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“Delve is an insight engine that transforms how brands understand their world.”
With every story, thread and meme battling for our attention, what do we focus on and care about? Communications pros Sean Garrett and Allison Braley—trusted by Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Slack, Bain Capital Ventures, and more—talk with those shifting the future of communications and who pays attention to what.
Sean 00:01
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett and we’re supported by Delve with the top-level context engine for comms. My co-host, Allison Braley, and I talk to industry experts about how we show up and get our message across in an era of limited time and shortened attention spans. Let's dive in.
Allison 00:28
Today's episode of Attention Shift is born from a fascination with the military. So I've worked almost all my life in tech companies, and those tend to be really flat organizations, or like they try to be, but I grew up in the DC area, and both my parents actually worked for the federal government, and so through them, I had this view into the exact opposite type of organization. And so nothing exemplifies this difference more in my mind, at least, than the military. So I really wanted to talk to Admiral John Kirby, and Sean and I were really excited to have him on the show. He has so much wisdom to share from a career that spans life across 28 years in uniform in the Navy, including deployments to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. He was Chief of Navy Information, the top communications role in that branch, and he also served in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, and in the Pentagon as the first uniformed officer to hold the position of Chief Spokesperson for the Department of Defence. He's been a commentator on CNN and an instructor at Georgetown, and so he has a lot of wisdom to share from a life of service as a communicator. So John talks a little bit on this episode about being thrown into the deep end on comms with no training. And so I remember some of the same vibes in my early jobs. You know, we don't have to go into like, this was bad, but I'm curious, Sean, like, what was the best training or advice that you've received in your career?
Sean 01:42
The best training was actually, like, very early on, I got thrown into a job where I was privileged, like, this is literally three months out of college, where I worked for the Governor of California. My job was like the lowest rung of the communications team, and my job was to go through 15 California newspapers a day and cut out different articles and create a clip book, and then go to a very large copy machine, which was revolutionary for its time, and make a book every day, and then go around the governor's office and hand out said book to everybody. And in that I would end up talking to cabinet secretaries. I would talk to the chief of staff, I would say hi to the governor. I would, you know, hang out with folks. And first, I learned a ton just going through and doing that process, but I basically was able to create some relationships with people that I otherwise wouldn't have been. And I think the biggest part about that job was, you know, just working with some really smart, generous people who were willing to give me their ear and their time and their insights. And so because these are some of the most accomplished professionals, really, in the country at the time, and there was one guy who lived in San Diego, and I would drive him to the airport every Friday, and drop him off at the airport on my way to back to where I lived. And he would just, like, give me insight after insight. And so was I paid a lot for that job? Absolutely not. Was it glamorous? Not really. Did I learn a ton? Incredibly. And I think, like, really, what I was optimizing there for was just being in proximity to smart people and trying to find ways without, you know, I wasn't forcing myself into any conversations, but just trying to find natural ways to learn from them was huge for me early on.
Allison 03:37
Yeah, when I think about those early career jobs too, there's a lot of really grunty, grindy work that you ended up doing, but at least I didn't resent it. I felt lucky to have a job at all. I graduated in 2002 when the economy was really poor, and I felt fortunate to have gotten a job at all in my chosen career. But yeah, a lot of like clip book making, you know, doing invitations for events. You know this media list building, you know, this kind of thing that certainly builds character, and it gives you proximity to people who are really smart. Do you remember any advice that any of those early career mentors gave you Sean?
Sean 04:12
Yeah one piece that stuck with me, and it's one I've given to a lot of people, is that there's this kind of urge to instantly get to where you want to get to. And I don't mean necessarily, like, I deserve more, and I'm entitled to, like, a higher title, but more of just like I see where I want to get to in my career, and I want to get there faster. And I feel like there's one group of people who feel that way. There's another group which are like, I don't really know where I want to go, right? And to me, the advice that was given, which I thought was very thoughtful, was—just try to find the next stepping stone along the way, and like, as you cross the river, and every time you take another leap, you'll get closer to the other side, you know, we get closer to that goal. And sometimes you go sideways, sometimes you go forward, but like, just keep moving, and I think, like, every job is an opportunity to… or every job within a job is an opportunity to move towards that place. But you don't have to do it all at once. And if you do, sometimes you fall into the lake or fall into the river. And so that always stuck with me as a good visualization where, you know, sometimes job changes or navigating things internally, you're like, while I might not be meeting my big goal, but the big goal isn't always the thing, and by the way, I've met my big goal several times now. In that case, you find a whole new river that crosses. And I just think, like not making everything so big and all at once, it's just really useful. How about you?
Allison 05:53
I was honestly struck too, by what Admiral Kirby said on this episode. And so, not to spoil his story, but he took a job at one point where he thought, like Jesus, this is career suicide. And what he learned from it was going into a situation where something is broken and fixing it is infinitely more valuable to the organization than going in and sort of optimizing something that's already working. And so, you know, it's funny, partway through my career, I started looking at it as a case study, each new job that I took, and you know what's the thing that I'm going to do that's going to stand out and sort of be the narrative that I can tell in my next set of interviews, and then that next stepping stone along the river, to use your analogy. But another piece of advice I got earlier in my career is—some people like this advice and some people hate it. I personally really like it. Don't come to me with problems; come to me with solutions. Because I think earlier in my career, I was tempted to say, “This is above my pay grade. I'm going to go ask for help.” And I would go in and say, like, “Hey, this happened. What should I do?” A much better approach is to go in and say, “Hey, this happened. This is what I'm considering. This is what I think we should do. Here are the pros and cons of that action potentially. And here's an alternative,” and then people just respect your counsel a lot more, and they'll give you their unvarnished take. But at least you're coming with an opinion, like simply by being there, you've earned the right to have an opinion. They hired you for a reason. But yeah, so going in with some thoughts on solutions, I do sometimes see that still with people who want to talk about something but don't have any idea what to do. And I appreciate somebody who comes in with a thought process and has given it some real constructive thought.
Sean 07:27
I mean, the most basic comms level advice I would give people is be well read, understand things, and then really listen well. And listening is like, you know, this core superpower, but if you're really well read and you can listen well, you can interject something thoughtful at a moment where everyone's going to be like, “Whoa. Who is this kid in the room?”
Allison 07:52
Yeah. I mean, I remember my internship interview. I think it was either an internship or full-time at… or an internship at Weber Shandwick… it was one of those. They actually quizzed me on the news of the day. Before I could even be interviewed, I had to answer a written test on what I had read about that day, and luckily, I read, but that is a lost art, I think, for many folks today, which is sad.
Sean 08:17
Anything else, as you moved along in your career, that you've picked up?
Allison 08:23
There's this really hard phase in the middle of your career where you maybe are starting to manage some people, but you're also still doing a lot of the hands-on work. And me, personally, I enjoy the hands-on work. I hope I never stop doing it. But you're sort of like stuck between— well, my value before was the hands-on work, and my value now is something different, and I don't totally understand what it is yet. And so you're tempted to, like, cling to the hands on work. And a colleague of mine, Leslie, who I work with at BCV, has this great phrase she says to people in that part of their career, which is, “What got you here won't get you there.” And so there's this massive mental shift you go through, I think at that point in your career, from—I have to do it all myself to—let me empower other people to make great decisions and let them fly free from the nest a little bit. And I'm still here. I'm still waiting if they need me. And that's really hard.
Sean 09:11
Yeah, I think that my career gets into this, but always try new things. Like, I think what will drive me crazy is when a 30-year-old says to me, “Oh, that's not the way we do things here, or we don't, you know… this is how this is done.” And I'm like, “What?” We are always changing. We're always evolving. You're always doing stuff, some other things that are maybe…
Allison 09:38
What the tech people call that is first principles thinking I love…
Sean 09:41
Please, please, yeah, I hate the phrase. Other things that like I think about too, which are maybe less pure career advice and more just kind of life advice when you when you have jobs is, when you move along your career, and especially like, if you're privileged to work in the tech industry and or work in the political world, or work in the military, you're going to see some shit, and you're going to come across some crazy moments. And I think early in my career, you know, I worked at a place where I was around musicians all the time, and they're in the music industry, and you would go to parties, and you get a VIP pass, and you do all this stuff. And it was, like, I actively tried just to be cool and kind of be like, This is my job, you know, I'm gonna just kind of do my job here. And then I look back on that, and I was like, I didn't take it in enough. Like there's something… you have to embrace the weird and embrace these things happening around you, and you have to look around, be like—this is amazing that I'm in this moment. This is so cool. Good for me, good for what I've done. I want to just, like, fully embrace this and think this is really neat. Like, you know, being on a podcast with you is really neat Allison, but, I mean… and I'm so serious about that. I just think people don't take the time to recognize those moments in their careers where they're just like, holy crap. Like that happened. Like, I'm gonna like, I'm gonna remember that for the rest of my life. And that's really cool. The other piece of advice that I give people is that we travel a lot, obviously, and I always try to find time to experience the city I'm in when I travel.
Allison 11:35
I got to go to Germany for work once, and I got to bring my dad, and I took him skiing at Zermatt, and he's gone now, and I'm still so grateful that I have found the time and the schedule to do that… like it's such a core memory. That's such great advice.
Sean 11:48
That's so cool. I mean, even if I could just… even if I only have 45 minutes to walk a city, I'll do it. There was a time when I was in Moscow, in the 90s, where I’d literally go from one hotel to another hotel for two weeks. And my only time I was outside a hotel was to experience New Year's fireworks, at midnight, and then I went back into the hotel, and I'm like, I'm never doing that again. There were reasons. Every time I went anywhere, there was someone with a very large person with a very large gun taking me somewhere. After that, I vowed to always experience the city I was in.
Allison 12:24
That’s a really good one.
Sean 12:26
And it's worked out great since.
Allison 12:28
Yeah, the other one I have is to collect people from each job that you have. I have this collection of people I've really enjoyed working with, at least one, truthfully, from every single job I've had. I mean, I look back on like, MWW Group, one of the sponsors of the pod, when I worked there, we were all in our mid-20s. We were having so much fun, and we worked more than our allotted hours because we were having so much fun. You know, they got a lot of truthfully, free work out of us just because we enjoyed each other. And so when you build a culture where people can build that kind of camaraderie, and it will pay back, you know, tenfold, that doesn't mean, like, have a pool table and, like, whatever Kegerator or whatever… It's more about the people you collect, and they create this energy that hopefully makes people want to be there and be with each other. But yeah, at every job, you'll have people you work really well with and admire, and I've had people who I've worked with, like ten fifteen years ago, who I'm trying to bring back now into the BCV portfolio, and because you know them, you know they're smart, you know what they're capable of. And so, you know, cherish those early career connections and make sure to hang on to them.
Sean 13:34
100%. That's what it's all about.
Allison 13:37
A lot of good stories. We once had our client 1-800-Flowers, and we were in the office at MWW Group trying to spray paint flowers to look like Biff on the Letterman Show, like his head. And suffice to say, it did not go well, but we all still laugh about it in the group chat, like, what were we doing? Why did we think we were capable of this? No one knows, but we had a lot of fun and made a lot of good memories. Don't spray paint flowers, don't do that. So with that, let's hear from Admiral John Kirby on his career, his comms lessons, and we'll start with a game of spin the plate that opened a door to his entire future.
Sean 14:13
I doubt John Kirby has ever painted flowers.
Allison 14:16
No, I highly doubt it, but I wouldn't be surprised… he's done a lot of jobs.
Sean 14:19
He probably actually is an artist in his own right.
Allison 14:23
Thank you so much for joining us today. John, you've served in the Navy, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. What drew you to the field of communications across these high-level roles, and how do you get selected for this kind of thing within the Navy?
John 14:39
I mean, there's a process to become a full-time public affairs officer. For me, though, it was the best decision that I ever made. I was teaching at the Naval Academy after my first sea tour. So this is around 89/90, and I knew I wanted to stay in the Navy, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And there's lots of different skill sets you can transfer into. Public affairs is one of them, but I couldn't decide, and I met a guy there, a friend of mine—we're still very close. Same thing. He loved the Navy. Didn't want to leave, but didn't want to keep doing what we were doing, which was called surface warfare, going to sea on warships. So as a joke, one day, we got a paper plate, and we took a marker, and we divided the paper plate up into eight equal slices, and then we wrote in each slice the name of a different skill set that we could transfer into. So, public affairs, intelligence, cryptology, supply core, you know, the whole thing. And we went to the clinic at the Naval Academy, and we got a tongue depressor. We drew an arrow on it, stuck it to the plate with a tack. And then every day, you know, over coffee before we would teach our classes, we'd spin the dial and it would land on something else, and we would laugh about what idiots we were. We were 25 years old, we didn't know what we were going to do, and then one day, after about two weeks of this, just goofing around, my buddy came in and said, “You know what? Let's do it for real.” So we shook hands, we spun the dial, and we both became public affairs officers.
Sean 16:00
So you both landed on public affairs?
John 16:02
Yeah, whatever it landed on, we were going to do, and it landed on public affairs that day. So we submitted the paperwork and went through the process, and there's an approval… a board meets and decides whether your background is appropriate or not. We both got picked up for it and had long careers in Navy Public Affairs. But I honestly, I can't tell you it was like a burning desire or something. I wasn't trained to do it. Hell. I was a history major at the University of South Florida. I had a little bit of time working for the St Pete Times in the sports department while I was going through college, but other than that, I had zero knowledge or experience about communications whatsoever.
Sean 16:38
I mean, haven't we all roshamboed for career choices, truly?
John 16:45
Yeah, it worked out, you know? I mean, I can't complain. I had some good opportunities.
Allison 16:51
What do you wish you knew then that you know now, when you were starting this out?
Sean 16:56
When you spun the dial, what happened? What happened next?
John 16:59
When I got picked up, they sent me right to an aircraft carrier, and that was getting ready to go on her last deployment, and they didn't have time to send me to any training, so I went to the aircraft carrier with no training. I had never spoken to a reporter other than in the sports department at the St Pete Times. I'd never spoken to a reporter on the record during any other attribution, and so I wish I had a chance to go through some basic training. I learned on the job, you know, but a little bit of training would have been nice in terms of, how do you write a press release and, you know, how do you pitch a story to a reporter? You know, what's the difference between on background and on the record? I knew none of that. The first interview I ever gave as a Navy spokesman was on the pier the day that the carrier got underway, with the local press all gathered there. I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, so a little bit more training, I think would have been helpful.
Allison 17:51
It's a common theme. It's funny in these podcasts, when we talk to people about their career, and sort of in general, that in communications, there isn't a lot of training in many cases. I hope that's changing, because there's a lot to learn about in the field.
Sean 18:05
I'm actually curious about that… real quick, I mean, are there, you know, if you're entering into that field now, what is your training in the military, if you're going into public affairs?
John 18:12
Yes, sir. And there was, when I went through it. It's called the Defence Information School. And back when I got picked up, that school was in Indiana. Now it's here in the DC area. It's up at Fort Meade in Maryland, and I got to tell you, it's a crown jewel. It is a very sophisticated training regimen. It's much more organized than it was before, and nobody doesn't get through that training. And so nobody has to experience what I went through. And there are various levels. So when you first become a public affairs officer, you'll go through a basic course of five to six weeks. And then we reintroduce you to the schoolhouse as you advance in rank, and you get to go back in for refresher training as you become more senior. And there's a whole school just for our enlisted communicators as well. So it's much more sophisticated and organized than when I did it. But, it has to be, because the communication environment is much more sophisticated and dynamic than it was when I came in in 1990, I mean, there was no social media. People didn't have cell phones. There was the legacy media, as we call it today, and that was pretty much it. So training a public affairs officer back then was a lot simpler enterprise than it is now.
Allison 19:26
Yeah, I can't even imagine sort of getting thrown into it like that. You've had a very long and storied career, and you've really moved up the ranks. What do you attribute that success to in moving up in an environment like that and getting to do all of the interesting roles that you've been able to accomplish?
John 19:42
I'd say two things. One is curiosity. You have to constantly want to learn, and that's how you can prove your value to a new assignment, to a new command… is going humble, knowing that you're ignorant to some degree, even though you have some experience, and be curious, ask lots of questions, just constantly ask. I mean, everywhere I went, I tried to learn. I remember when I went to the aircraft carrier. I had been on a guided missile frigate escorting tankers in and out of the Persian Gulf. I'd never been on a carrier, so I used to go up to the flight control tower at night after my work day was done, and the air boss, the guy controlling all the jets landing and taking off, would let me sit in his chair, put his headsets on and listen to him as he managed flight operations on a carrier. Did that have anything to do with comms? No, but it made me smarter about what an aircraft carrier can do and how it operates. And so when I did talk to press on that deployment, I felt a lot more informed. So be curious. Number two is, don't be afraid to say yes. In my time in the Navy, you certainly got the opportunity to request your next assignment. I'd like to go here. I'd like to go there, but it's the needs of the Navy. The Navy gets to determine where you go. That's why we call them orders. And I never turned a set of orders down in the United States Navy, even though it may have been to a place I wasn't all that enthusiastic about, or a job I didn't really, really want to do. When the Navy said, “Hey, we need you to go here,” I didn't argue. I just said yes, and I went. And it turns out, many of those jobs turned out to be some of the best jobs I ever had. I learned things I never would have learned otherwise. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I think that by being willing to take on these assignments and not questioning them and just doing the best I could at them, I think the Navy saw, Hey, this is a guy we can grow, and we can advance. And he's capable of more responsibility. And I think that helps a lot. It shows the institution you're willing, you know, to put in the time, even if it's not very glamorous.
Sean 21:46
What was an assignment that you were originally like—Oh, I don't want to go there. But then, you know, three months in, you're like, hey, this isn't so bad. Or I'm learning a ton. Give us an example of, you know, for folks who aren't normally deployed by the Navy, what an experience like that would be.
John 22:04
Back then, before there was the internet, the Navy had a monthly magazine called All Hands, and they put it out once a month, and it was designed for the internal audience, obviously, for sailors and families. You would have lots of information about personnel policies and that kind of thing, pay and benefits… and that magazine was just on its last legs in the late 90s. It was chronically late. There were some months where they didn't even put it out because they just couldn't get it out and couldn't get their program set. And I was just coming off a tour with the Blue Angels. I was their spokesman for five years, and that was a great job on so many levels, and a lot of fun. I mean, it was hard to leave the blues. And so I'm going from the Blue Angels, and they want to send me to be the editor-in-chief of All Hands Magazine, which nobody respected, nobody read, and nobody cared about. And I'm like, oh man. In fact, some of my buddies told me, if you take those orders, you're done. This is the Navy saying to you, we don't think you've got much of a future, because hardly anybody did well coming out of that job. And it was in Washington. I wasn't really excited about coming to DC. It was in Pensacola, for crying out loud. I didn't want to come up here, and it turns out, honestly, you said it best in your question, you know, three months, whatever, a few months into that job, and I was hooked. I had such a great time, and we built a team, and by the time I left, the magazine was in print and online. It had been a complete redo in terms of the logo, the color, all the graphics, and the content. We were knocking it out, not only on schedule, but ahead of schedule, and we won some awards. It was just a great, great job. I am so glad I got a chance to do that.
Allison 23:56
Love a turnaround like that. I think people sometimes turn down those types of opportunities because they think—Oh, this isn't going to look good on my resume. But if you take something that isn't doing well and make it great, that's honestly more impressive than fine-tuning something that's already successful.
John 24:12
Also, a lot more fun. I mean, one of the hardest things in the Navy, in my experience, was to take a job over from… because you're constantly moving, like, every two, two and a half years, you're taking a new assignment, so you're always relieving somebody who's been in the job for a few years. And one of the hardest things is to come into a job where it's been done really well… like nothing's really broken. It's working well. I mean, that's it's easy, in a sense, but it's not as fun. It's not as challenging if you like leadership and management and change. So I always enjoyed coming into a job where maybe there was room for improvement and something that I could do a little bit differently.
Allison 24:46
Yeah, that's a great lesson for everybody listening. I think you know, particularly the folks who listen, who are earlier in their career, don't shy away from a turnaround. I'll go back to one of my earlier questions—what do you know now that you wish you knew then? I always feel like, when someone's had a career as impressive as yours, is there something when you were starting out that you didn't know that you've come to understand over the course of your career?
John 25:07
I think it's the ability and the responsibility, the opportunity, to shape news coverage ahead of time. When I started doing this, again, I was on an aircraft carrier that was on a deployment, then I went to the Blue Angels for a few years, and then, as I said, this magazine, and it is natural, particularly at that low level in the military, in the Navy, for you and your public affairs efforts to be sort of reactive, responsive. You're… I'm responding to an airplane that crashed, or I'm responding to an air show coordinator who's angry about the noise in the local area, or whatever it is you're reacting. And what I wish I had fully understood and grasped, and I didn't get it until late in my career, and this is my fault, the ability to actually shape headlines, create the news you want to create, before it's even out there, and and get ahead of it and, and I learned it eventually, but I think I learned it too late, and I really got to see the value of that when I was at the National Security Council, my last government job just just left six months ago, and and at the White House, surrounded by these incredibly talented people and a national security advisor and Jake Sullivan, who truly understood the power of shaping a message and a narrative and how important that was to the policy process, I really learned it, and unfortunately, it came a little too late. I wish, if I could talk to myself 25 years ago, I would tell myself, learn how to get ahead and shape a narrative and a story rather than just react to it.
Allison 26:45
Yeah, they just threw you into it at the beginning. You talked a little bit about the internal audience that the content you worked on catered to. What other audiences are important to the military, and in thinking about wanting to interview you, that was one of the things that occurred to me that's so interesting about the roles that you've had is there are so many constituencies that have such varied opinions on things that the military are doing. How do you think about that challenge and tailor your messages while maintaining some sort of through line in the communications?
John 27:16
It's a great question. You absolutely have to think about all your audiences all at once, and you have to recognize that each of those audiences are going to have different needs and different expectations in terms of what you're communicating. At the same time, the challenge is, the most effective messages are ones that are simple and short and easily digestible to the maximum amount of your audience. So at the same time you're trying to make sure you're communicating in a way that disparate audiences can understand, you've also got to simplify your message so that it can be understood by the maximum amount of people. A great example of this in understanding your audiences is, about two weeks before Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, the guidance that we were getting at the Pentagon and at the State Department, my colleague Ned Price and Jen Psaki at the White House was they wanted us to say that the invasion was imminent, and that's the word that they asked us to use, and because that's what the intelligence was showing, that Putin was getting ready to cross the line. So Jen and I and Ned, that's what we said at our podiums. And then over in Kyiv, President Zelensky is saying publicly, Well, I don't really understand what the Americans are talking about. I'm not seeing that there's an imminent invasion. Now, part of this was that he, too, had audiences he had to communicate with, including and most especially, the Ukrainian people whom he was trying to keep calm. And we understood that. But what we learned later was that the word imminent, the way we were using the word imminent, wasn't translating in Ukrainian the way we wanted it to. It doesn't mean that they don't have an understanding of the word; of course, they do. But the way we were using it wasn't… literally wasn't translating well. And so we had to stop using “imminent” and start talking about “coming days” or “soon” that kind of thing.
You've got to constantly check in with your multiple audiences to make sure that the message is being received. The greatest myth of comms, and this isn't something I invented, it's a long… It's a well-known adage. But the greatest myth of communications is that you've done it, and if you're not constantly checking in with your audiences, all of them, to make sure that they are hearing it the way you wanted it to be heard, and changing it, and being humble enough to change it if you have to, then you're probably going to fail in communications. Anybody with a teenager at home can relate to this. You say, Do this. Don't do that. And then they go off and do something completely different, because, you know they're not, they're not hearing it the same way that you're trying to intend it. So you've got to understand who they are. And as a military officer, you're going to have, you know, the troops are the audience, their families are an audience, and the American people certainly are an audience. Congress is absolutely a significant audience for any military communicator. And then, of course, you've got our allies and partners as well as our adversaries. I'll tell you one quick story, and then I don't want to belabour the point, because I know we've got other things to get to, but one of the most impactful lessons I learned about this audience issue was Afghanistan. In 2013, I went over there for a couple of months to help the commander of the International Security Forces, General John Allen, a Marine General, who was in between spokespeople. I was working for Secretary Panetta, and Secretary Spence at the time, and they let me go over there to pitch in for just a couple of months. And right about the time I got there, there had been a series of violent uprisings in Afghanistan against Americans. Some American soldiers had burned some religious materials inadvertently, and it caused some violent protest activity, which ended up with a couple of soldiers being killed not far from Bagram Air Base. And General Allen got on a helicopter and flew to that base with his Afghan counterpart. You can still see his video on YouTube. It's pretty powerful. He went to a dining hall to talk to the soldiers in the unit that had lost their comrades to this violence, and he had three simple messages. Number one, this isn't who we are. We don't burn religious materials in the United States. We believe in religious freedom. Number two, we're going to investigate the burning of these materials, and if people need to be held accountable, then they're going to be held accountable. And number three, your mission is still important. I know you're angry, I know you're fearful, but you still have to get out there with your Afghan counterparts and continue the mission. It's that important. Then he had his Afghan counterparts say the same thing, but those were three simple messages delivered directly to troops. The smartest thing that he did that day was bring a camera crew with him, a NATO camera crew, which recorded that video. As I said, you can still find it, and we posted it online when he got back, and it went viral within, you know, an hour or so. Because what was so powerful was that those three messages resonated with everybody. If you were a Taliban, you understood, if you were the Iranians who were fomenting some of this violence, you understood. For the families of those troops, those were important messages for them to hear, our NATO allies, members of Congress. So what he did was, he devised these very simple messages that were easily digestible across all those audiences, and he deliberately delivered those remarks in a way that they could be digestible by all of them, all at once.
Sean 32:32
You said that you also need to be adaptable. You know, once you deliver a message, it's not one and done. And I think that, you know, there's been a shift in corporate communications from going to this kind of command and control message, where this is the message, this is what we're going to say, we're going to say it, and then we're going to say it again, and then we're going to say it again, and then we're done, right? And I think there's an assumption that it would be, you know, the military or big government entities would be that times ten, right? And there are companies that are flat and are more open and they are a little more porous, but like, what is your take on the… where even command and control communication is for command and control institutions like the military.
John 33:23
It's got to be a balance. I hate the phrase, you know, control the narrative. That is a fool's errand if you're going to try to control a narrative in today's environment. The information environment is just too dynamic and too diffuse, and it's also too democratic with a small “d” with a low barrier to entry. But I do understand the desire. I've seen it for myself, for large organizations to do message alignment through some top-down guidance. And as a matter of fact, that was my job at the NSC. My job as strategic communications coordinator was to make sure that all the agencies were involved in national security comms, Pentagon, State Department, intelligence community, DHS, all of us had message alignment for whatever the issue or issues were for the day. And every day, I was talking to all of them about, you know, here's what matters to the White House. Here's what the president's doing, here's what we're going to say about it, you know. And we need everybody to be on the same sheet of music. That said, and this is where it gets… this is where the balance gets tricky. You can't be so arrogant that you're not willing to modify that message or change it over time based on the feedback you're getting from those agencies that are delivering it. And you also have to understand that they all have their own equities. The State Department is going to communicate to their reporters about, let's say, I mean, the war in Ukraine is a great example. The State Department had different challenges and equities about communicating what we were doing to support Ukraine, than did the Pentagon. And so you've got to allow the agencies, the subordinates, a little bit of flexibility. And so what I tried to do… I won't claim that I was successful at every turn; I'm sure I made my share of mistakes, but what I tried to do was not micromanage. In other words, here's the meta narrative, here's where we're going, here's where the president's head is, and then let them execute to that to the degree that they can, and if they had to take a little bit of a different turn, depending on what it was, you know, we tried to allow that so that they could, again, to your question about audiences, meet their different audiences expectations, and try to craft narratives that would be resonant with those different audiences. It's a balancing act. It can't be one of the… you can't just… you have to have a meta-narrative. You have to have some alignment at the top, but you also have to allow flexibility at the bottom.
Allison 35:50
Yeah, what was the hardest situation you ever dealt with in your career, if you're able to talk about it? If you're not, that's okay. I think a lot of people we interview say they have war stories, but you have war stories, and so generally, I think it's something people might find interesting, and also perhaps perspective-enhancing.
John 36:09
Anytime I had to stand at a podium and talk about American troops who were killed or grievously wounded in action—those were the most difficult days. The Navy Yard shooting. I was the head of the Navy's Public Affairs efforts for that, you know, that was a tough day. The bombing at Abbey Gate in late August of ‘21, the 26th of August, to be exact. That was an extremely difficult day. And I can recount many other such days. I mean, those are tough because you have an obligation to communicate to the American people what the military is or is not doing in these moments of crises, and to the degree you can… what we know about the event at the same time, you can't forget that there's a spouse, a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister, a child who is going through the worst possible experience they'll ever, ever have to endure. And so you can't be clinical about it. You have to inject some humanity when you're talking about things like that. So without question, those were the most difficult moments. I can't think of a single other time when it was more difficult than that. How do you deliver context about something like that, and do it in a way that's accurate, contextual, but it's also respectful of the loss?
Sean 37:39
And I assume that's not something you just, you know, to the point of going into training, that's not something you learn. That's just something if… that's just who you are, right?
John 37:48
Well, yes, sir, at least you try to be, but no, there's no book on it. There's nothing you can consult. You just have to do it.
Allison 37:57
I'm sure, in situations like that and many others, where perhaps maybe the families haven't been notified yet, or there's just information that you need to hold back for a variety of reasons, how did you think about handling questions that are sensitive, like that, or speculative in nature? I think a lot of people in TV, you know, position comms people are going like “no comment.” But as comms people, we know that can be a little weird and abrupt. And how do you deal with that tension of people wanting all the information, but perhaps you're not able to give it?
John 38:27
You know, it's funny when… in the times I've been involved with actual crises, I found it helpful to slow down. The pressure is, as you just described it… You know, the families obviously want answers. Of course, other troops want answers. Commanders want answers. And, of course, the press, and they're all, you know, they're pounding, literally pounding your door and calling you nonstop for context. And the best thing you can do is to slow down. Slow yourself down, literally, take a breath and decide what I can put out now and what I can't and explain to, in this case, the press, why I can't tell you more. You have to be willing to not react to the pressure to come out with information and context, which may prove to be wrong, particularly when you're dealing with something like the loss of life, you don't want to be putting information out there. So I found that very helpful in all those instances, to just slow myself down, slow my team down, and say, “Look, I know we're all getting beat up. We're only going to go this far for right now, until we get more context and information.” That's frustrating. It's frustrating for the public. It's frustrating for the press. Sometimes it's frustrating for you as a spokesman, but you've got to do it. You simply can't allow yourself to just be swayed by the pressure.
Sean 39:51
Speaking of context and information, I think that challenge only gets harder now in this kind of… where we are within our media landscape, right? And you have operated within a world, especially you know, for the last five years, or maybe ten years plus, where misinformation has probably been something that you've dealt with on a day-to-day basis. How is it, from a leadership perspective, how would you be looking at it, if you know you're back in your job, how would you be looking at the misinformation environment right now, and how do all of us who do this job need to be thinking about it and operate in it? And I think there's this kind of hope that it's just this thing that's out there, it's not gonna go away, but there's nothing I can do about it. But we're actually working within that environment on a day-to-day basis, so it's not something you can just ignore.
John 40:45
There are two things that I learned and we did at the Pentagon that stayed and certainly at the NSC in my last couple of years, that I think are good remedies. Number one is imagery. You know, there's an old adage, you can't beat a lie to the punch, and there's some truth to that. But if you can overwhelm the lie with imagery that contradicts the narrative of the other side, it is really true that a picture is worth 1000 words. And what we tried to do, for instance, when there was an unsafe intercept by a Chinese fighter jet with one of our surveillance planes, or the same thing on the open oceans, you know, the Chinese Coast Guard bullying some of our allies and partners, or even US naval assets. We have camera crews on those planes, and we have camera crews on those ships, and they document that so that when the Chinese come out and say, Well, you know was we weren't the aggressors, you know, we were the victims, we could put the video out there and downgrade it. Imagery is so powerful, plus, imagery has an emotional context to it that words simply can't. I would say, if there can be a way to capture imagery that can disprove the misinformation or disinformation, find a way to capture it and then get it out as quickly as possible. The second thing that we did, and I give all credit to Jake Sullivan, our national security advisor at the time, was… we called them strategic downgrades of intelligence. So when the disinformation is getting out there, you can't beat a lot of the punch, but if you know the lie is coming, you can get ahead of it. We had very good success doing that. Two examples. One, right before Putin invaded, the intelligence was going to show that he was going to blame it on the Ukrainians. There was going to be a car bomb at a Russian official's headquarters in the Donbas. The Russians were going to set it off. They were going to blame it on Ukrainian terrorists, and boom, he's going to cross the line. We got that intelligence. Mr. Sullivan worked with the intelligence community to get it downgraded. A couple of weeks or so before we thought Putin was going to pull this false flag operation, we went public with it, and it did slow him down. The Russians were curious as to how we knew it and why we made it public. They eventually did set off the car bomb, but it didn't have anywhere near the effect that he wanted it to have in the public domain, because we'd already told the lie for him, and we said, this is exactly how he's going to justify…
Sean 43:01
He already detonated it.
John 43:02
Exactly. And we did the same thing when then Speaker Pelosi was going to go visit Taiwan. The intelligence showed us exactly how the Chinese were going to react, what missiles they were going to fly, what cyber operations they were going to conduct, the narrative they were going to try to put out there about Pelosi’s visit being, you know, antagonistic. And so again, Jake worked with the intelligence community. We got it downgraded, and then he gave it to me as a script, and he said, “Go to the podium at the White House and deliver this.” And that's what I did. Did the Chinese still do those things when Speaker Pelosi went? Yes, but they had nothing like the purchase in the information environment that they wanted to, so when you're dealing with disinformation, if you know it's coming, get ahead of it. Take the words literally out of the mouths of your adversary and put it out there before they can. It makes it harder for them. And then again, if you have imagery that can prove the point that you're trying to make, you know, put that out too. Those are two really simple but I think, very effective lessons that we learned over the last few years.
Allison 44:03
That's such smart advice in general, I think, for everyone listening in terms of how to handle a crisis. On the flip side, the opposite of a crisis, is the more consumer-facing kind of recruiting work that the military does and has to communicate around. Has that ever felt intentional with the more reactive communication messages that you have out there? I mean, if you're talking about things that have happened in the fog of war and soldiers losing their lives and so on and so forth, how does that intersect with the very… from what I've read, intense recruiting motion that goes on?
John 44:41
Yeah, the communicators in the military aren't too involved in the recruiting process. The recruiting is more about marketing, and so we hire professionals to do that, then we handle the actual operations and policy stuff. But your point's a good one. I mean, recruiting is not done in a vacuum. You know, young people who are thinking about serving are reading the news, and they're seeing, you know, what's the Navy and the Marine Corps or the Army and the Air Force up to? And they're deciding for themselves if that's something that they want to do or not. And there was analysis during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly when tensions were at their height, where we had indications that a lot of parents in the United States were not supportive of their sons and daughters joining the military because of the danger, which is perfectly understandable. And so obviously our folks that are responsible for recruiting and for marketing had to factor in messaging that would allay some of those concerns to the degree they can be. I mean, you know, the military is inherently a dangerous profession, but that is something that service leadership have to think about. The main goal is to perform the mission, whatever that mission is, even if that mission is dangerous, and many of them are, get it done. Get it done, right. Get it done well, and be willing… feel obligated to communicate how you're doing it. If there is an intersection between the two, this is it—where the communicators purposefully try to communicate to the American people what we're doing with their sons and daughters, what we're doing with their tax dollars, and show it demonstrably as much as possible, because it matters. It doesn't just matter to the policy. It matters to the American people who are supporting that policy, or at least want to be informed by that policy.
A great example of this is the embedding program in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Department of Defence trained in basic survival skills and military unit cohesiveness, they trained some reporters, and then they sent them to Iraq and Afghanistan at a small unit level. They were embedded in these units in the field, and that resulted in more contextual reporting about what we were doing on the ground, because these reporters were seeing it up close and personal. It also benefited both sides by enhancing the relationships between the military and the media, which had never really recovered after Vietnam. There is an intersection here. If you're doing your job well as a communicator and letting people know you know what the troops are doing and why it's important, it can help affect at least some of the propensity to serve. But there are so many other factors that weigh into the propensity to serve. It's not just the mission sets and the danger and the risks. It's the economy too. If the economy is doing very, very well, it's sometimes harder for young people to want to join the military. So there's a lot that's folded into that. It's interesting. When I went to go work at the State Department, I'm so used to coming from the military, where to your point, we were aggressively telling the story of what the United States military was doing, and then I went to the State Department to be their spokesman and and the culture shift was interesting, because…
Allison 48:09
First rule of fight club, don't, don't talk about it.
John 48:11
Yeah, I would listen to Secretary Kerry… was getting briefed up on what our diplomats were doing all over the world, all this great, incredible work, and I'd be writing notes like… This is gold. I got to get this out. You know, I want to do a topper at my presser about this, and not all the time, but more times than I was happy with, I was told, “No, you can't do that. You can't talk about that, because if we take credit for it, then the host government doesn't get to take credit for it, and then our diplomacy and our efforts in that country will be compromised.” And, you know, it was a completely different culture that I had to get used to in terms of communications.
Sean 48:50
Well, in hindsight, maybe the State Department could have used that kind of understanding of the role that they play and the effect they have in the world. But it's a different story. Talking about communication in different ways, you also have been communicating in different ways as a CNN commentator, and I'm curious, kind of like, how that seat has felt for you, and how it's maybe kind of shifted your perspective on the job at large.
John 49:12
Yeah, when I interviewed, Mr. Jeff Zucker was the president of CNN at the time. In 2017, when I took the job as an analyst there, and I was a full-time analyst… most of them are part-time. They hired me full-time, and when I flew up to New York to interview with Mr. Zucker, he asked me a question that nobody had ever asked me before, and I didn't have a good answer. He said, “Are you going to be comfortable expressing your own opinion?” And I said I didn't know. I'd never had to do that before. I was a naval officer. I was a State Department spokesman. You're speaking for the institution, and I really tried to compartmentalize. As a spokesman, you have to put your personal proclivities, all that, you have to put it aside because nobody cares what you think. They only care what you can articulate from the podium. And that was a tough adjustment for me to become an analyst and to go on live television and say, you know, I think this, or I believe that. That took a lot of getting used to. The other thing about the job that I found really fascinating was learning how the news gets made. I was so grateful to CNN for bringing me on like that, and I used to love… back to our first question about being curious, I didn't know how a TV show was put together, so I asked Wolf Blitzer's producer right after getting on board, you know, can I just tail you for a day? I just want to be in the room as you decide what's going to be on The Situation Room tonight. And he was so, so wonderful about letting me do that. And so was Wolf. And I just camped out in a chair and just watched. And it was fascinating to see how the news gets put together. What is news? What isn't? How much time are they going to devote to this issue or that? Who are the panellists going to be? It was a chance to see the other side of the notebook for a spokesman that I think was immeasurably valuable, and I didn't really appreciate it until I came back into government in the Biden administration, when I came back to the Pentagon and then over to the White House, having had that time at CNN was was really, really important.
Allison 51:29
That makes so much sense. I mean, seeing things from the media side just makes such a huge difference. I've had that opportunity a couple of times in my career, and it's just invaluable to know how.
John 51:39
I mean, you know, if you have good relationships with the press, and I tried to do that, they're a great source of context for you. When you talk to them every day, as I tried to do, you just get a sense of what's on their minds. You know, what do they care about? It's not like they're giving anything away, but it helps you, as a spokesperson, understand what's going to be a story that day, or what you're probably going to get asked about, or where stories are going over time. Because some stories have multiple, you know, there are multiple legs to stories. And talking to them about how they think about it, I think, makes you a better spokesman, but being actually at an outlet and listening to the decision-making process of how they're going to cover something was just invaluable for me. I truly don't think that I would have enjoyed the last few years as much as I did if it hadn't been for that time at CNN.
Sean 52:32
All right, so now, back to the here and now. We ask this question to all of our guests, and I'm fascinated here, what you're going to say here. What is keeping your attention these days? When you allow yourself in your current life, where you have, like, more openness and you could be doing a lot of things right now, what is making you look deeper into your phone or your computer or your television set?
John 52:53
Even though I've been trying to take a break for the last six months or so, I still follow the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza very, very closely. Those are two issues that I spoke to literally every day, and so I'm watching both of them with great concern. What happens in Ukraine isn't going to just happen to Ukraine. It has already and it will continue to affect the entire European continent. And if we let Putin get away with this, you know, where does it stop? And I worry about that a lot. And then, of course, what's going on in Gaza right now, it's so deeply disturbing and concerning, and where that goes will have a long term effect… it already has, but even more on tensions in the Middle East and where we're going in the Middle East, and I applaud the administration for trying to find a way to negotiate an end to both conflicts. I really do. I think their intentions are the right ones. We could argue all day, whether or not you know, the execution of it is as successful as it should be; it can't just be about ending them, it has to be about ending them in a way that at the back end of it, you know, we're safer, we're more secure, our allies and partners are safer and more secure. That makes it a much more difficult challenge. So I'm worried about that, and I'm also, quite frankly, I mean… to your question about, you know, what am I… well, what attracts me when I'm scrolling online, and that's where we're going in the media environment right now. I'm deeply concerned about some of the decisions that some of these corporate owners are making about owners are making about editorial content, concerned about the manner in which some of them appear to be caving into political pressure at the disadvantage to their own reporters. I have been for quite some time, but I am now more concerned than I was even before about the state of the military media relationship. Obviously, I have a special closeness to that because of my time, but it's not going in a good direction. It's not going in a direction that benefits obviously… it doesn't benefit the American people. It's not benefiting our troops and our families. You know, back to talking about audiences, you know, a healthy military media relationship is important to keeping our troops and our families informed and their curiosity satiated, and will ultimately help affect the retention environment about whether they decide, hey, this is something I want to do for a career, or hey, it's time to get out, that military media relationship matters significantly, and right now it's under great, great strain.
Allison 55:23
Yeah, those are great thoughts. Thank you so much for joining us, Admiral. This was incredible, and we learned so much.
John 55:31
I appreciate the time. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
Allison 55:26
Thank you for joining us today for Attention Shift, for today's deep dive on communication strategy. Check out our sponsors, Delve, at delve.news and Mike Worldwide at mww.com. Please like and subscribe to Attention Shift on Apple Spotify or your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you in a couple weeks for our next episode.