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Veterans know how to lead. The lessons we learned in the military form the foundation for bigger successes in business, entrepreneurship and community.
Host John S Berry, CEO of Berry Law, served as an active-duty Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with two deployments and retiring as a Battalion Commander in the National Guard. Today, his veteran led team at Berry Law, helps their clients fight some of the most important battles of their lives. Leading successful teams in the courtroom, the boardroom, and beyond, veteran leadership drives the firm’s rapid growth and business excellence.
Whether building teams, synchronizing operations, or refining tactics, we share our experiences, good and bad, to help you survive, thrive and dominate.
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[00:00:00.000] - Jody Daniels
How many ex-marines do you know? There's not a one out there in the world. They're former marines. They're not an ex-marine. But we, the army, talk about getting out all the time. I pushed on senior leadership during my last four years to talk about transition, because if you're going to be a soldier for life, then you don't get out. It's going to be a part of your culture, part of your DNA for life. Let's at least talk about it that way.
[00:00:22.230] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Lieutenant General Retired Jody J. Daniels. General Daniels served as the 34th Chief of Army Reserve and the ninth Commanding General of the US Army Reserve Command. She is the first woman to command the Army Reserve. In addition, Lieutenant General Daniels' key assignments have included the J2 Deputy Director of Intelligence and Knowledge Development for Africa Command and the Assistant Chief of Staff for the US Africa Command. After completing more than 41 years of military service, Dr. Dr. Daniels has served as the Director of Advanced Programs for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Labor. Welcome to the show, Dr. Daniels.
[00:01:10.390] - Jody Daniels
Thank you so much. It's really an honor to be here, and I'm excited to have this conversation.
[00:01:14.970] - John S. Berry
At Veteran Lead, we love to talk to veterans who have not only succeeded in their military careers, but have built even bigger, better futures. You've done that. But let's go back to the beginning. You're the first woman to command the US Army Reserve. What was that experience like?
[00:01:34.230] - Jody Daniels
It was phenomenal. I mean, it was just truly exciting. I was responsible for about 188,000 soldiers and about 11,000 civilians. I had a four-year tenure started in COVID. How much more fun can that be when everyone is just trying to figure out how to make our way through this? It was really a bit of a challenge to come out of COVID, to get back into in-person training. Then my big challenge was to get people out of being hyper-focused on all the administrative metrics that you could do from a distance, back into getting out and doing what I called tough, realistic training done safely. That was how my tenure unfolded.
[00:02:15.750] - John S. Berry
Okay, so I see how this is going. The metrics, we used to say pencil whip, where there would be metrics-based. People would pencil whip the training, and then it would be like, Oh, well, we met our metrics. Tpu, we're trained, but no, you're not. Okay, so how did you make that? And by the way, you have a great article about that called Changing Culture that talks specifically about it. And I want to dive right into this because this fascinates me. As an infantry officer, it was always about the metrics. What's your PT score? Let's talk about height and weight. Let's talk about whether you qualified at the range. Let's talk about all the weapon systems that you're qualified on, what you're not qualified on. And it became so much about metrics, especially for the operations officer. How do you change culture to say, yes, metrics are very important, but they don't necessarily mean that we're ready to fight a war.
[00:03:06.150] - Jody Daniels
It's like, what are the right metrics? Are you looking at administrative stuff? Have we done all our mandatory training? Are you looking at number of people that have Are you positioned out of the unit with your turnover rate? Or are you looking at how many people have gotten to the range? How many are qualified? Are they proficient in their skills? Are they doing the training that we need to be able to execute the mission in the future? Are the systems themselves ready to go? Are they up? Are we doing our best? Are we using them? One of the classic ones that I used to fight with you was like, My OR rate is 99%. I'm like, You're freaking lying. There's no way. It's not possibly that number. If it is, that means you're not using your system because you're not ordering parts, probably. I found a unit that had this pristine system. It was still in the freaking shrink wrap. I was like, That's not an OR rate of 100%. Your usage metric is zero. You all aren't proficient. Get it out. I'd say, Use your systems. Break it in. Don't break it, but break it in.
[00:04:08.740] - Jody Daniels
Use it, be proficient in it. You had to look at what metrics were applicable for readiness. That was the challenge.
[00:04:16.860] - John S. Berry
Okay, yeah, I remember that. I was a mechanized Infantry Platoon Leader, and I remember in my OER, it was all about your OR rating, your operational readiness, and the goal was like 90%. But we never hit E. Right.
[00:04:31.460] - Jody Daniels
But that's okay if you're using it. Do people know how to repair? Are the mechanics trained? Are the users trained in using? Are the mechanics trained in maintaining? Because you've broken it every now and then, because your parts wore out because you were doing... And so then if everyone is using the equipment, then your proficiency is up in both using and maintaining. If you've got a great OR rate, but people aren't actually touching the equipment, what's the value?
[00:04:58.090] - John S. Berry
I think that's a brilliant distinction. So then, General Daniels, how do we, as leaders, figure that out? How did you figure out? Well, wait a minute. There's no way that this is right. Did you go to the motor pool? Did you inspect the equipment? How did you know that this was, for lack of a better term, bullshit?
[00:05:15.540] - Jody Daniels
Well, first of all, anything that was... But with the amount of money that the Army Reserve receives, we are not funded to a 1020 standard. We are funded to a lower level. I'm not expecting people to be at that 90%. So if you're achieving that, I want to know why and how you got there. And if you did, that's awesome. What lessons can we take from you to pass to other people? Then certain pieces of equipment, you just expected them to be in the black. They were very finicky, hypersensitive pieces of equipment that had to have the right humidity in the sun, had to be at the right angle. I mean, they were just really fussy. If you were telling me that you were up out of the black, how did you get there? We're going for lessons learned not so much to find that people were lying or that they were deficient in doing anything, but what could be spread across the force? That helped unfold some realities. Also, it busts some myths about the standard we wanted you to maintain.
[00:06:15.240] - John S. Berry
Yeah. So what rank did you learn that? Because I know at the battalion level, the S3 and the XO were all over us about the OR rating and the readiness and all. But obviously, it takes a more mature leader. At what rank were you when you figured this out?
[00:06:27.180] - Jody Daniels
That's why I published the paper, which was moving from metrics to readiness. Because I could tell that across the force, everybody was that hyper-focused on all the admin stuff that we did during COVID. People were hyper-focused on PHAs. Got to get your PHA numbers. You had brigade commanders doing name tape level of physical health assessments. I'm like, Really? This is how we're spending our precious amount of time. You get basically 16 hours in a weekend, maybe 18, plus a little bit in between, and then your two weeks, why are you hyper-focused on something that isn't readiness? It's not a readiness metric. It's not going to help you fight the battle. That's why I wrote the paper. I crafted it, put a lot of time and effort, got it critiqued, and then put it out to the force, published it, and said, All right, everyone at Echelon needs to read this. Then I briefed it to the one on the two stars at command session with them and said, Okay, get the yes, no. Hey, we're not going to focus on some of these things. Here's some things we do need to focus on. Everybody on board, or Tell me why you're not on board.
[00:07:38.710] - Jody Daniels
Tell me what we need to change. Then I went every pre-command course for battalion, brigade-level commanders, sergeant majors, talking to them month after month after month because those people change out. Company commander, first sergeant course. I got to talk to those every other week. I spend half an hour with them and say, Here's my priorities. Get on it. Have you any issues with that? Then I would ask them, I said, So how many of you are doing weekly metrics calls? It was interesting early on, you got a ton of hands going up. I'm like, Okay, are they focused on the right things? Mostly no. All right, well, here's what I want you to focus on. You got an issue, you go to that battalion commander, you show them the paper and you say, This is what the three-star said. Why are we doing something the three-star said not to do? Then Interestingly enough, about a year into this, I would see how many hands go up, and the numbers dropped over time. Then I would ask, Okay, so who is willing to anonymously... I will anonymize you, but tell me what brigade you are in.
[00:08:44.500] - Jody Daniels
From your company level, what brigade are you in? I would go to the two-star commander and tell them where they had a problem. They're like, No, we told them, we talked about we're not supposed to be doing that. Why are they doing these meetings? I'm like, I don't know. You tell me. It's happening.
[00:08:58.100] - John S. Berry
It's your unit.
[00:08:59.470] - Jody Daniels
It's You tell me. It was really good to have that. I protected all the Company Commander's first sergeants that were letting me know this was happening out in the field. I would send them. Here's what I sent. I would just send a second message saying, Here's what I sent to You're a two-star commander. Here's the message. So you know what happened. I didn't dime anybody out in specific. I dimed out the brigade in the middle that was hosting the event.
[00:09:24.410] - John S. Berry
A dime dropped is a dime well spent. Oh, yeah. Amazing, ma'am. There are a lot of great, great lessons in this. I think one is how information trickles down, and as a leader, how we really need to sometimes skip levels down to make sure it is interpreted because they hear it, yeah, whatever. But I think the other piece, and I know you were in Kosovo. I was in Bosnia. I was there as an active duty Infantry Officer, and I experienced it from the active duty side. Then I was a reserve component Company Commander that deployed to Iraq. The difference I noticed, when we would ramp up as active duty. It was pretty easy. Okay, we're going to go to the National Training Center or JRTC. We've got our whole plan. And then you go to the reserve components. Okay, we're getting ready. And I, as a commander, want to train my company. But there are all these crazy requirements coming down from the top that have nothing to do with training, have very little to do with readiness. And my best, my soldiers would get very disgruntled about it. I'd say, Look, here's the deal.
[00:10:26.150] - John S. Berry
You're being paid right now to be ready. So come here in tape, take care of yourself, take care of your body, take care of your family. I will try to pack in as much training and get rid of this extraneous stuff. If we have to do it, we have to check the box or do it. But the thing you can control is your readiness to deploy, your physical readiness, your family readiness plan. Those are the things you can control. Don't get frustrated. Yes, we're going to do some stupid briefings for four hours. I have no control over that. I'll try to get us to the field. I'll try to do this. But in the end, what you need to know is we will get you the training when we can get you the training within the higher echelons requirements. But what I love about what you did, ma'am, is you cut through all that garbage, went straight to the commanders and said, Look, I get it. You're the commanders. You're in charge. Here's what you need to do. You're looking at the wrong stuff. We are going to fight a war, and I'm going to help you do it.
[00:11:17.870] - John S. Berry
I love the fact that you were able to do that because too often, we've had commanders and bosses who make us worry about the stupid stuff that doesn't win wars and doesn't save lives.
[00:11:28.930] - Jody Daniels
The other piece of that is going to the two stars and going, Oh, by the way, do you realize that you have the power to waive mandatory training? By regulation, every two-star commander can waive mandatory training. By 600-20, it's right in there. What is it? Dash nine, whatever the manual is, I'm drawing a blank right now. It's in there in writing, and they're like, Really? I'm like, Yes. I had learned that. I had done some of that. When I was a two-star commander, I put out the memo, said, Here's what I'm waiving, here's why. We'll do it every the other year instead of every year because we just don't have enough time. Here are the things I'm dropping down in priority. The metrics will suffer. Yeah, I don't care. I'll take the hit. You guys do the other stuff that you need to do, that's proficiency and range is based, and I'll take the hit on the admin and all the mandatory stuff. And they were like, oh, wow, cool.
[00:12:21.310] - John S. Berry
Yeah. I think in the civilian world, it's actually a little bit easier to simplify because the question becomes like, Okay, how does this affect our bottom line? How does this make money. And so when you look at the metric, it's like, wait a minute. Why are we looking at this silly stuff? It's not moving the needle forward. It's not helping us grow. It's not achieving our vision statement. It's not making money. Why are we doing it? So I want to transition now to Dr. Daniels, the Director of Advanced Programs for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Labor. Now, it seems to me you probably took some of this with you. So tell me about that, the transfer of your changing culture and caring more about readiness and metrics. How did you take that to Lockheed Martin?
[00:13:00.280] - Jody Daniels
Well, it was the other way around because I had left Lockheed in around 2011. I continued service. I had actually retired in 2011, and then I failed at that when I came back on a full-time status in 2012. But while I was there working with the engineers, you looked at what was important. We were a research lab. We're trying to take things that have been developed in laboratories and sanitary environments and take it out to a apply research, take it out to the field, get it messy, get it dirty, get and try it and use it. How do you get all of that done? It's really messy because you have these, what you think are the user requirements until you brought in and actually use a user, get to a user and they're like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to do this. You're like, oh. Getting all of the teams together, who was the most skills, the most proficiency to be able to get the product put together? We were doing You've a spoken language system with Marines out in the field, and you've trained up this language system. You've got to go in.
[00:14:05.430] - Jody Daniels
The first thing that happens is the Marine goes, Gunny needs ammo. Yeah, that wasn't in the model. Okay, so how do we adapt? How do we overcome? How do we bring that in and how do we do it? Having that focus on what's important, how do we make sure we get to that, is what applied back over into the service. Because you don't have a lot of time with those users. You got to focus, focus, focus, and then come back and adjust. It's that adjusting part. You're continuously adjusting, continuously changing that you've got to remember in the military, you've got rules, but you've got to continuously adjust and adapt as you go.
[00:14:40.340] - John S. Berry
Yeah, outstanding. I think for some of us, let's just go with the stereotype, which is a lot of times in the reserve component. And this was totally true before 9/11. Being active duty deployed, we would work with the guard and reserve, and we were like, Okay, this is team B. These guys don't know. They don't know what they're doing. And then you get post-9/11, and I Listen, like I said, now I'm in the National Guard and working side by side with active duty and reserve components. And the dynamic changed. And you would see people with amazing civilian skills come out there. Actually, one of my tech officers, when I was a battalion commander for the Officer and Warn Officer Canada School, he had the top engineer battalion in theater. I'm sorry, top engineer company in theater, and he was a guardsman. Now, he ran a nuclear power plant as a civilian, so you can see where maybe he had some leadership. But what I noticed, pre-911, you had people who had come to the reserve component, hang on, maybe not have a real job, or their civilian job was much lower than their military job.
[00:15:44.530] - John S. Berry
But after 911, I saw... I mean, E4s with specialists, E4s with PhDs. It was amazing to me the amount of talent that was coming through our pipelines. I mean, as a young infantry officer in the '90s, I would ask most of my 18-year-old soldiers, Well, why did you join the army? Sir, it was either this, Burger King or Job Corps. And that was it. And those were the options. But then you get post-9/11, you get some really talented people. But also in the reserve component, I saw just a tremendous amount of talent coming together to serve. So I'd love to talk about your journey, your reserve component officer, but you're also at Lockheed Martin. You're also a I have a doctorate degree. So for those veterans that are getting out but want to stay in the reserve component, how do they reach your level of success, or at least try. Sure.
[00:16:40.230] - Jody Daniels
So I started on active duty, did seven and a half years on active duty. I was a computer scientist, I was a Carnegie Mellon grad with the undergraduate in math, computer science, did a number of years of service, and then I was in a special access program and was super frustrated because the way you get a computer scientist wound up is you Okay, you, captain, are going to write requirements so that other people can code. I mean, seriously, come on now. I will also say, I didn't get out. I transitioned. Because how many ex-marines do you know? There's not a one out there in the world. They're former marines. They're not an ex-Merine. But we, the army, talk about getting out all the time. I pushed on senior leadership during my last four years to talk about transition, because if you're going to be a soldier for life, then you don't get It's going to be a part of your culture, part of your DNA for life. Let's at least talk about it that way. When I went off to grad school and had a great experience there, I was suddenly the person at University of Massachusetts in Amherst that was the army person because I had done some service.
[00:17:48.680] - Jody Daniels
I was expected to know all there was to know about service, which was very challenging. Made me think a little bit carefully about what words I used and how I spoke because I had been a little bit looser up until then. I got really a lot more careful with how I was speaking and continued in my reserve service and then went off to Lockheed Martin and was bringing both those careers together. It was great fun to be able to have that civilian career with these great engineers doing advanced technology projects, then to be able to go over into the military weekends to see who all was there doing. I ended up going into a Civil Affairs Unit and doing a deployment over to Kosovo. I thought I was going to have my summer free. I was completely confused on that fact. When I found myself on a hilltop in Pristina in the summer of '99, three weeks after the bombing campaign had ended. But it was an amazing experience for me to go from the intel community, tell no one anything, to civil affairs, tell everybody everything, be open, transparent. That, for me, was a game-changing time in terms of my mental thought process of how do I operate.
[00:19:00.230] - Jody Daniels
Because from being a little bit secretive and cautious to like, Oh, we got to tell everybody everything. I was like, How do I then operate, take this back into my intel world, into my Lockheed Martin world? I really became a change It changed my life to be much more of a sharing person in terms of information. When I eventually, in 2004, went over to Iraq in the role that I was doing there with the Multinational Security Transition Command, I ended up becoming the 411, the information central because I knew who was coming in to source the RFF. I had just lots of information and lots of connections, so I was the Rolodex that people came to. That civil affairs experience changed that mentality in how I generated. Then I use that in the future roles in terms of sharing. Who needs to know? How do we all be successful by passing along information? Not overloading, but making sure that those that had a vested interest got the information and things that they needed to able to be successful.
[00:20:02.070] - John S. Berry
That carries over then as a civilian, right? Did it seem like you were getting more value from one or the other? Or was it all interchangeable, your military career, your civilian career?
[00:20:14.070] - Jody Daniels
My military career helped me in my civilian career because it gave me the military pedigree within a defense contractor. Then my defense contractor experience and exposure and teamwork in the advanced technology lab gave me different sets of communication skills, leadership styles to be successful on the military side. How do you take these other tools in your toolkit and use them in a military environment for success? They were back and forth and they mutually beneficial.
[00:20:43.810] - John S. Berry
Now, if we look In this 41-year career, if you take military civilian, both highly accomplished. I mean, once again, we are talking about the first woman to command the US Army Reserve. Also, like I said, you're serving as a director of a advanced programs for Lockheed Martin's advanced technology laboratories. So both very high-level positions. And so a ton of lessons learned, I'm sure. But what were the leadership principles that stuck with you throughout this 41-year military career?
[00:21:14.970] - Jody Daniels
Interestingly, one of the first things I learned or was beaten into me when I was a Company Commander on active duty over in Korea was work yourself out of a job. I thought that was really strange guidance to be given until I thought about a little bit more and the conversation was, Well, yeah, you want to be able to go on vacation and step away. Your XO, your platoon leaders, your first sergeant need to be able to operate when you're not there. You need to be able to show your trust in them by leaving and going on vacation. You need to be confident when you go on vacation that you're not thinking about what they're up to because you've trained them and worked with them and they know how you think and operate, what you want them to get done. When we come back, they are empowered to make decisions. That was something that held true through all of the rest of my career, both of them, as that goes along with the principle of as you got higher and higher, it's like, do those things first that only you can do. What I mean by that is only you have the authority to sign or to make those decisions or to do that activity.
[00:22:26.150] - Jody Daniels
You cannot delegate it to anyone else because it's not delegatable. To put those things first and then look at what else you can do after that. That causes you to really think through how you allocate your time and how much trust you invest in others and how much training you invest in others to do all those other things to enable you to do those things that you must do. I think that followed through across the echelons. Of course, as you go up the echelons, it gets a bit more abstract, a bit more operational and then strategic as you go through that process. But it holds true as what What can you personally do versus what can you enable others to get done on your behalf?
[00:23:05.520] - John S. Berry
Then we take those principles, and now let's move to the point where you are leading 188,000 soldiers and civilians. What are your key strategies here to keep everybody aligned and to keep everybody ready and just maintain the culture. How do you do that at scale with 188,000?
[00:23:26.650] - Jody Daniels
You put out a paper and you make everybody read it, and then you You talk about it, and then you come up with the two-line mission statement that says, This is the mission. Then you brief that to everybody you talk to at Echelon, and you repeat it, and then you repeat it, and you repeat it some more. Then every time someone asks you a question, you repeat it again. You're continuously sending the same message across the entire time span. You don't deviate from that. You don't change the priorities. You don't give them an option for a second number one or a third number one or a fourth thing that's important. You stick with what you put out the first time and just stay with it to let it sink in and gain some traction. When the junior people say, Well, we're not doing that, then you help them, as I said, go back and rat out their middle management that's not paying attention to the guidance they've been given. But it's a matter of repeating over and that shows them that you really do want them to do that because you're holding the middle leaders accountable as you empower the junior leaders to do what you wanted them to do.
[00:24:28.760] - Jody Daniels
But it's communications, and then all that accountability.
[00:24:32.280] - John S. Berry
Wow. That is a great, concise answer. That probably goes in the veteran-led highlight reel of leadership advice. But it is the mother of influence is repetition. It's just getting clear on it, writing it, getting it to everybody, and then continuing to hammer that message. Wow.
[00:24:52.470] - Jody Daniels
My message was, tough, realistic training, done safely. That's what I want you to do. When I say training, I don't mean just the event itself. You've got the planning meeting, you've got the pre-check, you've got the pre-maintenance, you've got the rehearsals, and then you have the event itself. Then you've got the hot wash, the EAR, and then you've got the post-maintenance check on That's all training, but it's all part of just realistic training done safely. That was it. Go do.
[00:25:22.670] - John S. Berry
It's interesting. I heard a term. One of our clients was a Vietnam veteran, Navy CEO Hill, and he wrote a book, and he was talking about KIT. I'm like, What's that? Killed in training. We don't see as much of that anymore because we have gotten better. We do our draws or our risk assessments. But I think that's tough, realistic training done safely is A lot harder. I love the simplicity of the message because it's so clear and so concise, but to execute is not always as easy when you're executing Bradley table 12 or whatever.
[00:25:54.810] - Jody Daniels
Absolutely. It's much, much harder. But boiling it down to something that resume is at echelon, that's not easy to do either. But once you've got that, you just repeat, repeat, repeat.
[00:26:08.720] - John S. Berry
Yeah, I think too often as leaders, we're trying to be cute and clever and trying to come up with stuff. But being clear and concise and just repetitive. It's not like we make it so hard. I mean, it's difficult to boil it down, but we make it so hard on ourselves.
[00:26:23.790] - Jody Daniels
So Mark Twain, I would have written less if I'd had more time.
[00:26:27.360] - John S. Berry
Right.
[00:26:28.270] - Jody Daniels
So I read many, many books as I assumed my final role in the Army Reserve, and one of them was called Brief. It's the How to make a bigger impression by saying less. I was like, Oh, let me think about this. That really resonated with me, and that's why I put out the paper and I put in graphics in it, and I simplified things down, and it's a fast read. It looks like it's a little bit long, but you can read that very... It's a short lead. But it distilled what I wanted people to carry on and emphasize.
[00:27:07.230] - John S. Berry
Absolutely. I think it was Shakespeare that said, Brevity is the soul of wit. Yes. Okay, then I got that quote right. In your many Command roles. Did you have to adapt your leadership style to different commands and different missions, or did you find that you could generally be the same leader in any command role?
[00:27:23.600] - Jody Daniels
I think I could be the same leader, but it was a matter of adapting the level of activity that you gave out to your various subordinates. I mentioned that you've got to be able to start with what's your priority? Then, again, how do you get those leaders to backfill behind you by giving them the trust, empowering them to make decisions. Again, the type of decision would change at Echelon. The other piece to, I think, being a good leader is make a decision. When it's time to make a decision, then make a decision and go with it. I mean, there are too many people that I have watched that can move into analysis paralysis, as they say, and you can get feedback and ask more questions, more questionable questions, and never actually get to a decision. General Abrams was absolutely brilliant in, What's the last time I have to answer this question? How much time are you giving me to think about this? When do I have to come back to you on this? And so watching some others, but actually having an answer and giving clear guidance. Those were key things. Then that follow-up is also important.
[00:28:36.880] - Jody Daniels
Just that accountability. Are you making progress towards those goals? Or did the goal go out and nobody cared because no one checked up on it? You've seen that happen.
[00:28:47.620] - John S. Berry
Oh, yeah. In business and in the military. Ma'am, what is one of the toughest leadership decisions you had to make during your career, military or civilian?
[00:28:59.700] - Jody Daniels
I I'd say that the UCM military justice is hard. You're dealing with people's lives. Maybe they screwed up, maybe they didn't. They're arguing they didn't. They're arguing there's mitigation, that someone else had an influence or whatever. But trying to decide what really happened. You weren't there. You're getting written reports. Sometimes you'll talk to the individuals. You're doing an in-person Article 15. But what's really hard is, how do get the point across so that they know they've done something wrong without totally destroying them, but being able to rehab them and get them to move forward from whatever happened. I mean, those are hard times.
[00:29:43.250] - John S. Berry
Yeah, especially when you have a high performer, because treat your high performers like your low performers. And you can say that in UCMJ, but let's face it, in the real world, my A players, my high performers, everybody gets my love, but the high performers get my time. I invest much more in the high performers. So if they screw up, I usually know the backstory, and I'm probably going to be more lenient on them than private Snuffy who I never see and who's a low performer. I think that's tough to, I think, to hand out justice in a way that serves everyone and serves the unit. I still don't have the answer for that, but in my commands, I always felt like I could give grace to a high performer more than I could to someone who was mediocre or below average. That's not the right answer, but I always thought that that was in the best interest of the unit because I knew that if I destroyed this high performers morale, all those junior leaders and supporters who look up to him, they're going to feel that. But if there was a way I could do it constructively and help.
[00:30:47.080] - John S. Berry
I would do that. But I agree. That is the toughest part is making those decisions. And as a commander, I loved it when soldiers would come in and say, Sir, can I talk to you? I'd say, Okay, well, if this is a legal problem, I understand that you may be making me, you may be putting me in a position where I have to make decisions. So I highly suggest you go to Jag. And then they said, If this is anything spiritual-related or problems at home, we've got a chaplain. Now, is it either of these two. And I love that, the jag-off from the chapel, because I wasn't qualified to make those decisions, but I also knew those could put me in really bad places. And I learned that the hard way, where I had someone talk to me that it was a marital problem, and it turned out there was another soldier in the unit involved. I was like, Oh, I should have just let this go to the chaplain right away first.
[00:31:34.720] - Jody Daniels
But you learn. And so related to that, the other hard decision is you as a leader are daily assessing and judging your subordinates because you're going to have to rank order them when you evaluate them. And that's hard because you know them, and some of them you just don't want to put above each other because they're both doing great things, but they may be different areas. How do you make that correlation between the two to decide which one's coming out at the top? One of the things I kept harping on to more senior leaders was you've got to be a fair assessment in evaluation. What information does the board need to know? Are you being so that they can make a decision that you're trying to help them make the decision? If you're not clear, then... For example, the top 10% at one point got your highest rating. But if you put people in the top 49% get that most qualified block, and then everybody else is a fully qualified. If you got someone that's a fully qualified and you're saying they're in the top 15%, well, I'm confused because they're in the bottom 50, bottom 51, but you've just said they're a top 15% officer or NCO or whatever.
[00:32:57.760] - Jody Daniels
How do I reconcile that? So Being honest in that language, super hard, because you don't want to say, Don't promote them, because they're still a good person. They may not be the best person. Those are really hard decisions to make, but but need to be made faithfully and with transparency to all those involved. Nothing's worse than getting a fully qualified evaluation, having no clue that it was coming. Having that transparency with people, having those brutally honest discussions, even on the industry side. As a manager and a director of a research lab, I ended up becoming the bad guy. Frequently, I got put in charge of the performance improvement plans with some of our engineers who weren't up to par. You'd have to meet with them weekly and meet with them weekly, and you put out their written goals and how did they do and whatever. There were a couple of times with some senior and some more junior engineers, I'm like, Look, dude, dudette, this is not the place for you. You're a great human being. You're not a failure. You just don't fit in here. Let me help you with your resume. Let me help you with your cover letter.
[00:34:11.280] - Jody Daniels
To help them gracefully exit somewhere else with pride, with respect, even though they're not a match and they're not doing well here, they can do well elsewhere. I took the same approach with the soldiers, which is you can do well, but this is not the right unit, this is not the right job. Maybe it's not even my career field. Maybe you should switch to How do we help you? Or indiscipline being a different matter. What's causing you to have indiscipline? What's the root cause of how do we make you become a better you? But that takes time and effort and energy. And again, those are hard things to do, but worthy investment.
[00:34:47.160] - John S. Berry
Two great pieces of leadership gold right there. First of all, what I hear you saying is, hey, how we offboard somebody or help transition them says a lot about the strength of our culture, maybe more about the strength of our culture in our organization than it does about how we onboard and recruit them. Because they've served, whether they serve their country or serve on their team, they're just not going to fit, they're not going to be successful. And instead of saying, you're a failure, you're gone, it's, hey, it's probably not going to work here, but let me help you find a job, get you that letter of recommendation because you do some things well. You're not a worthless human being. You have a lot of value. But the value that we need here is it's not fitting and we can't maximize it. So let's help you go somewhere where we can maximize your value, where maybe you'll make more money, be be happier and live a better life. And we as an organization, whether we're the army or we're general dynamics or we're-Lockeed, too. Whoever we are, or Lockheed Martin, it doesn't. Or Lockheed Martin.
[00:35:40.460] - John S. Berry
It doesn't matter. We want to help you because you dedicated some time to us, just like your time in the service. Now, that being said, I love that gold. But the other piece of the gold is we get back to the metrics. How do you know who's in that top 10 %? Who's going to get that top rate? When you're that senior rater, who are you going to top block? Who's going to be? And I think it It comes down to, at least for me, it always came down to metrics and being up front with those leaders and saying, these are your metrics. This is how I'm judging you and how I'm judging your platoon, your company, and whoever. That's who's going to be top block. And so I want to be completely up front with you. I'm not picking favorites. My favorite is the winner. And my perspective on leadership is leadership is not about consensus. It's about getting results. And if I have to choose the best leader, I've got to choose the person who has the best results. But I got to get my metrics right. As for It's your paper. If my metrics aren't right, I'm screwing up.
[00:36:32.980] - Jody Daniels
Right. That was the challenge is that we had too many people that were hyper-focused on, is your paperwork all correct? You fill in the DD93 and your SGLV and all the acronym pieces of paper that in your admin human resources side, is all that paperwork correct? Have you done it? Have you updated all of that? Is everything in the system? What percentage of those in your unit has been completed? That's interesting, but not What's your proficiency? How do you assess proficiency? How do you look at who's being more proficient? I'll tell you one metric that I found interesting that I really poked people on is like, look, you talk about turnover rate, and you want to keep your turnover rate low. If the turnover rate is too high, then people start to get all excited because they think people are leaving. Well, why are they leaving? Was it because you had bad leadership? Things were really crappy. People didn't know how to manage their time. People were treating people horribly. Or was it because you were doing a great job with your people. You were training them up. They were going to boards, they were getting promoted, and they were going on to other units.
[00:37:38.370] - Jody Daniels
Now you got a high turnover because they're doing... And now your metrics, your overall admin metrics are going to drop because all your great green people just left, and you got to recruit some new ones. That's okay. That's winning. But it doesn't look like it from a metrics viewpoint.
[00:37:55.250] - John S. Berry
Sure. Or if you come into a unit that is not high performing and you raise the standard standards, and a lot of people don't meet it, and they're seeing attrition. At a ranger school, I think it was like 30% graduation rate when I went through, and it was like, yeah, but that's the point. When I ran the officer candid school, I had this great E7 who I'd call in a Being a remote battalion commander, I'd call in and say, Okay, what are the numbers? He'd say, Sir, attrition is the mission. We only want the best to become officers. That's fair. So we're going to lose people because we're going to maintain standards. So I think you're absolutely right. But I would also say this about leadership, especially as a law firm. I run mine like an infantry battalion, so I have commanders. I had one commander that didn't make it because this commander refused to force rank her people. You have to. I said, Look, I have to make decisions in the future. And if you can't force rank your people, your team, then they don't know where they stand. And the other one who force ranked him, she talked to another lawyer, and this lawyer was number 14 out of 15 and said, Okay, and that lawyer had no idea.
[00:38:54.920] - John S. Berry
You get your metrics, you get your scorecard every week. How do you not know? Well, I had no idea. I I didn't see that it hit him in the face like, wow, I'm almost last. And so sometimes we do our teams a favor. But if we are not strong enough as leaders to force rank our team, and of course, based on the right metrics, then we're really failing because it's like showing up to play a football game or something, but you never know what the score is. And then at the end of the game, you're told you lost, or you work hard all year, you think you're doing great things, and then you get fired because you didn't perform. I mean, as a leader, that's such a disservice. And if we're not clear on our metrics and really willing to rank people, we do them a disservice. It's not being nice, it's being kind. And we're not coddling them. We're not comforting them or coddling them. We're challenging them, and we're really trying to develop them. I think that that's tough. How do you, as a leader, when you've developed leaders who have that problem, how do you get them to get over themselves and have those honest conversations with subordinates?
[00:39:54.030] - Jody Daniels
Well, you tell them that that's one of their weaknesses that they need to focus on. It's going to affect themselves in terms of their ability to succeed. It's like, if you can't make a decision about people, then what other decisions can't you make? What else is it indicative of? If you can't make, and this is a hard one, and life is not always easy. So what else can you not make a call on? See how that show to them how that translates through to the rest of the world and the rest of life. You can't be everybody's friend. You can try, but probably not a good call.
[00:40:32.300] - John S. Berry
Absolutely. I find with the young lieutenants that come in to the arm, some of them want to be everybody's friend, and then you get the person on the other end of the spectrum who's a told stickler for all the rules. It's like, this one, they don't respect them, but they like them. And then the other lieutenant, they hate this lieutenant, but they respect him. And you want to be in the middle, where you're both respected and liked. That's where the soldiers will go to hell and back for you. But if you just want to be their friend, they're not going to respect you, and they don't want you in charge. If you're a stickler for the rules and you're always out to get everybody, as Lieutenant Newsflash, you're going to screw up, and they're going to turn you in, and they're going to have a field day with it. So you got to look. I think you've had to look for that medium.
[00:41:12.120] - Jody Daniels
So the other piece of that is, you talked about the person that the stickler. Then there's the other personality, which is, so as you become more senior, one of the things that I took on as a mantra was, Embrace the gray. Okay? Black and white, illegal, immoral, unethical, You know what those things are. But there's a lot of stuff that you can... It's not quite that black and white. There's some space in there for give, left and right. It's in there. My favorite tool as a senior leader was the exception to policy. The ETP. I loved the exception of policy because there are so many scenarios that are that exception. You look at it and you go, Why are we making this person repeat this course when they only need to repeat the last three weeks? Why are we making this person do X, Y, and Z when they only need to do Z or just X, and then they're good? Why are we doing whatever it is we're doing? Does it pass a common sense rule? If you look at it and it's like, Okay, so the exception of policy saves time, effort, and energy once you get the whole thing approved.
[00:42:18.740] - Jody Daniels
I mean, you have to get the exception approved. You have a process for it. But when you're looking at the greater good of the force, why do we need to do an exception? Does it make sense? Do we need to change the regulation? Do we need to change the policy itself because it no no longer makes sense. Made sense 20 years ago, but in today's environment, this is silly. And soldiers know what's silly. And so embracing that zone of when does an exception make sense and when is it going to break glass and destroy everything? When is the right time to use it? But it's a valuable tool to not forget about. I wrote policies. And you know what? I can change them. So I was, Oh, I've got power. But people senior leaders don't necessarily think about that. And I did In my final tenure, I can't tell you the number of policies that I requested that the Army G1 change because it didn't make sense for a reserve environment. We were doing things, jumping through hoops, doing crazy things, Cheetah flips, whatever you want to call, because we were trying to meet what was in that policy, whereas if we just change the policy, life would be a lot easier.
[00:43:21.680] - Jody Daniels
I had a good collaboration with whoever was in the Army G1, whoever's at Human Resources Command, working with those folks, primarily sometimes the Army G3 theory as to which thing were we trying to update so it met the current environment and we could accomplish it in a timely time, and it made sense on a metric value. I'll give you one great example. It turns out that I Looking at metrics, one day I had all of the subordinate units. In the Army Reserve Command, there's 28 subordinate units, which is a little crazy. Spanning control is a whole different matter. At the very bottom of their health assessments, their physicals, The Aviation Command was at the bottom of the list in terms of getting them done. I'm like, How does this make any sense? These are the people that need flight physicals. They're the ones that are always out flying and doing all that. How are they at the bottom of the list for PHA? Phas. Well, it turns out that a flight physical doesn't include some behavioral health questions, so it doesn't count as credit for a PHA. I'm like, You've got to be hitting me.
[00:44:28.180] - Jody Daniels
No wonder they're at the bottom of the pile. I'm like, You guys don't care. Stop. Pha, interesting, not relevant. Go do your flight physicals. That's the readiness standards you all need to maintain. Then we went about, How do we change this within the system so that the flight physicals that were being done for the Army Reserves soldiers would count as their PHA. I mean, it's some of those simple things that you're like, Really? We're doing this? I had some kid call me out in a town hall, We're doing... I'm like, We are? It's in this policy. I'm like, Give me the policy. I'm like, All right, we're changing that. Voco now, as of now, we're changing this policy to be something different. Then we went back and memorialized it on paper. But you have the power of the pen and the power of the policy and the power to ETP. A lot of times, it just simplifies things and makes a lot of sense and saves other resources.
[00:45:17.400] - John S. Berry
Wow, that hit home. That was powerful. I got to use more of the ETP. I want to transition to our after action review. I'm sure you're very familiar with the after action review.
[00:45:28.430] - Jody Daniels
Absolutely.
[00:45:29.120] - John S. Berry
You remember the three the three up, the three down, the hot wash, whatever. But I'd love to hear your three examples of great leadership, you can name names or not, and then three examples of horrible leadership. Name names or not, but this is more about teaching what were the great lessons you learned that helped you become who you wanted to become? And then what were the horrible lessons that told you, I do not want to be this leader?
[00:45:50.260] - Jody Daniels
So I mentioned one great one before, which was General Abrams and his asking, being very clear, what is my timeline to make a decision? When do you have to have this from me? And then he was exceptional at coming back and saying, And here is my guidance. His guidance was clear, concise. You knew exactly what the man was thinking. There was no mystery, and that was brilliant to watch. General Petraeus never yelled. My first exposure to a senior leader working on a staff, he was a three-star at the time. The man never yelled. You knew when he was angry. You knew when he was absolutely irate, livid, You know, frustrated, disappointed. There was no mystery, but he never yelled at you. It wasn't a passive-aggressive action where he was taking a swipe at you in a funny way. You knew. The language, he was good with his language so that you knew exactly where you stood. To me, that was really important. It was like, how effective he was without ever yelling. I took that to say, I don't know that I haven't succeeded on that front. I have yelled. But to know that they could be that way was was really impactful.
[00:47:02.850] - Jody Daniels
Trying to think of the third one. Maybe the bad was one that I... One of the very memorable bad ones was there was a first sergeant who put his soldiers at risk many, many times. He had gone. He was a reserve individual. I was a drill sergeant, commander, a battalion level. I had a company going out. They were doing training, and I'm getting reports back of things that have happened. He put some of his soldiers at risk out at the mission site, didn't make sure they had water, was doing things with transportation. That was one of the easiest evaluations I've ever had to write. It was incredibly metrics-based because you can say how many soldiers he put at risk in various different things. From that came a couple of lessons. One is assessing risk and taking care of soldiers. Then removing him. I got a call from a... I was a lieutenant colonel. I got a call from a two-star because this first sergeant's enlistment was about to be up and need to be renewed. I got the call like, Why are we not signing this? Why are we not extending his thing? You've put a flag on him.
[00:48:18.840] - Jody Daniels
I said, Yes, I have, because we're processing a lot of actions on his behalf. They, Well, why don't we just extend him by 30 days? I'm like, Great. That'll allow me to put a bar to reenlistment on him. They were like, That was not the action we were expecting. That's how strongly I felt about what a bad guy this was, that he was not a leader, and he did not need to be a leader anymore. I'm like, If you wanted to continue to be a leader, that's fine, but I think his time is done. He was the prototyical example of something bad. I don't have any specific... There are just too many times where leaders just don't think through the implications on their soldiers or some of the things they put Those second and third order effects when you give this massive decree, We're all going to do, and we're going to do it this fast and in this way. Really? We don't have time. Is it really that important? I'll say, think through what those second and third order effects are. Then the other piece of that is, does it make sense for everybody?
[00:49:27.650] - Jody Daniels
That's part of it. But it's also, when leaders keep giving priorities, Oh, this is really important. This is really important. They say it multiple different times. Like, well, it's important relative to what? You've given training guidance that I'm supposed to be using throughout the year, and now you're saying that this is important, and this is important, and this is important. It's like, How does it fit in to everything else you've already told me? Having the leader that can do the better... This is important, but I don't need it till next week. I don't need it till three months from now. When you get to it, it's great. It's important. It's relevant, but don't worry about it. If you get to it, that's awesome. I think our leadership doesn't do a good enough job integrating into existing priorities, new priorities, so that soldiers know exactly, leaders know exactly how to blend it in. I think we could do a better job on that front. I think there's a bunch of us that do it, and I've been guilty of it as well. But I tried to do as much as I could of, I need it this week, I need it tomorrow, I need it later, to give a time frame so that people could respond accordingly.
[00:50:34.930] - John S. Berry
Yeah, great advice. I think we're all guilty of that. It's the shiny object, it's the flavor of the week. It's the next thing. It's the next priority. As leaders, sometimes we don't realize the pack is this high. It's like when you're packing for a deployment, right? It's like you only have two duffle bags here. We're not getting all the stuff in there. So maybe we take some stuff off the packing list. I totally agree. Well, Dr. And Lieutenant General, Jody, Jay Daniels, where can veterans learn more about you?
[00:51:05.840] - Jody Daniels
Well, actually, I have a wiki page that's out there. When I moved into my final role, a wiki page got created, and it's authenticated, and it's actually true.
[00:51:16.390] - John S. Berry
Outstanding. And are you on LinkedIn?
[00:51:18.340] - Jody Daniels
I am on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook, and I visit both those. I troll a number of veterans and reserve groups offering up. When I see things that are silly, I'm like, No, let me give you some ground truth to some of these things. But I do troll on both those sites.
[00:51:39.030] - John S. Berry
Final question. What's next for you?
[00:51:40.920] - Jody Daniels
I'm on permanent vacation. Now that I'm retired, it's pretty awesome. The day that I officially retired, you could have found me on the ocean of Jamaica. Then since then, my husband and I, we've gone to Antarctica on a cruise, and we just got back from one going out of LA down to Mexico. I'm doing a few things here and there, interacting with AUSA, Chairperson for the Reserve Committee, but mostly enjoying vacation and seeing the globe.
[00:52:10.450] - John S. Berry
Well, ma'am, thank you so much for your over 41 years of military service. More importantly, thank you for sharing that today with your fellow veterans on Veteran Led.
[00:52:19.180] - Jody Daniels
Thank you for this opportunity. I really appreciate it. It was a wonderful service, years of service, great working on civilian career. I thank you for all that you all are doing to help inform veterans veterans as well.
[00:52:30.830] - John S. Berry
Thank you, and it's an honor, ma'am. Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching at Veteran Led on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Lead.