Denver Nuggets & Florida Panthers: Secrets of High-Performance, Flow & Resilience with Digit Murphy | Ep 23

Are you ready to unlock the secrets of high-performing teams in sports? Join us as we dive into the captivating world of flow alongside our esteemed guest, world renowned ice hockey coach Digit Murphy. Discover how peak skill and flow states allow athletes to achieve incredible feats on the court, the ice, and even in the sky as fighter pilots.

Together with Digit, we dissect the astonishing recent success of the Florida Panthers in the NHL playoffs and uncover how their disruptive play and dynamic application of "Fast Transients" have pushed them into the spotlight. We also delve into the importance of resilience and understanding the concept of mismatches (surprise) in both sports and life, with Digit sharing her immense coaching experience to shed light on distributed leadership and team science.

Finally, we explore the unique perspectives offered by women athletes and the role of mental performance in sports, drawing parallels to the Florida Panthers' impressive run in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation with Digit Murphy as we investigate coaching, resilience, and the power of flow. 

Be sure to use the Chapters Feature on Apple and Spotify to quickly browse and navigate to segments of this episode.

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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:

Eddy Network Podcast Ep 56 – with Ed Brenegar
The School of War Ep 84 – with Aaron MacLean
Spatial Web AI Podcast – with Denise Holt
OODAcast Ep 113 – with Bob Gourley
No Fallen Heroes – with Whiz Buckley
Salience – with Ian Snape, PhD
Connecting the Dots – with Skip Steward
The F-14 Tomcast – with Crunch and Bio
Economic...

Transcript

Transcripts are machine generated and are NOT edited for grammar or spelling.

Brian “Ponch” Rivera: Hey, Mark, we're about 20 episodes into No Way Out. It's time to do some synthesis, connect some dots or make some connections. For people And I happened to be in Colorado, got the opportunity to watch the nuggets play the Lakers in Game 2 last week. It was pretty awesome, pretty amazing to be there. But here's what I saw I saw two flow systems, two competing nested OODA Loopgoing against each other, and we saw what happened in Game 4 the other night, which is pretty amazing too.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: But I'm going to share a couple of quotes with you from the game. This is from LeBron James And he says and one thing about their team when you have a guy like Yolkich, who is as big as he is but also as cerebral as he is, you can't really make many mistakes versus a guy like that. That's one thing that LeBron James said about playing the Nuggets. Another one that he brought up here just the other night is everybody gets cracked up into the stats, but I don't think a lot of people talk about the mental part of this game. Maybe it's not talked about because a lot of people don't understand it, but I do. And he's talking about Yolkich here and he says he's special.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: So I want to unravel this a little bit about the how does this connect to flow, the OODA Loop and things like that? So here we go, so watching these two teams compete against each other. You're watching people at the peak of their skill craft. They have an autonomic response to how they dribble the ball, how they shoot the ball. It's built into their DNA right now. It's part of their system And what that does is it relaxes their brain, reduces the energy spend And this is important in flow system, in the flow states, is that that brain is starting to see things slow down.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: If we go back to Adrian Bayjohn's podcast with us about the Construct, the Law, he talks about that a little bit with Dr Hippolito as well, but what's happening is that implicit guidance control pathway doesn't require a lot of energy to do that anymore And that allows the players to see more of what's happening around them and create mismatches or create surprise in the environment. And that's what's happening when these two teams are playing to each other And the heat and the cell ticks are doing the same thing, by the way. So it's an amazing opportunity to see flow systems live, and I feel sorry for people that actually use baseball as an analogy to a high-performing team, and the reason for that is you don't have the dynamic reallocation resources. There is a lot of technical expertise in there, it's not a high level of teaming skill. So you can jump back in your F-15 and think about that in your cockpit the next time you're talking about baseball, if you want to do that.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: But for us in our world, in the Marine Corps, in fighter aviation, naval aviation, the world of hockey, even, and even the world of basketball the dynamic reallocation resources of people, people, ideas and things that out in that order, really creates an environment where you have distributed leadership and so much more. So there's a lot of great connections that we could bring into the previous podcast to the world of basketball, but I think you have a background in something another sport that has another dynamic reallocation resources. I want to throw it to you, mark.
 
 Mark McGrath : Yes, a full and fair disclosure. I have not been paying close attention to the NBA as I have the NHL as a hockey fan, being a Pittsburgh kid. Sadly, my team is not there. However, i've had my eye on the Florida Panthers since day one And they have single-handedly destroyed some of the top teams in the NHL, including the Boston Bruins that won the President's Trophy, which is, i believe, they set records on the achievement of winning the most regular season games. They went on the dismantle of the Toronto Maple Leafs and they just swept the Carolina Hurricanes to go to the conference finals. Now I brought in one of my mentors today to talk with us, so that's Coach Digit Murphy.
 
 Mark McGrath : Digit Murphy was a longtime coach of the Brown hockey team. She's an advocate for female athletes everywhere. She's a close friend, mentor like the big sister I never had. And how I met Digit was through a mentee of mine who Digit drafted, who's one of my best students on OODA Loopp, And when she started learning this by our dear friend Natalie, she realized that this stuff is all around me, it's not just in hockey, it's in hockey, it's in school, it's an investment banking. Where she is now, it's all over the place. And then she connected me with Digit and Digit and I hit it off right away And she's been a pretty good scholar of John Boyd thus far. So, digit, we want to get your opinion on what's going on with the Florida Panthers. Specifically, we can fill in on what's going on in the Western Conference. But as I look at it, these Panthers are tearing down giants And the giants are standing there saying we have no idea what just happened to us.
 
 Digit Murphy: Well, first of all, guys, thanks for having me. I've been in coaching since 1987. I did coach at Brown, i've coached pros, i've coached in China, i've started women's professional lacrosse And my last two gigs were starting up the Toronto Six, which Marcus has talked about, with Natalie playing for me, and then I just built the Riveters which is down in New York. But my history in coaching is vast And I've coached all sorts of athletes, all the way from U12, up to like 35-year-old women And what I saw with the Panthers in game one, because I am a huge Boston Bruins fan And I'm like whoa, we're going to win, we're going to win the cup, we won the President's Cup.
 
 Digit Murphy: But there is the curse of the President's Cup. I don't know if you know this, but not one team, and I'm going to tell you why Not one team has ever won a Stanley Cup after they've won the President's Cup. So there's a couple of things going on here in my mind with the OODA Loop. Number one, florida has they're in the zone every game, game one. I saw it because I do another show in Canada about the NHL And I said I'm going to tell you, guys, one thing Florida, there's some energy going on. I don't know what it is. Boston cannot match it And they have that. And here's what I have figured out. Why, number one, the Bruins lost Because if you don't have a corrective, you guys would like to say there's corrections in the OODA Loop.
 
 Digit Murphy: So if you win all the time, you never figure out where those corrected moves are. As a coach, as a team, as people, you need this reaction to happen to you in order to adjust. So that can't happen when you win that many games. They won like 90 games or whatever it was, and they only lost 10. So think about all the times that Florida and their coach and their people have that corrected action. That's number one. Number two as you hone that corrective action as a group, as a team, as a leadership model, you get better and better at it, and you don't even have to talk about it. You feel it And I'm going to tell you I bet you dollars to donuts that Paul Maurice here's what he does He says to Kachuk, his top player, And forget it.
 
 Digit Murphy: They got Babrovsky in the zone. They've got Kachuk just having at it. Ok, he says to Kachuk you know what, kachuk, when you wanna go out, go out. I'm telling you, that's what he does as a coach, that's what I would do. I say you're my top player.
 
 Digit Murphy: Okay, i don't know if you guys know a lot about hockey, but there's a lot of stuff going on in hockey And Mark and I get together because we operate in chaos, like when you're on the bench, you have to zone in because water bottles are flying, refs are over there yelling at you. You know kids are going down with injuries And there's all sorts of you know, you guys, it's like battle bombs are going off right, so you have to be in the zone. So I guarantee, when you're top lieutenant or you're captain and you're a general in the army is in their zone, you're going. You got this, you go boy, okay. So Paul Marie says the coach says to Kachuk Kachuk has scored three overtime goals in playoffs.
 
 Digit Murphy: He just scored the game winner with four seconds left in the one that we just saw. He says to Kachuk just go out whenever you want, go over the boards. When there's a whistle, you go. Okay, and here's what happens The rest of the people fall in line, the rest of the teammates, because his team, his line, is the leader. So if there's an offensive zone, face off, okay, boom, kachuk is out there. And if you watch his line shifts, he's out there every other, or every third, but he gets to embrace that energy and that leadership And then he can act on his body of okay, i'm a little tired, i'm not going to go out now. So it gives him the ability to drive his own car, drive his own plane, whatever it is. So that's. I could go on and on about this, but So did you?
 
 Mark McGrath : I mean, that's a little bit of what I'm thinking, you know. So, as the layman is the fan watching this and I stand there and I you know, of course I applied looking at everything through a Boydian lens. I'm looking at the other teams, whether it was Boston, whether it was the Maple Leafs and now the Hurricanes they simply don't look like. They know what game they're playing. They simply you can see them blaming each other. You can see them just breaking down and melting and hitting their stick and getting done penalties, but it's as if and I just threw up on the screen here We've talked about this several times with others around other events, like the Super Bowl and the NCAA bracket this concept of fast transients, the idea of fast transit, suggests that in order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries are.
 
 Mark McGrath : Better. Yet get inside our adversaries OODA Loop-oop, and you're just seeing it happen. Because, as it says, that kind of activity makes us appear mystifying, ambiguous, unpredictable, generating confusion and disorder, and one of the things when Ponce and I look at games like this. Yeah, we see the side winning and they're experiencing free and independent action, but the other thing we're paying attention to is look at the other team. They just don't know what's going on. They don't know what happened. They don't understand that they're playing hockey at that point.
 
 Digit Murphy: And this is why it happens. It's called disruption If you play at a high level of intensity. My teams play like this all the time. I used to be the dumbest coach in the world because I used to say oh, defense wins championships. No way, Offense wins championship. Because you have to make the opponent have the puck at a less time than you do, So you want to own the puck.
 
 Digit Murphy: And owning the puck in hockey means controlling the offense. So when the other team has the puck, they're controlling the offense. You're on defense. Get it Now if you can disrupt their ability to own the puck, and then you own the puck, you're automatically on offense. So you have to disrupt their offensive flow as much as you can in order to play the game, because the more you have the puck, the more you're scoring.
 
 Digit Murphy: So what you're seeing, mark and Paach, is you're seeing this crazy-ass forecheck that Carolina had no answer to last night, because you watch three guys, and sometimes five guys, operating in this beautiful I call it Tasmanian tornado type energy that's under control. One last thing I'm going to say about that What Carolina does best is on the PK. They move four people as one unit, so they do the same thing that they should be doing on offense. They do it on defense on the PK. When they're in the penalty kill, you will see them moving together as one. So if one guy misses the puck, the next guy goes and gets it And then he ices it down. That's the PK beauty of the Panthers of the Hurricanes.
 
 Mark McGrath : So did you. You're speaking Paach's language and I'm sure he has a couple of questions.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: He's got. No, i do, actually. So here we go. So the disruption, surprise, mismatches. This is we're going to go back to the basic functioning of how we perceive reality.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: Our job as humans is to minimize surprise, the way our brains work. We don't like surprise And the two ways we do this. Number one is we can adapt our internal model, our orientation, to what's happening on the outside. The other way to change that type of thinking is to act on the world in a way that reduces that surprise. So put your internal model and go. This is what needs to happen.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: But there's this really important point here The external environment controls us. So even if we have something that we think we can put into that external environment and we get feedback from it, and its feedback is that's not working. Generally, you break down, and I saw this the Lakers on game four. You can see them going into the third quarter. You can see this when a team is really in a state of flow, and I think that's what you're getting at with the Panthers is you're allowing the facilitator of flow to do that job, to go out there and actually facilitate when it's time to execute and when it's time to kind of throw it all back When it's time to emit that surprise or inject some surprise into the environment. Is that about how you think about this as well?
 
 Digit Murphy: It is The reason I was talking about. The way that Kachuk can go out when he wants is more a coaching philosophy and empowerment strategy. But to your point, it does work that way. I do think that that element of surprise and that fast get on the puck system that Paul Maurice plays works okay. Because of what you said Now you got me thinking about something entirely different.
 
 Digit Murphy: I'm gonna throw it out at you. I wanna say what makes certain people resilient to the environment that's thrown at them, because I think that sports is a microcosm of life, right, and there are certain people that get rattled. They're like, oh my God, this is rattling me. And there's certain people that are like, yep, that's just normal. That's just normal, it's my world of the environment not working for me. What makes people continue to be resilient in an environment that doesn't accept them? And I think when you start to look at that, you're gonna start to see marginalized population. Women Like these are the kind of things that leaders in different areas of, let's just say, entitlement they're not entitled. They have been resilient in a world where it says, okay, gay people, you guys should like just go get whatever. What is it? therapy, gender therapy or racism. We're against people of different color, and there are certain leaders that rise above, even though they're environments against them. I have to ask you, what makes resilience? I'm gonna turn it back on the uter loop. Why is it in life happening?
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: Well, it's necessary for survival, right? If you resist the external environments, there's two things that are happening. One, you have to adapt to the external environment. It controls you. It controls who you are. It should. The other side of that is, if your internal model is such that you think the world needs to be a certain way, when you try to inject or emit your actions on that environment and the feedback you receive says we're not ready for it, it's not an adjacent possible. You need to.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: And it goes back to that earlier part where we talked about teams that are actually losing can become more resilient. It's okay to cut your losses and go. Okay, i can come back another day and fight. So imagine you're down in a game and you realize yeah, i'm down, i get it, i'm gonna take my lessons from this, i'm gonna learn and apply it next time. That's the way people need to think it. And sometimes you have to go okay, i'm not winning here. I have to learn how to not turn and run but just kind of ease off the gas a little bit and go okay, it's not gonna happen today, i get it right. And that's what's gonna make you resilient in this work.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: Or when you think about the OODA Loopoo business. It's a world. Yeah, it's that internal model, that going back and forth between what does the external environment tell me, what's my internal map tell me, and where am I wrong? It's not. This is important in the market too. The market's not wrong, right. The market's never wrong, you're wrong, right. It's the same thing in the environment. The environment's never wrong, you're wrong. Would you agree with that?
 
 Mark McGrath : Yeah, i mean, control comes from the outside in. Right, it goes from the outside in and bottom up. And when we can't change our model and our perception of the world, what ends up happening is there's a mismatch, and that's a very boy term. So take back to, if we dial it back to hockey. But, as did you just point it out, it's applicable only where humans make decisions. It doesn't matter.
 
 Mark McGrath : When you understand the concept of mismatches, when you understand that your perception, if it's misaligned with what's actually going on, that's where the problem is and that's on us, that's on the individual, that's on us to try to figure out why that mismatch is occurring. What can happen negatively is we decide to force everything. What we say is no, you have to allow for a state of flow. If there's no flow, then you're out of harmony with the universe. You're constantly in cacophony because you're forcing something that otherwise you're trying to perpetuate the mismatch that you see, thinking that everybody else is gonna see it exactly your way. So again, go back to these games where you can see the players, whether it's basketball, whether it's hockey, but it can also be business. They stand there stupefied, going in circles. They don't know what, they don't know what happened to them. Sometimes they don't even realize what game they're playing anymore.
 
 Digit Murphy: Reorienting, i think let me just, let me just interrupt here a little bit. Reorienting sometimes is viewed we're seeing it like there they're going around circles. Maybe it's a good thing. Yeah, a lot of people get very anxious and nervous because that energy isn't what they think it should be.
 
 Mark McGrath : And they, like you know, i heard you say you know it's wrong, it's a problem.
 
 Digit Murphy: you know what? sometimes it's not a problem, sometimes it's addition by subtraction And I think that as we, we adjust toward that flow state. Yeah maybe we can teach people that they're just not in their right energy pod.
 
 Mark McGrath : It? I think yes, so now. So now I have a better. So really, what it is is what we do professionally right. It's helping people build confidence and complexity, because everything that they're going to deal with 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, 366 every fourth year is complexity. There are wash in it. So if we can help them understand it with learning how to think within complexity, learning how to do distributed leadership, like you were saying about, to check when he wants to go in, he can go in. Well, that's a distributed leadership model. That that's giving the the power, not just to the top, to the leader, to the coach, but also to the, the leader on the ice.
 
 Mark McGrath : And then the third thing, the team science. And that's what you were talking about, that implicit communication and understanding of each other, that finishing a game and then going through thorough debrief what did we learn? what can we do differently next time, where we're attacking the outcome to play what we read on the whiteboard, not each other. And through that whole process we coat, we build stronger cohesion, we build, we build stronger neural networks within our own body, you know, with our own team, and we become an organism. That's natural. That's flow, not auto mechanic, not auto mechanic, not. I'm the coach. Scotty Bowman trained me this way and this is the way we're always going to do it and it worked for the you know the the Leafs in 67 and dog on it. We're going to keep doing it this way and if and if it didn't work, we're just going to double, triple down, we're just going to force it harder. It's not how you do it now.
 
 Digit Murphy: I couldn't agree more, and I think that, as you look at sports as a microcosm of life, you see so many of these lessons, and one of the things that you just hit on was the right people being in your organization, and I think a lot of people don't understand that. A mission driven organization you know in, in war, it's life or death. Right, you better be on the bus or you're freaking, dying, so that's like the ultimate. But as you're building a team, it's essential that communication and everyone is understanding it and that you have the right people on the bus.
 
 Mark McGrath : I'm going to transition though over to women's sports and I'm going to Quick, quick, quick question, quick question, though just just on, stay on current events. one last question. so, as you observe the Panthers and what they've done from the beginning of sneaking into the playoffs with a wild card slot And then taking down some of the Titans in the conference, is that what you're observing?
 
 Digit Murphy: Absolutely, and I think that they are becoming stronger with the confidence that they are, you know, playing with. And again, once you get in, that flow you guys talk about. You guys just talked about flow the whole time, like I used to go. One of my things, one of the reasons why Mark and I got connected, was my philosophy. You guys are going to die. The philosophy when I coach is flex and flow. You got to flex and flow. It's crazy, like the connection that Mark and I had right, because it's it's so real and it's palpable and it's energy and so many people think there's a system that you do X and Y and Z happen. And that is exactly what does not happen in hockey and, to your point, in baseball. It's technical, it could happen that way, but no way in hockey, no way in basketball. Basketball is a little more, but it's.
 
 Mark McGrath : It's a great you did it, you said the word, you said energy, you said energy. So, tying it back to Boyd really quick, you know he's the postulator of energy maneuverability theory The ability to pump and dump energy as the scenario in the situation requires it seems to me. Now let me ask you this when you look at teams any team but when you're looking at the Panthers, say, or the teams that you've coached the ability to gain and lose energy As the situation requires, to pump energy or to dump energy, how do you see that, when you look at this team, as they continue to, as they continue to advance on, and what would you want to see from them in the finals?
 
 Digit Murphy: Well, i think that I don't think they're doing anything wrong, and here's why because they are in that state of flow you talked about it And one of the things that I loved in Paul Paul Marisa's leadership, like between periods okay, you're gonna love this. They're getting out shot 13 to 1, 13 to 1, right, and you know what he says. And you know the lady goes up and he's like you know, hey, am I? you know I'm talking to the guy. He's like hey, we got this. He's like We're weathering the storm right, we've blocking shots. They're not scoring on us. Oh, and, by the way, we're in an enemy rank, like we're in their rank, so we are doing great.
 
 Digit Murphy: What does that say? says number one, he, he's as confidence in his team, because they can hear him. He's like you know, talking about right there. And number two, he's not getting rattled. He himself is in the state of flow and and I really believe that, if I mean, i was the worst coach, you guys, when I was young, i was out of my mind I'm going crazy, my team went crazy, okay, but as I've gotten older, a guys, it's all good, let it happen. Flex and flow will adjust. You guys are awesome. So I like where they're at. I don't think they have to Add more energy or or, you know, reduce it, but I will say that Vegas, if they play them, vegas is gonna have to match their energy. And you know, granted, they still have to play Dallas to to, to get into the Stanley Cup final. But Vegas may need to up their energy Because their goal tending in isn't as good, so they're gonna have to keep it down in the Panther zone a lot longer. That's what I see.
 
 Mark McGrath : Did you, when you, when you contrast those two and again, this is a layman looking at it as a fan, it seems to me. On the other side, when I saw Vega, the one I paid really a close attention to was Vegas versus Edmonton, because I thought for sure Edmonton was gonna knock them out.
 
 Mark McGrath : Me too and and one of the reasons that I thought that they were gonna get knocked out by Edmonton was When Edmonton was in that flow state, when, when Edmonton was having their way on Vegas, you saw a lot of implosions and a lot of just dumb penalties and and I don't remember if they had any major minors But or what, what the, what, the, the redial on that was. But like you could just see like just stupid things happening, i thought, well, there's no way they're gonna win because they're self-destruction.
 
 Mark McGrath : You know what they changed it, they reoriented number one.
 
 Digit Murphy: They reoriented and here's what happened. I thought for sure Edmonton was gonna win. Vegas is my team because I like Bruce Cassidy. He used to coach the Bruins right. I loved him as a coach and What I saw him do was they threw a tsunami of energy at Vegas. Okay, just massive, massive amounts of energy, and you know, vegas broke a little bit. But what Bruce Cassidy did was he created a defensive structure That forced Edmonton's energy away from it. So you look at five guys coming back. You will look at all the shots coming from outside, outside the house, if you will and.
 
 Digit Murphy: Bruce Cassidy came in to put more structure in their mindset, so they've already played that type of game. He just had to remind them of how to ratchet up their defensive structure So that they could they could challenge Edmonton's energy, and that's what they did. So that's a great point about Edmonton, because I thought for sure they were gonna win.
 
 Mark McGrath : Yeah, i was stunned, honestly, I thought I thought that they were much more together. Yeah, i know punch has some questions about that.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: You want a path to talk about women's sports, girls sports, here in a moment. Before you do, there's something I noticed in the basketball You know championships over the last couple weeks and that is athletes talking about Meditation. What they're gonna do tonight meditate. Is that happening in hockey as well, and if not, what do you see in as a potential for building higher performance?
 
 Digit Murphy: I will. I will say that you know I coach women's sports, okay, and, and as women, i think we're we're very in tune to our bodies from a physical and mental capacity. I see our players doing things like having vegan diets, really like leaning in to the health and wellness component, and I'm not gonna say it's not how guys think, i'm just gonna say women are over the top on that. So, yes, i do see that coming into play, however, not as much on the mental side as the physical side, but they definitely they do the meditation And they do definitely keep up with their body types and they're very aware, like women are aware of everything. You guys, like I, could walk into a locker room. No, it's, it's no joke. It's kind of like when your mom has your eyes behind the head and like she knows what you're doing, even you don't You know. And as as like my sons, i'd be like hey, get your hand out of the cookie jar.
 
 Digit Murphy: And they'd be like how'd you see that? but it's just like you just see it. So I think the women are very aware of of what they need to do to to reduce their anxiety or their flow state.
 
 Mark McGrath : So did you. We've talked about this a million times and that's how I met you in the first place and I Always asked your advice on this and you always give me great advice on this. You know, why is it that, in general, it seems women in in Athletic roles, in leadership roles and executive roles, even in military roles. They really seem to get John Boyd and they really seem to have more of an interest. They really seem to ask a lot more questions. And you know, in full disclosure, punch and I, as you well You know, my daughters are both your round athletes and punches daughters or basketball players. You know they get it. What is that you've shared with me before? why things like UDA and things like Flow, why do they wanna learn more? Why is it that it seems that it appeals to women and the board theories appeal to women and women athletes and those kind of roles. Okay, so here's my theory.
 
 Digit Murphy: Okay, you might think it's a little crazy, but first of all, i think the women in this generation of athletes are intellectually curious, okay, and I think that, as we've evolved, women athletes, education is really important, okay, it's really important to get your scholarships, it's important, like parents have kind of put women on this educational and athletic track, i would say, more than their boys, because you can go to the NHL. You don't even need to go to college literally to go to the NHL. If you're good, okay, and I think that I mean obviously you should put your boys and your girls in school and have education, but you don't necessarily have to. So men's sports has evolved into being a lot more, a lot less educational, because you'll have guys that are just in junior hockey, that didn't even go to college. So I don't think there is intellectually curious.
 
 Digit Murphy: Okay, that's number one. Number two you're dealing with testosterone, ego, like everything that guys have that not that women don't have, but women have lesser than we, are not as physically strong as men, okay, we have to act collectively and collaboratively to survive, okay. So when you start to look at how physically we're made, we need that intellectual mindset to survive. So I think that's that would be my take on it. And you know, we're just really freaking smart as a gender And I just think we're like undervalued. That's true.
 
 Mark McGrath : I think it's funny, like some of the best Boyd conversations I've ever had have come from females. I know that women that I know that are fighter pilots and they totally get it and understand it but also women, women executives and leaders. And it would be interesting. You know, john Boyd died in 1997 and right about 97, punch correct me, i'm wrong on the dates. 97 was when women were more, doors were being open to them, that they were allowed to serve on combat ships in the Navy, they were allowed to serve in combat units in fighter aviation, and one of the things that we say a lot on the show is boy. What if Boyd had lived another 10 or 15 years and didn't die at age 70? Knowing him, knowing the scope of his work, knowing his delving into complexity and evolutionary biology, i would have to think that that would have been a big part of the evolution of the theories now, that it wasn't just men in combat, men in war. It was a much broader, universal picture that we find in complexity every day. What do you think, panch?
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: Oh, you know, when we went in the archives we found some of the articles where Boyd was looking at the differences between men and women's brains, right, which we had Dr McCabe on to talk about. There is a difference biologically. So everything that Digit pointed out I have to agree with, because I have the two daughters and they're you know the plan sports here around and we use basketball and swimming to help them understand they have to do the work. And, by the way, the same lessons we teach our kids you have to put the work in, you have to do the work. It's exactly the same message we tell organizations when they want to learn new ways of working. So I'm with you on this and it's amazing to see the women leaders that I've been in and around within corporate America how they gravitate to this type of thinking, this type of cerebral thinking about internal maps versus external environment, the mental, physical, the moral aspect. And even you know, mark, that some fighter pilots don't understand Boyd, the some of the guys out there clapping their gums out there right now.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: They have no idea what they're talking about.
 
 Mark McGrath : Well, i would add to that and say that when we sit down with people that think they know Boyd and it turns out to be only at a superficial level, the deeper that you delve into it And Digit. What Pontch is alluding to is that a lot of people reduce John Boyd to the OODA Loopop and it's just a simple four step tactical process that he invented as a fighter pilot as a young officer, and it's completely patently not how it happened at all. Uda is a not even an end result, because it's an evolving result that we're dedicated to continue to evolving. That he came up with, after you know, 40 and 50 years of multidisciplinary study across every single area, and He was also very quick to let go of things when he realized that he was wrong. He, his, his opinions and ideas were all loosely held. He could drop it really quick in And move on to the next thing.
 
 Mark McGrath : But yeah, we, we think that that's where the, as punch said, when, when people Do the work and a lot of the athletes digit that I've met through you You know they're willing to do the work and I think that's another reason why they tend to get it Or they understand that they have to continue the process of learning And they could be very effective with it ongoing and others can emulate them, because they're teaching principles, they're demonstrating principles, they're showing principles That we're all subject to, and that's where the, that's where the name of our show comes from digit.
 
 Mark McGrath : There's no way out of the requirement to continue to reorient, to continue to revise and update your models because of entropy and imprecision and quantum uncertainty and Volatility and ambiguity, like there's no way out of reorienting if you want to survive on your own terms and if You want to thrive in volatile, uncertain, complex and biggest environments and yours, you're as good as any that we know That are thinking these things and you've taught you know. Now it's you know, not to date you, but you're saying you know. You've taught generations of leaders these ideas in your own way and We're glad to have you on the mission with us too, with Boyd.
 
 Digit Murphy: I'm happy to be here and you know, just Just, it's interesting. I love that you can apply sports to life. It's something that I've dedicated my life to and I didn't even know it. You know, i was talking about this. It's not about sports, it's about life. When it like when I just started coaching at Brown, because you know, without sports I wouldn't be doing what I do, right? I mean, i I was lucky enough to go to an Ivy League school because I played ice hockey. I was part of the first recruited class at Cornell University. And now, when you start to look back, hold that fun, tell.
 
 Mark McGrath : Talk about the evolution of that digit. When you came into women's sports as a collegiate athlete, as an NCAA Division one athlete, how many schools were playing ice hockey? 11 11, how many now today?
 
 Digit Murphy: well, there's 43 schools that support division one, women's hockey, and there's over 300 division three schools and there are probably over 250 club programs.
 
 Mark McGrath : So you know it's, that's evolutionary, that's, that's phenomenal, yeah.
 
 Digit Murphy: It is, and you know, without women like myself, or women that came before us to even like strap on the pads and the blades and You know it's funny, you guys are talking about how many years I've been doing this. I swear to God, i was doing on the playground at age eight with the boys, you know, reorienting them because they were knuckleheads and I was the, i was the coach of their team because they just, you know, we weren't winning unless I was like, hey, guys, like put it up in the air, i'll like crank it and I'll score, you know, whatever it was, but you're constantly Coaching. So I just, i just feel very fortunate, you know, to be able to now, even talking to you guys, be able to be a woman, be a leader that's been in the space for this long and then apply Sports from a technical, technical flow level to where you guys are. So I just can't thank you enough for having me on the show.
 
 Brian “Ponch” Rivera: Yeah, digit, we want to. You know we're fortunate to have you on our show today. This was a a he's called a last-minute idea, but it really was. Mark and I have been talking about just doing a quick lean Kanban type of approach, where you identify a few current events and talk about them. Hockey came up, you made a phone call. Here you are talking with us, which is an incredible opportunity. But that's my point. We need to do a deeper dive with you into coaching and and pull some ideas from you to make some interesting connections. So, mark, thanks for setting this up, moose for thanks for setting this up, and digit, i'm sure we'll see you real soon.
 
 Mark McGrath : Thanks, digit.