The First World War by John Keegan w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

The First World War by John Keegan w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells
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00:00 "Roots of War and Vengeance"

06:45 "Origins of Modern Middle East"

11:58 Origins of Modern War Planning

21:52 Early Communication & Aristocratic Diplomacy

24:47 "Plans Fail Under Pressure"

29:34 The Assassination That Sparked WWI

37:45 "Next Man Up Leadership"

39:39 "US Military Decision-Making Explained"

49:06 "Somme: Britain's Greatest Tragedy"

52:21 "Normandy: Sacrifice for Victory"

01:00:59 "Undercover Boss: Season One Impact"

01:02:18 "Lack of Common Touch"

01:08:37 "Postmodern Cynicism and Elites"

01:16:01 "From Sharecropper to Success"

01:18:37 "America, Russia, and WWI"

01:28:29 WWI, Bolshevism, and Global Collapse

01:31:20 Local vs Global Tensions

01:35:52 "War Inspires Technological Innovation"

01:41:31 "First Instance of Pivoting"

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Opening and closing themes composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Creators and Guests

Host

Jesan Sorrells

CEO of HSCT Publishing, home of Leadership ToolBox and LeadingKeys

Host

Thomas Libby

Producer

Leadership Toolbox

The home of Leadership ToolBox, LeaderBuzz, and LeadingKeys. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast link here: https://t.co/3VmtjgqTUz

What is Leadership Lessons From The Great Books?

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All right, giddy up. Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

podcast, episode number

169 with Tom

Libby. The First World War by John Keegan

in three, two, one.

Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

episode number 169.

The author of our book today opens his

seminal one volume history of the

seminal war of the 20th century.

And a war that fascinates me endlessly because of the

dichotomies, disconnects and disruptions in leadership that

it portends for all of us a hundred years

later, he opens his book this way. And

we've read this paragraph on the show before. In

talking about books that circle around this book,

and I quote, the First World

War was a tragic and unnecessary

conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events that led

to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of

crisis that preceded the first clash of arms had

prudence or common goodwill found voice.

Tragic because the consequences of the first clash ended the lives of 10

million human beings, tortured the emotional lives of

millions more, destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the

European continent and left when the guns at last fell

silent four years later, a legacy of political

rancor and racial hatred so intense that

no explanation of the causes of the Second World War can

stand without reference to those roots.

The Second World War, five times more destructive of human life

and incalculably more than costly and material terms,

was the direct outcome of the 1st.

On the 18th of September 1922, Adolf

Hitler, the demobilized front fighter, threw down a

challenge to defeat a Germany that he would realize 17

years later. It cannot be that 2 million

Germans should have fallen in vain. No, we do

not pardon. We demand vengeance.

Close quote.

Today on the show, finally,

after all this time, we are going to

tackle the 25 year old volume.

You can see it on the video right there if you're watching at home.

The First World War by John

Keegan Leaders. The

First World War was an absolute waste of blood

and treasure among the fields, the marshes and the villages

of what we would call pre modern Europe.

And the postmodern world we now enjoy

wouldn't exist without that waste.

And of course, I'm joined today by my usual partner

in crime and in book

analysis, Tom Libby. How you doing today, Tom?

I am living my best life, my friend. There you go. And I, I don't

think you would be living that best life unless World War I had

happened. I'm,

I'm, I am thoroughly convinced of this now after reading Keegan's

book. Interesting. I, I, I,

I mean, I agree, but I may not agree for the same reasons. We'll see.

So as usual, what we do with, with copyrighted

works is we summarize ideas and we, we bring larger

ideas to, to our conversation. And we're going

to do that today with the First World War

when you open the book. And by the way, the volume that I have is

published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, and it was

published in 1998.

And it is a, some of the, some of the pieces in this

book were published originally in

Military History Quarterly and the Yale Reviews. You can actually

go grab those online. Most of Military History Quarterly is

available, I believe, without subscription. And the Yale Review is

available if you go to Yale University or you have access to the

Yale University Review Library. This book

has a ton of maps, it has a ton of illustrations. There's a ton of

supporting documents. This book is

almost 500 pages long. And so it is a

comprehensive volume that covers everything

from the beginning of World War I, which we of course notoriously

associate with the assassination of the

Archduke Franz Ferdinand by

Serbian nationalist terrorists

in, in, oh gosh, March, no, April, April

of 1914. Who moves all the way through

to the armistice at the Treaty of

Versailles in November of

1918. The battle maps are quite

amazing in this book. So it actually shows where

the Eastern Front was, where the Western Front was,

where the German boundaries and borders were. And Keegan does a

great job of showing the entirety of the

empires that existed during the time of the World War

I. So there was a British Empire with 400

million people. The British Empire covered countries

as from, from Canada all the way to Australia

and good chunks of Africa and of course the Middle East. By

the way, all the current problems we have in the Middle east can be blamed

on British and German and French imperialism.

Just in case you were wondering, actually had a conversation with some folks about this

on Sunday. Are they basing that on the redrawing of

like, of boundary lines and. Okay.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because so again, I was talking with

some folks with about this in a different context on Sunday. But one of the

things that really strikes you is like Iraq didn't

exist as a country before World War I. Right.

Iran didn't exist as a country before World War I.

These countries were carved out of what was left of

the, the, the, the, the Sick Old man of Europe,

as the Ottoman Empire was called

because the Turks made the

wrong decision in aligning themselves with the

Central Powers, aligning themselves with Germany and so when

Germany lost the war or just stopped fighting, which is

actually kind of closer to reality, the

Turks were carved up as part of the Treaty of Versailles.

There's also the French Empire and the German Empire. And

again, maps galore throughout this book, even

down to, like, the smaller battles that I didn't know about. Like I knew about

Damarne and Somme and Verdun, but

smaller battles that I had no understanding of,

like the Battle of the Frontiers, which was early in the

war or right after the crisis of 1914,

or the battles that occurred in the east, are well mapped

in this book. Also, Keegan

does a really good job of building military history into

sort of the biographies of people who are going in and out

of this war. He does have quite a bit

to say about the generals that ran this war. Folks like John

French for the British, Doug Ha. Douglas Hague for the British,

Pershing for the Americans eventually when they came into the war.

And of course, Joffrey

for the French. He was a interesting, interesting

gentleman. And Tsar Nicholas II who was

running the war for the. For the Russians.

And of course, a name that at first, first I was really

shocked to see. But this just shows how little I still know

about World War I. Hindenburg,

the guy who eventually would capitulate

17 years after the end of World War I

to Hitler. Hindenburg

was a general. Matter of fact, he was the general who

won one of the demonstrative and defining battles on the

Eastern front in World War I.

So one of the interesting things that you see in this book, and it really

strikes you, is all of the players that eventually showed up

later on in World War II started their careers,

were running around doing all kinds of things. Winston Churchill,

you know, all those guys, they all

had a role ultimately

in World War I, and they all showed up there first.

And of course, we see this in books that we've talked about. So F. Scott

Fitzgerald, interestingly enough, served

underneath Harry Truman. He also. Or

not Harry Truman, sorry, Eisenhower, who he did not personally. Like, he did

not personally care for Eisenhower when he served under him in World

War I. Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver

in World War I with the Italian Army. And

even. And Keegan even talks about this, he talks about how the

generals were defined not by. Or General

Ship. We're going to talk a little bit about General Ship today was defined not

by actions on the field, but instead by the.

They were defined by artists and others

who had access to grind against people

who had led them poorly. They believed in. In World War I.

And so Keegan is upfront about that, but the book opens with

something that after you get past the. The idea of a

European tragedy, and chapter two opens up with this idea of war

plans. And I want to talk about this at. Right at the beginning. So

Stifflands. Yes, Shiflin's war plan. So war

plans were based on this idea of mobilization,

okay? And mobilization was

described as the ability to use the

new technology of the train and the new technology

of rail to get troops

to what would be a quote unquote, front right

faster than the other party could get troops to

the opposing, quote, unquote front right. And so

Schliefland

created a. A plan. And one of the things

that Keegan notes in the book, and I'll pull a couple of quotes here, just

very briefly, he says this. All

these, however, were plans made on the hoof when war threatened or had actually

begun. All these war plans, right? By 1870, though

Napoleon III, who was prime minister, I believe, of

France at the time, did not appreciate it, a new era in

military planning had begun, that of the making of war plans in the abstract.

Plans conceived at leisure, pigeonholed and pulled out when

eventuality became actuality.

The development had two separate, though connected, origins. The first

was the building of the European rail network, which began in the

1830s. Soldiers rapidly grasped that

railways would revolutionize war by making the improvement, the movement

and supply of troops, perhaps 10 times as swift as by foot and horse,

but almost equally rapidly grasped at such a movement would

have to be meticulously planned. Then

moving down railways needed to be timetabled quite as strictly

in war as in peace. Indeed, more strictly. 19th century

soldiers learnt mobilization required lines designed to carry

thousands of passengers monthly to move millions of troops within

days. The writing of railway movement tables therefore became a

vital peacetime task. And then the next quote. Staff

colleges, like industrial and commercial schools, were a creation of the 19th

century. Napoleon's subordinates had learned their business from their

elders, and as they went along, their practical

mastery persuaded their competitors that expertise must

be systemized. So you had three things that came together, right? You had the development

of the European rail network, you had the technology of the train,

and you had the systemization of learning that was occurring between

the 1830s and the 1890s in Europe.

And where the hammer fell the hardest on this, and

Tom already brought this up. Where the hammer fell the

hardest was in. Was in Germany. And

Schliefflin's plan was developed as a

way. Oh, no, as an outgrowth of the war that was

briefly fought in the 1840s between France and

Germany and

Schlieflin created a mobilization plan that required.

And this is how you know it's German engineering precision,

timing, exactitude and had little room for

error. And he did it at a war

college without ever having to set foot on the

grounds of war himself.

Well if you. Again, I'm pretty sure in the book they talk a lot about

his, his education of himself. He educated himself quite a bit

behind and those, a lot of those war plans were foundations for from

other. The Punic wars and you know, all the other stuff. Like so

he, he studied that stuff

probably more than I've ever read anybody else studying that. That stuff.

Like he what I understand he, like he, he.

He could pinpoint failure points based on

just logic. Right. Because of course hindsight is 2020

and you know, you can look back on something and definitely see your areas of.

Of era you. It's very difficult to do looking

forward. But I also got the feeling from this part of the book

that, that this is kind of where our modern day war games

come from. Yes. If you think of like, like the, the joint

we do a lot of naval war games with like you know, the other.

The British Navy and etc. We'll invite, and we invite a lot of countries

into these war games and mostly allied

countries and we have allied countries play the, the evil

empire, so to speak. Right. Like they'll play the enemy. But,

but I got the vibe like in reading I was like this has to be

where this comes from because all a lot of stuff that Sheffin

talks about is like is trying to

use the past to have foresight into where you can

visualize those mistakes before they happen. Now granted, Germany

of course they lost the war, so they didn't do that really. Well, well, well,

they did it. I would argue, I would assert that they did it better.

They did it better on the Eastern

front than they did on the Western front. Well, because they've kind

of been there, done that. Right? Because. Well, sort of. Yeah. But also because.

Well also because they. And this is the other dynamic that he talks about in

this first chapter or this first couple of chapters.

Ambassadorship and diplomacy was great power

oriented, which we don't think about great power diplomacy anymore. Like we're in a weird.

We are, we're in a weird historical moment

111 years later that people back

then who were diplomats and ambassadors would not recognize now.

So back then There was no NATO, there was U.N. there was no,

none of that. And to be honest, it's not even 111. I remember as a

kid and thinking that like the ambassador to

England or the, whatever, the U. S. Ambassador, that, that was a pretty prestigious

position. And today if you ask somebody, they're like, they don't even know who the

ambassadors are anymore. Like, they don't care. Right? They don't care. Do we have an

ambassador in Afghanistan? I don't know. I don't care. Oh yeah, we do. I know

we do. I'm just saying, like, if you ask the majority of people, the,

the ambassadors around, our ambassadors around the world have very little

power, so to speak, or very little agency, you know.

Right. And that's as a result of World War I. They're supposed to speak

for our leadership. Right. They're supposed to be there in their stead and yet

none of us think that they have any authority whatsoever. Like,

I'll tell you the weirdest thing that was ever said to me. The weirdest thing

that was ever said to me. I belong to an organization. I

don't know if you want me to name them or not. I don't care. But

so, okay, if you, if you, if you've never met anybody who was on in

Rotary. Like the Rotary. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I was in

Rotary for a long time and I was told at one point or

another that if I was ever in a foreign country and in trouble to

find another Rotarian, don't worry about the US Ambassadorships, find a

Rotarian, because the Rotarians will treat you better than the US Embassy in

any country around the world. Like, and I'm paraphrasing people, by the way,

but when I was, when I said that, I was like, hold on a

minute. What kind of secret handshake club did I

join? Seriously? Exactly, exactly.

That was really. I was like, is this like the modern day

version of the Masons or something? Like, you know, like what the Masons used to

be. Again, Masons aren't what they used to be either. But I'm

like, I was very confused by this, but let me just tell

you, I happened to be in a foreign country. I was not

in any trouble. I just happened to see where a Rotary meeting

was being held and I just asked a question. I was like, oh, this is

you guys. I'm a Rotarian too. And this happened to be in a restaurant

and I was treated like a king. Like, it was, it was like,

oh, come sit down, this is our best table. And I'm like, what the hell

is going on right now? Like, I was really confused by this. But

did lead me to believe that if I was ever in real trouble in a

foreign country, if I could find a Rotarian, that they would help me in

ways that a normal civilian

wouldn't help another normal civilian. You know what I mean? Like, it's like.

It's like the Rotarians are, are like the more buttoned up version of

the A team. Like, it's, it's. I mean, they go, yeah, you know. No,

but like, so that. So then I started asking deeper questions and it was like,

okay, so what is it? What exactly does that mean? And here's the thing. In

some countries, if you are in trouble and you're. Let's say you're arrested in a

country, the likelihood of you getting to an American

embassy is slim to none. Like, right. It's very unlikely that you're. Now you can

make your call to the American embassy and they can start political, whatever,

dialogue, whatever. But if you, if you're in trouble and you go

to a Rotarian again, what I'm told is they will get you

to the embassy no matter what. Like, they will find a way to get you

to the embassy. They'll. They'll help you in ways that somebody like making a phone

call can't help you. Yeah, yeah, it's. It. And, and I was really

struck by that. And, and so what to go back to now, my previous statement,

it. It alludes to what we think of as our embassy,

as our ambassadors today. Like, we don't think of them

the way that they did back in the early part of the. The 20th century.

Well, and this gets to sort of an idea that we talked a little bit

about in. When we were talking about. Oh, gosh.

And I'm not suggesting the governments think of them that way. I'm talking about this.

No, the citizens. We don't view the ambassadors as having any

authority, but. Right. Maybe our government still does. I don't know.

Oh, no, no, our government does. I mean, those are still plum positions that people

fight over in Washington D.C. or wherever.

Mostly Washington, D.C. and they are still

positions that are delivered to.

That are delivered to people as. Oh,

gosh, they're delivered to people as. As

rewards. Right, as plum rewards. You still have. It's still the

spoils kind of scenario. Exactly. And every administration does this. Republican,

Democrat, doesn't matter. No, this reminds

me of something that BH Liddell Hart brought up. Right.

And. And why we don't learn from history. And it's, It's. It's very

stark. You can see it very starkly in World War I. So

ambassadors and prime ministers.

And ambassadors, prime ministers and

diplomats did not have.

Yes. The League of Nations hadn't even, didn't even exist yet.

So they didn't have a way to

communicate quickly. Right. Or

efficiently. And this is the other thing, even more than the

lack of communication, because the telegraph was just becoming a thing

and radio was just becoming a thing. As far as a

method of communication, you saw this in sea battles between the German U boats

and the British, the British, the British Navy, the British naval fleet later

on. And Kika does an awesome job of talking about those battles, which I had

no idea about. That's just kind of amazing.

But the, the diplomats and the ambassadors,

they still operated as an aristocratic class.

So the people that got those jobs, the people that were doing that

diplomacy were like the cousin of the Kaiser. Right.

Or the, or the, or the,

the brother in law of the Prime Minister. Right.

That person was the one that got that ambassadorial role,

regardless of their talents or skills. Now you can say in our time,

okay, Mitt Romney's brother

probably shouldn't be the ambassador to like, I don't

know, Sweden or something. Right. I'm just gonna name an

innocuous country here, not that Sweden's innocuous. We love all our Swedish listeners.

And I like Swedish fish and Swedish women and Swedish food.

Okay. Yes, thank you. And Mitt Romney, if he's a

president, I don't know that his brother, by virtue of running a

sovereign wealth management fund or whatever it is his brother is doing,

I don't even know if it. Romney has a brother. It doesn't matter. Just the

example I'm using, I don't know if that guy's qualified to run,

to go be the ambassador of Sweden. He's

probably not, but that's, but it's

interesting. We're more comfortable with the idea of an

unqualified stranger who's connected or even an unqualified kid

or a relative who's connected to the person in power. We're more

comfortable of that in an American context now post World War I

and people pre World War I and up to World War I,

they didn't even think about, like the structure of all of that.

And so you had diplomacy that was run basically on a

summer schedule. People who were making war plans

and mobilization plans based on the new technology of the rail and the

telegraph and the telephone. And then the third thing

here, and this is at the War College piece. And then the fourth thing here,

which by the way, Keegan brings up here, I Love this quote. He says this.

The effect exerted by paper plans on the unfolding of events must

never be exaggerated. Paper plans do not determine

outcomes. The happenings set in motion by a particular scheme

of action will rarely be those narrowly intended, are

intrinsically unpredictable, and will ramify far beyond the

anticipation of the instigator.

This whole section, you're going to laugh at me, but this

whole section reminded me of one quote from one.

This. Obscure quote from an American boxer

that said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

That's what it reminds me of. Like, because, because again, like you said, you could

put all the plans you want on paper, but until you actually start, listen, you

could have the best trained military in the world, and you're going to say, I'm

going to send one battalion in there because I know this

one battalion is going to beat up on their battalion, not understanding that that

battalion has the support of all the citizens in that, like. And now all

of a sudden, you're not fighting one battalion, you're fighting half a country because they,

like, they come out of the woodwork to defend their. Their land. Like, you

can't. And you're telling me that you can't plan for that. Like, there's no way

to know what that group of people are going to be able to do or

not do because they're not military people that you can put on a piece of.

Of paper and judge based on weaponry or

training or whatever. Like, they're. They're a. They're an X factor.

Which is why, like, he was saying, like, none of this matters once you

enact it, once you start, once you hit the go button, just like

hell hits the fan. So

Schliefen, speaking of him, he was a man without hobbies. All he liked doing was

making paper plants. He had nothing. That was hilarious. He was the most

boring guy on the planet. Even in his retirement, he was reading war books to

his granddaughter. Know,

he. He reminds me of the guy who. And you've known guys like

this? I've known guys like this. It is. And sorry, ladies who are listening, it

is guys. It is always guys. Guys are this obsessive. Women can't get there

from here. They just can't. I've never met a woman that obsesses about

one thing the way a man does. Never met it yet. You haven't met my

wife when she talks about cleaning. My wife literally watches cleaning videos on

Facebook for fun. Like, it. She's obsessed. Okay, all right. That's

okay. Okay. So you might have me there,

but. She'S the only one I know though, just, I'm just, just saying.

But men will obsess about one thing to

the point of them being, of them turning themselves into boring human

beings about everything else. Yeah, like we were just talking about.

We were just talking football before we, before we hit the record button on this

episode today. And we're not going to talk about football today, kids. The folks, don't

worry about it, it's fine. But, but like Tom Brady as a

quarterback. No, not even that. Tom Brady as a human being

has got to be the most boring human being on the planet. Gotta be. Because

what else does the guy know? Didn't know anything else. He has no other obsessions.

He doesn't care about anything else. He eats, sleeps, breathes football. If you try

to get him to talk about anything else. Snow, for God's sakes. The guy

doesn't, he doesn't have an opinion about that. Can't even think about it. He'll tell

you about the time in the snow game where they had to clear off a

patch of grass for Adam Venateri to kick a field goal. He'll tell you all

about that snow game. That's his

depth of knowledge about snow.

This is what I mean. And this was Schleepin sleeping was a guy

who, who was so obsessed with

warfare and war planning on paper

and yet had no practical experience in this.

And so when, when the practical as, as Keegan points

out, when the, when the theory, at a certain point you have to go

beyond theory, when the theory became actuality,

events started moving. And I think of the great Jocko Willick

quote the guy who wrote Extreme Ownership, the great Jocko Willa

quote, the enemy gets a vote. Yeah, and that's what,

yeah, that's what screws people up every friggin time.

Because to your point, I'll make plans all day

or Mike Tyson, I absolutely, I'm going to make a plan to fight Mike

Tyson. And yeah, it never survives

first contact with Mike Tyson. We say this in business, a

marketing plan never survives first contact with the customer. Like you could plan the

greatest marketing plan for your product ever. And we work, work in another project

where we do, we do that kind of work with, with startups.

And the second your customer tells you something,

that's something totally that you did not anticipate or expect or behaves in

a way that you did not anticipate or expect, there goes your plan. Now

what most people do is what in marketing or in Fighting or

in war planning. And in war planning, it has dangerous results,

which is where the First World War came from. Most people don't know

how to abandon their plan. They

don't have the courage to let it go. And so I guess that's

the first question is like, what's more, Is it, Is it current? Is it that

they don't have the courage to let it go? Or is it the ego taking

over, saying that, I know I'm right, I'm just going to continue on because,

well, I mean. Right. You know what I mean? Like, well, I mean, we talked

about egos, we talked about eagles with why we don't learn from history. Right? Yeah.

World War I presents itself even in the

assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Right? The

egos of the Serbian terrorists who were

convinced that they would get their independence

because they were nationalists. If they just killed this guy

who was representative of the Habsburg Empire, by the way, the

Habsburg Empire and the Austro Germany, or not Austro Germany, Austro

Hungary Empire, all of that, we don't even think about any of that stuff

anymore because all those parts of Central Europe look totally different now. Talk about redrawing

lines on maps. But the

Serbians, the Bosnians, the Greeks,

all of those countries, all of them were hyper

nationalistic, which means they were almost exclusively

driven and represented. And even

they even had their positions of power filled by men who had

egos as big as the kings and queens of the

big empires of England and France and Russia and

Germany. And they would take the Pepsi Challenge

against anybody else's ego on that continent. They were fine with that.

And so

egos, right, like, how do you.

I do think it's courage. I do think it's courage to abandon a plan when

it doesn't. When your ego, when it doesn't work.

But in business, because this is a business podcast, too,

how do you abandon that plan? Like, you put millions of dollars in there or

hundreds of thousands, depending upon what level you're at. And now the

customer says, no, I don't want this thing. My behavior

says, I want this thing.

People have no answer. People struggle with this massive business. People

struggle massively with this because you can either fight the market,

you can and not get anywhere, or not get

to the places you want to go. You can go with the market, and then

you can be seen internally as sort of being wishy washy after you did all

this planning, or you can do nothing

and then the market just runs over you.

I mean, I think. I mean, I. It's interesting that you,

that you Say that because I, you know, again, in the, the demographic of

businesses that I work with, in my consulting business is

usually smaller than, than most consultants want to work with.

I have no problem working with the, you know, a five million dollar a year

company which to most consultants they're not big enough to.

They're a spec, They're a blip on a map, right. Of a specimen. One of

the things that, that I think and I have

conversations with them way before we

transact any money or any money passes hands. And

one of the first questions I asked them is how willing are you to pivot?

And if their answer is even remotely too tight for me

beyond my, then I don't take them as a client. That's really what dictates whether

or not they're a client for me is their

intestinal fortitude of,

of openness. Right. Like a willingness to, to look at

actual analytical data. To

your point, because a lot of times people will look in business and

to your point where they go down a certain path and they're not willing to

leave that path. A lot of it is because whoever

is leading them down that pathway, if

they're, if they're asking them to change, they're not giving them enough

data, usually it's because they're not getting enough information. Now

to your point about, hey listen, if I said to you, hey son, you're running

this company, I'm your marketing advisor and I say to you, hey listen, our customers

are telling this, telling us this, we've got to change directions. And you go,

no, that's not enough to go by. We're not changing directions. And that's usually how

it happens. But had I said to you, our customers are saying this,

here's where all the analytical data lies. Our, all this, all the numbers

are saying that we're in the, we're on the wrong pathway. And all indications say

that if we shift over to this new path, we're going to gain traction here,

here and here. And here's why that now you're, if you say no to

that, by the way, as a, as your marketing consultant, I'm

out. If you say like I'm going, okay, then you, you don't need to pay

me anymore. And by the way, I have literally said this to people. You are

not taking my advice based on all the analytical data that I'm giving you.

I'm not your guy. You want somebody that you want somebody to

reinforce and double down on your area and your way

and show you a pathway to success. Bullying

yourself there instead of actually listening to. I'm not your guy. Right.

So. So I step out, and I don't want to take your money anymore because

that's the thing. You're paying me for my expertise. You're paying me to give you

the advice. And the end of the. Not just advice,

but you're paying me to give you advice based on analytical data that

I'm giving you. And if you're not willing to do that, then I'm not your

guy, so I'm out. And so the. And the thing in World War

I was the diplomats had their own silo, the kings

and queens had their own silo, the war colleges had their own

silo. And even inside the war colleges, there was class

stratification like nobody's business, because this was

a European war the Americans didn't get into late. Woodrow Wilson

infamously said, we're too proud to fight. Whatever. Okay,

okay. So it's more like. It's more like it didn't impact

us at all. At all. So why would we fight for something we had no.

We had no. We had no skin in the game. Like, we had no. We

had no dog in the fight, like. So why would we. Why would we fight

in the first place? He was just being nice.

I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Exactly, Frank. Woodrow Wilson is nice. We'll just leave that aside

for just a minute. The comment was being nice. I didn't say he was nice.

But you had all this European stratification inside of an

aristocratic worldview that said,

even with the Enlightenment, even with the American Republic,

even with the revolutions that had been fought, even. I

mean, Europe had enjoyed a long

19th century up to that point. Right.

They had some systems post Napoleon,

that sort of kind of in the middle of the 19th century kind of ameliorated

some things. But they still had the Crimean War, they still had the Boer War,

but those wars were far away in their colonies or in

other countries that they didn't care about. Right. And so

the bifurcation of. And I loved how you use the term lack of

data. Not only did they not have data

in going forth on this war, they had an

attitude. And Keegan nails this almost perfectly. They

had an attitude where you, as a. If you would. If you

could go back in time, Tom, outside of your own lifetime. Yeah.

And talk to these people, not one of them would listen to you. And not

because of your class status or because you're an American or a

weirdo at a time. Not because of any of those reasons. Although they would layer

those in. They. You.

They were playing a game where the rules involved their

egos and not data. And I don't think we're

any better on that now, even with all the

data we have at our disposal.

If you're talking strictly in warfare, I agree. I, I

think, well, in anywhere. Anywhere. I mean, business warfare. Anywhere, like I was

saying, in business. And again, I do think that

there, I think. I think there's a split. I think there are people in

business that will absolutely make judgments on data and will actually

make business decisions based on the data that they're seeing. I

do think that that exists in business. In warfare, I don't know so

much. But the one thing, I think the other thing, too, that really

comes into play, and I know you're. I maybe want to talk.

Maybe you want to wait until you ask the question, because I know there's a

question later that you're going to ask about,

about, you know, leading, about leading team. What we're learning,

like what the difference is learning between leading teams. And I don't, I don't remember

how you phrased it, but the, the idea behind the. And what.

I think one of the things that the Americans brought to that fight that

surprised people and I still. And I think that, that leaders

could learn from and still deploy today is,

if you ever notice, it's like a next man up syndrome or a next man

up kind of mentality where the Germans weren't ready for that. The

Germans weren't ready to kill a colonel or to kill a lieutenant in

the field. And then the army keep coming at them because somebody else just took

that lieutenant spot and they all in the. And the, the autonomy

that happens in between, I think is another thing, right, where you basically say

to, you know, you've got your generals down to the captain, down

to the lieutenant, and by the time it hits the lieutenant, you're like, listen,

here's the game plan. Your number one job is to take that hill,

and number two job is to survive at any cost, Right? Like take the

hill, survive. That's in that order of importance, by the way. And all

that stuff that happens in between, we don't care. Like, just do what you just

do those two things. We're happy. And I think leaders in today's business

could learn from that. Where you can take a. Take a sales manager, for example,

and say, here's your quota. Hit your quota. I don't care how it happens, just

go do it. You have some autonomy to make decisions for your team.

To hit that quota. And some of it is hiring and firing people, some of

it is tactical things like how, whatever, but,

but allowing that next man up to actually have some

autonomy and have some skin in the game. That's, I think, of something that came

out of that conflict that we didn't really have before.

And even in, like, we talked a little bit about this on another

episode of the podcast too. Even the, the

US Military's fight on the westward expansion of our own country.

Yeah, they didn't have a, they didn't have autonomy in

a sense of decision making power. They just had melees

and like stuff that happened because individual people just kind

of did what they wanted to do. That's not the same thing as taking a

military, like a military drive at something, say, go

take that hill and then survive. Those are your two,

your two, you know, goals in this, in this, in

this endeavor and you know, take the hill under, under

any circumstance, under any means necessary. Survive under any means

necessary. So at the end of the day, when you do capture that hill and

you lost 20% or 15% of your, your battalion

or whatever or your league, and the general comes in and

says, nice job, you took the hill. How did, how did, how

did question two go? Or in. In. In.

I can't remember the term I was thinking of, but whatever. Like goal number two

was to survive. We lost 15. Okay, how, how can we

make sure that doesn't happen again? Like there's that, that the whole idea of debriefing

with those two primary objectives in mind,

the rest doesn't matter. Right. And, and that wasn't the case. When

you look at all of the stuff that Schifflin and all those guys like the

war, the war on paper, etc. Etc.

There was never, there was never that clarity of

this is your objective one objective. There was never a backup plan. There was never

a secondary goal. Because if the secondary goal was to survive, then they would have

known. You get to a certain point, if you can't take the hill, you go

to objective two, which is to survive, and we're going to retreat and

regroup before we make the next plan. Like there was, it was very little of

that and they didn't, they didn't learn on the fly. Which is another thing

that happens when you have that next man up syndrome or

that next man up component that the, that the allied forces had.

It doesn't matter how many of them you knock down, there's going to be somebody

there to take the place of the leadership role. Like that they weren't ready for

that. And I think that's, I think that's the biggest thing. And again,

I think, I think in today's business society we have, we have a,

if you have a similar mentality, your company is going to thrive

in a better, at a better, in a better clip. It's, you know, it's not.

And we see that with startups all the time. Hyun, right where startup founder

thinks that they have to do everything themselves. They have, they have to have a

hand in everything. And once they learn that delegating that stuff with clear

objectives and then having them report back with successes and failures and

then taking the analytics to make the next decision,

it frees up the startup founder to, to

really become that, that centerpiece

and not, and not that. That you don't have to be everything,

you just have to be everything. Right? Right. Yeah. No, no,

yeah, no, you're exactly right. Well and you brought up a couple of points that

I was, I was looking through in Keegan's work here because there's a couple of

things that jump out, right, that support what you're, what you're saying here

and will allow us to transition into our next point. So the

generalship, right? Let's talk about leadership. The leadership in World War I.

The generals in World War I. Ha.

Joffrey, Hindenburg,

Ludendorff, even Brasilov in

I believe in Russia. Em all

Ataturk down in Turkey who later on

would become the, the founder of

the country of Turkey. Ataturk.

Interesting guy. Even,

even Winston Churchill who of course later on would become in Winston

Churchill who, who, who really pushed

for. Well, you know, he really pushed for the battle in the,

in the Dardanelles. In the Dardanelles straight at Gallipoli which,

the, by the way, the battle at Gallipoli. I, I had, I had never

fully appreciated just how much of a unmitigated

slaughter that was. And that's the thing that, the other thing that jumps out to

you about World War I. And so I want to read about General Ship a

little bit here and I want to talk about the Somme,

because the Somme was one of the worst battles on the Western Front

in, in the year of battles. In.

Well, the, in the year of battles. So I'm going to read about this holocaust

and it starts of course with generalship. So General Haig, right.

Douglas Haig. Right. Of the. Who was leading the, the British

Expeditionary Force, by the way. People people

misunder misunderstand this. The British army, the British

Expeditionary Force, while hardened in Colonial battles

was always second to the British Navy. And this is just sort of how it

works, right? In certain. In certain countries we would see this, saw this in

World War II, where, interestingly

enough, the Air Force, as a discrete

service, had to really fight to get out

from underneath the auspices of the army and

even the auspices of the Navy in the Pacific, like the Air Force, had to

fight to become a discrete service and still has a chip on its shoulder to

this day about being a discrete service in the. In the

US Military. So Haig

ran the. The British Expeditionary

Force in. In World War I.

And Keegan says this about

Haig, and it's interesting when he describes the personalities of these men.

He says this, and I quote, Haig,

whom his contemporaries found difficult to know, has become

today an enigma. The successful generals of the

First World War, those who did not crack outright or decline

gradually into pessimism, were a hard lot as they had to be

with the casualty figures accumulating on their desks.

Some nevertheless managed to combine toughness of mind with. With

some other striking human characteristic. Joffrey,

that was the leader of the French.

Imperturbability, Hindenburg, gravity,

folk fire, Khamel, certainty.

Haig, in whose public matter and private diaries

no concern for human suffering was or is

discernible, compensated for his aloofness with nothing

whatsoever of. And I love this term because this is

so English, nothing whatsoever of the common touch.

Such. You can tell Keegan's an English historian.

Just a little this little things an American would never say.

And back to the book. He seemed to move through the horrors of the First

World War as if guided by some inner voice speaking of a higher

purpose and a personal destiny that we now know was not

just appearance. Haig was a devotee of both spiritualistic

practices and a fundamentalist religion. As a young officer,

he had taken to attending seances where a medium put

him in touch with Napoleon. As commander in chief, he fell under the

influence of a Presbyterian chaplain whose sermons confirmed

him in his belief that he was in direct communication with God

and had a major part to play in a divine plan for the world. Closed

clip that was the general

that was head of all the commander in chief of all the British Expeditionary

Forces at the Psalm. That guy

in 1916. That guy.

Now I'm not going to go into the whole entire battle of the Somme. You

can read the whole thing. You can read how the Germans

responded to the British moving forward. Forward.

The Psalm is a muddy field. It is.

It is a muddy field. And the Germans, by the way, held the high ground.

And they held the high ground for the entire war. Talk about

to Tom's point earlier, going up the hill and grab it. You know,

they weren't given autonomy, the British soldiers were not given autonomy

and the British infantry did not have tanks at this point of the war. This

was a year too early. And

the, the Battle of the Somme dragged on through the

summer, through that summer, in, in, in 1916.

And. Well,

Keegan wraps up his analysis of the SOB with this

line. By the 19th of

November, when the Allied offensive was brought officially to a halt,

the furthest line of advance at Le Boeufs lay only

seven miles forward of the front line of attack

on the 1st of July. Now you want to know how many men they lost

to get 7 miles? This will make you sick.

The Germans may have. We don't have clear numbers even

now. The Germans may have lost over

600,000 killed and wounded in their effort to keep their solemn

positions. The Allies had certainly lost

over 600,000. The French casualty figure being

194,451. The British

419,654.

The Holocaust of the Somme was subsumed for the French in that

of Verdun. To the British, it was and

would remain their greatest military tragedy of the

20th century, indeed of their national

military history. Then it

goes down. There is nothing more poignant in British life than to visit the ribbon

of ceremony of cemeteries that marks the front line of 1

July 1916, and to find on a gravestone after gravestone

the fresh wreath, the face of a pal or a chum above a

khaki surge collar staring gravely back from a dim photograph,

the pinned poppy and the inscription to quote a father,

a grandfather and a great grandfather, close quote. The

psalm marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British

life that has never been recovered. And Keegan was

writing this in 1998.

By the way you add up those figures, what that means at

the psalm is that probably close to 1.2

million men died in one field, in one

battle. That,

and there's no other way for me to frame this is piss poor

leadership. That's, that's

homicidal leadership. Yeah.

And I don't care how much you think you're in touch with God.

And I, I say this as a Christian. I don't say how. I don't care

how much in touch a guy God you think you are. I don't care how

many seances you go to and call up Napoleon.

I don't care how class conscious you are and lack the common touch

to allow that to happen on your watch. For your part, the French do what

they do, the Germans do what they do, but on your part,

you're responsible for a third of that.

I will frame it this way. After I read that, I wouldn't have wanted to

be the soul, because I do think people have souls. I wouldn't have wanted to

be the soul of Douglas Hag when he showed up at wherever it is he

showed up at. I wouldn't want

to be that guy because that's a lot of explaining to do.

That's a lot.

I read that for 7 miles you expended

1.5 million people for 7 miles.

And still didn't take the actual hill. Right, right,

right. You did not actually achieve the objective. I mean,

I, I, I, I don't know the com, the comparative numbers, but

I'm thinking, like, think, think of that same thing. We, I don't know,

I don't think the numbers are going to be the same, but think of like

Normandy or Iwo Jima. Yeah, like Iwo Jima.

We took the hill. That was the reference point that I was using in that

for that and that. This is, by the way, folks, this is World War II,

not World War I, but. Right, but I would imagine the numbers of

loss are going to be high.

Yeah, I don't know if they're that high. I don't, I mean, even Normandy,

where we knew we were walking into. Yeah, we knew,

we actually knew going in that we were going to lose a good portion of

people, of men in that, in that battle. We knew going in, but we

also knew that if we took that beach that, that was going to basically

spearhead the remaining part of the, the, the,

the defense inland. Right? So like, we, we had to have

it and that, that's kind of what I was, you know, under any means necessary,

you take the hill or you take the beach. But you know, objective

number two is to survive it so that we can actually hold it after the

fact that, Right. You know, there's, there's purpose behind

objective number two. But I don't know, I don't

know what the, I don't know what the orders were in the psalm. Like that

doesn't make something there, There's a disconnect, right? Like that's the,

the Battle of Normandy resulted in

approximately226,386 Allied

casualties and around240,000 German

casualties with an additional20,000 French,

French civilian deaths. But actually killed

on that day, not just in the whole battle, but actually killed on that day

was around 72,000Americans and actually killed on

D Day. On the day of the actual invasion itself

was 25,000. 2500, yeah.

2,500Americans and 4,414 total

Allied troops, with approximately 153,000

wounded. Significantly lower numbers in World War I.

But still, to your point, we actually got on the

beach. Right, right, right. And that's the thing.

Like, Hague at the Somme is

probably the worst, but you have Hindenburg in.

In the Western. On the Western Front and Ludendorff on the

Western Front. Then you had the French at

Verdun under Folk and Joffrey.

Those guys. The generalship,

the piss poor generalship in World War I

is just kind of stunning. And when you read these numbers, and

consistently when I read these numbers in Keegan's wonderfully

written, wonderfully written book,

I. The thing that came back to me was,

this makes no sense. This makes no sense. This makes no

sense. This makes no sense. Why are we exp. Bending men?

And maybe this is something I don't understand, but

the men didn't understand why they were walking seven miles into

barbed wire and machine guns.

Like, at a certain point, the Germans would. And this was in battle, after

battle, the Germans would stop firing the machine

guns because the. The British

troops or the French troops who were advancing

would get caught in the barbed wire that hadn't been broken by the bombardments. By

the way, the numbers of tons of material. They're still finding

material in Europe from the battle, like from battles in World War

I. Millions of tons of rounds, millions

dropped on barbed wire. And because the way the

Germans burrowed and trenched into the side of the mountains

and into the side of the grounds at the Somme, and particularly at Verdun, where

the chalky soil was where they could just literally embed like,

like wasps nests. They could just embed and stay in there, and then they come

out and shoot you and just go right back in. Plus, there was

no. There was no bombers. Like, that wasn't a

concept that really, like, existed until World War II,

which prevented a lot of trench warfare, World War II, from occurring. Because now you

could bomb from the sky, right, which totally obliterates all of that.

But the tons of material you had expended and then

the tons of men you had expanded. The Germans would literally watch the British

walk across no Man's Land after they had shot off their. All of their

cartridges, and then they just stopped firing and let Them just let them go back

and carry their. Why are we. Why are we executing people now? It was

literally a firing spot that you're sending guys into.

And to be a general. And I get

it, you're at the back, you're having three meals a day,

you're talking with some prime minister. You're managing

the war. Telegraph lines of communication,

which were a new thing that were being put down at the time,

were cut by bombardments. So you would literally send out a message in

the morning. You would get maybe one message in the middle of the battle, in

the afternoon, and then you wouldn't find out about the outcome of the battle until

the next day. In some cases, if you're a general in the rear

with the gear. Unlike the wars of the

early 18th of the early 19th century, where, and

Keegan even mentions this at, at

Waterloo, Wellington actually rode out with his

men. Like, he rode out. He saw Napoleon. He's like, oh, yeah, that's

Napoleon. Yeah, I got you. Mfer you that right there.

I could see the whites of his eyes. Hank never did that.

Hank didn't go out to the front. That was not a concept

for them because, again, they were aristocratic Europeans.

He didn't have the common touch. He wasn't going to be dealing with the hoi

polloi and the people. And he was just fine

with ex. With just executing people in order to achieve

some objective that wasn't going to get a. That he didn't even know hadn't

been. He didn't even know hadn't been achieved because

the telegraph lines were cut. Because the main thing wasn't

communication. The main thing was, well, just go out there and

figure it out, maybe, or do actually figure out. Go

out there and do what you're told. March to those lines. If you get

caught in the barbed wire, well, it will be a glorious sacrifice for the British

Empire. And there were people willing to do that.

Hell, on both sides. On the German side, on the French side, on the. On

English, their work. And this is a mindset we can't comprehend.

No, we just can't comprehend. It's like I said this to a buddy of mine

who went to Iraq and was. Was a driver in

Iraq for a couple of different tours. And I've said this to other buddies who

went to Iraq and Afghanistan. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we lost

in America 8,000 people total

over the course of 20 years. We lost our minds as a country.

We haven't lost our minds like that since Vietnam, where we lost 50,000 people

in like 17 years.

Numbers that a World War I general would be

peachy keen with, or even. A World War II general,

apparently. Well, and that's where. Right, and

that's where we say they're made of different stuff. They were made of different stuff.

Because now the generals you have. Now this is why we're all talking about

drone warfare and sending robots to go fight for us. We don't want to

expend any men at all. And I don't know how you do war

without expending men. I don't know how you do the war between the robots, because

eventually they'll wake up and be like, oh, we can just have our own war.

We don't need human beings. Like, why don't we just go shoot the human beings?

That's my concern about that. Don't give a drone too much

autonomy. That's going to be a wrong problem. Not for the drone, for you,

but exactly.

But World War I, how do you. So this is

a question, and it didn't really have it written down, but this is a question

that jumps out of this. What do you do when the leader doesn't

care? When the people have no clue what the vision is

and the leader is so removed he can't explain

it? I think of these

CEOs, of these companies that have 50,000 employees, like Mark

Zuckerberg has no idea what's happening in the front line of his company.

He has no clue. He can't. Or, or if

he does have a clue, he would be the most unique CEO

ever by far. Yeah. And I don't think he is.

Well, I mean, or David Ellison or, or

Larry Ellison or any of these guys running these big companies.

What's his name, Nadella over at Microsoft? Any of those guys, I don't

think any of them are unique. I think they're more like World War I generals

than we want to, than we want to admit. Yeah. And I, I don't, I

don't disagree with you. And, and I think it's interesting. That was the whole

crux of the. Quite a few years ago.

You remember the show Undercover Boss?

Oh, yeah, yeah. And what an eye openening experience it

was for every one of those, especially season one, by the way, because after season

one, everybody knew what the hell you were doing. So it wasn't really. Which I

knew first for certain. That show had a very short shelf life

because, yeah, you know, there's only so many times you're going to trick people that

are actually watching these show anyway. But the point, first season in

my opinion was very real. It was very like when these,

or at least it seemed it maybe I'm just saying. But

when these CEOs of these bigger companies, like companies like Waste Management and

whatever, like they go undercover and they go on the front lines and they

realize what they're asking those frontline people to do

for the money that they make and they're like this, this can't,

this can't go on like this. We can't do this. Like it was very eye

openening for them, which I don't see Mark Zuckerberg ever.

Bezos is probably a better example, right? Because I don't know what, I don't know

what the front line of Zuckerberg's enterprise does, but I do know the front

line of Jeff Bezos group are some of those delivery drivers that are

getting dirt for pay, working their knuckles to,

you know, knuckles to the bone day in, day out, six, seven days a

week. And they're making barely enough money to live. You ask Jeff

Bezos to go do that job and see what he thinks. But you know what?

He won't. There's no way he would. There's no way he would. No. And,

and, and he may, he may be bereft of religion. I have no idea what

his religious beliefs are, but the, the

attitude. So, so we could read about a guy like Hank,

right? And I picked him because he was the most. And I picked the song

because it's just the most egregious example out of a whole pile of

atrocious examples, right? Don't get me started on what happened

in Russia and the nonsense with their. Oh my God, please, they,

they got the Lenin that they deserved. And I'm not talking about the Beatles guy

either. So

that attitude, that posture of,

and well, as Keegan said, not having the common touch, not

being able to put aside

ego or class consciousness or whatever the hell

to get out of your little box, your little office

and to your point, get in the delivery drivers

vehicle and do that job for 12 hours a

day, every day. Like Bezos didn't even start doing

that job. Like he, you know, he, he and I,

I'm old enough to remember when Jeff Bezos had hair. So is Tom.

I remember that guy before he was Lex Luthor. And

he, he never had the common touch. He was always an

aristocrat. He always has had an aristocratic attitude, for God's sakes.

The man was a finance major in college. Like you don't go into

those kinds of, that kind of role because you really like

human beings because you have the like, because you

have empathy for people as people, right? Because you don't want to waste human

capital. You go into that, into that realm. And by

the way, all my finance people, I'm not knocking all of you. I'm merely saying

about the attitude in there. Yes, there's different attitudes among finance

folks. I understand that. And because two things can

be true at once, the vast majority of finance folks I work

with or have engaged with over the course of my career have been

folks who really want to take a human being and turn it into a one

or a zero or put a dollar sign behind it. And

if you can't, if they can't do that, they are confused by the question.

And that is a failure of leadership as a leader. You can't be

confused by the human elements of the question. You could disagree with them,

you can fundamentally dislike them, whatever,

but you have to. You have to have it. You have

to tear. Why do boards. Why do boards. I've often,

I've often questioned this, and I've never asked this question of anybody else, ever.

Hasan. Yeah. You're the first person to get this question. But I'm curious

to your opinion about this, because I think you would know before most or

people that I know anyway. Most people that I know.

Why then do board of directors of big companies often look at the

CFO as the natural successor to the

CEO? That makes no sense

to me, but happens all the time. Because boards of

directors are fundamentally uncomfortable with the

idea of a founder that cares about. Not even a founder, a CEO that cares

about people. Because they don't believe fundamentally,

as business people themselves, that they can do business and have feelings

at the same time. They believe that those. They believe those two things are an

anathema to each other and that they wouldn't be able to make. I remember the

line from. It's. This is actually directly from Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman

when he went researched this back in the 1970s. He said that when he would

talk to CEOs about being more human and more emotionally intelligent,

they would say, I can't be emotionally intelligent because it

will prevent me from being able to make the, quote, unquote, hard decisions that business

requires. That's a bunch of hogwash and you

know it. I know it's hogwash, but you have to take what people's words are.

Right? Okay, so if I take you on your words, if I actually seriously believe

you, then you're closer to Doug Haig

sending out boy after boy after boy after boy in the psalm

for a useless objective, then you are,

then you are close to Mother Teresa trying to save people,

you know, from an, from a convent in India.

Yeah, because you think that Mother Teresa's weak

and you think that Doug Hag is strong. They must, they, they must

all hate guys like Richard Branson then, right? Like Richard Branson

philosophy about businesses. If, listen, when, when you, he

was asked in an interview once, like, you know, shouldn't you,

shouldn't the, you know, the customer is always right? Right. Like, shouldn't you worry about

the customer more than anybody else, blah, blah, blah. And he said, no. If I

treat my frontline employees like they matter more than anything else,

if I treat my frontline employees like their family and I'm going to treat them

with the utmost respect and then they naturally will take care of my

client, my customers, if they're happy, if they're, if

they're, if they're, if they're experiencing a positive work environment. They

are, they are just naturally going to provide my customers

with a good experience. And now I'm not saying he was right 100% of the

time. I'm sure there are still disgruntled employees, whatever. I get that. But

at least his mental thought process had more to do with

treating the boys going into battle

better than most of the people that we're thinking of today. And by the way,

he was a multi, he was a billionaire multibillionaire. He's not like, it's not like

he. Yeah, but, you know, but you'll get that guy. Okay, so you'll

get Richard Branson on a stage, right? You've seen, you've seen this.

You'll get Richard Branson on a stage with Jeff

Bezos and Jamie Dimon.

And the moderator will ask this august

panel of brilliant wealthy

entrepreneurs who have succeeded how they treat their

people. They will give the three answers that, you know,

those three people would give, and then they will

walk off the stage and not talk to each other at all.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and, and, or, or, or even worse. And this is

what I think most of us on the bottom of these hierarchies think

actually happens. They'll give the answer,

they'll have the collapse, they'll walk off the stage. This is where the

modern, the postmodern cynicism comes as an outgrowth of World War I

and World War II and Vietnam. They'll walk

off the stage and what we all imagine is they're all high fiving

about how they've like fooled the Hoi polloi one more time.

Yeah, that's what we all imagine. And I think

it's probably closer to the first example, the first

outcome, than the second one. I don't think Jamie Dimon knows how

to talk to a guy like Richard Branson because I think it's so far out

of his wheelhouse, he just. It's easier to get into his

chauffeured car and just drive home or to his

mistress's house or whatever the hell he does. It's easy.

Whatever, like, whatever. It's easier for Bezos to go on

his yacht with Lauren Sanchez and whatever. With whatever he's

doing with her. It's easier for Richard Branson to go buy another island

instead of some ayahuasca retreat for Aaron Rodgers. It's

just easier to do those things. Because here's the thing.

Haig and Joffrey and Foch and Ludendorff During

World War I, those World War I generals all understood

aristocracy and hierarchy in a way that I don't think we

get, that we don't appreciate. And I think the reason why I'm drawing a

parallel between them and the CEOs that we have now is because I think the

CEOs get hierarchy and class in a way that we don't

get. Things have become more democratized and

egalitarian among the people below that

rank. But among the people above that rank, things have gotten

tighter and tighter as wealth has increased. Things have gotten tighter and

tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter where they are

closer to those World War Generals in attitude.

Maybe not in the ability to command people, but in

attitude. They're closer to that. That's why Jeff Bezos has

no problem with replacing every single one of his

workers at Amazon with a robot. Yeah,

he has. No problem. He won't lose a moment of sleep.

He won't. And people want him to lose sleep,

but he can't because he's ascended to a different

level of. Not to use the Marxist term, but I'm going to go ahead and

use the Marxist term. He's ascended to a different level of class consciousness.

I, I would. I would agree with that, too. I, I guess if you take

out. If you take out the. All that, all the,

the nonsense at the billionaire level. Right. And you just come. Come back down

to Earth at the Millionaire level. Right, Right. Yeah. Those guys. I, I

feel. I feel like if I met a.

We. We recently hosted an event for the

other project we work on. Yeah. At the end of the table with me. And

I'm not Going to mention names, I don't want to embarrass him or anything, but

there was a gentleman at the end of the table that was probably worth, if

I had to guess, 50 million. That, that was. His net worth is probably

50 million. Now for those of you listening to this, mine, not even a fraction

of that. So. But at that level, he

sat at the end of the table with me, lowly nobody,

and spoke to me like I was just another guy and he was just

another guy. That could not happen at the billionaire

level. No, I, I don't, I, I couldn't imagine a

single billionaire that, that would do that,

that would sit at a table like that. It was a dinner table. There was

about 20 of us at dinner. There was, you know, 20 of us at dinner.

I sat at his end of the table and, and there's. I, I can't

think of another. I cannot think of a single billionaire that would do.

Maybe there's one. I could say maybe,

maybe Musk would do it. Maybe. You think

so? Maybe. But I, but I also

think that he's

cut of a slightly, only slightly like the, the colors.

And like you have red and then you have like really, really red, like

slightly, you know, slightly different colored cloth

than the rest of them. Only because, and this is

the only reason why, only because of the amount

of debt he carries to fund

all his projects and that if all of the markers

were called tomorrow, he'd be the brokest man in the world.

That's the only thing I gotcha. But I, but, but again,

I think is the difference between red and really, really red. Like, you know, so

maybe he would sit at the end of the table. But even there I'm not

quite sure. I'm sure he has the same attitude as rest of them. I thinking

the billionaires. My thinking was that that guy is probably the top of the

top that would sit at that table. Yeah. So 50 million in, in net,

in like as a.

Jesus, what's the word I was just thinking of? Oh, net worth. Net worth. Sorry.

Thank you. So somebody at around 50 million net worth. Once you get into even

100 million net worth. I am nobody to them, literally

nobody. And they're not okay. Listen to a goddamn thing I say. Well,

so. Well, okay, so let me, let me, let me frame this this way.

I'll frame this this way. So I'm going to tell a little personal

story and we can move into the next section here. So that kind of proves

this point a little bit. So

on my, my father's side's a little bit wonky. We

don't. We're not really quite sure, or at least I'm not really quite sure. My

mother might be quite sure, but I'm not quite sure. But I could definitely speak

to my mother's side. So my mother's side of my family, right?

My great. My great grandfather. So my

grandmother's father was a sharecropper.

If you know anything about sharecropping in America, you know that that was

sharecropping in the 1920s, 1930s, 1910s. That was just

a step above slavery in. In the Jim Crow south, no less.

Okay, so now we kind of know what framing we're working with,

right? My grandmother was one of, I believe, 12

kids brought in the wash when she was like, 8 years old.

My grandmother, now my. My great grandfather was a sharecropper.

My grandmother got a master's degree. A

huge story in our family. Educational attainment is a huge thing, as you can

tell. That's why I do this podcast. That's why I talk the way I talk.

Whatever. Grandma got the master's degree, right?

Mom got in

the. In the 80s, took her till the 80s, but got a law

degree while working for the federal government.

I stopped with my master's degree. My mother wanted me to go on and do

other things. Things. But I stopped the master's degree because I thought, well, we've had

enough lawyers in the world. Think I'm good, think I think I'm set.

And that was as much of a tussle as you can imagine anyway.

But. But I stopped at a master's degree, right? And one day I may get

a doctorate. I don't know. Just depends. It depends if it's something interesting, maybe, and

I don't have to pay for it. If someone wants to give me an honorary

doctorate, I'll take that, too, thank you very much, but

I won't turn down the honor. But with each one of those steps

from sharecropper to where I am

now, over the course of. Let's just

round it out a hundred years, right? Take it a hundred years for the. For

the side of my family that my mother comes from and that I am now

the descendant of, to go from

probably making less than a. Less than five bucks a month

to where my current net worth is, which I'm not going to say what that

is on the podcast, but let's just say

I could sit at one end of that table that Tom is talking about and

be comfortable. Now, I could always get more money,

but I could sit at one end of that table and be comfortable and not

feel as if I was an imposter sitting at that table.

There's a long way from sharecropper to that table.

Long way. And

maybe my kid, one of my kids will be a finance major.

Maybe he will be. I have no idea. But he's

going to go the next step up. He might get to

that 50 million or 100 million.

And the challenge that I see with leadership is

Kanye rapped about this. People forget where they

came from. For sure. People

forget where they came from. And it's. It's something as simple

as that. Jeff Bezos forgets where he came from.

So does. So does Bill Gates. Bill Gates absolutely has forgotten where he

came from. Like, if you had to knock Bill Gates down all the way back

to putting together computers for, you

know, some club in the 70s, you

know, because his dad was a Harvard professor or whatever, he

wouldn't be able to do it. He wouldn't be able to go back down there

and start all over again. And I often think about that, like all these

people, all these men who are our version

of World War I generals in our time, they have forgotten where they came

from. And that's the fundamental mistake. And

so the question you asked originally about the boards, the boards are also

full of people who are aspirational and want

to forget where they came from. And the. The

CEO to CFO change,

or as I put, well, yeah, we'll just use that. The CEO to

CFO change. That shift reflects an

aspirational desire to have their stock price go up so they

can sit it, so they can move up chairs in that table.

Sometimes psychological explanations are just really simple. Sometimes they're not complicated.

You know,

back to the book, Back to the First World War by John

Keegan.

There's one other point I want to make, but I want to say this first.

The book rounds out with a

chapter entitled America and Armageddon

about the entering of America into World

War I. One of the points

that is interesting in

here, in this chapter, is Keegan's

effort to pull apart why America's entry into World

War I was so important and the role of

great power politics in a country that

is currently in our geopolitical

thoughts and mines.

So Russia's exit from the First World War

was because of German meddling and interference.

Germany knew that Russia was having

a revolution, and so they put a

guy named Lenin on a train and sent him out through, I

believe it was Finland Station, ensured his safe

passage and he wound up in Petrograde

and started doing the things that, well, Lenin was going to do.

The Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War drained

at minimum 10 million men from the Eastern Front,

pulled them back into the country and ensured that

Germany would be able to, would be able to hold the

Western Front and be able to hold out against both the French,

the combined, the combined will of the French and the British

by at least late 1917.

That's why the Germans sent Lenin on a train to

Petrograde Petrograd.

It was a tactical move that had strategic

implications. However,

what the Germans did not anticipate was

the Americans showing up.

Matter of fact, the chapter

10 opens up with this from

the Secretary of State for the

Navy of Germany. I believe

he said this about the Americans and I quote,

they will not even come. Admiral Capel, the Secretary of State

for the Navy, had assured the budgetary committee of the German

Parliament on 31 January 1917,

because our submarines will sink them. Thus

America from a military point of view means nothing. And

again, nothing. And for a third time, nothing.

Town talked previously about a tipping point right of power.

And initially, Germany's

analysis of America was correct. At the beginning of

1917, four months before the United States entered the war on the side of the

Allies its army, as opposed to its large and

modern navy, by the way, all the navies in the world were in competition with

each other to build better boats. It was kind of amazing, actually.

Might indeed they still are. Have you seen stuff coming out of

China right now? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well,

and we're, we're, we're.

We're busy trying to figure out how to basically put.

Without getting too much into the details. Glad you follow some of this. We're busy

trying to try to figure out how to, how to put a nuclear warhead

on a missile you could fire out of a torpedo tube on the top

of a ship and turn into like an arrow that travels

at supersonic speed. Because that's how we're going to

solve that problem. That's what we're working on

anyway. Anyway. Sorry, go

ahead. No, it's like

so, so one of the things, just as I know, so one of the things

at the, at the end of World War II, when we were doing the nuclear,

nuclear tests before we came up with the hydrogen bomb.

Edward Teller came up with the hydrogen bomb a couple of years after the atomic

bomb got dropped. In that couple of years, we were testing

nuclear warheads. We had the idea to put.

I think I said this before on the show. But to put a nuclear warhead

on a shell and shoot it out of the, the turret of a

tank.

This is why we're the greatest country on the, on earth and also the most

dangerous. This is why. Because some junior officer, not even a

junior officer. And I bet it was a Marine Corps officer. Honestly,

that's Marine Corps thinking. Why don't we just take this warhead and just put

it on this thing and just shoot it at those guys? Yeah, yeah. Make

them smaller. Why are you making these giant, like these giant. Make them

smaller. Actually, you know what I mean, the logic and thinking there is

not terrible. Plus, plus that's an American right there.

That's how you know you're an American. No, no, because think of, think about it.

Plus the destruction is isolated, like, right,

like, like, like you can, it's not like you're. Again, what

we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was in my opinion just

criminal. Well, maybe not criminal, but it was, ah,

it was, I mean it was world changing.

We, we now, we now have the option to have moral qualms about

it, which we may not have had that option if we had not dropped the

bomb. Agreed. Agreed. And I'll leave it at that. That's my,

that's my whole, that's why, that's my conclusion about it. Agreed, but,

but again, fast forward to now. We don't need that same level

of destruction to make the point. The same point. We put this, we put the

war. We, we put them on arrowheads instead of,

instead of moabs where

we're taking out a square block, like a city block

instead of, you know what I mean? It's, it's

precision. It's just, it's right, it's instrumental. It's not, it's not

like I, I, whoever came up with that idea, I, I think we should explore

it. Oh, I think they have been for a

while now. Anyway, to

finish the sentence about America, Its

army ranked in size 107,000 men,

17th in the world. It had no experience of large scale operations

since the armistice and Appomattox 51 years earlier and possessed no

modern equipment heavier than its medium machine guns. Its

reserve, the National Guard. The larger, with 132,000 men,

was the part time militia of the individual 48 states, poorly

trained even in the richer states and subject to the sketchiest federal

supervision. Again, understating it like a Britisher can only

understate it. Those guys are running around in the woods like

shooting at food. Okay, that was, that was the National Guard. Back in the

day, the only first class American force, the United

States Marine Corps. 1234. I

love Marine Corps. 15,500 strong was

scattered in America's overseas possessions and areas of intervention,

including several Central American republics which the United States had decided

to police in the aftermath of the Spanish American War of 1898.

By the way, one of those Central American republics was

your friend in mind, Cuba.

Anyway, by the way, I met a guy the other day who's,

who knew, who knew a guy whose grandfather

rode with Pancho Villa. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, I

was like, it's pretty awesome. That's awesome. Ah,

we're not making guys like that anymore anyway,

but the United States. And then I'll go to this.

And he does say this, by the way, Keegan points this out to Tom's, to

Tom's credit. Rare are the times in a great war when the fortunes of

one side or the other are transformed by the sudden accrual accretion of

a disequiliberating reinforce, a disequiliberating

reinforcement. Those of Napoleon's enemies were so transformed in

1813 when the failure of his Moscow campaign brought the Russian army to the side

of British and Austria. Those of the United States against the Confederacy were

transformed in 1863 when the adoption of conscription brought the

North's millions into play against the South's hundreds of thousands.

Those of an isolated Britain and an almost defeated Soviet Union would be

transformed in 1941 when Hitler's intemperance declaration of war against

America brought the power of the world's leading state to stand against that of Nazi

Germany as well as Imperial Japan. By 1918, President

Wilson's decision to declare war on Germany and its allies had brought such an

accretion to the Allied side. Capell's theory,

quote, unquote. They will never come, have been triumphed or have been

trumped in six months by America's

melodramatic Lafayette. I am here.

The United States had not wanted to enter the war. America, its

president Woodrow Wilson had said, was, quote, too proud to fight, close quote.

And it has sustained a succession of diplomatic affronts from the sinking of the

Lusitania and its American passengers to the German attempts

to foment a divisionary war in Mexico without responding to

provocation by material means.

Now he does talk about black troops, interestingly enough in

here, kind of does an interesting aside about that. You can read, you can read

about that. But then he goes into a deep under, a deep

dive into Russian Bolshevikism and into

why Russia With Trotsky and Lenin

at the. At the forefront, were having such trouble with the

Germans and why they struggled to sign the Bre

what is it? The Brest Litzlock

Treaty. But one of the points that he made, which I did not know, I

was not aware of, was that Finland,

interestingly enough, was once part of Russia

before World War I. Did not know that they

were also part of that nationalistic friction

that began to grow because of the collapse of

the aristocracies and the collapse of the aristocratic system

in Europe as a result of World War I.

Now, as America entered the war, the

Turks began to collapse and the Ottoman Empire began to fall

apart after Gallipoli. And of course

the machinations of T.E. lawrence and the rise of the

Arabs who wanted their own countries

began as well towards the end of

World War I. And of course has led to all of the

current shenanigans we have around Palestine,

Israel, Iraq, Iran,

Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and

on and on and on. Also

Russia, just to point this out, is

still working through the exoduses of World

War I in its current fight with the Ukraine,

by the way, the Donbas region, all of that. Germany

successfully pushed into that during World War I and was loathe to

give it up. Matter of fact, the spot where Putin is now

coming from, coming from east to west, the

Germans made it to that spot in World War I, coming from west to east

and were loath to give it up as part of the Treaty of

Versailles. Ukraine has always

had problems.

In the close of our episode today,

a couple of things that I would like to point out as we've had a

lively conversation, I would encourage you to pick up the First World War. I would

also encourage you to pick up John Keegan's second volume, the Second

World War, where he talks about in a one volume

history about everything that went on in, went on in

World War II. A couple of things to point out here.

One of the real stories, and we didn't talk too much about this today, but

one of the real stories of World War I that often doesn't get

talked about is the story of the the friction

that lay between local people who are focused on local battles

versus elite people who were focused on more global

concerns, right? And we even have this friction and this

challenge today. One of the things that's

geopolitically lamented with the rise of quote unquote

populism is the idea that somehow, and

there is a hook underneath this, that somehow being

focused on local things for local people in your local backyard

somehow makes you provincial or unable to understand global

concerns. But then there's

also the opposite side of that, where being too focused on global

concerns and being too cosmopolitan

leaves you at a remove, like Mr. Hague and many of the other

generals from what the actual local people who

actually voted for you actually want.

And I don't know how you solve that problem, but what I

do know is that when both positions are hardened,

it makes you blindly arrogant, and then you wind up in a space

where war can happen. And I think. I think

over the last hundred years, we've been doing our damnedest as human beings

to try to balance that and to try to avoid that

blind arrogance. The other

thing that we didn't point out too much, we kind of touched on it a

little bit with the flattening of hierarchies when we had our conversation

about CEOs, is this. This is sort of the

last point I would make today,

100 plus years later, after World War I, at the close of World War I,

with the death of the European

aristocratic class. Or

maybe not death. Death's probably an over. An over exaggeration. It just

goes into other places. Diminishment. Yeah, diminishment, Absolutely.

The diminishment of the European aristocratic class. We live in a world

where, particularly in America, where hierarchies are ruthlessly flattened

in the pursuit of liberal egalitarianism. You see this

in the way that. To go back to Bill Gates for just a minute, Bill

Gates dresses. He dresses like he's your uncle

from the 1980s.

He may have forgotten where he came from, but he knows how to put on

the uniform like he hasn't. And

yeah, his Nikes are more expensive than yours, but they're

still Nikes. H.

There's something that has happened, and I think it's one of those un.

Undiscussed, unmentioned outgrowths from World War I,

where hierarchies,

no, you need leaders to do things, and you need leaders to

be at least the way humans have the. Have the pyramid

set up. You need leaders to be at the top. You need people

to execute, to be in the middle. And then you have a whole bunch of

people at the bottom that are just walking around waiting for direction.

This is how we have our hierarchy set up.

And hierarchy exists almost as a function of reality.

But the pendulum that we live with now

has swung far away from where it was originally in a

pre1914 world. And I think that this is the part that,

like, frustrates us when we can see it. Other places.

And we wonder, rightly so, probably

why is it that even now, or that now kings and prime

ministers want to wear Nikes and Cosby sweaters, but they don't seem

to be willing to abandon the other aspects of their elitism? This is

why there's a lot of chest thumping in the United States about billionaires and

taxing the rich. Lot of chest thumping about this

and very little ability to actually cross the gap and talk to those people

because of hierarchies. So

those are some of the lessons that I have picked up from the war to

end all wars. Tom,

what do we need to learn from World War I we can apply to our

leadership struggles 111 years on?

I think there's. Without getting, I mean, we could probably have

another podcast episode just on this question alone, because

I think there's a tremendous amount that we can think about

from, from the technological advancements, right? Without World War I,

we wouldn't have the tank. And every war, every subsequent

subsequent war since then has, has

introduced technology at, at a

lightning pace, right? So like, so it's, it's like that

whole necessity is the mother of invention thing, right? So on a, at

a, at a company, at a corporate level, same idea, if your company

is being threatened to go out of business, some sort of hostile takeover, etc. Etc.

You're looking for some sort of technological advancement to save your

skin, right? Like, so we, we learned that from

warfare that you can, you don't have to lean into.

You can, you can lean into the technology version of your company in order

to try to save yourself or, and save your, your people. The, the

hierarchy thing. I, I don't think I could really say a lot more to. Other

than the fact that I think it, I think it's changed from the bottom

up, not the other way around. I think that the people on the bottom have

forced the issue going up because it's.

There is some realization somewhere along the line that, that somebody

said, hey, without those people on the bottom, that company doesn't exist.

So we have to act. We have to. We. We should know that we're important

and we should walk around as if we're no less important than the people above

us. So like, now, that being said, I. The way

that you described it is perfectly okay with that thinking because the people on

the bottom that you are describing walking around aimlessly are still doing

that, even though it's the, it's the middle, it's the middle section

that, that ties the two, right? Meaning, like the middle

section Kind of gets it. They weren't at the bottom long enough ago

that they don't remember and they want to get to the top so they still

assume aspire. I think it's that middle section that really drives that.

I think they drive it. I think they, they sharpen the knife at both ends

because I think they drive the wedge. I think they drive the wedge at the

top and I think they absorb the, the, the wants and

fears from the bottom. Right. But I think they do it very calculatedly and I

think that that's that middle part of the hierarchy that actually runs more

of the world than we think it does. Yeah. From a corporate level. I'm not

talking about the military necessary. But from the war. No, I think every. I think,

I think everywhere. No, I think you're right. I think everywhere. I also think it.

And it just occurred to me, I just clicked over as you were saying it.

This is the unintended consequence of,

of the Marxist revolution in Russia. Because what

Marx. Not Marx. Well, well, yeah, what Marx was proposing

was a rejiggering of class structures.

Sure. So that the proletariat would have,

would have shared common power or the means of production

or whatever fancy term Marxists are using now. I think they're still using means

of production. I think mom dummy recently said that the New York City mayoral

candidate talking about how we will redistribute the means of production. And I was,

yeah, I did hear that. And I thought,

kiddo, you don't say that out loud. You don't,

don't let your inside voice out. Gotta be careful about that. You gotta

watch out for that anyway. But I think

the knock on concept, the knock on effect of Lenin actually trying

to make that happen in a nation state like Russia

during the course of all the chaos of World War I,

weirdly enough, had a positive effect. And I almost never say anything positive about

Marxism because I think it's a terrible theory for how humans should be

organized. But I think it had a, that was the

one positive effect is that the people

from the bottom up could now push the issue

more. Yeah. Because they actually had a

material example of what pushing that

issue meant. And by the way, I always, and I've always said on this,

this on the show people pre1920, pre1950

even I'm willing to give grace to on Marxism,

I really am. Because you don't know what you don't

know. You don't know what you don't know. Right. You just, you just don't hell,

I'll not even 1950 I'll say pre1930 because by 1930 things are

starting to like sort of pop up under Stalin where people were like oh this

is not maybe the best thing. But up until that

point they didn't know. They, they

actually genuinely did not know what this would look like in, in reality. And

they want. Wanted a chance to try it and Lenin, even

though he was a sadistic sociopathic murderer, gave them

a chance to try it. Yeah.

Anyway, go ahead. So yeah. So the middle folks. The knife sharpens at both ends.

A couple, a couple other things I think of is like you know, again this

is really where we start think. This is really the point in history

where we start thinking we should play out scenarios in

live action instead of just on paper. The war, I. E.

The war games, things like that. So, so that led to. Again, so in

corporate America you're starting to. When you lay out your. Earlier you

talked about laying out the marketing plan, you're laying out these marketing plans. There

are environments where you can test these things before you go live

so that you're. It's basically our version of war games, right? You. How

would you. You have focus groups, you have all kinds of things. You can test

these things and start before you deploy your actual hard earned money, so

to speak. So between that the. And then I think the

biggest thing honestly that, that, that we learned from World War I is

that adaptability factor. Like you're going into something full

steam ahead. Something happens, you have to change directions. I, I

think it's the, I think it's the first instance of where we can use

the term we need to pivot like,

like this is happening, we need to pivot. Let's focus our

attention, let's change the focus. You know and because that's what they did, especially

once the US Got involved in the war, you saw that much more clearly when

the US Got involved in the war because the US Looked at and said hey,

we got the smallest army in this game. We're not willing to lose our people,

so we need to be better at this. Like, and you saw that

when, when you saw some of the, the US Generals get involved and you saw

some of the. Was a clear. There was a clear. You're talking about

the Psalm and like there's other battles in there. There was clear differences once the

US Got involved in those war in that war that said we're not

just going to throw caution to the wind. We're not just going to throw Our

boys to the, to the wolves, so to speak. And you, you start in World

War II as well. Like just, it happens throughout

the course of our warfare here. So I think, I think World War I was

really the epitome of all of that. The, the adaptability, the planning, the

structure, the all, you know, and again from a corporate environment, what you take out

of that is the exact same thing. Adaptability, structure and planning, like the same

lessons can be learned. It's just a matter of our deployment has less

lively left lives at stake. Although, I mean if you have a 50,

000 person company that goes under now, you have 50, 000 people unemployed,

those lives are, those lives are at stake. So yeah, you know, you still got

to think about from a leadership perspective. And, and I think the other thing is,

you know, we saw it to your point about the communication and, and

how communication was impacted in World War I

warfare today. That's just not the same. It's not the same. Like

we learned, we learned lessons from that, that, that we basically said that is never

going to happen to us ever again. And again. If you look at, at

companies that have been around for a significantly late

leg of time, I'm thinking like the Hudson Bay Company that started in the

1800s, that is still in existence today. It's a little bit different. I know, don't,

don't come at me. I understand that it looks a little different today, but the

foundation of that company still exists. The, you know, the

telecommunications company that sprung up with Ma Bell and you know,

things like that. Like companies that have been around, what is it? Rockport

and some of these other companies that have been around for literally over a century.

You think they do business the exact same way they did after World War. No.

They like their entire business models have changed things. They've adapted,

they've shown that same level of adaptability and which is why they've been around 100

plus years. So it's, it's, there's a, there's

mirrors involved in military tactics and military

strategies to corporate tactics and strategies.

There's direct correlations to how these things work between.

Again, next man up we talked about like, so you get a, you get a

great sales manager, leads a great sales team. He quits because, because he gets offered

a VP of sales somewhere else and you got a next man up, you, somebody

has to take their place. So you gotta just, you move it and you're not

gonna, you're not gonna stop the ship because one person jumps ship.

You've got to figure out a way to move the wheel, to move the needle,

to keep the cog moving. And, you know, and having those

again, In World War I, it was one of the first instances of, like,

that you. You have to have the backup plan. Right?

Because plan, Plan one, if it fails, we

need to know what we're doing. We can't be. We can't fail and then regroup.

And in an environment like World War I, you can't just say,

oh, just go for it, and we'll see what happens. And if it fails, we'll

regroup and we'll decide what. That. What to do next. That. That's. That is not

a thing. Again, from a corporate perspective, you have to have. You have to be

at the ready of. For that kind of. That kind of thinking at the

same time. So I think there's a lot of lessons we can learn from World

War I that we could move into the corporate world.

Excellent. Well, with that, I'd like to thank

Tom Libby for coming on our show today and joining me. Always a pleasure.

Always my pleasure. All right. With that, well,

we're out.