The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #32: Is The Minimum "Okay"?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #32: Is The Minimum "Okay"?

Podcast Information:

• Title: Jocko Podcast
• Host/Author: Jocko Willink (Retired Navy SEAL) and Dave Berke
• Description: Retired Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink and Director, Dave Berke discuss discipline and leadership in business, war, relationships, and everyday life.
• Episode: The Debrief w/ Jocko and Dave Berke #32: Is The Minimum "Okay"?
• Release Date: February 13, 2025

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1. Introduction to Echelon Front and the Podcast's Purpose

In the opening segment ([00:00]), Jocko Willink and Dave Berke introduce their leadership consulting firm, Echelon Front. They highlight the diverse industries they serve, ranging from energy and finance to construction and automotive sectors. The primary focus of their work is to identify and resolve leadership challenges within organizations through detailed debriefs.

Key Points:

• Echelon Front's Reach: Works with every imaginable industry.
• Purpose of the Podcast: To share high-level insights from client debriefs while maintaining confidentiality by altering specific details.
• Client Engagement: Emphasizes solving real-world leadership problems and applying practical solutions.

Notable Quote:

"We teach leadership. That's what we do." — Jocko Willink ([00:35])

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2. The Core Topic: Is The Minimum "Okay"?

The central theme of the episode revolves around the concept of whether performing at minimum acceptable standards is sufficient in a team or organizational setting.

a. Clarifying the Statement

At [01:54], Dave Berke introduces the provocative statement, "The minimum is okay," which initially causes discomfort among listeners and team members alike.

Key Points:

• Misinterpretation: Many perceive the statement as a lack of ambition or low standards.
• Contextual Understanding: Jocko clarifies that the statement isn't meant sarcastically but requires deeper context to be meaningful.

Notable Quote:

"The minimum is okay, assuming all those things are thinking about." — Dave Berke ([07:05])

b. Application in Leadership and Team Dynamics

The discussion progresses to how leaders perceive team members who consistently meet but do not exceed expectations. Jocko and Dave explore the balance between setting high standards and recognizing the value of reliability.

Key Points:

• Reliability vs. Ambition: A team member who is dependable and meets all responsibilities can still be a valuable asset, even if they aren't seeking advancement.
• Understanding Individual Motivations: Leaders should discern whether a team member's lack of ambition stems from personal preference or other factors.
• Strengths and Weaknesses: Emphasis on leveraging individual strengths while compensating for weaknesses within the team structure.

Notable Quote:

"Your strengths can be your weaknesses and your weaknesses can be your strengths." — Dave Berke ([09:30])

c. Real-World Scenario: Handling a Non-Ambitious Team Member

Dave presents a client scenario where a manager struggles with an employee who only performs at the minimum level. The discussion delves into assessing the employee's contributions versus their lack of desire to ascend within the company.

Key Points:

• Assessing Performance: The employee in question is reliable, punctual, and meets all job requirements.
• Potential Reasons for Minimal Effort: Personal satisfaction with the current role, lack of interest in upward mobility, or misalignment with career goals.
• Leadership Strategy: Instead of pushing for promotion, leaders should recognize and accommodate different career aspirations, ensuring that the employee's strengths continue to benefit the team.

Notable Quote:

"If you're a plumber, there are some people that might not be the best actual plumber, but they're really good at... presenting to clients." — Dave Berke ([07:45])

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3. Leadership Insights and Strategies

Jocko and Dave expand on the broader implications of accepting minimum performance as "okay," emphasizing the importance of understanding team dynamics and individual motivations.

a. The Importance of Q&A Sessions

They stress the value of open communication channels, particularly Q&A sessions during client consultations, to uncover underlying issues and apply leadership principles effectively.

Key Points:

• Real Relevance: Addressing real-time, specific challenges faced by clients rather than hypothetical situations.
• Tailored Solutions: Applying leadership theories to practical, unique problems within each organization.

Notable Quote:

"The Q and A is important." — Dave Berke ([03:32])

b. Balancing Team Composition

The hosts discuss the necessity of building a team that balances diverse strengths and compensates for individual weaknesses, ensuring overall effectiveness and cohesion.

Key Points:

• Complementary Skills: Assigning roles based on individual strengths to enhance team performance.
• Adaptability: Being flexible in leadership approaches to accommodate various personality types and work styles.

Notable Quote:

"Instead of judging them, I say, oh, Dave's really good at meeting and greeting people. Really bad at follow up. Okay, cool." — Dave Berke ([10:32])

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4. Relating Professional Leadership to Personal Life

Towards the end of the transcript ([08:55]), Jocko draws parallels between leadership in professional settings and personal relationships, emphasizing the universality of leadership principles.

Key Points:

• Personal Accountability: Applying leadership strategies to family and personal interactions.
• Building Support Systems: Strengthening relationships by focusing on mutual strengths and providing support where needed.

Notable Quote:

"Instead of focusing on those things, Help them out, build your team and support each other and everything will end up much, much better." — Dave Berke ([10:48])

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5. Conclusion and Call to Action

In the closing remarks, Jocko and Dave encourage listeners to engage with their various platforms for further leadership training and consultancy services.

Key Points:

• Resources Provided:
  • Website: extremeownership.com for online training.
  • Consultancy Services: echelonfront.com for in-organization leadership solutions.
• Additional Ventures: Mention of other associated websites like jockeyfuel.com, jocastore.com, and originusa.com.
• Final Encouragement: "Now go lead." — A motivational send-off to empower listeners to apply discussed principles.

Notable Quote:

"That's all we got for now. So thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead." — Dave and Jocko ([10:48])

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Key Takeaways:

1. Understanding Minimum Performance: Recognizing that while striving for excellence is vital, there is value in team members who reliably meet expectations without seeking advancement.

2. Tailored Leadership: Effective leadership involves assessing individual motivations and leveraging strengths while compensating for weaknesses within the team.

3. Open Communication: Regular Q&A sessions are crucial for uncovering real issues and applying leadership principles to concrete problems.

4. Balanced Team Dynamics: Building a team with complementary skills ensures overall effectiveness and minimizes the impact of individual deficiencies.

5. Applicability Across Domains: Leadership principles discussed are universally applicable, extending beyond professional environments into personal and family relationships.

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This episode of The Jocko Podcast delves deep into the nuanced understanding of team dynamics, emphasizing that while high standards are essential, recognizing and valuing the reliability of team members who consistently perform at the minimum acceptable level is equally important. Through real-world scenarios and reflective discussions, Jocko and Dave provide actionable insights for leaders aiming to build cohesive and effective teams.

Transcript

[A]

This is the Jocko debrief podcast, episode 32 with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. We have a leadership consulting company. It's called Echelon Front, and we work with clients from every different type of industry imaginable. I think we literally work with every type of industry, whether it's energy, whether it's finance, whether it's insurance, whether it's construction, manufacturing, just automotive. Every. We work with every different type of industry, and we work with these different companies and we teach leadership. That's what we do. And so when we work with these companies, obviously they run into leadership problems. And then we, as a company, Echelon Front, we debrief those problems so that we all understand what's happening with the client, how we overcome those issues, what leadership solutions we use and utilize to solve their problems, and then all of us can learn. So at a certain point a while back, we decided we might as well make these debriefs, at least some of the high points from these debriefs, accessible to more people. That's why we started this little podcast. And what we do is because we have. We want to respect our clients, we change the details of the situation. So we'll usually use a different industry. We'll change. So that way their. Their issues inside their organization aren't revealed to the world. Yeah. So, and it's interesting, we do a good. Really good job of that, because I've had people in the companies that we're talking about talk about the debrief that we did and say, oh, yeah, that sound like those guys had a similar thing to us. Yo, they. They did. You know, so. So that's what we're doing. Thanks for joining us. All right, Dave, let's debrief. What do you got?

[B]

The minimum is okay. And that's. That's hard sometimes to think about that. It's just like you were talking about.

[A]

Hold on, I'm going to rephrase that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You just said the minimum is okay. What you meant is the minimum is okay.

[B]

Exactly right.

[A]

It wasn't. It's not a sarcastic statement. It's not a setup. You're literally saying the minimum is okay.

[B]

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think that as we probably made.

[A]

A bunch of people shudder right there. Right? There's a bunch of people. What are you talking about? That's not who I want at my company.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Well, we don't necessarily want that at our company, but we end up with that sometimes. Yeah.

[B]

And it's. It's a topic that the whole point of that, that little sound bite at the minute was okay, is because that's a hard thing to hear sometimes. That's exactly the point of why we're talking about this. Because that doesn't sound right when you hear it. That doesn't sound right. I don't say, hey, strive for the minimum, you'll be good to go. I don't think like that. I don't say like that. But. But there's some context that's really required. And just like you were talking about too, though, is at every event we do at Echelon Front, when we're on site with the clients, we always allocate time for Q and A. And we say that that's really the most important part of what we do is the Q and A. Because that lets clients ask us questions about what's really going on. Sometimes we explain at the very beginning we got some theory, some background, some history. But if, if you're my client and you ask me a question about a micromanag, that's not a made up, hypothetical situation. That's a real thing you got going on. And that lets us take the principles we teach and apply them to the real things you got going on. That's why the Q and A time that we spent is so important, because it's real relevant situations.

[A]

Yeah, it's harder than you would think for people to transpose what they hear us say or what they read in the book and transpose that into what's actually happening in their world. You see this a lot with your kids. You know, you teach your kids one lesson that obviously so obviously applies to a bunch of other things, but when they're young, it's hard for them to figure that out. So it's the same, same thing with all of us. We don't recognize. We don't have quite the pattern recognition that we think we should have. And so that's why we get asked questions. Even though we talk about, you know, we could. We could be talking about COVID move and how operations has to support sales. And then, you know, we'll get asked a question. Well, and not only does operation have to support sales, but sales has to support operations. We have to work together as a team. And we'll make that so clear in our minds. And they'll nod their head and say, absolutely. And then they'll say, hey, you know, we got a problem with our marketing group not working well with finance. And you know, it's. Yep. Yeah. So that's why The Q and A is important.

[B]

Yeah, it's super important. That's one of our favorite things to do. So here's a question. This is what came up. Here's what he said. I have a guy on my team I can't get to promote. He's stuck in the same role, has no interest in growing in the company. He just wants to do the minimum and nothing beyond what's expected. I don't get it. What's his issue? So I'm paraphrasing. That's essentially the question he asks. And listen, that's a fair question. Same thing we just talked about. Especially coming from someone, the person who asked this, this person's grown the company, they've been promoted, they started off at the beginning, they're now in a managerial role and he wants the same thing for his people. So the way that he's asking the question, I totally understand that. So it's worth the conversation because he's not alone in that. Getting other people try to get them to elevate and promote. The standard should be high. The standard should be high and we should have high expectations for our team. But we don't want to begrudge the people that don't exceed that standard. That's why it's the standard. And so some things that came out in this conversation. Does this guy do a good job? Yes. Does a good job. Is he meeting expectations? Yes, he's meeting expectations. Is he reliable? Absolutely. He's always on time, he's always where he needs to be. He shows up. This is a guy we can count on. So you have all these positive of attributes and so you can see how the intent is. Oh, this is a type of person I want him to elevate because he's doing all these things. So great. So what's the problem? Well, the other side of the story is, is the problem and it's good. Here's some comments we've heard from folks not just on that team, but we hear this all the time. And I, and I know there's going to be some experiences you had in the teams as a seal that I had in the military, in the Marine Corps as well. Some of the pushback. I like being a frontline guy, I like that work, I like the hands on work and I don't want to get promoted to a desk. Okay, Roger, here's a direct quote from, from this guy's company. Being a PM Project manager sounds like a nightmare. No thanks. So the next thing up is something that he looks up because that doesn't look like the kind of want work I want to do. My boss wants me working on strategic things. That's not my intent, that's not my strength. I like to be on the ground. So you've got this other side of that story about these people doing good work, meeting the expectations, doing all the things you want, right. That don't have a desire to do other things. So in this case, you think about it like maybe he's right, maybe, maybe getting promoted isn't worth a salary increase. Maybe it's just not what he wants to do. But, but most of the time, most of the time you've got a young kid who's doing good work and you invest in them most of the time and you show them a path and you reveal the opportunities they're going to want. That, that's true for a lot of people. And we as a leader, we recommend that if you're new to my team, I want you to see the long term path of your potential success where you could end up, how you can grow, how you can take on more responsibility and how you can contribute and that that's how it usually happens, but not all the time. And it's just not how it is all the time. And I was thinking back in my experience in the Marine Corps, in aviation, more responsibility, what that meant was less flying. And a lot of people wanted to fly airplanes. And I was thinking like as a seal, it had to be the same for you, is like, you know what, the more responsible you have, the less time you're gonna shoot and blow things up. And, and that's okay for some people, but for other people it's not. In the army, army aviation has a rank called warrant officer, designed specifically for the people. That guy for that guy, I just want to fly airplanes. And you know what? Good. We need people flying airplanes. So don't spend too much time worrying about that. There's some things you need to think about though. Some potential risks that this person needs to know. Maybe over his career that means less money. Maybe he gets assigned to some less impactful projects, maybe gets less benefits, less influence, less control. Things that we might think we want, we have to at least explain. If you're going to stay in this role. These are the things you might lose out on and let them decide whether that's important. Less chance to promote as their bosses roll in and roll out. You got to acclimate to a new boss every time. Sometimes that means less freedom, sometimes it means boss. You don't like Working for your performance reviews are going to reflect your lack of interest, elevating. And really, all of that is okay. All of that is okay. Assuming your minimum is good. And I know how it was for me in my career and I'm sure I know how it was for the seals is the minimum. Standard is a pretty good standard. So if your folks are meaning that, that's okay. And that's what we mean by the minimum. The minimum is okay. Assuming all those things are thinking about.

[A]

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, you get someone that is in a part of their career, part of their life, where they got young kids and they want to be going to every wrestling match, whatever, it's like, I don't want that. I don't want to have my phone on a, on a Saturday and have that thing ring and me have to go in and solve some problems. I work from 9 to 5. And you know, you, you get that, that sometimes this question comes in the form of, you know, I got a guy, five o'clock every day, he's the first guy out the door and they begrudge them. And I get it right, I get it. But at the same time, did he show up on time? Did he get his work complete? Like those questions you ran through. Did he show up on time? Did he get his work complete? Is he going to be there on Monday at 9:00 in the morning when we open up? Is he going to be there ready to go and if that's a yes, yes, yes, yes. Man, I got a reliable, good, solid person and I like it. I know that there's other military units in the world where if you like being a platoon sergeant, you can stay there. Yeah. And that's awesome. The SEAL teams is not like that, is very difficult. I don't know. I mean, let's say you were a pilot that really liked to fly. You don't have a choice in the Marine Corps, do you? Really?

[B]

Not, not forever, no. It's, you know, there's that up and out. I mean, you can't just say a captain flying fighters. There are certainly different paths. I was thinking, you know, this, but, you know the BlackBerry, you remember the BlackBerry?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

In the Marine Corps, at one point.

[A]

When I was the Admiral's aide, I had two blackberries, one unclassified and one classified.

[B]

Yeah, well, then you know where I'm going with this because you know what comes of that is when you get promoted and then you get assigned a particular job, like you're now in charge of all of Operations for the squadron. You know what you get? You get a BlackBerry.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And what comes along with that is 24 hour day. When that thing rings, you answer it. So if you're your kids wrestling match on Saturday, the BlackBerry rings, you're answering it. And, and yeah, I get it. I had several blackberries just like you did. And, and there are some pros and cons that come along with that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. The SEAL teams is the same way. Like you are going to get promoted. And if you're not looking to get promoted, you're, you're gonna get, you're gonna get higher tenure. You're gonna have to get out of the military because you can't get promoted unless you get this certain job. And if you don't get that certain job, you don't get promoted. Now you stay in this rank and after a certain amount of time at a certain rank there, you're going to have to get out. Now look, in the SEAL teams, I'll probably figure out a way to make it happen. But you know, BTF Tony, he didn't want to. He, he would have stayed a platoon chief indefinitely. And you know, quite frankly, I would have been a platoon commander over and over and over and over and over again. I'm sure Leif would have done the same thing. I'm sure Stoner would have done the same thing. You think Leif wanted to go back and be an operations officer? Hell no. No, not a chance. It's very, there's people that are in the SEAL teams where, you know, they look at getting a commission and they go, why would I want to get a commission? Well, I like, I like being, I like the job of being a seal. And when you get a commission, your, your time of doing that specific hands on job of being a SEAL is not very long. It's maybe 10 years if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it might be a couple deployments. If you're lucky, maybe you could do four or five deployments like that. So it is definitely. I don't think it's optimal, I don't think it's optimal that they promote people. The other thing is there's some people that would actually be, I'm sure you knew people that were like okay pilots and great squadron commanders. Yep. Right. And same thing in the SEAL teams. You'd have a guy that was like, hey, the guy wasn't the most like shooter, but damn, he was a good, good platoon commander. Good task, you know, commander, good commanding officer. You know, the, the Absolute guy you want to send to go and brief some, you know, brigade commander about what you guys, what capability you have. You want to send that guy, even though they're not the best at it. But it's okay. So there's some people we think, ah, this guy, we could probably put that guy in a pretty good spot. And just like, you know, if you're a. If you're a plumber, there's. There's some people that might not be the best actual plumber. They might not be the best at soldering, but they're really good at figuring out the books and presenting to clients and going in and talking and saying, yeah, we can remodel this bathroom for you. Here's what we got. So, unfortunately, that's not the way the world always works. But the point of this is, hey, keep that in mind. And this actually flows right into the thing that I want to talk about today. So the thing I wanted to talk about today is there's. There's this quote from David Lee Roth. You know David Lee? I do. He gave some really good quotes. One of his. One of his quotes that I really like was, money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you a boat big enough to sail right up next to it. Which I always thought was a good quote. But he also had another quote, and it was. His quote was, I'm not like this because I'm in Van Halen. I'm in Van Halen because I'm like this. Yeah, so David Lee Roth, you know, he was this super kind of flamboyant lead singer that did acrobatic moves, and he had long feathered hair, and he had wore headbands and spandex outfits, and he loved the camera and the attention. And he's a great front man because of it. He was great. But that stuff didn't always land great with the rest of the band. And there was a lot of tension. There was a lot of drama around it. And they. He ended up leaving the band. And I forget if he was kicked out or if he left or was mutual or whatever, but, you know, this was after their biggest hit album, 1984, which. Do you remember when 1984 came out? I mean, that was 100, the radio and MTV, 24 hours a day. Just a massive hit. And he left the band for whatever. I forget if it was mutual. I forget if he left. I forget if they fired him. But they just couldn't get along. Why? Because he acted like David Lee Roth. But the reason he was there is because he was David Lee Roth. And one of the reasons for they had all that popularity was because he was David Lee Roth. And that was his point. He's like, I'm not acting like this because I'm in Van Halen. No, I'm in Van Halen because I act like this. And so the band after he left was never, in my opinion, never as good. Again, no offense to Sammy Hagar. They. They made some great albums, right? They made some great albums. But if you want to get Prime Van Halen, you're going with that OG lineup. So it's an important thing to remember. And again, this ties into everything that we're talking about, is that people are who they are and they're going to have good elements and they're going to have bad elements about them. Because, you know, if. If you. If you work for me, Dave, and you show up every day on time and you do a good job in this task that you have, and you're super reliable, but you don't want to get promoted. I can view that as a negative, right? I can be like, oh, he doesn't want any more responsibility. What's wrong with him? It's like, no, actually, there's nothing wrong with him. He's got the job that he likes. He's good at it. He's naturally gifted at whatever that thing is. Why don't I let him do it? And the other thing you have to remember is that your strengths can be your weaknesses and your weaknesses can be your strengths. Like if you're David Lee Roth and you feel like you're the center of the universe, and so you're like, I want to, you know, I want my song to be on this position of the album. Guys are like, no, we don't like that. Well, now we have a problem. So the fact that he loved being the center of attention so much was very beneficial when he was going out on stage to entertain thousands and thousands of people. But it was terrible when he was trying to get along with his other bandmates. So we have strengths and weaknesses, and oftentimes our strength is our weakness and our weakness is our strength. So the creative person that you have at your company that doesn't follow the rules really well, right? Or the highly disciplined person that follows all the rules, but they have no creative thought, that's a problem. Or the high energy person that's always super engaged and excited and they talk too much, right? So it's great to have them and it's great when we need energy. But Then they won't shut up. They don't know when it's time to shut up. Or the low energy person that doesn't know like, oh, we actually need input right now. Or the person that's really good at speaking but is really bad at paperwork. Or the paperwork guru, right, that can't get up and brief anybody. Or the social butterfly that's really good at building relationships but has no follow through. So it's great. He goes out and meets a bunch of clients and sets up a bunch of appointments, but then doesn't ever follow through and doesn't ever go to the appointments and we lose a bunch of business. Or the guy that's really good at execution but he can't carry on a conversation with someone. So this goes on and on. And it's not, it's, you know, it's generally, it's not always as extreme as that. Like, person like, oh, they are really good socially, but they're, but they're a terrible fall through. It's normally not an extreme like that. But they'll have certain strengths and certain weaknesses, they'll have certain deficiencies and certain shirt falls. And so what we have to do, what we have to remember. And by the way, we all have our own shortfalls and deficiencies. But as leaders, instead of looking at them and saying, oh, you don't want to get promoted, you're not a good person, instead of judging them or saying, oh, you're not good at briefing Dave, you're a terrible person. No, no, no, instead of judging them, I say, oh, okay, Dave's really good at meeting and greeting people. Really bad at follow up. Okay, cool. I'm going to put someone on his team that's really good at follow up. Or Dave's really good at follow up, but he's not good at talking to people. Okay, I'm going to give him someone on his team that's really good at communication and we fill the voids and we counter the deficiencies so that, so that we can have the best possible team. And by the way, this applies to, not just to work, this applies to life as well. Because, you know, look, my wife of course is 100% perfect, right? And I know your wife is 100% perfect. But let's say for instance, hypothetically, you had a wife that wasn't 100% perfect. Maybe she had some shortfalls. And if that happens, what are you gonna do about it? Well, I hope what you do is instead of focusing on those shortfalls and pointing them out all the time. I hope you just fill in the gaps. And you know what? Your kids, your kids are not going to be perfect. Your kids are going to have deficiencies. They're not. They're going to be doing some things that you think, what are you, why can't you do this better? Instead of focusing on those things, you can try and strengthen those areas up, bolster those areas if you can, like, oh, they're not doing that great academically. Maybe you can get them a tutor, you can try and help them out. But to say, oh, the kid's never going to do anything good, it's like wrong, wrong call. So don't focus on those things, Help them out, build your team and support each other, compliment each other and everything will end up much, much better. And that's we got. And if you want to dig any deeper onto these aspects of leadership in any arena, whether that's your home, whether that's your, your work, your community, you can join us. Well, actually you can go to extreme ownership.com we have a, we have a online training academy@extreme ownership.com and we solve problems through leadership. We teach all these different skills there. We also have our leadership consultancy which is echelonfront.com we can come inside your organization and we can help you with your leadership scenarios and when you have problems inside your organization, their leadership problems, we can help you sort those out. Written a bunch of books about leadership as well and well, you can check them out. We also have jockey fuel.com jocastore.com and origin usa.com for other, other little things that we have happening. That's all we got for now. So thanks for listening to the debrief. Now go lead. This is Dave and Jocko out.