miles an hour. And when you're in combat, that adds an entirely different layer of complexity over the top. So it's just kind of mind-boggling, I think, to the average Yeah, the speeds we're flying at are incredible.

So talking in that book, uh, getting up to 25,000 feet, plugging the, uh, the engine to max afterburner, so 30,000 pounds of thrust coming out of the back of the jet. You're just on this rocket ship and got up to Mach 1.9, so almost twice the speed of sound, which is actually about 1,500 miles an hour. So at that speed, things are closing about a mile every 3 seconds. So you really have to have Yeah. Quick decision-making. But as fighter pilots, we're also at the other end of the spectrum. We're sometimes planning missions that are going to happen days, months, or even years into the future. So it's a lot of project management with a diverse team coming together to align towards one common objective. So there's a lot of carryover with what we do as fighter pilots and what people do in the civilian world. And to your point, combat does add another layer of complexity. So we have a saying that as soon as you put on your put on your helmet, you lose 20 IQ points. And that's because that stress and the fog and friction of war really degrades your ability to, uh, to be able to perform at your peak. So I talk in the book a lot about ways to, uh, to mitigate that decrease in IQ and ways to, uh, to execute.

So who is the target reader for this book? Somebody's listening today, they think, okay, he's a really cool guy, but is this book right for me? Who is the target reader? Who'd you intend the book for?

Yeah, so I wanted it to be targeted towards organizations and businesses, which is really great that the Wall Street Journal picked it up as a business book. So right now it's the number 2 business book in the country. So I didn't want to write a book just for my friends. We have time to tell stories and to point with our hands, but I wanted a way to be able to pass this information off into something that anybody can use. Because right now I think we're at a key moment where decision-making is one of the most important skills, and yet it's not taught In most schools. And as a fighter pilot, we're leveraging technology. So essentially, in my suit of technology, I can be thousands of times more capable than I could be on the battlefield. But the same goes for all of us. We're using phones and computers and cars that amplify our decision-making. And a simple way to look at that is through our energy consumption. So we just burn about 90 watts of electricity through our bodies, and yet the average average first-world country, the average citizen burns 12,000 watts of electricity. So that powers the technology that's amplifying our decisions. And going back to your point about businesses, so with the rise of AI, that's increasing. So right now, there are predictions that the next billion-dollar company will be run by 3 or fewer people. So that's insane. That's incredible, the amount of leverage that the technology is allowing people to have. And that's Increasing the importance of the decisions that people are making.

Coming back to the US, do you feel like all the decisions that you have to make on a daily basis are now much easier for you? Because I think about, you know, fighting with my wife over dinner some nights, and then I look at somebody like you who's making these split-second decisions going 1,000 miles per hour. Like, how does that translate into civilian life?

Yeah, you realize that most decisions don't matter. So it's not that important. We get wrapped around the axle about, you know, Analysis by paralysis or paralysis by analysis, all of those things. So when you're in combat, you're, you're crystal clear on, on what you need to do to survive. And so you have a really clear goal. When you come back, it's a little bit murkier, but you realize that at the end of the day, you know, I'm safe most of the time. Most people have food. So it's, uh, it's a lot easier to make decisions back here.

Do you think having a clear vision for what you want in your life is an important factor in making good decisions?

Yeah, so I think it really helps. So one of the the things I tell people: if you have any interest in aviation, just learn how to solo even a small plane like a Cessna. Cessna's you know 152 is what I started on. It's like a a lawnmower with wings. So just just solo an aircraft because as soon as you take off, you're responsible for landing. So it's an incredible feeling. And so I think flying, and especially in combat, really helps hone your decision making because you're forced to make decisions. And a lot of times we like to push off. Decisions. And that, that, that forcing of doing it and having thousands of each flight really to improve your ability to, uh, to make good decisions. And ultimately what we're trying to do when we're making good decisions or any decision is finding what good is going to happen out of the potential course of action. What's the probability of that happening minus the bad times the probability of that happening. So that's the risk there. So you're just coming up with that risk to reward ratio, which is something that we're kind of ingrained in doing. Even, even a lion hunting, uh, you know, on the plains of Africa, they're, you know, assessing that risk versus reward. But I think a lot of people are so tied into large organizations now that they don't see that big picture. Very few people are making that big picture. So if you can just boil it down to what is the probability of something good happening, how good is that minus the probability of something bad happening times the probability of that, then you have a pretty good head start.

Yeah, I think it's going to be tough for the average person listening today to visualize themselves flying a plane. And we could talk about what that might look like in a few seconds. But yeah, I think when you said in the book, it was kind of the first time that I had ever really thought about the fact that when you take off, you have no other choice but to land. And if you go back, I think you said maybe the 1920s, and you were to apply the same failure rate to the amount of commercial flights that are up today, there'd be like 7,000 commercial airliners a year crashing. And that's why we've paid so much attention to every single time a plane goes down. optimizing the process, understanding what happened and fixing it. So it's still an extremely optimized, like, profession to be in, but there's still that ultimate failure rate that if you fail, you will die, or you could come very close to it, which is a pretty scary thing to think about.

Well, I think that's the reason why we're able to develop these decision-making frameworks is because the nature of the crashes were so spectacular. So Yeah. When a plane goes down, I mean, people are dying. It's, it's a huge fireball. I think for most accidents in business, you don't have that spectacular, uh, you know, uh, issue when, when something like that happens. And so it forces people to, to focus and to debrief. And I think if you ask any fighter pilot, what's the key to learning, they're gonna say the fighter pilot debrief. And so we'll sometimes go out and we'll fly for about an hour, hour and a half, and we'll come back and we'll debrief for 2 to 6 hours, breaking everything down, even Even if a flight did well or if it did bad, we'll still have the same debrief and we'll listen to the same radio call sometimes 15 times just to understand what happened. And so I think a lot of organizations, they don't have that scheduled time to debrief and there's a lot of culture behind it. So it's, it's a really unstable thing. People like to pass blame naturally. So it's pretty difficult to build that culture where everybody takes accountability for their actions. They want to be the first people to call themselves out. And so that's something that we have in the fighter pilot debrief of a sterile environment. Rank comes off, it's faceless. So a young 20-year-old wingman will sometimes be debriefing a wing commander who's in charge of the entire base. And so it takes a lot of best practices to make that happen.

And when did that process start to get instilled in you? That was the Air Force Academy?

So I did go to the Air Force Academy, but surprisingly, you don't do a whole lot of flying at the Air Force Academy. So it was really after that I went and flew the T-6, which is a— it's almost like a P-51 Mustang, high-performance prop plane, 1,100 horsepower. It was, you know, an awesome plane. I wasn't the best in school. I was decent athletically. And this kind of just merged both of them where you are having to fly with your hands. You're also having to study a lot. And it just Really clicked for me. But yeah, that's where it really got started.

Well, I think one of my main takeaways from talking with you and our experience with you professionally so far is that at BookThinkers as a business, we need to host these debriefing sessions, these after-action reports, and really analyze what goes well and also what could be improved with every single business interaction that we have. And that's something that The military obviously does very well. And I think the general civilian business operator does not do very well because like you're talking about, the stakes are not as high. And, uh, so that's my big, my big kind of lesson so far, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. So just spending a little bit of time for the debrief doesn't need to be 2 to 6 hours. Just 5 minutes is good enough. And that does a couple of things. So, uh, you know, pretty much the main framework of the book is ACE. It's assess, choose, and execute. So if you're not able to, uh, to see that problem in front of you, you're never going to be able to consistently make good decisions. Then choosing the correct course of action. And then lastly, being able to execute. So oftentimes we can come up with the right solution. We just fail to execute it properly. Uh, when we're flying jets, sometimes we'll have 1,000 people whose eyes, uh, are on us, who've touched that mission, everybody from spies on the ground to intelligence, uh, operators to satellite operators, and we're the last link in that chain. And if we fail, all their work is for nothing, and we never may fly again. So it's a lot of pressure there, but it is important because not only does it— to assess what— debrief yourself. That's one of the worst things you can do when you're in a high-pressure environment, to be critiquing yourself. While it's actually happening, so if you always have a set side set aside time to debrief, even if it's just five minutes, thirty minutes, then you can tell yourself in the moment, "I'm not going to critique myself right now. I'm just going to worry about trying to execute in the moment," and then afterwards have that time to debrief.

That's a powerful message because I feel like so often we get so caught up in and do you know criticizing ourselves. While we're doing the work instead of just doing the work and then looking at it afterwards. I think that's a, that's going to be a really good takeaway for myself for sure today. I'm curious, like, what is, in your opinion, like, what are the most, the most critical skills that someone needs to, to execute decisions like quickly and also like effectively?

Yeah, I would say the first thing is to be able to prioritize. So I talk in my book about a story with Eisenhower. So his decision to delay D-Day by Yeah. And then to execute even though there's a very narrow window in the weather. And one thing Eisenhower was fantastic at was assessing what was important versus urgent. So, um, if you just break that down into a graph of importance versus urgency, you can come up with 4 quadrants. What's important and urgent is obviously the most important thing, but then what we as humans really struggle with, and it's something called the urgency effect, we tend to prioritize what's urgent over what's important. And those are the meetings, the notifications, the invites that are coming at us. Those really sap our attention. And so if you're just able to, to be able to allocate the tasks that you have into those 4 quadrants, you can increase your ability to prioritize by 60%. So I would say the most important thing to being able to make good decisions is being able to prioritize. That's a really important tool. Another is assessing power laws. So I really dive into this in the book of Most— the way as humans we're wired to see things linearly. If you walk 30 steps, you're now 30 steps away. But most variables in life are nonlinear. So you can have exponential growth. So like compound interest, you have the law of diminishing return and long-tail power laws. So those are the 3 main power laws to look out for. And it can have a significant impact on whatever system you're looking at. So as a fighter pilot, One big thing is, uh, if we have to eject, how, uh, how fast you're going, cuz the speed that we're going does not increase linearly with the force. If we're going Mach 1.6 and you stick your hand out, it's gonna be 300 times the force of going 75 miles an hour. So it'll rip your hand right off. So we have a lot of things that we have to do, checklist to run before ejecting, but the most important thing is just slowing down. And so there's a lot of things like that in life where you can find A lot of gain from, from just a small variable. Think of it as like a clock, a small gear can make a big difference on what, what that time, what that clock is saying from a time perspective.

As you're reaching hundreds of millions of people annually through your social media, what do you think is the main attraction? What are most people following you for, do you think?

I think people have a fascination with military aviation. So these jets are incredible. They are $100 million apiece. The helmet alone is $400,000. So that's a lot of pressure to not drop the helmet. So it's really the pinnacle of engineering. And so being able to harness that is, is, I think, pretty, pretty interesting. I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons I wanted to be a fighter pilot, not only to serve my country, but also to be able to, to use this amazing piece of technology. And so I think that's one of the biggest draws that people have with my social media, with my YouTube channel, being able to go out and show credible information. There's a lot of not credible information out there. So being able to use my background to, to show what these things can do and how we're using them to, to really educate the public out there.

Speaking of, uh, not credible information, I'm just curious what percentage of, uh, Top Gun is accurate. Do you watch the movie and analyze like piece by piece and go, oh, that's just ridiculous, or, oh, that's very accurate?

So I thought it was a good movie. I thought it was a very good movie. So the storyline was great. The cinematography was fantastic. They had a lot of military advisors on it. So the actual communication was pretty good in terms of that mission and like flying low and only sending in 4 F-18s, they'd all get shot down. So I think as a pilot, I can really appreciate it. And I like the effort that they put into it. And I, having done all these videos on YouTube and stuff, I understand that you have to kind of water it down a little bit to make it exciting to the, uh, to the lay audience. But, um, I thought it was a good movie, but there are obviously a lot of glaring issues. We don't just go take up, uh, you know, enemy F-14s all the time.

I was, yeah, I was going to ask about that towards the end. And, uh, but I did enjoy, uh, sort of the patriotic feel. I feel like there aren't enough movies like that anymore. And so I really enjoyed that aspect of it. But from a technical standpoint, I'm sure it left a little to be desired.

Right, right. And same thing with my book. Like I didn't make it for fighter pilots. If I did, I would really go into different details and, and really narrow it down, but I wanted to make it something that everybody could enjoy. And I'm sure the same conversations happened with Top Gun. And so ultimately it's a great movie. I think they did a fantastic job and hopefully it helps with, uh, with the recruiting for the next 30 years, like the first one did.

Oh, I'm sure it will. All right. Back to business a little bit. You talked about the debrief. You talked about power laws. When you go in and consult with a business today, what are some of the most obvious things that they lack as far as clear thinking is concerned?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is that they don't trust themselves. So most people want to outsource their decision to committees or to computer models. And so one of the things in the book I really try to emphasize is that a true expert in a field should, should never just hand over their critical thinking. You should always be able to come up with a decision on your own. You might not execute on that at the end, but you should always hold yourself accountable. So just use that, that formula of what is the good that's going to happen? What's the probability of that going to happen? What's the bad times the probability of that happening? And come up with a rationale for the decision that you're going to make. After that, you can now include other information, committees, computer models, things like that. But I think a lot of businesses and organizations, Air Force is just as guilty, we have some amazingly complex and elaborate computer models, but a lot of them will be hinging on variables that, that can change, that there's really a lot of uncertainty behind those variables, especially if we're going into a new country and, you know, there's a leader that has multiple different options that they can pick. Ultimately, there's a lot of uncertainty in those models. So I think as, uh, as leaders, as, as businesses, for businesses, organizations, just really Being able to hold yourself accountable, come up with a decision on your own, then compare that to, uh, to whatever that decision is to committees or computer models is big because that's gonna hold you accountable. It's gonna make you, uh, assess what your decision was, what theirs is, and what was flawed with your thinking. Or you're able to catch some of those errors that, uh, you know, computer models can spit out some spectacularly wrong answers if they're off by just, uh, you know, a couple, uh, percent. So you'll, you'll be able to, uh, to save the day with that.

Yeah, sort of like a garbage in, garbage out line of thinking. Well, I'll tell you this, I'm happy that the world has people like you that are capable of understanding these things at a macro level because it, the average brain, it, like mine, it's a lot to comprehend and understand. I'm oftentimes wowed at organizations like the United States Air Force or these large businesses and organizations at how well they can operate despite the number of variables that have to go into making So yeah, kudos to you.

Well, I think it's something that everybody can do and it's just a matter of building up those experts, that expertise, learning. So that's one thing I go a lot into the book of how we've evolved our way of learning and then being able to trust yourself. So the '08 financial crisis, I think a lot of the computer models said there's about a 1 in a trillion chance of something like that happening. And obviously it did happen. And looking back, it wasn't just a 1 in a trillion chance. You know, even though they can be really elaborate and smart and there's a lot of great committees and things like that, ultimately trusting yourself is one of the most important skills that you can foster.

And how can we, how can we begin to build trust with ourselves? Because I know in my life and then others that I've seen, it's, it can be a very difficult thing to cultivate in your life. So like, what are some tips that you have to, to build that trust with yourself?

So the first thing is just preparation. So we have a saying, you don't rise to the level of your expectation, you fall to the level of your preparation. So no matter, you know, what field you're going into, you have to be able to, to prepare for it. And so when we're flying missions, we're often doing missions that are significantly more difficult in training than we do in combat. Because like I said, as soon as you put on your helmet, it's a helmet for us. I'm sure it's, you know, different things for other people. But as soon as you put on your tie or your suit, or whatever, your IQ drops 20% or 20 IQ points. So you really have to be able to over-prepare. After that, it's just a matter of getting into the proper feedback cycle, maintaining a proper zone of excellence. You don't want something that's too difficult. So as an instructor, we'll fly with students. And one of the big differences that we do now from past training is really trying to push them, but not push them too hard. You push them too hard, you can break them. They can Break down their confidence. That's an important aspect of being a fighter pilot, to be confident but not arrogant. But if it's too easy, then you're going to get complacent and it's going to be, uh, you're going to kind of shut down from that. So finding that proper zone is, uh, is challenging. And you can do it for yourself. You can have a coach help you out, or if you're a boss or a leader, being able to put your people into that zone is important and you can watch them grow really quickly.

Is there, is there anything that you, that off the top of your head that you can think of that can help us assess other people that we are managing to help them get into that proper zone so we don't, so we don't push them too hard or don't push them enough to where they become complacent?

Yeah, so I think the, the number one thing is being able to take feedback from the students. So often it's a one-way street, so assessing how you're doing as an instructor. So anytime we have a student who's failing or who's having issues with a flight, then they will— we'll try to get together as instructors and understand what we're doing wrong. So I think that's one of the big shifts is we're not just evaluators out there, we're coaches trying to make them better, trying to assess how we can be better. So at the end of the day, for the debrief for a student, I will write down 3 things that they did well, 3 things that they can improve upon, and then I'll ask for 3 things that I can do better. So I think getting that, getting that flowing and understanding how you can be better as an instructor is important because, you know, everybody learns differently. Everybody is coming from a different background. They have a different framework for how the world operates. So you have to be able to fit into that framework. If you're going the other way, it's going to be pretty challenging to get them to learn what you're trying to teach them.

Is there a way that we can build trust with the people that are under us? Because I feel like oftentimes, at least in the corporate world, like people don't want to give their boss So is there a way that we can cultivate that culture within our business as we grow it?

Yeah, if you're, you know, if you are a subordinate and you have a boss that, you know, is just, you know, on you and you don't have a lot of say, then there's not a lot you can do other— you know, you can only control so much. So hold yourself accountable. Try to, try to pass that along to people that are underneath you or people that you're working with. There's only so much you can do. So you can't just blow up the system if you're not the, you know, a VP or CEO of your company. So just controlling what you can control. I think that's one of the big mindsets that we learn as fighter pilots. You're going out, there's a lot of chaos and confusion. It's the fog of war. So you can only control so much, control what you have, have accountability for what you're doing. And I think it'll eventually change the organization.

So if, if the United States Air Force sets the standard as far as how culture should work, between a leader and a subordinate as an example. What have you found now as you're transitioning to an author with your own small team working with some of these bigger business organizations that are not part of the military? Like, what are some of the things that they're having a hard time translating or that you're having a hard time translating into business from the military?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I wouldn't say we're just the gold standard and there's nothing, nothing to work on for us. So we're constantly evolving, trying to change up our mindset. Like I said, pilot training really Changed significantly about five years ago. But I think, I think the biggest thing is we don't for my for my team we don't all come from the same shared background. So I think a lot of fighter pilots they all have gone through ROTC. They've gone through the Air Force Academy. They have that. They've gone through pilot training. So they have that shared background. So you're thinking about something. They know exactly what you're thinking about because they went through that too. But when you start leading small diverse teams, so I have editors. I have Uh, project managers, people like that, that come from completely different backgrounds than me. And often it's easy for communication to get lost because I'll say one thing and they'll be thinking something else because they have a completely different way of thinking. So I think just slowing down and making sure the communication channels are open, letting them ask as many questions as they want, really dedicating time to, to interlocking your mental framework with theirs. So I think it takes a little bit more time to do that.

Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any premium selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now, everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand and Scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up, but I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now back to today's episode. Okay, so you and Luke talked about this a little bit earlier, but I'd like you to expand on it if you can. As a leader, if you value transparency and you talk about that consistently with your team, but you still collect feedback sometimes that you're not as approachable as you want to be, how can you improve that? I'd love some advice there.

Yeah, so I think the first thing is that, uh, people are watching how you interact with other people that have given, given you or the boss feedback. And if they see that boss is snapping at them or, you know, treatment poorly, then they're not because they know that's a good thing to say. But ultimately it's about our actions. So that's one aspect. Another is, I think, holding people accountable to making decisions. So often it's easy to get caught up in groupthink. And once there's some momentum there, most 90% of people aren't going to want to challenge the status quo. So I think before you as a leader or boss make a decision, you hear from everybody around the room, and you can hear from them privately to kind of understand their thought process. But I think, you know, it just really goes against the grain for most people to speak up when the group is moving in a direction. So I like to have my people go through that expected value matrix of what's the good that's going to happen, what's the probability of that happening, what's the bad, what's the probability of that, because that holds them accountable. And then I can toss out some different ideas of what about this, what about that, accountable to making decisions. And then I think also just taking a break once in a while and giving the reins over to different people kind of shows them what you do, what you have to deal with. It makes them have empathy for your job. And it forces them to be in the hot seat making decisions, and it really can improve how they make decisions when they're working for you. So I think there's a lot of different things that go into that.

Yeah, I love all of that advice. All right, final question for me as far as translating military philosophy to business: How does the military, or how does the U.S. Air Force at such an elite level, deal with people who are underperforming? Uh, I'm curious. We get a lot of questions about that, just book recommendations and things of that nature. So what are some of your thoughts on how to deal with people who are underperforming?

So I think usually it's the, the instructor or teacher's fault. So at least the students that we have coming to fly the F-35 and the F-16, when I was an F-16 instructor, they're world-class students. They're, they're putting in a ton of effort. So we might have slightly different challenges than organizations, but for us, it's just a matter of being able to speak that the way that they're thinking. So oftentimes that's the biggest disconnect is they just don't quite understand the way that we're teaching them because they've grown up in a different environment. So I think for us, the big thing is not just being an evaluator. At the end of the day, we have to do that to make sure that they're safe flying and we grade them on like 60+ things every flight. But our first and primary job is to be a coach, to provide some feedback, to give them confidence. You know, you're walking a delicate balance. You want them to fix everything that they're doing wrong because nobody starts off as a good pilot. Every single person is a terrible pilot when they first start. And so you want to be able to tell them everything that they're doing wrong, but you're also walking a balance. You want them to be confident and to believe in themselves and to be able to To focus. It's kind of like being a parent. So if you have small kids, it's kind of the same balance. You can only push them so hard, you know, before they kind of snap. So you want to find that balance of being able to push them into that optimal zone of performance, but not pushing them too far that they start losing confidence in themselves.

That's a great answer. And it's definitely easier said than done. But I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the leader or the coach has to take responsibility ultimately for that person's performance. And that's just a really great takeaway. What do you hope that— what's like the biggest thing that you hope that readers will take away from your book? And like, how do you envision it like positively impacting their lives?

So I hope it helps people to learn to make better decisions. So I wanted to, A, make it in a really entertaining and suspenseful, engaging way. So I think that's That's how we learn things as humans. We don't learn things from just bullet points. So if all it took was information, we'd all have six packs and be billionaires. I think somebody was saying so. So that's not how we learn. We learn things through experiencing things. But as humans, we learn even more than that. We can learn from other people's experiences. And so that's what I really try to do with the book is to put people in the moment of some of these really complex decisions and break down the ways. I was thinking about it, or it's from key moments in history. I even talk about business decisions as well. So I talk about how Excite.com back in the day failed to buy Google for $750,000. So call that the, uh, the trillion-dollar miss. So clearly some things were, were missed out on that decision. So I want people to be able to, to make better decisions because I do think that decision-making is becoming a more important skill and it's still not taught. in most schools. I think we're moving from the age of management with the Industrial Revolution, which was really designed to help factory workers and to be able to control hundreds or thousands of people in a factory, to now it's about decision-making. Like I said, billion-dollar company with 3 or fewer people, each one of those decisions is far more leveraged. And with AI set to impact the world even more than it has now, I think that's going to be even more of a factor. So I'd really want just people to focus on on how to make better decisions. And I think this is an entertaining and engaging way to do it.

Yeah, well, I think you've done a great job at that in your book. And I'm just in the first few chapters of it, but I can't wait to keep getting into it. It's such a well-written book for sure. So I definitely appreciate you putting the time and effort into writing the book. I know how difficult that is. Nick's in the process of finishing his book. I'm in the process of writing a book. So, uh, coming from some authors, it's a difficult task. So very, very thankful that you took the time to do that for people.

Um, well, thank you. Yeah, it was an immense challenge. It was a 6-year process. I wrote every word in the book. Um, at one point I wrote over 500 days in a row. So I would just sit in this office 4 hours every morning trying to knock out 500 words. I'm a real slow writer. I went through 9 revisions because I wanted to make it as perfect as I could. So, you know, it's great to finally see it get out into the world.

And you narrated it as well. So that's another whole step to the process.

Yeah, I spent months preparing for that because, you know, it's a lot more challenging than at least I thought because most people read for content. They don't read for precision. And so you're trying to read every single word and if you screw up or, your shoelace brushes against your pant, you have to repeat that sentence. And one cool thing with this is I had a chance to, uh, to do parts of it while in a cockpit of a jet. So I think it's the first time any, uh, Audible has done that. So there are, uh, I introduced the, uh, the book as well as introduced different chapters from the cockpit of a jet. That's pretty crazy.

Yeah. And I've seen some photos online of the book up in the air. Already. So that's pretty cool as well.

Yeah.

So Hazard, one of my favorite subjects is the subject of mortality, of death. And as a fighter pilot, I'm sure you're constantly thinking about death. You're in combat. You flew over 80 missions in Afghanistan. So that's constantly on your mind. How do you keep it cool, calm, and collected in the face of mortality? And how do you think about your life? What's your life's purpose moving forward? And how does the role of mortality play into that?

Yeah, that's a, that's a deep question. So as, as fighter pilots, you are kind of always 5 minutes away from your engine failing, having to eject and trying to outrun the Taliban. So who are trying to cut your head off. So, you know, it is a pretty, pretty strange experience because you are above the battlefield. You're in an air conditioner heated jet, but you know, you're always kind of moments away from worst case scenario. And You know, as fighter pilots, you're going to eject by yourself and you're going to be out there alone on the battlefield. So your wingman might be able to stay for about 5 minutes. You know, that's, that's probably about the padding of fuel that we have. And then after that, they're gone and you're running around with a pistol with a whole bunch of groups trying to capture you. So I think for me, it was just focusing on the mission. So just, there've been quite a few near-death moments I've had. Usually they've been kind of close passes with other aircraft with about 1,000 miles an hour of closure. But I think, at least for me, based on the training, everything kind of narrows down and you just focus on how to survive in that moment. And then it's not until afterwards, after you've landed, when you start focusing on, you know, I almost died there, and, you know, what are some of the implications of that? So yeah, every time I've been near in a near-death situation, everything is kind of just honed in, laser-focused, and I haven't felt any fear. And that's not just, you know, trying to be macho or anything like that. Like, I can genuinely, genuinely say that every time that there's a near-death incident, there's no fear at all. And the fear comes several hours later after you've already landed from the jet. So that was— that's the answer to the first part of the question. For the life's purpose, I think now it's being able to— ultimately it's about being able to help people. I think you're only on this earth for, you know, a few short years, and you're— there's not going to be any legacy. Any book that you write is going to fade. Anything that you build, any company is going to fade. So you can only just help other people, and they're going to help other people, and that's really anybody's legacy. So, you know, 99.999% of people aren't going to get remembered. Even the ones that do really don't get remembered as people. So I don't think we really remember, uh, I don't know, uh, George Washington or any of those, you know, older people. We don't think of them as people. We just think of them as like on dollar bills and things like that. So I don't think anybody is truly remembered as a person. You just have to, you know, spread, spread the good, be able to teach people some things, and they'll pass that on to the next generation.

Yeah, very well spoken. I heard somebody recently say Hey, have you ever heard of the Sumerian people? It's like, well, maybe. Well, at one point they were the largest population on planet Earth, and they had kings and queens and royal dignitaries and military leaders, and not a single one of those people, uh, is thought about on a daily or weekly basis by anybody alive today. And so yeah, it really puts things into perspective. And I'm sure that as a fighter pilot, you sort of have to come to grips with that. That chance, the risk that you're going to die before you get in the cockpit every single time.

So yeah, that's why most pilots will, you know, before you go to combat, will write a letter, you know, to their friends and family if something happens. And I think that's a good experience for anybody to do. It really crystallizes, crystallizes, you know, your thoughts and your relationships and what's important and what's not. So I think that was a very cathartic experience. And I think that's something that probably most people don't do. So imagine. You know, what would happen if you died next week? Maybe write a letter to your friends and family and then maybe write an obituary of what you want to be remembered for. I think, I think that could help quite a bit.

Is that part of an annual goal-setting practice or anything that you have in place today?

It's not, but, you know, maybe that's a good idea to do that because I found that to be a very, very good experience and it really helped distill and crystallize what was important to me and what wasn't. Um, so yeah, I think that might be something useful typically for, for most fighter pilots. And I know a lot of people that go into combat, it's just the couple weeks beforehand, but that might be a good practice to carry on.

Great recommendation.

All right. So for my final question, I always like to ask this, and that is if you pass away and all of the knowledge that you've put out, everything that you've done, all the information that you put out everywhere goes away. But you could leave the world with one single piece of advice, what would it be?

Yeah, that's a, that's a challenging question. That's a great one too. Um, so there's a lot of information in the book, but I think I would go a different route. I would say, uh, keep that spark of creativity alive. I think that schools are great, but they often prioritize, uh, Compliance over creativity, and so the real world is quite a bit different than the academic world. And so I think, I think it crushes a lot of people, and I think, I think you know it can be great and it teaches people a lot of things, but it also crushes a lot of people that are maybe more creative and don't do well in the academic world. And I saw it at the, I saw it when I was going through school. I saw it at the Air Force Academy. I've seen it in the military because a lot of things we select. Don't, uh, at least when I was going through, we weeded out a lot of people that were creative. And then those are some of the most important skills when you become an instructor or when you become a senior leader or supervisor or things like that. So I think there's a little bit of a disconnect there. And I think these organizations, schools, businesses can really crush that creativity. And I think, uh, you know, it's our job to, to keep that spark alive.

It's a great answer. I really appreciate it. Well, for our listeners who want to find you, who want to find out where your book is, where can they go? What can they do?

You can, you can find the book anywhere you get books. So it was, it's a Barnes& Noble bestseller, number one Amazon bestseller. It's available pretty much any of those places, Audible for the, you know, kind of the unique Feeling of hearing me narrate it. Social media at Hazard Lee with an S, so H A S A R D Lee L E E. Have a website too, so you can find a lot of cool things on Instagram and LinkedIn and things like that.

Fantastic. Well, Hazard, we appreciate your time so much. It's been a joy talking to you. Such a smart guy, and lots of people have a lot to learn from you. So thank you for putting your wisdom out into the world.

Thank you for having me on.

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